i.
Once her mother made her promise to never wander into the gray forests surrounding their home alone, where the Beowolves roamed – that'd they would eat up a little girl like her, but as long as she went with her mother, her mother would protect her.
Once her mother had been a Huntress and she wore a white hood and she promised to come home but she didn't. No one ever told her why – how – but she always thought of the Beowolves eating up her mother.
Once she'd been sitting in a little red wagon in those gray forests she'd promised her mother to never enter alone. Her mother didn't keep her promise to come home, but she kept hers: she didn't enter alone. All the same, when she woke she saw the glowing red eyes of the Beowolves and all she could think were her mother's words: they would eat up a little girl like her. But they didn't. That day, a little girl in a little red hood was saved by a Huntsman.
That girl grew and learned to wield weapons. When she outgrew her small red hood, she took her mother's spare white one and dyed it red.
Red like roses, red the color of blood, red like the burning red eyes of the Beowolves.
She did not want to be a little girl protected, she wanted to be a Huntsmen herself – a Huntress, and she would do the protecting.
Her mother told her that the Beowolves would eat up a little girl like her, but she wasn't a little girl and the Beowolves' heads cleaved so easily from their necks underneath her scythe.
ii.
As a little girl, she was taught by her family to keep her heart in a box, to lock it up tight, and not give it to anyone. They did so easily, kept their hearts locked up so tight in jewel-encrusted boxes, but pretended they had not with sweet smiles they did not mean. She struggled to obey and sang into mirrors of her loneliness and she did so alone.
As a little girl, she came to know stories of forbidden fruit that gave forbidden knowledge.
Once, when she was a not-quite-so-little-girl, an apple was extended to her and she took it in her hand.
She bite into the apple its skin, not red or pale green or even gold, but papery white. Her teeth sank into the apple, the skin the color of bone and flesh translucent like glass.
Its juice dribbled down her chin and tasted mealy; the worst thing she'd ever tasted. She gagged on its translucent flesh, and tried to scrape its taste from her mouth with her fingernails. The apple dropped from her grasp and its white flesh bruised purple like human flesh.
In truth, there was no apple, but there was forbidden knowledge and it poisoned her thoughts. She could not see her family – her father, the same. With his heart locked in a box he committed acts that were… criminal.
So she promised he would not be the last of her name, locked her heart up tight and threw away the key, and became a Huntress.
She gritted white teeth, sank her nails into white palms, swung white hair out of her eye scarred brilliant red, a scar she earned on her path to being a Huntress.
She never imagined her heart would be unlocked from its box so easy but she sang lonely songs to her mirrors no more.
iii.
"Beast," they called her, snarling with curled lips and wrinkled noses from the streets with raised fists.
"Beauty," he called her with gentle hands that cradled her face and placed roses in her hair.
"Both," she declared as she looked at her image in the mirror.
iv.
In a house in gray forests, there lived a family. There was a mother and father and their child.
There was also a little girl with golden curls and she called them mother, father, and sister, though she was not born to both her parents. They loved her just the same.
When her father hugged her, he squeezed and crushed her against him. He held her so tight, she was left breathless and squirming to escape his arms and chest. He only held her tighter, as though afraid she might run and leave him behind. His touch bruised and trapped her against him, he was scared to let her slip away. Her father hugged too tightly until she ran off to become a Huntress, to danger, for refuge from his weight and fear.
Her mama's hugs were gentle, too gentle. Her arms held loose against her waist until the girl herself held tight and pulled her mama close. Later, when her mother's arms around her were a whisper of a memory she could never have back, she would wonder if perhaps her mom was reluctant to hug a child that wasn't her own. Later still, she would wonder if perhaps her mom wasn't afraid she might reject her hugs and kisses and love. She wishes her mama had held on tighter.
Her sister's arms were clumsy and warm and safe. Her sister held her close and tight, but never stifling, never crushing, never afraid of the strength to put into her embrace. Home was where her sister breathed and her sister's open arms her welcome home. Her hold was an anchor, a constant, a weight for the little girl to always to return to and never a leash or cage to escape. Her sister's arms fitted around her perfect, as her own arms came to wrap around her sister and nuzzle her face against her sister's hair.
The girl with her golden curls fit just right with that family.