The Woman and the Shirt – A Retold Fairy Tale of Identity and Escape

I remember the time when everyone was made to wear red shirts. It wasn’t a matter of fashion. It was control—heavy, suffocating, binding.

They said the queen herself had thrown these red shirts upon her sons, turning them into swans. Or so the story went. But in truth, the tales were tangled. Perhaps it was the sons who used the queen, pulling her strings to create those cursed shirts.

It’s always hard to retell stories born from broken places—where failed kingdoms and ruthless gangs reign. Stories there never quite make sense.

That’s where I was—standing at a street corner as the twisted fairy tale played out in front of me. And then—everything changed.

In that world, you were either a shirt-wearer or a skin-lover. The skin-lovers stayed hidden, buried deep in their hovels, never daring to bare their naked truth beneath the sun. They spun yarn endlessly, with no buyers, no market, no escape.

But they lived. Without those red shirts, they endured.

You’d never find a machete or blade among them. Poverty was sharp enough.

I was a skin-lover once. A mother. I had a daughter, and together we lived in a tiny hovel. In the dark, in the dirt—but happy.

This is our story, of a mother and daughter in a land where shirts could kill.

We stayed out of sight, but the shirt-wearers came closer. They built factories just outside our refuge. Their blue and white flags flapped violently in the sky. “Super Mano Dura” they called it. The iron hand. By then, all the twelve-year-old boys were in jail, every one of them.

One day, a bus came. I watched—watched as the sons of the queen crafted their bloody shirts with a violence so pure it turned my stomach. They saw me watching. I ran.

I ran faster than a swan can fly, away from that upside-down world. I ran so fast that I left my daughter behind.

Everyone knows that a child who puts on the red shirt is lost. No happy endings there. But no one ever tells the story of the ones who ran—the ones who watched and fled. The bystanders, the powerless, the cowards.

I fled to the forest, far from shirts and their makers. There, I did what I knew best: I spun yarn. Yarn until my fingers ached, until my heart numbed. I wanted to make my daughter a dress—a pink one. I told myself she would find me. She’d come, and when she did, I’d have something beautiful for her. A Quinceañera in the woods—it would be lovely.

Then one day, an old woman came to my door. Her name was Indira. She asked to trade her spinning for my yarn. I agreed.

Together, we began the pink dress. But Indira wanted to teach me something else: how to make shirts whiter than snow.

“No more shirts!” I protested. I’d seen enough of them.

But Indira laughed. “No, no. These are different. Not heavy, not enslaving, not binding. They’re light, freeing. Life-giving. You’ll see. Everyone wears a shirt, my dear. But it’s what kind you wear that makes all the difference.”

So we talked as we spun. Day melted into night in conversation, and with every stitch, my heart longed for my daughter.

At last, the dress was ready. But as every tale goes, a happy ending demands a price.

A coyote asked for $11,000 to bring my daughter to me. A bad bargain, I knew.

Instead, I chose the wings of the swan. I flew—flew back into that cursed fairy tale world, crossed rivers of memory, and found her. I brought her home to the forest.

We were together again.

Ending 1

But happiness is fragile.

When she unpacked, I saw them: feathers. Red, bloodied feathers buried in the folds of her suitcase.

I should have checked. I should have known.

She took them with her to school. Bit by bit, they turned into red shirts of her own.

Then one day, she vanished.

I searched, desperate and breathless. Then—Facebook. That modern, merciless mirror.

A photo. There she was, in a red shirt. Smiling. I was too late.

Ending 2

Indira loved my daughter as her own.

The three of us worked together in the forest, spinning, sewing, laughing. Indira told us tales of her own land, of different magic, while we shared the broken fairy tales of ours.

If my daughter had brought feathers, she shed them long ago.

Now she dreams of sewing her own shirts—but only the white ones.

Moral of the Story

In a world that tries to clothe us in identities not our own, the choice of what we wear—both on our bodies and in our souls—defines who we become. True freedom is not in hiding but in remaking the garments of our lives with threads of dignity, courage, and love.