Anastasia was dancing with someone she couldn't fully make out. He was tall and his smile was sweet and genuine in a way she rarely saw. He whirled her around the polished floor of the chateau vestibule and she laughed for happiness.
- C - C - C -
And then it shattered as Drizella's scream in the next room ripped Anastasia from her dream. Her sister was bellowing at the top of her voice for Cinderella and probably pulling the servants' bell clear out of the wall. Anastasia knew that there was no chance she would get back to sleep now.
She sat up in her bed and stretched her arms with a large, noisy yawn. It was music day. When she was little, music day had been her favorite day of the week. By the time she was eight, though, her mother and sister had decided that her voice was unsalvageable and forbidden her from ever singing again. She had wanted to learn to play the pianoforte, but Mother had decided that her hands were too small to ever play well and refused to teach her. Instead, she had been given a horrid old flute that pinched her fingers and only reluctantly made tinny, irritating sounds. It had been a long time since she had not dreaded music day.
Anastasia glanced at the flute case resting on a small stool across the room. She longingly imagined throwing it out the window. Before she could try to work up the courage to do it, though, there was a polite knock at the door.
"Come in," she called. It could only be Cinderella. Her mother and sister never knocked at all, much less knocked politely.
The servant girl came in with a breakfast tray in her hands.
"Good morning, Anastasia," she murmured as she sat down the tray.
"I wish it was a good morning," Anastasia grumbled. Cinderella's cheerful greetings always irritated her and made her behave rudely, but it was only to Cinderella, so it hardly mattered.
With a nod, her stepsister slipped out of the room, leaving Anastasia to munch grumpily on her toast and wish she belonged to a different family.