By Emily Parker • February 16, 2026 • Share
They covered her head with a burlap sack like her face was something shameful. Something that needed to be hidden.
But the pain Ligia carried inside was rougher than any cloth scraping her skin under the brutal sun of La Candelaria Market.
She stood there, blind under the sack, listening to men laugh and bargain over her like livestock. Every comment landed like an invisible punch.
“How much for the one in the sack?” someone joked, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Cheap,” Gaspar the trader replied, grinning like ice. “She’s good for work, not for showing off.”
At twenty-two, Ligia already felt like her life had lasted too long.
She’d been alone since childhood. The aunt who raised her never missed a chance to remind her she was a burden. For years, Ligia was fed the same poison: no one will ever want you, you’re not pretty enough, your only value is what your hands can do.
When her aunt decided she was tired of “feeding an extra mouth,” she found a clean way to get rid of her: invent a story about a terrifying face… and sell her.
For two days, Ligia stood under that sack, trapped between fear and humiliation. She didn’t dream of love anymore. She didn’t even dream of escape.
She just prayed that whoever bought her wouldn’t be cruel.
And then, from the noise of the market, came a voice that didn’t carry laughter.
It was calm. Firm. Unhurried.
“What’s the price for her?”
Gaspar hesitated.
“You don’t even know what she looks like. They say her face will scare you.”
“I didn’t ask that,” the man said. “I asked how much.”
Coins changed hands.
Moments later, Ligia felt someone take her arm.
No yanking. No roughness. Just a steady grip… strangely respectful.
“Get up,” the man said. “A storm’s coming and the road is long.”
Ligia’s stomach tightened.
She didn’t know who her “buyer” was. She didn’t know what waited for her.
All she knew was that the air grew colder and cleaner as they climbed toward the mountains, and her fear wrestled with a new, dangerous thing:
Curiosity.
Why would a man buy a girl without even looking at her?
They rode for hours in silence.
But the silence wasn’t threatening.
When they stopped at a stream, he helped her down and poured water into her hands without trying to lift the sack. A simple gesture.
And yet it hit her like a shock.
Because it had been a long time since anyone treated her like a human being.
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