Retold Fairytales - Tumblr Posts

3 years ago

Mulan: A City Girl

(this was done as a commission for @significantfoliage :D)

Her mother complains that they’re country folk, that their families were born and died in farmland, and that they should do the same. She says this so often that her husband has stopped responding to her entirely.

Mulan doesn’t know what growing up in the country would have been like. She remembers it vaguely, like a dream. When she was a little girl, her father was summoned to the capital to serve the emperor as his one of his advisers.

Her father couldn’t have denied the emperor, so Mulan doesn’t understand her mother’s anger.

But it doesn’t matter, for she grows up in the city, grows up running through the palace, constantly trailing after her father and getting underfoot.

She’s a beautiful child, with large expressive eyes and a waterfall of shiny black hair. Her face is as pale as the moon, and her lips a ruddy red. Many people comment on it, saying that she’ll surely make a beautiful bride one day. Her father says nothing, reacting with stony silence until they change the subject.

Little girls grow up to be brides. She knows that.

But in the capital, she thinks there are so many things more interesting to do than becoming a bride. Like riding horses, and playing board games, and pestering her father into teaching her how to properly hold a sword.

Like archery.

She watches the men practice in the courtyard for hours, arrow after arrow hitting their targets. She wants to be able to do that, but her father says she’s not strong enough yet, that she has to wait to learn.

She’s ten years old, and she feels plenty strong. If her father expects time to dissuade her, then he’s sorely mistaken. But she can wait. The other advisors won’t help her learn how to hold a sword, but they do play Go with her, and that’s almost as good.

Mulan is awake even earlier than usual one morning, and she sees a boy a few years older than her on the practice field.

He’s very bad.

It’s no wonder he’s practicing when no one else can see him.

She walks up behind him, and he’s not very observant either, because she’s nearly on top of him when she says, “You’re holding it all wrong.”

He jumps nearly a foot in the air, and she covers her mouth with her sleeve to hide her giggles. His eyes narrow and he holds out an arrow threateningly, like he’s ready to stab her in the neck with it. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I am Hua Mulan,” she says. “I was walking, and saw you. You are so pathetic, that I thought I might try and help you.”

He scowls, lowering the arrow. “What do you know? You’re just a girl.”

For the first time, anger sparks inside her. Arrows held at her throat are fine, but insulting her skill is quite another matter.

The fact that she has no skill to speak of isn’t the point.

“Give me your bow and arrow, and I’ll show you,” she says heatedly.

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3 years ago

Baroness Marian

a sequel to my retold fairytale Red Robin Hood

robin goes to a lot of fancy parties full of rich and privileged people. to steal from the rich, she has to get close to them.

this means she spends a lot of time pretending to be something she’s not.

often, she is a servant, moving silently and invisibly between everyone, using her light and quick fingers to take purses from men’s belts and jewelry from women’s necks. but sometimes, if the party is big enough and the wine is plentiful enough, she goes as guest. she puts her red coat aside for the evening and puts on a dress made for a woman far above her station. she blends into the crowd in an entirely new way.

she always wears red.

her skirt is long and full, all the better for filling her voluminous pockets with her stolen treasure, and there are more people here than she count, all moving around and next to her. it’s perfect. she’s almost sorry she didn’t wear a bigger skirt.

everything’s going normal, as expected, just another night of high stakes robbery. if she’s caught, she’ll be hanged, but it’s been over a decade, and she hasn’t been caught yet. either she’s very good, or those that are after her are very bad.

since fairness is kind of her thing, she graciously tells herself it’s probably a little of both.

she’s almost gotten to the point where it’s time for her to make a quick exit, before people start realizing what they’re missing, when she hears a laugh. it’s loud, full bodied, rolling across the crowd of loud, drunk people like a wave crashing against the shore.

robin turns her head in search of its source before she can think to stop herself, and her breath catches in her throat.

there’s a woman with skin so dark it looks like she’s been cut from the night sky. her bald head shines in the candle light, and her gold dress should looks gaudy, should look tacky, and on anyone else it probably would. but on her it’s glowing. she has on dangling ruby earrings, and more studs cut from precious stones curve up the shells of her ears. she wears a small fortune on her ears, which is what makes her necklace so perplexing.

it’s copper.

copper buffed to shine, and hammered into a wavy, interlocking pattern along the base of her throat, but copper just the same. a peasant couldn’t afford the quality of work, perhaps, but the materials are easily bought, or even scrounged up from a trash heap. a copper pot with a crack down the middle would do just fine.

it’s strange, because her dress is spun gold and her ears are glittering with wealth, but around her neck is necklace that’s worth is no more than a child’s pocket money.

a man beside her says, contempt grumbling beneath each word, “the baroness is in fine form tonight.”

“excuse me?” robin says, and she doesn’t usually talk to people, she’s not usually around long enough to talk to people. she should go. she needs to go.

he jerks his head towards the woman. “here, dressed like that, and without her husband. talking to everyone like she is!”

robin looks, and doesn’t get it. everyone who’s around the baroness seems delighted to be there, leaning into her as if she is the sun on their faces. she likes the dress too. or maybe just the way the baroness wears it. “excuse me,” she says, instead of answering, and melts into the crowd, turning her back to it all.

she finds a corner of the castle and empties her pockets into a leather drawstring bag. next she takes off the dress, kicking it into the corner. she never wears the same dress twice. the last thing she needs is for someone to recognize her because she was too lazy to steal a new dress for a party. underneath she wears tight, black hose and a low cut black undershirt. it’s the middle of winter. her soft slippers are going to get soaked as soon as she steps outside.

oh well.

either someone in the lower villages will lend her some clothes, or they won’t, and she hopes musta and his pack is close enough that she won’t freeze to death in the forest. she left her cloak with him, knowing she wouldn’t be able to double back unless she wanted to bring suspicion onto her poor hosts while she was in this city.

“you should have locked the door,” says a low, amused voice, and robin curses as she turns on her heals.

it’s the baroness, somehow just as glittering in this dark corridor, as if all the bits of moonlight are clinging to her. “i – i was just,” she stutters, mind blank. she’s never been caught before. she’s never had to come up with an excuse before.

