(note:this part is largely just the exposition before the fun stuff begins)

Once upon a time in a Kingdom far away (but most likely in modern France or Germany) Lived a Girl names Ella. Ella was a free spirited young girl who loved doing nothing more than to have fun. At this point in life she had a simple childhood. One of her favorite activities in these early days was to help her mother to take care of the animals around the house. They were a rich family so one may have thought that they would have had farm hands around the house but her mom very much liked to bond with many of the animals. Activities varied from training horses to milking cows and harvesting eggs, but the one thing Ella enjoyed most changing the pig feed. The first time she was given the job her mother had to go out to a fancy ball of some sorts and had told her to spread out the feed evenly, for Ella this meant getting in. While In the pen she had slipped but decided that instead of leaving she could get on her knees and move it around using her whole body. Her mother saw this and, still wearing her best ball gown, went in and tried to get Ella out before slipping in and falling herself. Seeing as it her gown was now ruined anyways the beautiful mother decided to make the most of it and started wallowing and playing around in the mud in some ways even more than her daughter. News about this event reached town quickly but it was not of much concern to her. While not doing the chore in quite as fancy of an outfit ever again, every weekend the pair would continue going about this chore in the Incredibly messy manner for many years.

However this all changed when one day Ella's mother had gotten sick with an unknown (Medicine wasn't that great in those days) disease and in less than a month Ella had to watch her mother trapped in her bed as her smooth skin and golden hair both become disheveled and her once strong bones turn frail. She would die only 2 months after first realizing there was a problem.

As her father didn't actually own the rights to most of what the family had, he became somewhat desperate for cash and ended up marrying a semi-noble woman named Lady Tremaine. She had two ugly (Compared to Ella at least) daughters, From two different marriages, by the names of Drizzila and Anastasia. While Ella's mother had been a kind and much loved woman, Tremaine was found to be a bully by most people and this did extend to her family. Ella's father, while sympathetic to his daughter, feared for their financial security and thus was unable to do anything about it.

For years upon years Ella would be made to do chores around the large estate of which they lived. Gone was her care free childhood days, now she was forced to work as a cook, maid and occasionally just a punching bag for her two step sisters. One particular incident of note was when Anastasia one day had fallen down some stairs and was caught in a position revealing all her undergarments which was highly embarassing now but far more so back then. In order to help her daughter, Tremaine burned a pair of Ella's lingerie in a fire and told her to "pick up every ash" before she would be allowed to eat. When Ella finished 3 hours later she was seen covered in Cinder by the family leading her to receive the nickname (of which she later adopted) "Cinderella".

But everything began to change one day.

The day had started out normally with Ella being woken up at the crack of dawn to make breakfast for her step family, of which she of course would only get the smallest amount of (and sometimes they forced her to eat it like a dog) When she heard a trumpet playing signaling some kind of important message.

Ella began to get up to check the news when she heard her stepmother snap at her.

"I didn't tell you to stop working did I"

"No step mother"

Ella then had to go back into the kitchen where she good here her step sisters rush down the stairs and the man talk about something not entirely clear to her. For now she needed to focus on the getting breakfast ready if she wanted to actually eat any of it. After about 10 minutes of talking she heard Anastasia yell at her to get done and feed her, which was usual but she also heard them talk about something else.

"Oh I can't wait to go to the ball. I bet the Prince will choose me as his future queen" said Drizilla.

"oh shut up he would choose me of course. as I'm the one with all the beauty and charm" replied Anastasia.

The stepmother knew that neither of these statements were true but she was more than willing to satisfy their beliefs, besides a small part of her hoped that he could be pursuaded somehow.

"Ball? What are you guys talking about?"

"Mind your own business this doesn't concern a pig such as you" replied one of the step sisters

Cinderella knew this was true, as long as she lived under this roof it really did not concern her. Yet, the Idea could not escape her mind. What if she did actually have a chance to meet a prince and he did choose her as a future wife. Her mom was a beautiful and sweet woman, perhaps other people would think she was too. She told herself these were silly thoughts and simply went upstairs for a thirty minute break before she would be subjected to another round of chores and bullying at her step families heels.

"Ah if only I had a way to go to this ball" she said to herself.

Or at least she thought it was to herself. In reality, a mouse by the name of Tim had been listening and pitied the girl. Really he had always pitied her but had no way to really help her. One time he had considered running up the leg of one of her step sisters during one of their dates and embarrassing her, but he decided against it as it was too dangerous, and even then he knew Ella would probably suffer from it more in the end. He began crying a little thinking about the girls treatment and how long it had gone on for. this sound did not escape Ella's ears.

"oh hey there little fellow do you want something?"

He tried telling her no but she didn't seem to get the message

"oh you would like some of this wouldn't you" she said signaling at her plate. "well here you go" she then gave him a small but noticeable piece of her dish before she slowly ate the rest.

Tim decided then that he would try whatever he could to help her and he found the best way was to help her make a dress as that seemed to be the one thing she lacked for the ball above everything else.

The problem was that even if he knew how to make a dress (which for the record he absolutely did not) he couldn't do it alone. He spent several hours trying to stitch together something using strains and threads he found around the place when another mouse name Jack came up to him.

