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Old 07-30-2005, 08:00 PM   #5
Mnemosyne
New Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 16
Mnemosyne is on a distinguished road
*delurks*

Daphne was not a pretty baby.

Her mother had proven fertile and Daphne had five older siblings, two boys and three girls. She was the last of the lot, the final endeavor that broke something inside her mother and rendered her unable to have children. It seemed, genetically speaking, that much of the good material had been used on her older siblings, and the grade of offspring had reduced in quality as time went by. She was a short, gnarled, wispy-haired and bad-skinned child, prone to sunburns and scars, and none of that changed much as she grew.

School was nightmarish. While not, technically, a midget, Daphne was short enough for it to cause problems, and was the butt of everyone's joke in class. The boys evidently considered her more of a monster than a human, as the 'don't hit girls' rule was bent only in Daphne's occasion, and many times did the school boys volunteer their efforts to try and beat her bone structure into serviceable shape. However, while it hurt a lot, Daphne's shriveled physique proved to have one quality that was both a blessing and a curse: a tremendous hardiness that made sure she never got sick, never got hurt, and could literally be thrown off the roof of the three-storey suburban public school and escape with only cuts and bruises.

She learned to keep to herself. Life, for an ugly girl, is terrible; for an ugly woman it's terrible in whispers. While no boys beat her up and no girls would circle around her to taunt her, Daphne in womanhood was avoided, talked down-to, and treated in several ways subtly worse than a higher grade of human. Corners that, for an average woman, would be cut, were allowed to strike her; opportunities that would flourish for a pretty girl were stonily denied. She found that modern society considered beauty, in women, to be almost a responsability, and that as an ugly woman she had failed. She learned to keep her failure to herself, and never ever reveal that it hurt her. Her ugliness, which appeared to be a symptom of her physical hardiness, became a symbol for her mental strength. Bitterness was happiness, and the only way she could feel strong.

Daphne is thirty-one. She is four-foot-eleven, two hundred and thirty-two pounds. Her hair is brown, mouse-colored, and matches her eyes; her body tends to pouches and folds, and even her face is shaped like some great, blotchy organ. She is still a virgin. She faces life naked, with no relief, and it makes her tough, leathery with pain; it makes her strong.

And when it builds, builds so hot... relief comes as a symbol. A thousand birds collect when honey is offered. A thousand birds with broken backs.

*relurks, creeped out by her own brain*
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