“miss hood, i presume?” she murmurs, stepping closer. she runs the back of her knuckle against robin’s cheek, and she suddenly finds it difficult to focus on the very immediate danger that she’s in. she needs to run. people are depending on her. she has too much work left to do to die now. she doesn’t move. “you’re certainly red. should i be flattered?”

she’s flushed all over, and she can’t control it, doesn’t know what to do about it. “why haven’t you screamed yet?”

“well, we just met, it seems a little forward,” she tilts her head to the side. “are you interested in making me scream, miss hood?”

she is so, so unprepared for this conversation. maybe the noose wouldn’t be so bad. “my name is robin.”

why did she tell her that? it’s not like it’s a secret, it’s the opposite of the secret, but why is that what she chose to say?

“robin,” she repeats, and tucks one of robin’s curls behind her ear. “i am the baroness of this county. but my friends call me maid marian.” when she smiles, robin forgets to breath. “i think we would make good friends. don’t you?”

“your friends call you a maid?” she asks, instead of addressing the latter part of that sentence.

marian tilts her head to the side, and she’s so close, when did she get so close? “well, i was a maid, when i was younger.”

“how does a maid become a baroness?” she asks, and she can’t believe she’s doing this, she shouldn’t be asking questions, she should be running.

“do you want me to tell you?” she murmurs, “or do you want me to show you?”

before robin can answer, marian grips her thighs lifts her up, slamming her back against the wall and pressing her body against robin’s. she’s strong. deceptively strong, easily holding robin pinned against cold castle wall with her searing hot body pressed along hers, and this is at once a worse and much better way to die than beheading.

marian shifts so she can speak directly into robin’s ear, and robin has no way to prove that marian drags her lips against her earlobe on purpose, but she really doesn’t see how that could be an accident. “do you like my dress?”

“what?” she says, trying to pull her attention away from anything but marian’s fingers digging into her thighs or her hot breath on her neck. “yes. it makes you glow.”

robin can’t see her smile, but she can feel it. she’s warm all over and her heart is beating too fast in her chest, and part of her wants to run, but most of her wants stay pinned beneath baroness marian.

“do you think,” she whispers, “that i would look better with it off?”

there’s so many reasons not to answer that. she has a bag of stolen jewels and coins on her. the baroness is married. they don’t even know each other. the list goes on.

“yes,” she says, and she’s ready when marian’s mouth finds hers.

marian reaches into her hose, pressing her fingers inside her, and robin lets out a broken sound at the back of her throat. her orgasm comes too fast and too intense, leaving her trembling and clinging to marian. the baroness licks over her fluttering pulse point and says, “that’s one,” smug and anticipatory all at once, and robin’s dizzy just listening to it.

not enough time later, robin’s on her back and she has her head between marian’s thighs, her hands gripping fistfuls of robin’s hair, and she can’t even mind, she just doesn’t care, she’s still not completely clear how she ended up having sex with a baroness in an abandoned corridor, but it seems blasphemous to question her good fortune. then she hears the yelling, and her fortune’s definitely mixed. it seems everyone just found out they were robbed.

marian curses and get up off of robin’s face, which is obviously the responsible thing to do, but she feels a little cross about it anyway. she wasn’t done yet! “you have to go,” she says, pulling her dress back on. robin gives herself one more second to mourn her loss before scrambling back into her own clothes. she grabs her bag of stolen wealth, and marian says, “wait, not yet.” she pulls off her dangling ruby earrings and slips them into robin’s bag. “it would be suspicious if i wasn’t stolen from.”

“right,” she says, and she wants to kiss her goodbye, at least. is it weird if she kisses her?

marian undoes her copper necklace, but instead of putting it in her bag, she reaches around and places it on robin’s neck, the metal warm against her skin. “here. this too.”

“why copper?” she asks, “it’s not even valuable.”

marian smiles, running a hand through robin’s hair. “i know. i wanted to give you something that you wouldn’t feel bad about keeping.”

“you wanted–” she blinks. “were you looking for me?”

marian presses her against the stone wall again, still so warm. “of course. why do you think i wore gold? i heard that’s something you’re interested in stealing.” she presses their foreheads together. “i’ve heard stories of you, red robin hood.”

before robin can respond to that one way or another, marian is kissing her, and robin could demand an explanation that she may or may not get, or they could keep kissing. she chooses the latter. obviously.

the yelling gets closer, and marian pulls away, walking briskly down the corridor while robin is still leaning dazed against the wall. “run!” she calls over her shoulder. “i’ll stall them as long as i can.”

robin scrambles up to the window and them shimmies outside, landing in the soft, cold snow, just as she’d planned to do before marian found her.

robin’s spent almost half her life running across the country, riding on the backs of her giant wolf friends and stealing from everyone who had more than they need, and she’s never met anyone like marian before. this is new. this is interesting. this is fun.

she touches the cool copper necklace against her throat. she’ll give everything else away, but this? this she’ll keep. just like marian wanted her to.

she hopes she has a reason to come back to this city soon.

she hopes she has a reason to find marian again soon.

read more of my retold fairytales here


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3 years ago

Fox Sister

there is a farmer who has a beautiful and strong wife, and she bears him three beautiful and strong sons. the eldest is of soft voice and hard temper, and his name is jae-shin. the second is quick to anger and yells too much, but is quick to forgive, and his name is ki-tae. the third is of even temper and soft voice, and his name is min-woo.

the farmer loves his family very much, but he feels as if it’s incomplete. he loves his sons, but he desperately wants a little girl to call his own. he prays and prays, asking for a little girl. he doesn’t care if she’s not like his other children, if she is weak or ugly, he vows to love her just the same no matter what.

his prayers are answered, and nine months later his wife gives birth to a baby girl. but she’s not weak, and she’s not ugly. she’s every bit as strong and beautiful as her brothers.

they call her yeon-saeng.

