The first world started, like many after, softly and slowly. Built on imagination and gumption (which is a fancy word for will power) it was the first of its kind. Many came after of course, and soon there were many worlds and many towns and many characters, each with their own set of circumstances to overcome, of love to find, of enemies dark and numberless to vanquish.

This particuar world was started by an American. She wasn't particularly bright or pretty. She wasn't rich and she wasn' t poor. Nothing haunted or marred her happy and contented childhood. Essentially, she was doomed to be ordinary. She took this realization as happily and niavely as a fish who comes to realize it will never fly.  An author can not bloom without inspiration to give birth to words, and she stubbornly refused to disbey her parents, to feel unworthy, to accept defeat. She stubbornly clung to her ordinary pleasant life. But this world is not kind to those who find happiness within themselves.

The first thing she noticed was an odd look. It was twisted and cold and pointed at her. She grabbed her mother's hand tightly and quickly looked down at the ground. The cool plain linoleum of the grocery store looked back at her but offered no answer to the questions darting around in her small childish brain. What had she done wrong? What did she do to garner that expression? Who was this woman? She did not get any answers that day. She didn't get any answers the following days or years to the other quesitons the subsequently followed. A person who is different from other people can never discover the source of the difference. It isn't like those games where you have two images and you have to find the difference; It isn't that obvious. The worst part about being different, which Meriam Webste defines as partly or totally unlike in nature,form, or quality, is that this word is never used positively. If your sister is asked how she likes the food and she replies, "it's different." She is not paying that food a compliment. And there are so many words that mean different. The human race is so attuned to whats different that they have 30 different words that mean the same thing. Disparate, dissimilar, distant, distinct, distinctive, distinguishable, diverse, nonidentical, other, unalike, unlike,  divers, miscellaneous, mixed, several, sundry, variant, varied, various; differentiable, discriminable; alternate, alternative, individual, particular, peculiar, single; disproportionate, divergent, unequal. And if you take the nastiest form of this word, peculiar, which means being out of the ordinary and look up different words you get, aberrant, aberrated, abnormal, anomalous, atypical, especial, exceeding, extraordinaire, extraordinary, freak, odd, peculiar, phenomenal, preternatural, rare, singular, uncommon, uncustomary, unique, unusual, unwonted, conspicuous, notable, noticeable, outstanding, prominent, remarkable, salient, striking; bizarre, deviant, eccentric, freakish, monstrous, oddball, outlandish, quaint, strange, weird; incomprehensible, inconceivable, incredible, unimaginable, unthinkable