00- Cypress Blooms

I've always been treated with a fair mind. No one has treated me badly. Every maid and every butler served me with care and respect and not one has decided to try anything with me. I'm not upset with this, I had known this is the way the people would act, especially since they are aware of my disease, the thing that makes me such a sob story.

At a young age, I had dizzy spells, fainting, bloody noses, cold sweats, weakness in my body and many others to name. My father didn't think much of it and was satisfied with the diagnoses that I had lower blood pressure than others, and a weaker body.

This was partly true. My mother was ill frequently when I was unborn and when I was alive, she was always bedridden and when she was out of bed, she was working on other affairs that required her attention. I remember being small and watching her from the crack between her workroom doors, how her flaming ginger eyelashes shadowed her green eyes like curtains or blankets, and how her delicate hands took the quill and wrote on the papers. She was effortlessly beautiful.

My father choose to ignore her throughout their marriage, and as a young child I didn't understand. I thought he was so busy as a child that he didn't have time to spare for us, as most the maids, and mother included, would tell me when I asked. The most he could do was eat dinner with me and mother once a week, if not, he'd do once a month.

Soon, mother fell ill. She was burdened by a disease. She coughed and was vomiting blood. Her back was extremely distorted and at one point her wails from her bedroom at night shook me so much I stopped visiting her everyday. I regret that decision, because soon enough me and my father joined again after half a year, hand in hand, to lay a rose down on the grave of a woman he never payed much attention to.

After awhile, I started showing these symptoms, but father chose to ignore them, saying I was attempting to imitate mother for attention. I started to hide the fact I was becoming ill. I was only twelve when I first fainted and slept for a full three days, and by then, the doctors had decided that it was time to examine me thoroughly.

I remember my fathers look. A look that he despised me. Me and my sickly body. The daughter of the high ranking noble who is terminally ill. His one and only heir was sick and bound to die.

He never spared me another glance. He did not care for his sickly daughter.