Once upon a time, Masha’s story was just a folktale before which her reality took place.

This is the tale of the Little Red Riding Hood as it once was, as it’s been passed down in one of the deepest villages of Russia long ago, and how it’s nearly been forgotten but found anew. 

This is the Little Red Riding Hood as it should have been.

Come, stray into the woods, beware of the Wolves that take the guise of men, and find the lonesome wooden house that belongs to the ruthless Huntress…

Masha will welcome you there, like she did me.

Once upon a time…

Anastasia stood out from the crowd in all the senses, and never the good ones. She was standing next to her mother, her beautiful dark-haired mother turned scarecrow-like and dirty, trembling in the cold that seeped through her patched-up and used sarafan and torn bast lapti (even her coarse heavy cloth kaftan didn’t do its proper job anymore), feet away from the village crowd. Despised, shamed, nearly forgotten but not quite out of obligation.

But most of all: pariahs.

It wasn’t her mother’s fault. Nor hers!

But people’s minds—most of them, anyway—are thick. Yet, as she watched Masha, the previous Huntress’s granddaughter, come out triumphantly and savagely out of the woods, her Babushka’s Wolf shuba dripping red, Anastasia knew she would understand her.

Somehow, she had to make herself not only seen by Masha, by this conqueror and grand protector, but also heard.

Whereas others believed Anastasia to be the abhorrent result of a wolf making himself at home in her mother’s body without her consent, Masha was bound to help her.

Was she not?

As Masha walked to meet the village’s council in the middle of the circle, Anastasia lifted herself on her toes to at least not miss the Huntress’s head. While the new Huntress recounted the tragic and brutal event, everybody listened closely, even more than when someone told them a secret.

Now their Huntress was speaking, and the whole village gave her esteem and respect.

Where Masha was revered for her supernatural abilities passed down from supreme women to their daughters and granddaughters, Anastasia was, at best, ignored, but mostly jeered at, bullied, and poor by force.

Anastasia gulped and, stumbling on her short thin legs, bit her lower lip.

She had nothing to lose except her last hope, and that scared her more than anything.