The Dress Maker's Daughter

Amongst all of this, a meek grey creature watched from a stool in the corner. Her nimble fingers worked frantically, spinning threads of all colours, whilst the rest of her body was still as a mouse.
She was a thin girl, with delicate fingers that could embroider intricately without pricking themselves. This talent was a sought after one in a tailor’s shop, and it was a convenience to the tailor that his daughter possessed it.
Her name was Giselle. It had never suited her; even as a baby she was a quiet and disregarded thing, and never grew into her name.
Her mother was dead or vanished, and it had never been clear who she was in the first place. Town gossip was that the cloaked woman who turned up on the tailor’s doorstep was a gypsy who had seduced him nine months before. She left a squirming bundle, which grew into Giselle, and everyone expected her to turn out a robbing harlot like her gypsy relatives. But, to their disappointment, she did not.
Giselle watched everyday from her stool, as customers came and went, ordering fine dresses and coats, and imagined herself into their lives. She dreamed the days away with thoughts of attending glittering balls in the dresses she made, and of handsome men to carry her away. But, alas, every perfectly crafted garment was soon swept away by a starry-eyed girl, hanging off her fiancées arm and not caring to look at Giselle.
She was a magpie, and would occasionally steal away a silver button or a piece of shiny cloth. Stowing these in a small wooden box under her bed, she would sometimes allow herself glimpses of these small treasures.
Anything bright or shiny attracted her like a moth to a flame. So when the gypsies came, one early Autumn evening, her eyes grew wide and round like moons.
They came with trundling caravans in every colour, with bells sewn onto their skirts and flowers in their horses’ manes. They brought with them the sound of fiddles and pipe music, and the smells of roasting chestnuts.