~

yeon-saeng is smarter and stronger than her brothers, than her parents, but she doesn’t say anything, never points it out, because she loves them dearly and would never want to hurt them.

yeon-saeng is ten years old when the hunger grows to be too much to ignore. she’s hungry constantly, and they are not a rich family, but her mother gives her all the food she asks for with a smile, pats her hands and kisses her cheeks and says nothing of the strain her eternal appetite puts on their household.

but no matter how much she eats, she’s never full. it’s not what she craves.

she is ten years old, and it’s the night of the full moon when she sneaks into the barn. she knows what she wants, what she needs, but she hesitates even now. she wishes there was another way, but she knows if she doesn’t eat, then she’ll die. she doesn’t’ want to die.

she kills the cow, and eats its liver, bites into its heart, and her hunger is sated.

the next morning, the cow is found, and her father says it looks like a fox did it.

yeon-saeng burns with shame, and says nothing.

~

she doesn’t have to eat every night, if she did then they would run out of cows and her family would go hungry. she doesn’t want them to go hungry, and she does not want to die, so she waits. she waits until her stomach is bloated with hunger and she feels ravenous with it, half mad with it, then sneaks out under the night of the full moon to kill another cow. for now, she does not need too many, can go months between feeding so long as she pushed herself.

she’s changing. her nails are sharper, more pointed, and her hair gleams red in sunlight. she doesn’t think she’s a little girl. she doesn’t even think she’s truly her parents’ daughter.

but the thought is too heartbreaking to contemplate, so she doesn’t.

~

the father worries after his livestock, and the fox he can’t seem to catch. he sends jae-shin to hide in the barn and keep a look out, to kill whatever is killing their cows.

jae-shin waits, and he hides, and he watches his sister kill the cow and eat its liver and heart. her hands become claws, her hair turns red, and fangs sprout from her mouth. she’s a fox demon forced to into human shape, an abomination to humans and demons alike. he’s horrified, and afraid, but he can’t bring himself to kill her.

she is his sister.

the next day, he tells his father everything. he says they have to do something, that she’s a monster, that soon she’ll hurt them.

jae-shin could not bring himself to kill her. but he still believes she should be killed.

the farmer is furious that his son could say such horrible things about his beloved daughter. he says that jae-shin must have fallen asleep, and had a bad dream, that he speaks of madness. but jae-shin will not back down, and eventually the farmer throws his son from the house, saying never to darken their doorstep again, that any son that could speak of killing family is no son of his.

yeon-saeng pleads on her brother’s behalf. she can’t risk telling them the truth, she should be happy it is jae-shin who is tossed aside and not her. but she loves her brother. he is mean and surly, quiet in his misery, but he let her ride on his shoulder when she was little and taught her to tame a horse and let her huddle into his side when she became frightened by thunder storms. she does not want him to go.

but father will not listen, and jae-shin is forced to go.

a few months, and another dead cow later, he sends ki-tae to the barn, to find what is killing the cows and to kill whatever animal it is. ki-tae is terrified of falling asleep and being thrown out like his elder brother, so he stays wide awake and vigilant the whole night.

he sees what jae-shin saw – his little sister half transforming into a fox demon, and killing and eating a cow’s heart and liver. he’s not afraid. he’s furious. he is quick to anger over small things, but this is not a small thing. yeon-saeng allowed their father to kick out their brother, even what he told the truth. she said nothing as he left them, when she could have saved him. she did nothing.

he sneaks back to the house and wakes his father, bidding him to come to the barn quickly. but when he returns, yeon-saeng is gone. the cow is there dead, it’s liver and heart gone, but his sister is nowhere to be found. he runs back into the house, his father at his heels, and finds yeon-saeng fast asleep in bed. he pulls her from her bed onto the floor. she cries out in pain, and his father pushes him against the wall, furious. ki-tae yells at her, says to tell father what she did, calls her a monster with all the disgust he can muster.

yeon-saeng pulls her knees to her chest, crying, and for a single moment ki-tae feels a stab or remorse. but she is a monster, and his father must know. they all have to know. how long before she kills one of them?

father is just as furious with him as he was with jae-shin. again, yeon-saeng pleads for brother, begging her father to let him stay. no matter his temper, ki-tae is always kind in those small moments, in the quiet lulls between his anger he has bandaged her scraped knees and braided her hair, and he would roll her rice into the shape of a snake when she was little and would grow stubborn and refuse to eat. she loves him, and she doesn’t want him to go.

but father will not listen, and ki-tae is forced to go.

a few more months, and another dead cow later, father sends min-woo to spend the night in the barn, to find out what is killing the cows, and to kill whatever it is. he sits, and waits, and sees what his brothers saw. he sees yeon-saeng kill the cow, and eat its heart and liver.

he does nothing at all.

the next morning, he tells his father that he didn’t see anything. whatever is killing the cows was too quick for him. father wants to be angry that min-woo failed, but he’s secretly relieved that at least his youngest son, so calm and even tempered, hasn’t been affected by the madness that had taken his eldest sons, and resigns himself to the lost livestock.

it is not ideal, but it’s not crippling them, not killing them.

~

yeon-saeng loves min-woo, but misses her eldest brothers terribly. on the surface, min-woo is nicer, he’s never made fun of her or gotten mud on her clothes, never yelled that she was too young to play with him. he never seeks her out, but always welcomes her when she comes to him.

he’s not as mean as their elder brothers, but he’s not as nice either.  

yeon-saeng is thirteen the first time she eats a cow’s liver and heart, and still feels the gnawing pains of hunger. she keeps eating, desperate, because this is her only option. she eats the rest of the internal organs, the muscle, all of it. she keeps eating until the red of dawn beats against the barn doors. she’s covered in blood, more fox than girl, and there’s nothing left of the cow but bones.

she’s still hungry.

