Maria walked nervously around her house for hours until her aunt and uncle came home. Then she resumed her nervous pacing in her bedroom.

"Maria?" The knock and the voice at her door had Maria jumping out of her skin.

"Yeah?" She asked nervously as she slowly opened her door.

"Are you okay honey?" Tearsa asked softly.

Giving a small nervous smile, Maria nodded slowly. "Of course, Aunt Tearsa." She said bowing her head.

"Don't do that." Tearsa said frustrated. "You make me feel old when you do."

Maria let out a small laugh. "I'm sorry. I am so used to doing it for all the elders in the village." She answered slowly.

Tearsa nodded. "Yes, child. I know. I used to live there too. A few years after you were born." She explained.

"Really?" Maria asked curiously. She invited her aunt in and they sat together on her bed. "Then you knew Great Grandmother Marie?" She asked tentatively.

Tearsa knew where this was going. So she slowly bobbed her head up and down. "Yes, I knew Grandmother Marie. You were supposed to have been named completely after her. Marie Rosa." She stated softly.

Maria nodded. "I know. But if I was supposed to have been, why was I named Maria Rose instead?"

"Because your father was angry and Grandmother Marie for this curse that runs your life now." Tearsa said softly. "Even though he was the one that asked for it."

Hot, salty tears started to burn Maria's eyes. "What did he do? All I know was that his vanity made me the way that I am. But no one will tell me what Papa did." She cried out in fear.

Tearsa hugged Maria to her tightly. "Your father, when you were born, was the proudest man any papa could have been. Grandmother Maria had let each of her children ask a wish of her for their children. Most asked for a good heart, strength, or health. Your papa asked for beauty beyond beauty."

Maria shuddered violently. She leaned out of Tearsa's embrace and looked her in the eye. She had to watch her aunt tell this vital information about her childhood, her life now, and what her life was going to be like in the future.

Tearsa nodded her head to Maria's unasked question. "He did ask for you to be the most beautiful in all the world. He asked for you to come with a voice as fresh and as sweet as spring water. For you to have faith and honor beyond most. And...." She trailed off. "To love someone as worthy as you."

Maria hung her head low in shame. Her father's vanity indeed set the curse upon her.

"Grandmother Marie was furious. He had wanted you to be the best in the world. Not to be average, but to be the finest." Tearsa shook her head in disgust. "So for your father's vanity she laced a curse with the wishes she ha granted. She was going to let you love someone so deeply and so caring that she was going to make it where you could never be together."

Sitting up straight, Maria stared hard at her aunt. "But why can we not be together?" She wailed.

Tearsa grabbed Maria into another fierce hug. "Because of difference."

"What difference?" Maria asked sniffling. "If we love each other, where can there be difference?"

"I don't know, Baby. I don't know." Tearsa whispered as she rocked them back and forth.

Maria felt her eyes, head, and limb grow heavy.

Soon she was asleep, and Tearsa gently laid her on her bed. Kissing her forehead, she faintly said a small prayer for her niece before she slowly walked out of the room switching off the lights.

Maria knew her aunt had just left her. Tears slowly slid down the side of her face as she stared out her window. In the Hanson's house she could silhouettes from figures standing in front of curtained windows.

She sighed softly. I can't believe that you would punish me Great Grandmother. "Punish me for my father's faults." She said angrily.

She saw Isaac open a curtain and then the window before closing the curtain again. Maria sighed again. "The difference is; he is white, and I am a Gypsy." She whispered softly before exhaustion settled over her and forced her into a dreamless sleep.