an outsider - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

I have always felt as if I were the weed of this garden, yet the bees and nature do love them so. We grow bold and strong, often where least expected and apparently without any golden invitation. They can't see what weeds are until they bloom, so little attention does our development garner. Yet our fragrance is as aromatic and our nectar as sweet as any other. We bring that creative richness, that smirk of a smile when at last our vibrant petals show, the gifts we have to offer received with gratitude.

Her face shone in the watery sunlight. It burst in beams through the almost complete cloud layer above to cast transitory spotlights. Her features were typical of her kin in the district across the ocean channel but here they marked her out as a stranger. Her dark features, considered beautiful back home, were alarming to these creatures who had lived in the colder northern climes for so long that their skin now matched the snow. Their eyes were smaller than hers and the mouths meaner, thinner lipped and often elongated. But they had the clothing she needed to get into the mountains, to visit the fabled spring, and so she ventured into a store to make the purchases, consciously bringing forth the charm that came to her without trying back home.

Back home I don't have an accent. In the hills the way I talk is as common as the coarse grey shingle we cover the dirt roads with, but in the city it marks me as an outsider. With clean clothes and washed hair I look just like they do - the same dark eyes and honeyed skin. They ignore me until I must speak, then I watch their eyes harden as they try to drop the trade negotiation and move on to someone with more money. They're the ones with an accent. Where my voice rolls they bark. Where my inflections rise at the end of a sentence, theirs are flat. They think my speech is a sign of both lower intelligence and rudeness though it is neither. All these fine folks came from the country just a generation or two ago, they just like to forget that part...