Metamorphosis

Lisette was a blank sheet of paper receiving a writer's first words; a white canvas at the first touch of paint.

Now dimming in warm twilight, this day had taken away forever the ragged-child Lisette; she who had only recently relegated Mama's stories about her papa, prince of an enchanted castle, to the bejewelled memories of childhood, as other children might the tooth fairy.

At their cottage door, Mama had spoken in hushed tones with a liveried coachman. She had bade Lisette to go, not to worry, she would see her soon. Bouncing on highly sprung leather, she had been transported to a house the likes of which she had never seen. In opulent rooms, a maid helped her bathe in lavender-scented water, rinsed her hair with a pitcher, eased the tangles from her matted hair, and dressed her in a gown of rose pink.

Responding to Lisette's questions, the maid had chuckled as if at a secret joke.

"We gotta get ya spruced up, to meet yer papa. So to speak," she had said.

Papa had turned out to be a wax-faced stranger, cheeks rouged like a woman's. Lisette stared, unable to take her eyes off the satin padding of the coffin; the sun making rainbow patterns through stained glass on the alabaster skin, until she was ushered out of the chapel, back to the main house. There, pompously, in a study smelling tantalisingly of leather and parchment, a moustachioed man wearing pince-nez declared that she, Miss Lisette Corston, was the sole heir of her father, Sir Harrington.

"All this this is yours". A grandiose sweep of a pasty hand.

Now, watching for the coach that had been sent for her mother, lady-of-the-manor Lisette, still smelling of soap, contemplated the first page in the true story of her life.

Winner "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  8th October 2016