~

she hopes it’s a fluke, a mistake. she waits, to see if time will make her full, but it’s just the opposite. her whole body aches with hunger, her limbs grow sluggish and heavy. she sleeps the day away, hoping it will help, that she’ll wake up feeling normal, but it doesn’t work.

her parents fret over her, and her brother watches her with calm, even eyes that give away nothing at all. the days pass, and she seems to flip, instead of becoming weaker, she becomes stronger. her body fills with a frantic, desperate energy to feed, and she huddles under the blankets, afraid to let her family see her. she can’t get her claws or teeth to go away, her hair is bright red. she looks like a fox, and nothing she does makes it go away.

late at night, her hunger becomes too much, and she snaps. she’s outside her parent’s door when she realizes what she was about to do, her hand just about to slide open their door.

she’s so certain that a single human heart could sate her hunger.

yeon-saeng runs. it’s painful to walk away, she can smell them, smell her brother down the hall, and her mouth waters. she’s so hungry. but she forces herself to walk away and runs to the barn.

she kills half their heard that night, gobbling up hearts and livers in a frenzy. she slaughters the next cow while the previous one’s warm, wet heart is still in her hand.

it’s not quite daybreak, and she’s not hungry anymore. she’s not quite satisfied, but the ravenous yearning deep in her gut is gone.

it’s a devastating loss. her father will struggle to survive now that half his cows are dead. and what’s worse is this – she cannot stay. she will either eat the other half, and leave them penniless to starve, or she will give in to her urges, and kill them herself. she’s selfish, but not that selfish. she loves her family too much to do this to them.

when the sun rises into the sky, she’s gone.

~

her hair never goes back to black. it’s a permanent dark orange, and her nails are too sharp, and her teeth a little too long. but she almost looks like a person, as long as no one looks too closely.

the first few years are the hardest. she wanders through towns, too young to do any real work, but sometimes a kind innkeep would let her clean tables in exchange for a room. other times, she sneaks into barns and sleeps among the warm, dry hay.

she has to eat, and she has to eat often. small animals don’t satisfy her, she tries chickens and rabbits, even sheep don’t sate her hunger. cows and boars will do, and horses probably would too, but she’s reluctant to test her theory. partially because killing a horse will certainly garner more attention than she wants. but also because, well, she likes horses. she thinks they have kind eyes, and she’ll sooner eat a horse than she will a human, but would prefer to have neither, honestly.

she misses rice cakes. they were her favorite as a child, but now they taste like ashes in her mouth.

when possible, she hunts for he own food in the forest, searching out wild board to feed herself with. but sometimes that’s not possible, and when that happens she sneaks away to a pasture and kills a cow. they always say it looks like a fox attack.

she doesn’t want people to go hungry because of her, to suffer because of her, so she doesn’t stay in one town for long. she moves around constantly, killing and stealing the livestock of farmers she needs to live, trying to keep her head down and not cause trouble.

she still craves human hearts more than anything else. but as long as she keeps herself well fed it’s … well, not easy to ignore it, but manageable.

she’s managing.

~

yeon-saeng is sixteen, and it’s much easier. people hire her to serve drinks in restaurants now, will hire her to smile at customers now.

she still doesn’t look quiet human, but people never seem to notice that.

she’s beautiful. they don’t know what she is, they don’t care, all they care for is her pretty face. she always smiles with her mouth closed so they don’t see her teeth, but that’s okay. things are easier now.

she is sixteen when she makes a friend.

it’s not one she expected to make, if she ever thought she’d have one. she keeps everyone way, women are nice to her and men want her, but she rejects them all, keeping to herself and offering them nothing more than her close-lipped smile.

she’s a monster. those around her risk one day being eaten by her, and the pain of that potential loss stops her whenever she fees the urge to reach out to someone. she thinks of her parents often, of her brothers. she hopes they’re happy. sometimes she hopes they’ve forgotten her, but she’s still a selfish girl, and the thought that not one person cares for her cuts like a knife.

but one person does come to care for her.

his name is bou, and he’s a monk. he is plain, and nondescript, but there are not many buddhist monks, and he stands out, somehow, with his calm face and plain grey robes. he follows her from town to town, and at first she thinks it is a coincidence, that maybe they are simply traveling in the same direction. but soon it’s too much to be a coincidence, and she can only think of one reason a monk would have for following her. he must know what she is, and be here to kill her.

she does not want to die.

yeon-saeng corners him, nails and claws out, eyes blazing red, and says she will not die easily, says that she does not want to kill him, but she will to preserve her own life.

she’s already thinking that if she does kill him, she’ll have to tear out his heart and liver and grind it into the dirt so she does not eat them. once she starts eating humans, she doesn’t know if she could stop, and to leave them whole would be a temptation she would be unable to refuse.

he looks at her, unflinching, and tells her a story. he happened upon two brothers not long ago, with very strange histories. born into near-poverty, they were separated as teenagers and led remarkable lives. the eldest was adopted into a noble family and became one of the hwarang, the refined and cultured warriors who live on the edges of the country. the younger became the assistant to a yangban, the high level civil servants of the country. both now had prestigious positions rarely achieved by nobility. they happened to pass each other on the street one day just a few short months ago, both visiting a city they were not from, and recognized each other instantly.

they cried to find each other again, and it is here when bou overheard them talking while at a tavern. they spoke of their sister, who killed their cows and devoured their hearts and livers, and was the reason they’d been thrown from their homes. they spoke of their sister, who was not their sister by blood, but a demon sent from the heavens, for some misdeed none of them knew of. they spoke of their sister, who they knew to be a monster, and who they could not face. they spoke of their sister, who they loved in spite of everything, to this very day.  

bou intended to find her, and kill her, to rid the world of her evil. but he finds her, and finds that she is not evil. that she is kind, and hurting, and alone, and trying so desperately to do no harm, to be a good person in a world that does not have enough good people.

a demon she may be, but a monster she is not.

yeon-saeng is sobbing by the end of this, stepping away from him. bou has decided that she is the best kind of person, and that he would like to follow her, to travel with her, if she will allow it. she tries to refuse, says she will put him in danger, but bou does not listen.

she doesn’t have to let him be her friend. but he will follow her wherever she goes, so she might as well make this easier on both of them. she does not give in until he makes her a promise – if she ever does become a monster, he’ll kill her himself. when she cannot trust herself, she can trust him.

bou and yeon-saeng travel together, and although she worries constantly, yeon-saeng never harms him. years pass, and she grows stronger, she leans even further into her demon powers.

she is at least part kumiho, part nine tailed demon, and there are certain skills that come with that. with bou and his holy powers by her side, she feels comfortable exploring them for the first time. if she ever goes too far, bou will stop her.

