MileStone #4

The beach shimmered like a postcard—the kind found pinned to fridges in northern cities, worn at the edges by longing. It was the kind of day that made gods jealous. The sun, high and golden, stretched its arms across the bay, glinting off the calm, glassy sea. Cicadas buzzed like invisible machinery in the olive trees above, and the air smelled of salt, sunscreen, and grilled octopus.

Children ran barefoot between towels and umbrellas, their laughter like windchimes. Couples reclined with sunglasses tilted on their noses, reading half-finished novels or scrolling in silence. The sea breathed gently, drawing in the restless, releasing them renewed.

It was, in every visible way, a paradise. A place that promised leisure, where time softened at the edges and the ugliness of the world stayed behind locked doors and television screens.

But paradise, as always, was a lie told by those who could afford it. And among the umbrellas and inflatable flamingos, a story older than empires began to unfold once again.

She walked along the shore with the silent grace of someone who no longer needed to belong. Her steps left no imprint on the wet sand. Her eyes, rimmed with knowing, scanned the scene not as a beachgoer but as a witness. There were families—postcard-perfect clutches of flesh and fabric—yet among them, her gaze caught a subtle dissonance. A family that did not quite match the varnished backdrop. A mother, and three children. At first glance, unremarkable. At second, unmistakably “other.”

Two boys wrestled in the sand. The girl, younger, spun a plastic ball with the absentminded focus of a child who has learned to entertain herself. When the ball rolled toward another girl, alone a few meters away, there was a moment—delicate and sacred—where neither hesitation nor prejudice intervened. One child threw the ball. The other caught it. A game was born from silence, as all pure things are.

Ten minutes passed. Or was it eternity?

Then the world fractured.

“Stop that, Liza,” came the mother’s voice—sharp, imperial, and bitter with fear. “I told you not to talk to strangers.”

Liza froze, her hand still half-raised, as if justice itself had been slapped from her. She turned, shrinking, retreating not just from the game but from the unspoken possibility it carried.

Speranza’s mother—her name a cruel irony—leaned forward and spoke with resignation, not rage: “You too. Don’t talk to people who call you ‘foreigner.’ They don’t deserve it.”

It should have ended there. But hatred, like oil on water, finds its way into every crevice.

The man—the father—rose. Not suddenly, not dramatically. But with the sickening slowness of something inevitable.

He was not a brute by appearance. Not the kind of man whose shadow made children cry. His polo shirt was tucked neatly into beige shorts, his sandals were clean, and he wore a smartwatch that buzzed periodically with forgotten reminders.

He read the headlines, knew enough to repeat what the morning radio said about “the economy” and “security threats,” and spoke often about “hard work” and “values,” though he rarely reflected on whose work built the roads he drove or who cleaned the buildings he walked through.

He was, in every way, typical. A man who had never questioned the myths that raised him, because they’d always served him well enough. His education had taught him numbers and dates, but not the dignity of other people’s stories. He had opinions, but not thoughts. He could quote the price of gas to the cent, but not the name of a single refugee child who’d drowned on the shores of this very sea.

He was not monstrous. He was worse. He was ordinary.

And now, ordinary rose to its feet with rage.

“Who told you, stupid bitch, to speak to us like that?” he roared, advancing toward Speranza’s mother. “Get your bastard kids and go somewhere else. You don’t belong here. We feed you, we pay for you to sit on your asses while you poison our kids with drugs and steal from us. Parasites. Bastards. Foreign scum!”

That was the moment she—the Peacock Woman—stepped forward.

Her voice—velvet, laced with flame—cut through the air like a sacred verdict:

“You are a chicken,” she said.
“A coward, trembling for fear they’ll one day cut your throat. Every day they let you live, and when they choose, they grind your bones into chicken nuggets. And you think yourself a man?

A man, roaring at a woman alone with her children?
A man, inflamed not by justice, but by the fragile panic of losing a throne built on sand?

You call them foreigners, but it is your kind—the ones who live fat on conquest and lies—who made them wanderers.
You fear the poor, yet it is your nations that bled their homelands dry—drilling their mountains, stealing their water, poisoning their air with your hunger for more.
You fear the war-torn, but it is your bombs that fell.
Your markets that fed dictators.
Your flags that waved while their homes turned to ash.

And now you dare to point a trembling, beer-soaked finger and say they do not belong?
It is you who should be questioned.
You, whose comfort was built on centuries of looting masked as order.

You do not hate them because they are different.
You hate them because they remind you of what was taken.
Because deep in the marrow of your cowardice, you know—you know—
you could never survive what they have survived.”

He opened his mouth. No sound came.

And then, something impossible happened.

She changed.

Feathers bloomed where skin had been. Her body, now radiant and terrible, stretched and shimmered in hues no human tongue could name—blues like lapis, greens like sacred fire. Her eyes glowed with the long memory of exiled queens, her voice no longer human but ancient, elemental.

He staggered back, wetting himself in silence. His anger, once volcanic, had cooled into the ash of shame.

He turned to his daughter.

“…You can play with her,” he whispered, not in apology, but in surrender.

No one understood what had happened.

Only the children noticed how the air shifted.
Only they remembered how the wind had paused, as if time itself held its breath.
Because innocence is attuned to truth in a way no cynic can grasp. Because only those unclouded by hatred, untouched by the armor of prejudice, could sense the invisible miracle. The children did not need words. They felt it in their chests, like a song forgotten and suddenly remembered.

The Peacock Woman faded once again into her invisible form.
She walked on.

She did not need to be seen.
She only needed the truth to be heard.

https://thepeacockwoman.com/women-on-the-move-resilience-in-migration/