"excuse me Tim but what are you doing?"

"I'm trying to make a dress for Ellie here"

"who"

"Cinderellie, the golden haired girl in this house"

"Oh yes her. Wait why?"

Jack of course knew difficulties and the constant verbal abuse she would suffer, but he typically thought it was better to avoid the problems of the humans. All the ever did was accuse mice of spreading the plague (which to be fair they did do, but it wasn't like they intended to) and accuse them of stealing cheese (he was more of a custard guy himself) and then typically killed them.

Tim knew this as well but he told Jack about what he had seen her do, how she had offered him food instead of trying to smash his brains like the other members of the family. After much convincing Jack helped out, first by trying to tailor the dress himself, which he quickly learned he was equally as useless at, before embarking on a lobbying campaign of other mice. While it did take a while he was able to convince the other mice in the house to assist on the dress, using a variety of methods ranging from appealing to emotions to threats. Originally they had tried to hide the dress, partially as to give her a surprise gift, but also because they feared what her step family would do to it if discovered. They soon found this to be impractical after only reaching the bottom of the hem and running out of space within the walls of the house. They then displayed what they had on a mannequin that was thrown out by the Stepmother.

"ooh what is this you guys are doing?" Ella asked upon first laying her eyes upon the mannequin.

The mice, not being able to speak in human tongue of course couldn't reply, Ellie, not being as dumb as her stepsisters was still able to figure it out after a few seconds of thought.

"Oh how wonderful!" she said and precede to sang them a song to lift up their spirits.

The singing brought back fond memories of how she would use to help out the Animals back home, what she considered home anyways. She sand about how she had dreams to one day escape this place and simply live happily. Her singing even attracted other nearby forest critters into the house who would bring over beeds and string and anything else that is necessary in the clothes making process. This arrangement would carry on for several days and nights. Her topic of song also began to change often delving into specific incidents that brightened her mood such as when she first learned how to spell her name or how she would ride her horse and even wallow in the mud, while these songs confused people (and even quite a few animals) the thoughts brought some joy back into her mind which was all that really mattered to her. After several days and nights of work on the parts of all involved her dress was complete, and just a week before the ball.

The week continued on as normal as any other for her but the thought of perhaps impressing this charming prince ate away at her mind, and she began to show more tolerance towards her sisters' abuses, something their mother picked up and found quite suspicious. To inspect she sent Ella out one day to fetch dinner supplies. When Cinderella left, Tremaine went up into her room to see if their was something up, and there she saw it the dress. Tim witnessing her standing there ran up to her in hopes of scaring her off but all it took was one glare from her eyes to tell Tim that it was best if he just run along. While Tremaine wanted to confront her stepdaughter about this directly she had a different idea: Ruin her dress right before the ball so she couldn't go, preferably with her wearing it.

Roughly a week had passed since then and the Day of the ball had arrived. It was the most important day in the lives of many people up to this point and there was a general sense of excitement amongst the kingdom's female residents. For Cinderella it was just a day like any other (or so she wanted her family to believe), she made breakfast, ate little of it, washed all the dishes, swept the floor made lunch and a few more chores which she was sure her step sisters just made up, for her though it would all be worth it later. Night would come and so would the time of the ball, her sister's both came out wearing some odd dresses that she would have giggled at if it wouldn't have given her 50 spankings, they headed out the door when Tremaine left her with one final demand.

"I want every last bit of that dress of yours cleaned out of the fire place by the time we get back"

In reality what her stepmother had burned was an old pair of, stockings, but she hoped to give her a scare before deciding to beat her up further. The step family then went out the door but didn't go to the ball right away, instead the decided to watch Cinderella Clean up the ashes.

"It was fun at first, but at some point shouldn't we actually get going" said anastasia.

"patience dear the fun part should come soon, besides, I don't have much reason to believe that the Prince would take interest in either of you two"

"what's that supposed to mean" the two step sisters asked simultaneously.

"oh nothing, wait look she's coming down guys" Tremaine said.

She in fact was coming down wearing her gown. It was a nice sleaveless floor length pink dress with one layer of petticoats with a shimmering crest in the middle (honestly if you know the movie just look at that I'm not very good at explaining stuff). She was just about to make it to the door when it opened by itself hitting her in the head.

"Hello CINDERella" said Anastasia mockingly

"What? I thought you guys were gone?"

"And then we would have missed the chance to do this" and with that her step sisters began to pick up buckets of paint and lob them at the poor girl, Ella was desperate to block them but she kept getting hit often right in the face by bucket after bucket of red, green, yellow, blue, purple, basically every color except the pink she was wearing. they carried on with this for twenty minutes until eventually they ran out of paint and walked off to the ball. Ella looked into a mirror and saw the state of herself. Her dress was now a mix of several colors that seemed to all add up to gray, her hair was not a bright red and even most of her skin had become green. She wanted to just lay down and cry but decided to go somewhere else: the mud pit.
She decided to simply lay down in there, as her dress was ruined anyways, and feel the goo run down her body. It reminded her of when she saw her mother doing this all those years ago, a pleasant memory but one that still made her cry when she compared it to the present day. She lay back and made mud angels, just like how she and her mother used to it was then that she saw what seemed to be a real angel.