she is a young woman when bou convinces her to seek out her family, to try and make amends with them. she cannot yet face her eldest brothers, whose lives she forced off course so dramatically, but agrees to try and visit her parents and youngest elder brother at home.

when she arrives, there are no cows in the pasture, and she worries. the house looks worn, and it feels empty. she knocks on the door, fear and worry making her shake, and it is only bou’s presence at her back that steadies her.

but the door opens, and it’s her brother, min-woo. he’s older, of course, but he looks healthy, looks fine. he’s startled to see her, but welcomes her inside like nothing has changed, like she hasn’t been missing for a decade. he doesn’t move to embrace her, and she holds herself back, uncertain. he tells her she has good timing, because he has invited their elder brothers home.

min-woo tells her that their parents have died, and she’s nearly bowled over in her grief. but he implores her to stay, says that now they can be a family once more. yeon-saeng agrees because she doesn’t know what else to do, her kind mother and father who loved her so very much are dead, and even though she hasn’t seen them in years their loss is just as devastating. min-woo comforts her, tells her they were simply old, and these things happen. she doesn’t think they were that old, but what does she know, she hasn’t been there for years.

she agrees, and min-woo tells her he has nothing to feed her and her companion, but she doesn’t mind. pretending to enjoy rice that tastes like dirt is a waste on both of them, and bou has endured much worse than a night’s sleep on an empty stomach. min-woo does offer them water, which they accept. it doesn’t taste clean, but both are too polite to say anything about it.

so they settle down, and bou falls asleep at her back, like he always does, and she eventually falls into a fitful sleep, thoughts of her dead parents and her living brothers chasing around her head.

when she awakes, everything has somehow gotten even worse.

she’s tied up, and she twists to see bou is as well, wide-eyed and with a gag in his mouth. min-woo sits in front of them, a cruel twist to his mouth she’s never seen before. her head is foggy, and it takes her a moment to process everything. the water must have been drugged.

he tells them their timing is perfect. he’d nearly run out of their parents’ flesh to eat, and so had invited their elder brothers home, intent on killing them and eating them. but eating her flesh, consuming the heart of a kumiho, will sustain him so much longer than mere humans would.

she looks at him in horror, not understanding. she asks if he was born a demon too, if he’s like her, but he laughs at her. he is just a human, but if he eats her maybe he will be something more.

min-woo takes a hunk of something folded in butcher paper and unwraps it, and in the center is a heart. the scent hits her nose all at once, and she knows it’s a human heart.

that it’s her father’s heart.

he’s been saving this for himself, but the stronger she is when he kills and eats her, the stronger she will make him. he holds it to her mouth, and parts of her wants it, it’s not fresh but it hasn’t gone bad, has been kept frozen and recently defrosted by the smell, and her mouth is already watering. she lives with a constant low-level hunger, but now it’s out in full force, begging her to bite into the heart her brother is holding to her lips.

she closes her mouth and shakes her head, turning away from it. this isn’t right. it’s not fair. she asks why, asks if it was because they ran out of food, was there truly nothing else for him to eat?

he says business was fine. they had plenty to eat. he just wanted to eat them, he just wanted to kill and eat human flesh, says he wanted to become stronger, and this seemed like the easiest way to do it.

this is incomprehensible to yeon-saeng, who has struggled against the gnawing in her stomach her whole life. she could break the ropes, could break min-woo. she’s a kumiho. her power is so far beyond min-woo’s that it’s laughable.

but guilt and grief swallow her. maybe the true reason she was born into her family was not divine punishment, maybe she was meant to protect them, to keep them safe. maybe her true purpose was to protect her beloved parents from min-woo, and she has failed. her parents are dead, her brother is a monster, and she has failed at the one thing she supposed to do.

she has no reason to live. once min-woo eats her, he will have no need of bou, her friend will be fine. she won’t eat her father’s heart, even now, at the end, but she can’t seem to muster the will to defend herself.

bou is screaming through his gag, surely begging her to do something, but she can’t move, too numb to do anything at all. min-woo gets tired of trying to force her to eat the heart, and lifts up a knife, moving to slit her throat.

before he gets the chance, a blade is shoved through his chest and out his mouth, killing him instantly. yeon-saeng looks up, wide eyed.

min-woo slides off the blade, revealing the man holding it. it is her eldest brother, jae-shin. her second eldest brother ki-tae is at his side. they’re older too, more steady, firmer than she remembers them being. she bows her head, waiting for her own death blow, but it doesn’t come.

instead ki-tae throws his arms around her, her eldest brother doing the same. they heard everything, they know everything. they cry as they hold her, apologies falling from their lips. she is their sister, and they love her, and they’re sorry they ever doubted her.

they could never bring themselves to hurt her, but did not hesitate to cut down min-woo. maybe deep down they’d always known who the true monster was.

jae-shin cuts her free, and does the same for bou. yeon-saeng is shaking in ki-tae’s arms still, but jae-shin pulls her forward and cups her face in his hands, kisses her forehead and tells her he’s sorry, that if he hadn’t acted so rashly so long ago maybe none of this would have happened.

yeon-saeng won’t accept their apologies, instead offering her own for letting their father throw them out when they only spoke the truth, for remaining silent in the face of their banishment.

their parents are dead, killed by their brother, who has been killed by jae-shin. they are as broken as ever, but the three of them are together once more, are willing and eager to rebuild their relationship. they all made mistakes, but all are willing to forgive.

bou is furious with yeon-saeng for freezing, for doing nothing to save herself. but he’s pulled between his anger and his worry that now she has her brothers back, she won’t need him anymore. but she knows him just as well as he knows her, so she assuages his worries and apologizes for freezing, says she won’t do it again. she tells bou that he’s her best friend, and she never wants him to leave.

so now this incredibly strange group is traveling together, roaming the country – a short tempered yangban’s assistant, a charming hwarang warrior, a buddhist monk, and a kumiho.

together, they do their best to figure out the extent of yeon-saeng’s powers, and try to leave everywhere they go a little better, a little less broken.

they succeed.

