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Preface
In the land where the green grew without hesitating, the strange beautiful creatures dwelled like hidden wild flowers. Aging trees and plants were sprinkled with buds and pulps, ready to bloom. When their soft petals opened up to salute to the pale blue sky, the whole land sparkled with color and glittered like rainbows caught in water drops. Everything in the land was beautiful, but the humans regarded themselves to be the hideous creatures in the land.
Over time, only a few poor and misfit families remained in the most beautiful part of the land called the Forest. They settled in little villages of humble straw cottages. The rest of the abundant humans moved west to the edge of the land because they were intimidated by the beauty of the Forest. Eventually, these humans established their own kingdom, called the West Kingdom, under the rule of the chosen King.
The humans were peaceful moral creatures but they, especially the ladies of the Kingdom, became too involved with their appearances. They believed they were terribly ugly compared to the nymphs and the fairies of the Forest. Therefore, the women worked hard to lavish themselves with sparkling gems braided into their hair, and decked themselves with laces and silks from faraway islands. They even painted their faces with red and blue powder to resemble those adorable faces of the fairies.
Since the recent King was young and unmarried, the mothers grew excited for their daughters, and the daughters grew more concerned about their looks, while the fathers and sons frowned. The women demanded more jewels and better dresses, under the expense of the men. The girls in the Kingdom started to vigorously strap themselves thin at the waist, paint their lips red as blood, and bathe themselves in milk, honey, and rose petals, so that their pink skin was shiny, soft, and smelled like young budding roses. Indeed with all these efforts and pampering, the girls were all beautiful, not much unlike the fairies. The King was bound to fall for one of the lovely girls in the Kingdom. But not all humans were plagued with the vanity and consciousness of beauty.
The Forest cottage dwellers were the ugliest of the humans. Their self-woven clothes were always stained with grass and dirt. Men and women had frizzy unmanageable hair from lack of proper washing and combing. Yet they seemed to be used to their squalor. Being poor beings, these humans gathered and grew their own food as a living. They raised their families lovingly and peacefully. The Forest fairies sometimes poked around the people’s cottages to mischievously steal a baby’s toy or a shoe, but they never did any harm. In fact, they found these humans rather amusing. The people were also aware of the fairies sneaking about them, but they often ignored them as if they were just pesky butterflies.
In one particular cottage, lived two orphaned sisters and their patroness. The two sisters were very close to each other since the tragic day that left them as orphans. They had to live with their bitter old-maid aunt, who only provided them shelter and food. There was an iniquity about the aunt that no one ever figured out. She was a secretive and stern women who had the tendency of bursting her temper out on the girls at every moment. As the girls grew older and more useful, the aunt treated them more like bounded oxen. Not a single night did the sisters not huddle together in their little room and wept.
Merina, the older girl, always worked harder and took all the blame for her little sister because she wanted to protect her from further suffering. Merina grew large and coarse from all the work, pulling stubborn weeds in the garden to scrubbing the house from the roof to the last footsteps of the cottage. She was born a plain-looking girl with a big nose and squinty eyes, but the thorny seeds that stuck in her hair, and the stitched up dress she wore everyday made her appearance more monstrously hideous than ever. In contrast, her sister Olly, was strangely pretty even though her clothes were just as tattered, and her golden hair was just as knotted. The little sister was blessed with a thin fairy-like figure and a heart-shaped face with sea-blue lemon eyes. She was so delicate that she resembled a shy fragile fawn. More could be said about the little sister, but the title of the story belongs to Merina. Thus, the tale must begin......
