I awaken. Nine years of age I was yesterday, ten I am today. My room is a gentle ocean blue with golden accents, they shine pleasantly as the sun kisses my face. The maid comes in, she smiles and beckons me out of bed, dressing me in a comfortable blue dress. As she finishes my look with a yellow headband, my mother enters, prompting her to quickly fold her hands behind her back and leave the room.
"Good morning, Callie! Have you enjoyed your ten years?" she says with a gleaming smile as she leans down to kiss my forehead. She is a younger woman of twenty-nine dressed in an emerald green dress to match her eyes that were passed to me. Her hair I possess as well, dirty brown and naturally wild. Runic tattoos of noble status that I will one day wear adorn her face. She smiles to no one but me.
"Yeah!" I say, warmly embracing her before slipping my feet into the black, shiny pumps by my bed. I emerge from my room and greet the few servants I see in the hallway.
"Splendid!" says my mother. "Your gifts are in my study for whenever you wish to open them. Is there anything else you want?"
"A friend!" I say with palpable excitement.
"Oh? Are those girls at your school not friends of yours?" she asks with a raised eyebrow.
"They're mean. I want that nice scullery girl to be my friend!"
My mother's smile vanishes and he goes slightly white. "That cursed-blood girl? She's a maid-slave, hardly a fitting companion for a duchess's daughter! That won't do, I-"
She ceases his talking upon seeing my newly formed doe-eyes and pleading expression, a spell that has not once failed to make her yield.
My mother sighs. "Very well. I have some meetings, I trust you two can abide alone."
"Of course, mother!"
She rustles my hair and leaves.
I enter the kitchen. Old Kath, the chef, is in the courtyard counting the food shipments. All who remains is a girl in a dirty gray dress and once-white apron. She sits on her knees beside a bucket of wooden make full of water and potatoes, peeling them. She is my age and my height, but thinner, almost unhealthily so. Ram-like horns sprout from her body. A horn from her head covers one of her eyes and long gouged out the other; she is blind. Her hair is like mine, but dirtier, she hears me.
"Mousey!" I cry, making her light up.
She rises to her feet and runs to me with a limp acquired long ago from a particularly nasty beating
"Mistress!" she says, embracing me.
I giggle. "No, silly! I'm Callie!"
Mouse frowns a bit. "But Kath says I got's ta call ya' that…"
"Kath is the chef, missy! I'm the master's daughter, and I say you don't!" I say with a mock evil laugh.
She smiles at me and hugs me again, tighter.
"Did's ya get yer momma ta let us be friends?"
"Yep! Doe-eyes got her real good. Wanna go play?"
She frowns again. "But I got's to peel the tatoes…"
I grab her gently by the wrist. "Not anymore! Let's go!"
We sit behind the manor, the dark woods to at the bottom of the hill made even darker by the gray clouds that fill the afternoon sky. I have put Mouse in a frilly pink dress, it is small on me, but nearly big on her. She sits on the swing set, idly rocking with the gentle wind. I clear the table of our recent tea party.
Mouse fiddled with the hem and felt the bows which I had affixed to her horns.
"I like the dress, Callie. But I've ruined it with mah horns." she says.
I wink at her. "Good. I only made my mothher get it so I could share it with you."
She smiles, but it falters. "But what if she…"
I interrupt her. "I won't let her."
Mouse departs from the swing and limps to me.
"I'm scared, Callie…"
I force a smile. "I promise, Mousey, everything will work out. Let's go."
She nods and follows me as I approach the woods.
We walk through the heart of the woods. We hear an evil whisper. From nothing, a figure lunges at us, it is wolfish and horrid, black fur that smells like hellfire covers it. Blood pours from its maw, but doesn't hit the ground, instead floating as if underwater. It stops just short of our faces.
"Hello, girls." it says like a blistering wind.
Mouse is scared silent. I speak up.
"I-I am Duchess Aeria's daughter! I o-order you not to hurt us!"
The spirit laughs. "Very well, Duchess Aeria's daughter. I suppose I am at your service. Your orders, mistress?"
Gaining confidence, I look the spirit in the glowing white eyes.
"I order you t-to tell us the future!"
"But of course, mistress."
The spirit's eyes turn red, mouse begins to cry.
**"Ahhhh. I see your past. A noble and a scullery maid, birthed by a noble and a scullery maid. One cursed with horns, hated by her mother. One blessed with everything, loved by her mother. I see days yet to come. The girl-born-maid shall live on to do great things, but only if she would have both noble-borns die."
"I-I have to die for her?" I say, looking at Mouse, beginning to cry with her.
The spirit says nothing.
"A-anything to make her happy…" I say.
As I finish, I hear my mother yelling. She is running to us, accompanied by two officers, it is now or never.
"I accept!" I scream. My mother drops dead.
I wait, my eyes shut tight.
Mouse drops dead.