She was born with skin like glass.

Transparent organs swished inside a steel rib-cage like shiny circus fish trapped in a clear plastic bag. Sunlight passes through her smooth surface, setting out multicolored lights of that trace the ground as she walks. When she was young she understood that without oxygen blood travels through our veins in blue rivulets, across h er wrists and in the fins points of her joints. She is young but she that all the tiny veins that crisscross and trace themselves along along her skin are in fact minutiae worlds. Smaller versions of herself speeding and rushing and throbbing wildly in her chest.
She knew about more human anatomy than anyone else. She could name all the pulsing muscle in her upper body, and count all the dilating figments in her left knee as she stretched her legs, out in front of her and tried to imagine the feel of grass against her skin.

The feel of real actual skin.

She was born without actual skin. In it's place she was given this: glass. A smooth transparent surface that sends ripples into the water, becoming invisible, as clear as ice. She is given a portable light show of blue to spend her days with,yet she is unhappy.

Linden Georges is a glass cut doll made from crystal blue ice and small tubes, that ease breathing and prevent the cracking of her small delicate frame. She is the source of her parents pride and constant panic. As so they keep her behind metal bars, locked inside a cushion patted jail cell, far from human attachment or danger. She sits upon her high pedestal and watches the kids play outside. They are not as pretty as her. Their every step does not radiate an abundant of blue light that seems to glow deep in their core.

They are not special as she is.

Not as perfect. But she cant help but watch their fleshy limbs move around in the air and tumble in the ground. She watched with interest as they fall and scrape and cut and bleed, getting back again despite the pain throbbing in their legs.

They are free.

They are not made of glass.Once she tried to leave her silent domain, where footsteps die out in the hush of the heavily quilted floor. She sneaked out, her feet making small taps on the hard wood surface, as she descended the stair case, and took the key she stole from her mother and went outside.

It was marvelous.

The air was a brisk cold that sang softly in her open pores, leaves fell from the trees entangling themselves into her threadlike hair.And all around her the world seemed to be waking and new with the soft whipsy touches of flower petals , and brash sounds of animals scurrying in the trees. She wanted to run to scream, to fill her quavering lungs with that dewy morning air, and swallow the world whole with her screams.

She wanted to be free.

She wanted to be a normal girl with paper cuts, and splinters and hard floors to pound on when she gets mad.

She wanted to feel warmth.

Like a sparrow, so she could stretch her wings and fly away from all the tests and cracks and cold smiles her parents give her every night. A real bird that could get away from these cold and cushioned rooms, and fly somewhere warm where skin is always soft, and wounds heal with time.
Instead she tripped on her very few first steps and sent a huge crack going through the middle of her front. A wound that would never heal, no matter how much the doctors try.She simply wasn't built like that.

Today, she exactly the same as the cool morning long ago.

Glass princesses don't grow up, their cool metal sharp bodies never change with age. Instead, the get weaker, their blood pounding with less vigor as before and the diamond blue of their veins fade away.
She is a beautiful child.

This is not a fairy tale.