A Girl they called Roxane
Here it is, the life of a girl they called Roxane, who will grow up to be a phenomenal singer, Dustfinger's wife, and mother of three children. She'll have her pains and her grief and she'll also have laughs of joy. But this is her story before she knew any of that...
Hate
.
.
Roxane didn't understand what the words meant, but she wasn't stupid. She knew it meant nothing good, especially if it came from that woman's mouth. Her horrid, ugly, thick-lipped mouth.
"You little bitch," the woman hissed. "How dare you give me that look! You think you're better than me? When you're nothing but that whore's runt?" She grabbed Roxane by the arm, her long nails digging into Roxane's skin. Roxane bit her lip. She wouldn't give that woman the satisfaction of seeing her in pain. "Go clean the chamber pots! We'll see if your attitude improves after that!"
Roxane was too young to know about hate. But looking up into that woman's face - at her slits for eyes, her flared nostrils, her ears with the gold jewels dangling from it, her hair swept up carefully and held by sparkling pins, her red-painted lips pulled back into a sneer - Roxane was strongly tempted to spit at her, to kick her in the stomach, to smear dirt all over the woman's silk gown.
But she did none of that. Because young as she was, she still understood enough, just who was the one in power here and who was not.
So she bent her neck, nodded silently like she has seen her mother do, and went to clean the chamber pots.