Snow White...was beautiful beyond belief; pale as snow, with gleaming black hair and blood-red lips the lusciousness of which any poisoned apple would tremble to feel.
Snow White...was kind, serene, and sweet enough to lure the fawn, the bluebird, and the tightly-strung red fox to her hand with little more than a melodious strain of tune.
Snow White...was perfect. And tragic. And now....so well-loved.
Rose Red was none of those things.
Sisters they may be, but stranger things have happened than bearing one child cool as ice and a second wild as a breeze-fanned forest fire.
Snow White and Rose Red had been happy in their youth, carefree and full of laughter as they chased each other through the sunlight glades and the moss-laden trees near their family's home. Any difference in their countenance or temperament mattered little to them; like kittens with odd-matching stripes they cared for the variety in their base about as much as a handful of grain would to a hummingbird.
Doe-shy Snow White WAS inclined to hang back in the shadows while her impetuous sister did what she pleased...that much was true. But it was also true that the tongues of neighboring housewives were never so sharp as they were when touched upon the topic of star-bright Rose Red...and never so kind as when they spoke of her cream-pale younger sister.
As age approached and both girls blossomed into the literal flowers of their womanhood, the contrast between one and the next became more apparent. Snow White preferred the cool lagoons and sunny fields in which wild animals awaited her soft hands and pleasant warbling. Rose Red was soon abandoning her docile sister as soon as they set foot outside the abode, racing alone and unsupervised to steep mountain cliffs or fast-rushing rapids to test the resilience the beat of her heart promised her.
Barbs discarded in youth stung and stuck now, and the gossiping old bags' tongues turned from Rose's uncontrollable behavior to her repulsive titian hair and her boy-slim figure. Perhaps THAT was the reason that began to change her oak-brown eyes to brilliant green that matched the flower bearing her name. No matter what she did, no matter how she tried, stereotypes had been formed and opinions were cemented, and for the rest of her life Rose Red would be the regarded as 'less' than her sister Snow. Less responsible. Less feminine. Less...White.
How does interact with such flagrant favoritism? How can one compare one's self with 'better'? More and more, Rose found herself escaping from the stifling atmosphere of the 'why can't you be more like's and the 'when are you going to learn's, to wander alone and cold through the woods once so happily traversed by TWO little girls, absolutely equal in stature and ability. She met the stone-eyed wolf, and slept beneath a blanket of stars, and held her feet beneath ice-cold rippling moonlight even when she couldn't feel them anymore; singing songs whose verses consisted entirely of 'save me'. It was no longer abnormal to see Snow White's green-eyed sister drifting like a ghost among the willow and the forest birch, thinking thoughts as violent as the scarlet mess of her long, tangled hair.
Was it any wonder, then...when it came time for the fairy tale to be written...that sweet Snow White's bloody-headed sister watched from the edge of the forest as the crystal coffin was laid to rest?
Rose Red HAD to have a place. She was the flaming firebird to her sister's lyrical dove; the brilliance of a ruddy sunset to her sibling's shining clear stars. She was a rose among banks and banks of pure, white snow. Rose HAD to have a place, somewhere. Was it always destined to be...in her sister's shadow?