Snow
Don't believe what you have heard. She did not send me to be killed, I ran. There was no huntsman, just my father, who didn't care, unless I was in his way. White as snow, red as blood, was only because my parents didn't want people to see the bruises on my snow white skin, or the blood on my red lips. They didn't want others to know of the abuse that went on in such a house as ours. So they kept me inside.
So I ran, I discovered an open door one night and out I slipped into the forest and took off. I didn't know alot, just what I had learned from home, which was that life is painful and people in this world aren't there to love you. Maybe that is why I stopped at the robber's house, maybe that is why I didn't shake in fear when they came home. Ironically it was amoung robbers that I learned that some people can be nice. It was from them that I learned kindness. And no it wasn't a house full of men, how they like to scandalize this story. It was a family, and when they took me in I finally learned what it was to be part of a real family. The brothers treated me like a sister, and their sisters treated me like one of their own as well. I learned many things amoung the robbers, however, I did not leave with them during the day. I was still too unused to going outside to venture out again.
It was not a mirror that drew her to me, I think it was rumors. Somehow it must have slipped to someone that a girl white as snow with blood red lips lived with this family. And that is what must have drawn her, the news that I was happy. There was no comb, no bodice, no poisoned apple, just herself bringing words poisoned with years of lies. She saw me and simply said, "Come home, we miss you and have been worried about you." I told her no and watched as she left crying. The bruise on her cheek told me all I needed to know. But the shock of seeing her, the possibility that they might come back to take me home was too much for me and I fainted dead away.
I didn't sleep for years, just days, and while I slept my prince came. I awoke to the touch of his hand on my breast, his mouth on my lips. He told me later, after he discovered that I was not related to the robbers, that he had come to bring the robbers to justice. And after slaughtering the whole family had found me locked away in a little room that the youngest, a boy of ten, had been guarding. When he busted down the door and found me asleep and alone on a small little cot he paused because of my beauty. I am quite a beauty when I have no bruises. He had paused to kiss me before he did away with me and by then I had awaken and told him my story.
He has told me his intentions, I will be his queen and then he will be able to finish what he started when he found me. Unfortunately he is no better than my father and I have no wish to live a life with him. I hardly have a choice though, what with the whole kingdom behind him. However, unlike the fainting flower I am portrayed as I will not faint on my wedding night. I didn't tell him of the things I learned from the robber girls. So he does not know that he is not the only one that can prick with a knife. And once I have removed him from my story I will do what I learned before I got to the robbers. I will run, there will be no crystal casket for me.
(Author's note: Spent a good part of the day reading the Endicott Studio Journal of Mythic Arts and thought on an article on Snow White. I find it is amusing to put twists into well known fairy tales, giving the reader a new perspective on an old story.)