Lace and Candy

My sister was always fanciful. She was born simply Anna, you know, but she had to call herself Arabella, and put on airs. Her and that silly name and her colourful lacy dresses, dragging everywhere and showing dirt! I always preferred the plain black clothes, no muss, no fuss, so much for suitable for our profession. We were born into it, like our mother before us, it was a proud tradition.

All we women lived under the same roof, singing, proud of our role in life. Not so Arabella. No, she had to go make her fancy dresses, and when we teased her, well then she did what not one of our family had done in generations, she took off on her own. She made her own cottage in a nearby wood.

I visited as often as I could, even though I thought she was snobby, and treated us like we were beneath her. I hated her blonde ringlet curls and primping ways. I hated the way she swept the floor with the broom, clutching it carefully so as not to chip the coloured beetle shells she wore glued to her fingernails, making them glitter and gleam in the sunlight. But I think I was a little jealous of her too.

But the house- the house was a monstrosity. It was made entirely of sweets! In our day, sweets were rare enough, and to make a whole house out of them- well, even for one of our kind, it was a frightful and embarrassing indulgence. Gingerbread walls and roof, rock candy beams, boiled sweet windows! What a thing! It was beautiful, yes, but stupid! She was asking for trouble!

I wasn't surprised when I heard what happened. The greedy little children, eating her beautiful house. Of course Arabella was furious. But she should have turned them into frogs, not just threatened. Still, she was never as good with spells as the rest of our kind. Only the sweet things, never the squirmy ones. So what did she do? Threaten to eat them, an empty and silly threat! Imagine sweet tooth Arabella trying to eat a child! She wouldn't even eat chameleon stew! Of course the silly creature ended up in the oven herself! She couldn't scare a newt! Humans! How they overreact!

I miss my sister, even though centuries have passed. Even though she misused her broom to sweep the floors, instead of flying high on the five winds, as one of our kind should. I remember her stupid, fanciful house and feel a little wistful. I remember her bright dresses, and sometimes, my charcoal garments seem a little dull. I kept one of her dresses for moments such as these. By day, when my sisters and mother are asleep, I sneak outside, black cloak over the red lace, until I reach a sunlit glade and twirl and dance to my heart's content. Sometimes, if I dance long enough, I hear soft laughter on the wind, and I could swear she is there with me.