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3 years ago

Let Down Your Hair

he is a young man, with a young, pregnant wife. they are poor, and can’t afford much, so he sneaks into the witch’s garden at night to steal away the rapunzel lettuce his wife so desperately craves.

when the witch gothel catches, him she demands the child that her garden is feeding as payment.

he agrees, because there’s nothing else he can do.

he and his wife can have more children, but not if they’re dead. they can have more children later, when they have the means to provide for them, when they’re older and more sure of themselves, when the prospect of being responsible for another mouth to feed isn’t quite so terrifying.

his wife is still slick with blood when he wraps their daughter in an old pillowcase and brings her to the stone wall separating their land from the witch’s. “are you going to hurt her?” he asks, clutching his crying daughter to his chest.

gothel raises an eyebrow and says, “what a foolish question.” she pulls away from him and is gone in the next instant.

his arms feel empty, but lighter too. he’ll never say this aloud, but it’s almost a relief to give the child away.

they couldn’t even afford to feed themselves, never mind anyone else.

he wants to be a father. he doesn’t want to be the father of a hungry child.

~

this is not the first time gothel has bargained a child away from its parents. and so she tucks the squalling little girl in bend of her elbow, and goes where she always goes.

“caroline!” she calls out, “oh mother caroline!”

she stands in front of large house, one that has the general appearance of being many houses stacked up on top of each other, all different colors and sizes and styles. also, from the side, it does not look unlike a rather large shoe.

the door bangs open, and a small wave of children run for her, small sticky hands grasping at her dress and cloak, and gap toothed grins everywhere she turns. “have you brought us another brother?” a girl asks, wrinkling her nose. “i have too many brothers.”

the boys turn to her, glaring, but the girl is unrepentant. she’s the only girl in among the younger kids, and is quite cross about it.

then the older kids surround gothel, the ones that had had the patience not to go chasing after her at a sprint. the teenagers like to pretend like they don’t care, but she has many eager and impatient eyes on her, lots of twitching fingers eager to take the baby away from her. that’s fine by gothel – she’s eager to be rid of the blasted thing.

“that’s enough!” a powerful, creaky voice shouts. “that’s quite enough of that! make room, make room, let me through!”

the crowd of children part for mother caroline. like gothel, caroline has dark skin and black hair, a strong, wide nose and plump lips. but while gothel appears to be a woman in the prime of her youth, caroline is an old woman. her back is straight and strong, and there is strength in the width of her waist. but her dark hair is streaked with silver, and her skin has started to bend to the will of time and gravity, causing delicate wrinkles to frame her face. “little sister,” gothel greets, “you’ve gotten older.”

caroline shoots her an irritated glance, “while you haven’t changed at all.”

“you could have became a witch like me,” gothel says, not for the first time, “you were always quite good with physical magic. then neither of us would age at all!”

“change is inevitable,” caroline says with the type of finality that makes gothel’s skin crawl. “let me see the child.”

the children crowd impossibly closer as gothel hands the baby over, red faced and new. caroline cradles the babe against her chest, then stills, her lips pulling down at the corners. “what’s wrong?” gothel demands, peering down at the baby anxiously.

she looks like any other baby gothel has seen. her face is squished oddly and her eyes are a watery blue. she has ten fingers and ten toes – gothel checked! – and she was crying when her father handed her over, but she’s quiet now.

“i can’t take this child,” caroline says.

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3 years ago

Prince Aladdin

i just rewatched aladdin with the roommates and it got me thinking

aladdin wishes to be made a prince, but all genie does is get him a lot of stuff and money. that’s not what a prince is. a prince is the son of the king, someone in line for the throne. someone with a lot of money is just - rich. so what i think is:

genie goes okay, that’s a big one - and i can do it! but not on my own, not if you want to do it right. not if you truly want a chance to marry your princess for real, as a prince. and aladdin is a foolish, moral, kind boy - and he agrees. he’s fallen in love with jasmine, an innocent all encompassing love, and he’ll do anything for this sweet, clever girl he only knew for a few hours. so genie takes him across the desert, far from agrabah, and plops right in the middle of a skirmish and is like okay, good luck! and aladdin is like ?????

but there’s assholes with swords attacking a young girl, and aladdin doesn’t even have to think about that, just like when he stood in front of the whip for those little kids. there are three men against him, but he’s fast and clever and has been against a dozen trained palace guards. so it’s not easy to get out of there alive, especially with the little girl to protect, but he manages it with only a thin slice on his upper arm, and he’s endured worse for less. so he picks up the little girl and says “i think we should get out of here, hmm?” and she’s in a pretty red silk getup with tiny jewels encrusted on her like stars against sunset. and she nods and throws her arms around his neck. she won’t talk, only points in the direction of home, but aladdin’s okay with that, he’s used to quiet, scared kids. so he keeps up a steady stream of stories of agrabah, which seems almost like this other desert land. but there are more men with swords and aladdin is like what the fuck is going on, but he hides the girl in a corner and fights them too. and that’s how it goes all the way home. there’s no one on the streets really, and they all scatter when the men attack, and they keep on attacking, he fights his way all the way through the city with the girl on his hip or hidden away.

and he should have known, of course, but he was tired and bruised and bleeding by the time he realized the little girl is silently guiding him to the palace and he’s like why can’t you princesses stay inside??? but he walks up and the guards get one look at the child in his arms and whisk him through and multiple people try to take the girl away but she won’t budge from him, a stubborn pout to her lips as her hands remained locked behind his neck. and he’s finally tossed into a throne room where a tall old man is sitting in agony and two young men pace in front of him, each at least a decade older than aladdin. “they’ve taken our sister!” one of the younger men hiss, “i don’t care about their power or their connections, they’ve taken esfir, and we must go get her!”

