Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who was trapped and could only be rescued by a handsome prince.
No.
No, no, no.
She was no princess, no great beauty, no damsel. She did not need rescuing—or rather, there was no way to be rescued. She could not be helped by anyone other than herself. She could not—would not—wait to be rescued by anyone, especially a man wrapped in tin foil.
So.
Once upon a time, there was a woman—
Dammit.
No.
Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was average in appearance, nothing particularly special or striking. She longed for the day where she could see the world untainted by her jaded attitude, view the world with a childlike innocence that she had never been given the opportunity to possess. She would have gotten her opportunity, too, if it hadn't been for the evil that befell her and mother. An evil that was timeless and deadly. Once the evil took root, there was nothing to do but commence a losing battle; the girl fought long and hard for her mother, never giving up hope that the battle could be won by the good, by the downtrodden who were constantly underfoot of the bigger, higher powers that be.
But the girl's hope was for naught—the downtrodden could never win, not when they remained under the thumb of others. And so the battle was lost, along with all of the girl's hope and dreams, along with her peace of mind and potential to be great. Upon the day the battle ended, she was cursed to endlessly roam the earth, never to be content or happy. The evil had taken what little the girl had and she was filled with a sense of loss beyond belief.
You see, boys and girls, it is one thing to have your world crash around you, to have to pick up the broken, scattered pieces. To see your life reduced to bits and pieces. It is another entirely when you have no world, where you possess only one thing. This one thing you cling to, making it a part of you. You cling to it, you become one with it, in the belief that it will always be there. But when you lose that one thing, then you lose everything—you lose yourself. There are no pieces to pick up, no shattered dreams to repair. There is nothing but a void where you once existed, an empty shell of a person.
And so the girl began her journey, never expecting an end or a middle. Never expecting fulfillment or joy. She wandered listlessly, all sense of hope lost but never a prayer to get it back.