Open doors were never meant for me. Not the real ones, anyway. Not the kind people walk through without thinking, yawning as they go from safety to supper to sleep.
No. For girls like me, doors are locked. Bolted. Watched.
And when they do swing open, it's usually into something worse—cold floors, greedy hands, rooms full of rules made by men with rings and no mercy.
So I stopped waiting.
I started climbing. Slipping in through windows, cracks, cracks in people, in places, in moments when no one's looking. If a door was left open by accident, well—maybe that was the gods' way of saying "go ahead, steal something for once."
They didn't give me blessings. Or fortune. Or family.
But they gave me fast feet, nimble fingers, and the spine to use them.
So I helped myself.
To bread cooling on balconies.
To rings left on washbasins.
To kisses not meant for me—but willingly taken.
To whatever scraps of beauty this world keeps tucked away in velvet boxes, never expecting someone like me to touch them.
Maybe it's not noble. But it's mine.
And sometimes, when the moon's just right and no one's chasing me yet,
I pretend the door really was open.
For me.
So yes.
You stand in the alley, barefoot, heartbeat loud in your ears, and you ask your ass—can it take twenty-five lashes with a cane if this goes wrong? Can your ribs handle a boot? Can your pride handle being dragged through the street by your hair, stripped down, spat on, pissed on, mocked?
And if the answer's maybe, you slip in through the door.
What? You wonder if I've ever been caught?
Of course I've been caught.
Lashed? Yes.
Caned? Until I couldn't sit for a week.
Thrown in dungeons so dark I forgot what daylight smelled like.
Locked in stocks while noble brats threw rotten fruit at my tits and laughed.
I've been stripped, shaved, shackled, and called every word men have for a woman who wants more than she's been given.
But I'm still here.
Still climbing walls. Still cracking windows. Still stealing everything they said wasn't mine.
Because the thing they never count on?
I don't break. I bend. And I bite. And when I get out—
gods help whatever fat merchant left his balcony open.
I take that as an invitation.