There once was a fairy princess named Constance who had the most beautiful, incandescent wings. The sunlight glinted off of them ever so slightly and, if you watched her closely, you could just make out a kalidescope of sky and cloud through them as she flew over head. All of the other fairies told her how grand and gorgeous her wings were, but Constance didn't see what was so special about them. To her, they were ordinary and plain. She hated the way they'd change from robin's egg blue to lavender as she moved in the sunlight. She couldn't stand the sapphire tint they'd take on at night. She wanted them to be ordinary: yellow, orange, green red, just something that didn't stand out.
One night, Constance waited up, flipping between Conan and Jimmy Kimmel mostly, until long after the other fairies had all gone to bed. Then, she quietly made her way to the communal tool shed, found an old saw she'd used to make a bird house when she was eleven, and slowly and steadily hacked off her radiant wings, with only a few sips of wine to dull the pain and a rag to bite on that muffled her screams. She managed to bandage up the stumps on her back before passing out on the floor of the tool shed in a pool of her own blood.
When the other fairies found her the next afternoon, they were, of course, appalled. "Constance," they asked, "who did this to you?" Constance's only response was a smile. She finally had what she wanted.
After a while, life got back to what now could be called normal. Constance returned to the same daily routine as before, only minus the flying and without the showers of admiration from her peers. She was still unique. She still stood out. But now it was something different. She was the damaged one. The freak. Boisterous conversations would quickly decay into whispers or silence when she rounded the corner. Several of the fairies refused to fly around her; so she wouldn't feel bad they reasoned. No one let their eyes meet hers for long, afraid of what they might find if they looked too deeply. And Constance just kept on smiling. She didn't mind this kind of attention. Now she was different by her own hand. Now she was special with a purpose. Her smile screamed futility. It pleaded for logic and reason. No more flying. No more parties. Just cold, dead weight. Tethered to the earth. Constance swore she knew a secret: soaring or crawling, we all end up together.
