BROKEN BEASTS | COMPLETED

01

Issie looked down from her balcony, decorated with blue and burgundy roses with large, violent thorns. The vines wrapped
themselves around the bannister on the balcony, usually pricking anyone who foolishly leaned on it. They looked threatening enough but Issie never minded; she was
used to the pain as she scratched at one of the old scars appearing on her arm, crossing the boundary from her wrist to her hand, only managing to end at the bottom of her middle finger.

The thorn dug into her skin, drawing blood, as she leaned on the bannister. The blood droplets trickled down her forearm and dropped onto her dress, tainting it with an inky patch. Other droplets followed this same path and created an even bigger patch on her dress. She didn't care, this dress was one of the many dresses that sat lonely in her wardrobe. Growing numb to the feeling of the thorns digging their way into her skin, she watched as her sisters flirted with the many men that her father had hand-picked for them. She watched as her sister, Roselyn, intentionally dropped her hair-pin, and bent down in front of the man, knowingly showing off her bosom. Issie watched as the tiny smirk appeared on her sister's face and disappeared before anyone could acknowledge that it was there. The man blushed, his ivory cheeks grew with more colour than Issie thought was possible as he tried his best to look away.

Her sisters were special in that sense. The whispers in the air called them succubi, some called them syrens, and some even called them whores, but everyone knew that their lustful power was hard to refuse. The warm undertone under their dark Taiwanese skin gave them a celestial golden glow, to the point where many thought they were angels in the form of mere mortals on earth. Fallen angels, the three sisters often joked. Issie would laugh along with them, even though she knew that she was not one of them.

She was different. Her skin, although bearing the same glow of their dark Taiwanese skin, was not as flawless as her sisters. This did not mean that they loved her any less. Yet, she (and the entire world) knew her differences. The tattooed-like scars on her arms and on her body had written out a different path for her, one that her father never approved of.

*~*~*

Rumours surrounded the birth of Gualin (1) Tsai's fourth child. Gualin was famously known for treating his female children with the same respect that men treated their sons. Many disagreed with his parenting techniques but nobody had the effrontery to confront him about it, as many feared the consequences that came with it.

Issie's birth was kept a secret. Her father knew that his other children's lives were already on the line, and since the assassination of his youngest brother, he knew that his rivals would stop at nothing to end the Tsai dynasty. He had sent the newborn and her mother to live in the rural part of the city, so that nobody would suspect their whereabouts when the quick-fire gossip about Issie's arrival spread throughout the city. By the time Issie was nine, far from her father's household, strange marks had begun to appear on her body. Intricate scar-like lines etched into her skin. Issie's mother grew grey with worry, wondering what on earth had suddenly plagued her daughter.

Issie was at the tender age of twelve when it was considered safe for her to live back with her father and her other three sisters. She was welcomed back with open hands, but her father was still worried about the prominent scars that led from her ribs and wrapped itself around her back. Some whispered in the seedy restaurants that the fourth Tsai child was cursed, a curse bestowed by the legends above. However, her father (a sceptic) could not believe such madness. If anything his daughter was simply a product of the legends themselves, and that was the end of it. He wouldn't entertain the idea that his wife brought up many times: to see an old herbalist in order to determine what was wrong.

"There is nothing wrong with her! She is a product of you and I! Are you saying that our genetics are twisted?" He would keep his voice firm, knowing that his wife would soon let the subject go.