Rated G
No Pairings.

Here's another little bit that's been eating at my brain.
Hope you enjoy.  All the usual disclaimers,  Alliance owns them.  Comments
taken at Lkiwki@bigfoot.com
TYK
Lys

He flexed his little hand, the sharp points went back and forth.  Wide,
blue eyes stared as the long silver edges.  A clipping sound fell on
his ears with movement of  his hand.  He turned them and examined them
from every angle.  Pointed or v-ed, the shape was still long and silver.
The little fingers of his hand just barely made the item in his hand
move.  

Taking a deep breath, he remembered the thing that he had become aware
of just today.  He was different.  Every one of his friends looked nearly
the same, coal black hair, straight and strong; each with shinning dark
eyes, their skin bronzed.  

He stood on the stool again to look in his mother's mirror.  Yes, there
it was the face the other kids laughed at.  He was different.   His eyes
were bluer than the sky.  Could that be a bad thing?  His skin was pale
and white.  His mother's skin was like that, was that a bad thing?  Those
items he could deal with, he loved his mother, and he liked looking a
little like her.  But oh the hair.  Dark, fluffy curls surround his pale
face.  The strands of his hair lay in curls on his forehead, over his
ears around his neck.  The curls were soft, and thick.  He sighed.  All
he wanted was to be welcomed by the others. 

Well, maybe, 

Clip, clip went the scissors in his hand.  Curls began to fall around
his feet on the chair.  No, he would have to clip shorter as his hair
still curled.  Grabbing another piece, he clipped again.  He clipped
until all the dreaded curls were on the chair and on the floor.  The
uneven cut was spikey and very short.  Parts of his head appeared almost
bald.  He raised the scissors again... 

"Ben, what are you doing?" his mother said rushing across the room to
fall on her knees beside the 4-year-old little boy on the chair.  

He looked down into her tear filled eyes and though he smiled there were
tears in his eyes.  "I just want to be like everyone else.  So I cut
my hair." 

Caroline Fraser took in a deep breath and began running her hands over
her child's shorn locks.  "Ben, Ben.  You can shave your head darling,
if you want to, but you'll still be different.  Would you give me the
scissors?"  she began fussing over his hair and trying to even out the
unnatural way it was not cut. 

"Different is good Ben," she whispered in his ear.  "If everyone was
exactly alike there wouldn't be any variety in life.  Remember the flowers
we saw in the spring?  Even though all those flowers were on the same
plant, each one was a little different from the others." 

His eyes were filling with tears.  "I don't understand." His little voice
said. 

She smiled and hugged him close.  "Someday you will understand."  She
stepped back from him now that she thought she had evened out the odd
lengths of his hair.  

But inside her, her heart pulled at her, gripped her in pain. She broke
into a smile and drew him to her and turned them to face the mirror.

"See darling, you're still you, just with shorter hair."  
He turned in her arms and hugged her.  

The door swung open and Bob Fraser came in carrying his pack.  He took
one look at all the hair on the chair and on the floor.  "Geesh Caroline,
I said perhaps Ben needed a more adult hair cut now he's four...Did you
have to scalp him."  

Ben and Caroline looked at each other and laughed.  "We just got carried
away."