A/N: I know you're all groaning and rolling your eyes, but this is indeed one more Cinderella story to add to the hundreds that have already been thought up. I hope this one is unique, but you never know with Cinderella stories what has been done and what hasn't. Oh, and I'm gonna try my hardest to keep the romance fluff and junk to a minimum.

Chapter 1:

I woke up that day and adorned my regular cloths, a dress that used to be white, a black apron, and slippers as dirty as the floors. And I should know how dirty the floors are. After all, I wash them. Welcome, to yet another Cinderella story.

First, let's get something straight. My name's not Cinderella. Heck, it's not even Ella. No, my name is Floor Girl. Well, that's my name to anyone who ranks above me, which is most everyone in the house I work in besides the cats and a few other servants. The only other person who calls me by my true name would be my father.

Oh wait, he's dead.

Maybe I should give you a brief history of me. First, about my parents. You would be hard pressed to find a woman who was more loving, caring or gentler then my mother.

At least, that's what I always thought. Once when I asked my father about her, all he said was that she had been one of the queen's ladies, that she and him had an arranged marriage, and that when I was born she died in childbirth. I had seen a picture of her once; she had fair hair and green eyes. I had her eyes, but my hair was dark, unlike my mothers. Her mother and my father's mother were great friends, and they were always convinced that when they both had children, they would be married. Imagine their pleasure when that dream came true.

Imagine my misfortune. My father was a lord of something. He didn't care for me, or my mother. He had stern grey eyes and dark hair like mine. When she died he was left with me. So he hired a nanny, a horrible, fat woman with greasy blonde hair, eyes the colour of puke, and who did nothing all day but eat and sleep and shout at me to be quiet while she read horrible cheesy romance books. I didn't even have any friends. Eventually my nanny died, something to do with her heart. So my father was stuck with me again.

Not long after that he met Victoria, the woman who would soon be my stepmother. She had long black hair and blue eyes, and she batted her black-painted eyelashes hard and quick, making them look like they were about to fly off. I remember meeting her and her two horrid girls for the first time. I was seven, my father invited them to our large house and when they got there, he told me to take them up to my room to play, "while their mother and I get better acquainted."

So, I took Cindy and Ella (no doubt where the bard who wrote my story got my 'name' from) up to my room. It was full of toys and dolls and brushes, but the only thing that wasn't covered in a thin layer of dust was the bookshelf. Cindy was a little younger then me, her thin blonde hair was done up in a loose ponytail and she had inherited her mothers blue eyes. Ella was a little older then me, had her mothers black hair, and brown eyes to match. So while Cindy and Ella contented themselves to tearing my dolls cloths and chopping off their hair, I sat on my bed and watched them. That was when Ella reached for Caroline.

Caroline was a porcelain doll that used to be my mothers, and even though I never actually played with her, she was the only thing that I had of my mothers. She had skin the colour of milk, very red lips, blonde hair and blue eyes. I wouldn't let Ella desecrate her.

"Hey," I said, "that's mine."

Ella turned and looked at me, her hand halfway to Caroline's place on my bookshelf. "Oh, well can I play with it?" she asked sweetly. I didn't fall for it.

"Sorry, but it used to be my mothers, and I don't want anything to happen to it."

"So I can't even play with it for a little?" Ella gave me a pathetic look, like she was going to burst into tears any second. I shook my head, and her look hardened. "Fine then, I didn't want to play with that stupid thing anyway."

Two years later, my father married Victoria, and I was stuck with two unbearable stepsisters. But the worst was yet to come. In the time being, I had to put up with Ella and Cindy, but even more horrible then them were Victoria and my father. I overheard them talking about me all the time, saying awful things.

"I don't like her." I once heard Victoria say, "She's a positively dreadful girl, not like my two beauties."

"Why do you hate her so?" My father asked, though I could tell by his voice the only reason he didn't agree with her completely was because I was his daughter, however little that meant to him.

"She is just not like any other little girls I know." Victoria shivered in disgust as she said, "I mean, she talks, to her servants! That is just totally unacceptable. And she reads those horrid books! I don't think I've ever seen her play with a doll like a normal girl. She isn't even interested in getting married!" That was at least true, even when I was nine and ten I had no intention of getting married and having kids. Why would I want to, when there was so much world to discover?

But I only had to endure overhearing conversations like that for five years, because when I was fourteen my father died in his sleep. After a funeral where my stepmother got overly weepy just for show, Victoria did something she had wanted to do ever since she and my father got married; she demoted me from daughter to servant. And here I was now, two years later, getting up at the crack of dawn to scrub floors.

"Hey, Danielle," Arica, one of my best friends, popped her black-haired head through the curtain that blocked my sleeping area off from the rest of the servants quarters. Victoria insisted on putting them up, saying that as I was a 'lords daughter,' I needed some level of privacy. "the ogress wants you to, 'scrub the dining room floor till it shines!'" Arica could do a perfect impression of Victoria, or 'the ogress' as she put it. It always got me laughing.

As I stepped out of the overly crowded servant's quarters, I was struck by the fact that there were so little people in the basement hallway, only one small boy who was getting things from the supply closet. "Where is everyone?" I asked.

Arica shrugged, "Oh, they're all upstairs. Apparently the ogress is having a special supper tonight with a bunch of dignitaries, and she's having everyone work overtime." That was when Arica's brother and my other best friend, Karter, came rushing down the basement stairs.

Karter had black hair like his sister, and like his sister, his skin was darker then anyone else I'd ever known, although, while Arica's skin was nearly black, his was more of a brown. Their eyes were so brown, they were almost black. They came from the south, and though they never told me about where they came from, I had heard stories about animals like horses with black and white stripes, and brown and yellow patchy ones with long necks.

"Oh, Danielle, you're up." Karter panted, "Good. Victoria is shouting up a storm upstairs. I think she wants you to scrub every floor in the house!" He meant it good humouredly, but I just grunted. It had happened before.

"Well, I had better get up there then." I said, and started up the stairs.

"Floor Girl," Victoria shrieked, "you had better scrub the dining room floor till I can see my face in it!" Then she stopped off in her shiny black high-heeled boots. Even though she had grown older as sure as I did, she had hired a magician to make her look younger. But I thought that this 'magician' was certainly a fake, for she only looked younger then she was, because of the dollops and globs of makeup she wore, making her look more like an iced cake then a girl only a little older then me.

"Yes, mistress ogre." I muttered when she was put of hearing range.

The dining room was huge and white, and it would take me most of the day to clean it. I went downstairs into the supply closet, and grabbed a bucket, soap and a scrubby brush. This was going to be a long day…