At the zoo, there are two sisters, separated by a few years, but with a vast chasm between them. The oldest is beautiful, but her eyes exude a knowledge of this beauty and its value to others, emptying her of all things but to be pretty.

You can see the younger growing into the same beauty, but she is not yet stripped of her personality by being the object for others. This awakens in you an instinct to protect the younger one, to allow her to grow into the woman she will become without the corrosive effects that her blossoming comeliness have wrought on her sister. But they are both strangers to you.

You go back to staring at the giraffes.

See the author’s published work here.

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