Uniqueness:

I never met them, you know. I had heard stories about them—how they were tall, and different. While everyone was attending the loveliest garden parties and sipping imported tea from the furthest corners of the world, my parents were out studying birds and people watching. They were the sort of people that intimidated the higher class with their uniqueness. They were so different, it was scary.

I would have loved to meet them. To be able to tell them that I didn’t think they were so frightening—that I could go with them to the Amazon and draw pictures of strange creatures that no one had ever seen. Bugs and dirt didn’t bother me—I reveled in that sense of carelessness. To me, different was good. If everyone was the same, nothing would matter, and we would die soul-less, colorless people, none of us as individuals, but a common group of stagnant waste.

I had always been told my parents were a disgrace to society because they spoke their minds—which in that day of England was always a crime. No one was supposed to say what they really felt—just what they were expected to feel. I hated it there. England was a place full of walls. Walls that divided people. Division between class, gender, race, sexuality. People put up fortresses and only invited in those that were exactly like them. White faces were everywhere—the rich grouped with the rich. Of course, the wealthy remained wealthy while the poor suffered. They only way out of poverty was to marry into money—a hard thing to do for us poor females, considering the pompous stuffed-shirts wanted nothing to do with the female lower class unless it involved getting up her skirts. It was the kind of thing that made you sick.

I longed to get away. But how does a poor, orphaned, connection-less female get away from her position? I was a dependant in Lithstone Manor, the estate of my deceased uncle’s wife. She treated me, although I was family, as a servant. It was not frowned upon you know, to treat your charge lower than the very pebbles under your feet. In they eyes of the land, we were trash that clung to society.

There was no talk of running away, no thoughts of leaving Lithstone. I despised being there—but I had no where else to go. The people of that land were not hospitable ones. If I left, I would have no choice but to starve, and I would not degrade myself to begging, even if it was a successful trade. No, Lithstone would remain my prison until I was seventeen.

Freedom is a wonderful thing. To break away from something so horrid, and come into a beautiful place, where the sun shines and love is everywhere. I will never forget the coldness of my aunt Margaret’s estate. I will never forget the pain I felt as her charge. I will never forget the friendlessness. I will never forget the degradation. But likewise, I will never forget the day I broke free. And that is where this story really begins…