Act One Scene One

Narrator: I am neither man nor woman, neither beast nor human, neither death nor life. There are no words to describe me as only myself. People say I am like the wind, cold and warm, comforting and killing. They say I am love but they also say there is a thin line between love and hate. I consider myself as the Watcher and the Recorder, the one who experiences the emotions of all living things and the one who feels nothing at all. I am the rose, the crone who knocked on the door of a castle and sought welcome from a prince. I am the fairy, the enchantress who cursed him until he could feel what I could not and what I always do. I am neither compassion nor disdain. I am the past and the future but not the present for the present has no stories to tell but stories to write. So maybe I am more of a Storyteller. Maybe that is what I am and what I am not. But no one can define me, not even me so instead I want to tell you a tale, a story of both the past and the future of a Beast, a prince and a Beauty, someone more or less of a woman. The wind shakes the leaves of the trees and as this story unfolds, the leaves turn to the color of gold and of roses and they fall and the trees whisper no more for a time. The world is blanketed with a white covering of snow when our story begins. It begins with 8 sisters, Truth, Helen, Faith, Ivy, Marigold, Victory, Harmony and finally, the last and youngest, Rose. They had a father once who was also a mother. But he ended his life with the drama of Cleopatra and her lover. I can not say if this was selfish of him for I am neither of life or of death but an observer but the sisters thought not of it. Instead they continued their life as best they could. Truth, Helen and Faith, being of twenty-four, twenty-two and twenty-two years of age, supported their five sisters as best they could, relinquishing any thought of marriage in the pursuit of surviving and for the first couple of years after their father had died, they managed but soon they were in tremendous debt. Our story begins when they search for a resolution and finally find one.