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a good wife is a rare bird on earth, and very like a black swan - Juvenal

Long, long ago, before once upon a time, I was white as a Dominican nun, whiter than the arctic hare in winter, or first fall of new snow over a mountain; whiter than a beluga whale or Himalayan birch trees in a grove. So beautiful was I, and so modest and meek, the birds of the air were filled with envy. Beak and claw, they fell upon me greedily, tearing the feathers from my startled flesh. Hour upon hour, they pecked and pecked again until the skin of my breast was quite abraded. I could not cry out but my blood ran down it, streamed in rivulets of red. Made mute by nature, I had no other choice. I endured my misery in silence. Some of my companions came clucking and hissing but not one would render me aid.  Of all those self-righteous wing-beaters, it was the scavenging crow who looked on my sorrow with compassion, who came caw-caw-cawing about my head and promised me all would be well.  She climbed so high in the blue and gold glare and searched with such unremitting diligence that she found The Morrigan and begged her to clothe me in her own shape-shifting beauty so that her dark feathers spilled over me like an unlooked for kindness and her tenderness scarfed up my wounds. But still, for all that, my snowy white wingtips, innocent as Leda, and the splash of blood that still stains my bill must remind me how my friends turned against me, how it was I came undone, and how, in that time, I learned to cry.