Edith Crawley's life has been nothing short of tragic. Though born into a wealthy family, she grew up largely forgotten as her prettier sisters took the spotlight. Lost, forgotten and facing an unhappy future, she seeks an escape~drugs.
Her earliest memory consists of looking into a mirror and being frightened of the little girl on the other side - the gloomy eyes and the sharp nose and ginger hair that never behaved. How awful to be born ugly; what undue penance. The memory grows worse when on that grey September afternoon her sisters appear out-of-nowhere, their reflections joining hers. Sybil is still a small child and prone to bluntness; Mary is eight years old, frighteningly pale despite the long summer.
The ginger child in the mirror is already unconsciously comparing her reflection to the others when Sybil announces, "We're playing make-believe! Edith you're the troll."
Mary puts a hand over her youngest sister's mouth in mock horror, except it's not mock because Mary is incapable of being anything but serious. She admonishes, "Sybil, don't be so unkind! Edith can't help being ghastly." Edith horrified, escapes the mirror. Without intending to, she finds herself running blindly through the halls. Occasionally she will run into a maid though this hardly slows her down. She finds the nursery and crawls onto the window seat, sobbing herself into hollowness. What happens next, she does not recall, only that by the time she leaves the nursery she has decided she will never show her face again; she keeps it covered by the old blue baby-blanket Nanny has been urging her to discard.
It is her Grandmother she runs into first, who immediately demands, "Edith dear take contraption that off at once. You'll go blind!" Through a moth-eaten hole in the blanket, Edith, unmoving, watches her Grandmother bang her ornate cane indigently on the floor. Violet is not used to being ignored. Knowing she is not to disrespect her elders, Edith scuttles away before having to obey.
When she runs into her sisters again, Sybil is frightened and begins to cry, but Mary simply scoffs, "Oh Edith, must you always be so dramatic?"
Papa is away on business; Nanny's efforts to remove the mask are futile, as each time she separates Edith from the blanket, Edith manages to gain it back. Finally, it is Mama who forces Edith to show her face again. "Now Edith, you are my pretty little girl and you will take that off at once. I will not have you hiding your face away!"
Edith does not believe her mother, not then and certainly not now. She does not believe anyone who tells her she is pretty. She keeps waiting for someone to call her beautiful but they seem to prefer "pretty" or "gentle." She was not allowed the blanket back, but it hasn't mattered. The incident in the mirror was only the first in a long series of losses.
Hello everyone, thanks for reading! I'm keeping this short but have plans to continue if readers are interested. Leave me a comment or review and let me know. :)