A/N: This is a rewrite. I hope it doesn't disappoint any of my readers, scarce though they are.
Far away, there is a hollow hill that lies open to the sky. Within the hill, there is a crystal tower. It gleams when the light hits it, and glistens in the rain. It sits sunk so deeply in the hill that even from the highest room, you cannot see daylight. The inhabitant of the tower has spent her whole life in night.
She sits at her desk, dark brown hair spilling over her shoulders. The silver pen moves quickly over the parchment, in the grip of a pale, graceful hand. This is the fifth draft. Her eyes are focused on the page: they are a warm brown colour.
To whosoever receives this letter: I do not know who you are. You do not know who I am either, most likely. My name is Bella, but most call me "the dark lady of the tower" or, if they have been listening to the rumours, "the lady with the dead eyes".
For years I have lived in a crystal tower, within a hollow hill. The hill is surrounded by a forest, and on the outskirts of the forest is a village. The tower is set deep within the hill: so deep that I have never seen daylight. At any time of day or night, I can look out of my window and watch the stars dance across the sky.
The stars are her friends. She learned their names when she was small, and used to spend hours staring out of the window, naming them one by one. Living in a tower-inside-a-hill is not conducive to making human friends. There is a witch who visits sometimes, a lovely honey-haired girl called Angela. She is kind and funny and she sometimes lets Bella help her with spells. Angela can be counted as a friend.
I am forced to remain within this tower by a spell. The same spell causes the people of the surrounding villages, those of old bloodlines, to guard me as wolf-men – shape-shifters. However, the true power of the curse is grief. For as long as I can remember, I have felt a great heart-heaviness, with neither beginning nor end nor reason. I have neither care to live nor will to die.
Some of the wolves are kind, too. Jacob is like a brother to her, or almost a son, although she doesn't see him much any more. To anyone else he would have been a sun to warm them, but she feels only a candle-flame's worth of light and heat. It's not his fault. It's not his fault, either, that he and her handmaiden Nessie – a girl who was like a sister to her, or almost a daughter – fell in love almost as soon as they met. It's not his fault that the two of them cannot come near the tower any more, for fear of worsening her grief.
I can live in the tower without fear of hunger or thirst. There is a spring in one of the tower rooms that I can drink from, and the wolf-men bring me food, prepared by their wives. But I am lonely here. I can see the world outside – some of it – through pools of water that act like magic mirrors, but that only worsens the loneliness. I watch others laugh and talk, and know that I will never have those friendships.
The pools of water sometimes show her the rumours about the tower. She has heard herself described as a princess, or a little girl, or a dark sorceress. One of them – a small girl with dark, wildly curly hair – is particularly spiteful. Her name, Bella remembers, is Jessica. She wonders what she could ever have done to Jessica to hurt her so. Perhaps it is the fascination that some of the young men show with the tower. Bella knows they are not interested in her, but rather in the adventure, so she is not a threat to Jessica's suitors: but perhaps Jessica doesn't know that.
I write to you because of the terms of the spell. There is only one person who can release me from it. I am desperate to be released. This grief presses on me so heavily that I cannot bear it. It will drive me insane. Sometimes I think I am insane already. I beg of you to help me.
Angela visited a soothsayer recently, named Alice. "Something is coming for you," she confided to Bella, afterwards. "That's all she would tell me. She said it was difficult to see your future, because of the spell, but some kind of change is definitely on its way. So take hope." Bella does more than take hope; she clings onto it for dear life. If there is one thing she needs, it is hope.
Only my true love can bring me safely out of the tower and release me from the curse. So I pray you, if you might be my true love – if you think you could ever love the woman with the dead eyes who has never seen the light of day – please find me. Please make me want to live.