Snow White

She was a duchess, an innocent child at heart. Her mother died giving birth to her, and her father, well, he soon remarried and followed.

She was cursed from birth with unexplainable beauty, the mark of her mother's dying love. And she hated it.

But who hated it more was her very step mother- an evil sorceress at heart. She watched this young woman grow- watched her bloom from a dainty, shy bud into a beauteous, angelic flower. This young woman had the voice of a songbird, the grace and poise of a feline, and the beauty of snow upon the dark forests that surrounded their home.

But alas, this stepmother was so very jealous, that she plotted the demise of this very child.

She sent the young woman out to pick a bouquet for her, to choose from the meadow in the very center of the darkest, thickest place in the forest- for the most delicate and intense flowers bloomed there.

And by noon she sent a hunter to take her step-daughter's heart. To carve it out with a razor-sharp knife so that she could eat it.

If you are not back by midnight with her heart, she told the hunter, I will have you beheaded, and your family stripped of all rank. So this hunter, who had a very tender heart, caught a pig from the forest, and let the child live free- but not before finding her, and warning her of the danger of returning home.

If you return to your home, said he, you will be killed. Your stepmother sent me to kill you myself, but I shall trick her. The sorceress! He cried.

And so, the child fled to a well-hidden shack, dainty and dilapidated.

There she stayed for seven days.

There she was found, yet again, by the hunter. The duchess's stepmother was no fool.

There she sleeps.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall; Who is the fairest of them all?

You, my lady, are the fairest in this land.