In A World Of My Own by Tanya Mayers

Did you ever hear of that story of a beautiful girl who shunned every man who loved her and wore a silken green ribbon around her throat?Turns out, she wasn’t an androphobe. She actually married a man, upon the condition that he would never, ever untie that ribbon. The man kept his word until his wife’s dying day, where she lay pale and wasted and beautiful amongst sheets as white as her face, eaten from within by a disease. That’s when he finally untied the ribbon, only to find that her head rolled to the ground without that strand of support.

Quite the horror story. I read it in a storybook as a child, before I knew all about the true legacy.

My ribbon is like that, and also it isn’t. I tie it around my head to keep my brains in place, because heaven forbid that they fall out. Ask the crows—the crows know. They’ve been wheeling around my head for ages, jeering that my ribbon will come undone and it will be their turn to feast. But really, it doesn’t bother me. If my mother could live her whole life with the secret of her green ribbon, then so can I.

~Angreek87