The Ugly Girl

This girl of fifteen, people said was ugly. At home she didn’t have a mirror because her parents thought she would lose heart seeing her face so ugly. She liked to be alone with herself, often swinging her legs in the clear water and playing with the floating blooming waterlilies in the nearby pond, but didn’t ever venture to go in the deeper waters for she didn’t know how to swim. One full moon night when the shining water was calm, she saw the pond turn into a mirror, reflecting her ugly face onto her shocked eyes. She decided not to look in the water mirror again, but make a special mirror of her own that would show her a beautiful face. This she did earnestly polishing a steel plate with stems of waterlily. In the magic mirror she saw her smiling face as beautiful as the flower. She then told people her mirror could turn all faces into lovely flowers. People said she had become insane. This made her inordinately sad more than ever, but found consoling refuge and joy in her image she saw in the magic mirror, smiling like waterlily. In the gleaming twilight hours of one spring when the pond water was rippling the hues of the setting sun she was plucking the waterlilies, her magic mirror she carried always with her, slipped from her unwary hand, and as it sank and disappeared in the deep waters she plunged on an impulse in the pond, and for the last time saw her smiling face lying beside her magic mirror. On her sixteenth birthday people found the pond covered with blooming waterlily they said beautiful, and the unique story of the ugly girl would unfold. _________________ September 21, 2022 Contest : Chapter 1 Sponsored by : Matt Caliri