“uh,” he clears his throat, “hi?”

and all three men whirl on him and the old man stumble-runs to him. esfir finally lets go of aladdin to picked up and twirled around by her father. the two men are rahim and shapur and they look in wonder at this dirty boy of fifteen who’s returned the girl to them, and he speaks with an accent and clearly is not from here and they get the story from him - he’s traveled across the desert because those in his own country want him dead. “you know,” rahim says as the king clutches at esfir in desperate relief, “you could have held her for ransom. you almost died saving her, and we would have paid handsomely to have her returned safely.”

and aladdin gives him a flat disapproving look, appearing in this moment four times his age, and says “people are not objects or bargaining chips. especially not lost little girls.” and rahim and shapur share an impressed conspiring look and they each grab one of his arms and lead him away. “hey! what are you -”

“do be quiet little brother,” shapur says cheerfully, “we really have to get you out of your rags.”

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2 years ago

the gifts of beauty and song

ok so i think maleficent did a great job of giving us a different kind of sleeping beauty story but here’s another one

what if the three faeries were the dark ones

what if maleficent had been the good faerie all along

fae are all about illusion, about misdirection, about doing one thing and being another. it makes sense that the adorable and seemingly kind faeries would be the bad ones, and the one shrouded and darkness and cruelty would be the one trying to do some good.

“you will be gifted with beauty” says flora, but what is beautiful to the fae is often horrific to everyone else. beauty to the fae is coldness, darkness, it’s emotionless and ruthless and power. it has almost nothing to do with a pretty face.

“you will be gifted with song,” says fauna, but that means voice, pretty words, and oh, who doesn’t know what tangled webs the fae weave with their words, the traps they leave, the same way they’re doing it right now

then maleficent arrives - and she’s too late. the young princess has already been cursed. she’ll grow now not into a young woman, but a young fae. a mercurial being, not someone fit to lead the land of men. so she does what she must. maleficent is a good faerie, she can’t kill directly, so instead she curses the no-longer-human child, gives her a curse of death that will be complete when she pricks her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel. it’s indirect, but it’s the only way she knows to save this kingdom. then she leaves.

but the faeries will not be defeated so easily. so merryweather casts her own spell, alters maleficent’s just enough – she will fall into a deep sleep, one that can be broken by the most powerful magic this world knows: true love’s kiss.

the faeries aren’t worried. true love is an easy enough spell, they only need a suitable, malleable prince to cast it on when the time comes. foolish mortal have been falling in love with beautiful fae since the dawn of time, and this will be no different.

the king announces all the spinning wheels are to either be burned or locked up in a secret room in the palace, and that the faeries will raise aurora in the woods, far away from spinning wheels and evil faeries.

this all works out even better than they could have hoped for. they get to raise aurora on their own, get to teach her the subtle arts of manipulation and misdirection out from under the eyes of the king and queen. aurora grows older, and more beautiful, more dangerous. the fae will have one of their own on the thrown of the mortal realm, will have a fae queen because aurora is more faerie than human now.

aurora isn’t a faerie though. not completely: she’s human enough to lie, to cheat, and steal – to throw off the shackles that hold back the rest of the fae and use her position as queen to tear down the world.

maleficent likes these humans, it’s why she spends so much time in their realm. they’re fun playthings. if the fae succeed at putting one of their own on the thrown, then the mortal realm will turn into something as twisted and cruel as the fae court. that’s not what maleficent wants – humans are twisted and broken, but in the same ways. she likes them how they are, and she wants them to stay that way.

so she steals away the young prince philip in the middle of the night, weaving a spell of sleep on him, and she goes to the forests, deep into them, slipping into the darkest shadows of the oldest trees. she goes to the elves, because they are one of few races who can’t be tricked by their magic, who know the sharp cleverness of their tongue, who know the worst and best of what faeries can be. she goes to the elf king and queen and offers them philip in exchange for an elven prince, one she can place back on the throne in the mortal realm.

“one mortal prince is not worth an elf prince,” says the king, “for the child, you may have a servant child.”

an elf child is pushed forward, and to an untrained eye he looks like all the others, but hers is not an untrained eye. he’s smaller than he should be, his clothes don’t sit as perfectly straight as the others do. but he has kind eyes, and that’s truly what she needs, more than royal blood. besides, she has nothing left to bargain with.

“very well,” she says, and hands the boy to the queen, who quirks an eyebrow but takes the boy agreeably enough. maleficent doesn’t know what they plan to do with the boy. she does not care – they won’t hurt him, but that’s as far as her knowledge extends. the elf child moves to her side, and she bows low before holding out her hand. the elf boy takes it, and they travel back to the mortal realm.

“your name is philip now,” she tells him, “you are a prince here.”

“yes ma’am,” he says, used to taking orders, and not used to being a prince. “what would you like me to do?”

she looks down at him, and he’s staring at her, patient and with those same soft eyes, and she says, “grow up. don’t be afraid. this is your realm now, and these are your people. do you understand?”

his eyebrows dip together, so she knows he doesn’t, but he says, “yes, ma’am.” that’s okay. he’s her only hope to save aurora, to save the world. he doesn’t need to know that.

so philip grows. he has a doting father and is trained to be a little prince, and that’s what he becomes. he grows up honest, and kind, and humble. he becomes a prince that no other elf could be, only someone who’s seen the crueler and harder side of life would know how important it is to strive to make the world just a little softer.

aurora is a young woman now. ethereally beautiful, manipulative and thoughtlessly cruel, just like her faerie guardians raised her to be. except she’s not all fae. she’s a human too, a young mortal girl that loves beautiful things and the warm rays of sunlight on her skin and the soft weight of a fox napping on her lap. one day she’s in the woods, trying to encourage an apple tree to grow. philip is there, having gotten separated from his hunting party and hopelessly lost, and he’s just thankful there are no other elves around to laugh at him. an elf! lost! in the woods!

except instead he bumps into aurora, and he can see under glamour effortlessly, isn’t even sure why she has one when she’s so beautiful underneath. “hello,” he says politely, because the elves considered faeries to be beneath them but his father raised him with manners. besides, she doesn’t feel quite like a fae.

and aurora looks at this handsome young man, not the first she’s seen, but the first she’s seen whom she likes, even if she can’t know why. he feels different, his presence in the air isn’t like the other mortal men she’s encountered. instead, he – he almost – he almost feels like her. like something that doesn’t belong, like something not quite normal and not quiet other, like they’re the answers to something but everyone forgot to tell them the question.

