Red,Black,White

Hair as black as night

16 Years Later

"Snow! Snow White, come back here this instant!" The scolding tones of Meredith, Snow's maid, fill the crisp air. Snow smiles, and only runs faster. Her raven hair whips in the wind, her laughter carefree and joyful. That is, until she runs smack into a warm body. Both go down hard, tumbling onto the wet grass. Snow is first up, groaning, putting a hand to her head. She stiffened as she finally saw whom she had knocked into.

"Forgive me, stepmother," she formally states, eyes narrow slits. She sticks out her hand to help the groaning queen up, pulling her to her feet. Once up, the queen straightens her full-skirted gown, putting a delicate hand to her flowing mane of hair. Even muddy, she shines like the sun. Her long, wavy blond hair flows back from her face in the breeze. Her steely blue eyes, which turned stormy grey in winter, flash dangerously as they glare at Snow. Her model figure and easy grace make her the barbie doll to Snow's porcelain figure.

"Watch where you're going, Snow," she reprimands her, musical voice stern. Snow lowers her eyes and nods dolefully. Inside, she is fuming. Watch where she's going? The woman practically ran into her!

"Yes, stepmother," Snow says mechanically; she doesn't mean what she says half the time.

The queen nodded elegantly, picking up her skirts and turning to go. As she walks to her chambers, she calls back over her shoulder,

"Shouldn't you be in ettiquete?" Snow nods meekly while biting off a curse. That had been precisly why she had been running from Meredith. She watched her go, until the queen's figure had turned into shadows and tricks of the light. Upon her face was a look of pure contempt and disgust.

Snow despised the queen ever so much. In her admitably rather twisted logic, her stepmother had taken the throne from the rightful queen. Her mother.

Snow remembered something her mother had once said to her, something Snow wasn't inclined to forget anytime soon.

"Never trust beauty, Snow. It will slither into your heart and, when you are most vulnerable, poison your soul." And the little Snow had listened to her dying mama, and never trusted anything of beauty. Snow did not trust her father, or her dappled grey mare. She did not trust the beauty of autmn before it plunges into the harsh cold of winter, nor the melidous charms of music. She most certainly did not trust the decietful snake that was her stepmother. The only one whom Snow had ever trusted was her mother, and she was gone now. Snow's heart had shriveled up, letting no one in but her mother. For sure, it would be a lyer, a con, a sorcerer, to make her open her heart again.

Snow knew she was beautiful; she reveled in her beauty. She enjoyed playing with people's hearts- those who didn't know that beauty was posionous. She especially enjoyed their expressions when they found out- it reminded her of what she ahd felt after her mother had died. No one else felt the pain, either. Even her father hadn't shared her grief, marrying the little witch who was her stepmother soon after.

And so the broken little girl became something quite different from what she was meant to be. She was a whip, entrancing in its deadly path. She was a wild mustand, untamed and unbroken.

She was a poisoned apple, perfect on the outside, but rotten in the core.