I was told that only the guilty wash their hands. That sin builds into a uncontrolable stinch and to be pure is to be nothing, to smell like nothing. I thought it was odd. For every mistake in our lives to be forged into our being as if we cannot change, but every adult in my life said it was normal.

This is the way things are. They would tell me that and seem satisfied with that explanation as if it actually explained anything. Then I met a woman, her thinking was completely different and she looked different too. Her hair was white as snow but her skin a dark golden brown that shined under the slightest light. She was beautiful and her hands had a bit of smell to them, but not like the adults had said, it wasnt a bad smell at all. She smelled of honey and forests, of sin mixed with virtue. I asked her how she managed to be so enthralling while bearing the weight of her mistakes. She said that she started by not bearing them at all.

“Your mistakes are a part of you. It is how you learn who you are, but you dont have to drag them behind you like a corpse.” She said, her hand caressing the ground for dandaliens that grew at our feet. I helped her.

“You make your mistakes, say something you dont mean or regret a choice already made, and you move on and be better next time.”

“But how do you deal with your smell? With people feeling your sin?”

“It is mine and it doesnt bother me, why would I care about the opinion of another?”

I was quiet, then I picked a flower and handed it to her. “But, isnt it embarrasssing?” I asked, “To walk around knowing how different you are?”

She smiled and took the plant before standing with the woven basket in her other hand. The wind blew back her puffy strands of hair as she smelled the gift and I watched her face. She really was beautiful.

“Do you think my smell suits me?” She said, her eyes staring down at me. I nodded and she continued, smiling wider now.

“The scent I have is not a curse, it is a blessing, because it means that I have found myself. And knowing oneself is the least embarrassing thing you could ever do.”

She put the flower in her basket and offered me a hand up, I took it.

“Its more embarrassing to walk around scared than to live and try. Not everything is going to be for you, not everything was for me, but you are here to live and see wonders beyond your wildest imagination and get upset over things no one else cares about because that is what it means to be alive.”

She kneeled to my level and told me one more thing before the sun set.

“Go commit every sin young man, go be greedy and lazy and down right insufferable if you have to, just make sure you come out of it having lived, and make sure youre a good person. You’d be surprised how much that counts for.”

She gave me a hug and I hugged her back as she told me to be safe on my journey home. I told her to be safe on her adventure as well.

Then just like that, 10 years passed and I saw her in a tavern as beautiful as she was when I was a child with a dandalion in her hair. I stared at her for a while before she noticed me because I didnt think she remembered me, but then, with that same interest from all those years ago, she spoke.

“Young man?” She asked, and I nodded. Instantly her eyes lit up and she hugged me like she did when I was 7.

And just like back then, I was surronded by her scent, but I could hardely even smell the sin anymore. I wondered what had happened for a milisecond before I remembered what she asked me 10 years ago right before sunset.

“Do you think my smell suits me?” She had asked.

This was when I realized why the sin was so faint, it was because her scent had covered it.

She hadnt changed, she just became more herself.