Jun 07, 2006 02:27
The thing was obvious. I was flawed. It is not, of course, that I lacked beauty. My soft features echoed my mother’s, carved in miniature perfection. My skin, though too fair, was nonetheless a perfectly acceptable shade of ivory. My limbs were straight and supple, my bones a marvel of delicate strength. No, the problem was elsewhere. My eyes, and not even the pair of them, but merely the one. Such a small thing on which to hinge such a fate. Nothing more than a mote, a fleck, a mere speck of color. My eyes, when they settled, were that color the poets call bistre, a deep and lustrous darkness like a forest pool under the shade of ancient oaks. Bistre, then, rich and liquid-dark; save for the left eye, where in the iris that ringed the black pupil, a fleck of color shone. Scarlet, call it, or crimson. Thus did I enter the world, with an ill-luck name and a pinprick of blood emblazoned in my gaze. When love cast me out, it was cruelty who took pity on me.