so they’re circling each other, intrigued by each other, and philip and aurora end up spending the day talking and playing and laughing and coaxing trees into growing and enticing woodland creatures to say hello and getting fish to bring them shiny rocks from the stream. all the things normal elvish and fae children get to do, but they never got a chance to because philip was a servant and aurora is a plaything for dark faeries who want her to become something twisted just like them.

and they meet, in secret, again and again. and philip peels away the layers of aurora’s cruelty and hardness, untangles all the bits of her that the faeries had tried so hard to twist together. aurora is still smart and manipulative and powerful – but the scales have tipped just enough, being with philip has healed her just enough so that she’s more human than fae.

philip and aurora fall in love, because of course they do, they’re two of a kind, different sides of the same coin, they don’t believe in destiny but they believe in each other.

philip tells his father he’s found the woman he wants to mary. aurora is whisked back to the castle, and her guardians tell her of their plan: aurora will return to her parents, and she will be named the heir, the crown princess. then the faeries will kill them, and aurora will become queen.

aurora doesn’t care about her parents. the person she was before meeting philip would have been all for this plan, or at least wouldn’t have minded. but now – she knows morality, she knows little girls shouldn’t go around killing the people that bore them. so she hatches a plan instead.

she pretends to go along with it, of course, pretends to be just as agreeable and despicable as always. the faeries are banking the success of their plan on aurora’s ability to lie. they forget that she can lie to them too.

iron can be used against fae, so she goes searching the castle for something she can take and use. she finds a locked room, and when she gets inside it’s filled with broken spinning wheels. she can’t begin to imagine why this room exists, but it doesn’t matter. she carefully goes through, gathering the needles from each wheel. she’ll only have one chance to do this. she has to get it right.

meanwhile, philip can’t find aurora. she’s not in the woods or the cottage, and he’s desperate. he begs the wind for help, knows that he’s not the sort of elf that the wind cares to listen to, but this is important, it’s a matter of love. and the wind helps him, guides him to the castle. it’s the day of aurora’s coronation as crown princess.

she’s prepared, she was up all night carefully weaving magic into the needles, the ones that she’s tucked into the sleeves of her dress. little girls probably shouldn’t be going around killing the beings that raised them either, but thanks to philip she knows the faeries that raised her are not good, that the things they made her do were not good, and she wishes she could feel bad about what she’s going to do, but she doesn’t.

she’s about to be coronated, the faeries by her side, when she spins, knocking the crown from her mother’s hands and onto the floor. she reaches inside and flings the needles with inhuman force. they embed themselves into the faeries, and aurora flings herself between the faeries and her parents, refusing to let harm come to them, because she doesn’t care but she knows she should, because she thinks that if philip was here he would want her to care.

and it’s a vicious fight, of magic and strength, but aurora is just as the faeries made her – powerful and beautiful and strong, and she wins.

the faeries lay dead and aurora turns to her people, the ones staring at her in fear, and she drops her glamour, reveals her blond hair and pink lips, and she almost looks the same, before she looked like something out of a nightmare, and now she looks like what she is – a princess, pretty and hard and broken but in love and with a heart that can learn to love even more than a lost prince with kind eyes. “they were dark faeries. i know it’s hard to tell the difference, but it’s true. they would have destroyed you,” she tells them, and her voice breaks, “just like they tried to destroy me. you are my people. i will protect you.”

and it’s been a long time since this realm has had a warrior princess, a warrior queen, but after a long moment of stunned silence they start cheering, and pressing forward, and aurora is smiling. her parents come forward, wanting to make sure she’s okay, wanting to make sure they’re foolish decision to entrust her to faeries hasn’t broken their only daughter.

aurora reaches out a hand. a single spindle needle falls from her sleeve. she reaches out to grab it and –

– it pricks her finger. she collapses instantly. everyone’s crowding around her, her parents are weeping, because she’s in a death-like sleep, because they were so close to having her back and they’ve lost her.

philip bursts through the doors, “aurora!”

he pushes to the front of the room, hands reaching for her. “philip?” the king asks, staring at the son of one of his best friends, at the boy who they’d arranged to marry his daughter.

“what happened to her?” he asks, hands hovering over her, but not wanting to touch and somehow make it worse. he glances at the dead faeries, “was it them? i knew they were hurting her, i knew it–”

“you know her?” the queen asks.

philip looks between them, and gathers his courage and admits, “i love her.”

the king and queen look at each other, then at him. “true love’s kiss will break the spell,” she says urgently, “please, you must try.”

philip stares, because true love’s kiss is a faeries spell, or a mortal miracle, but it has nothing to do with elvish servants and almost-fae princesses. but he loves her. so he must try.

he bends over, oh so carefully, and they’ve never kissed before, so he closes his eyes, and presses his lips to hers, soft and careful, just enough pressure to make sure it counts and not a bit more. he leans back, and they all wait.

aurora opens her eyes. “philip!” she cries, then: “you kissed me!”

“yes,” he says, even as her parents pull her up and hug her tight. “will you marry me?”

her parents let go and she flings herself into his arms, “yes!”

and the very confused audience for this coronation / murder / engagement starts clapping, because a royal wedding is something to be celebrated, and as confusing as the past couple hours have been, they’re at least clear on that.

aurora and philip stay in love and get married, officially uniting their two kingdoms. they’re are scarily well matched couple, and just and powerful and merciful rulers.

the day of their coronation as king and queen of their newly united land, maleficent stands at the back of the crowd and smiles.

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2 years ago

what's a fire and how does it - what's the word? - burn

so i have this disney playlist i listen to usually when i’m driving and i was blasting poor unfortunate souls this morning and i was thinking

what if ariel didn’t sign the scroll?

because she’s about to, okay, and she looks at the paper. the parchment made of seaweed, the ones that’s specially treated to survive underwater. and she thinks of her cave of treasures, her books that remain perfectly preserved underwater. “no thank you,” she says slowly, becoming keenly aware of air of this place, of the not-people she’d seen who hadn’t been able to pay the price for sea witch’s bargain. “i – no. thank you. but no.”

ursula tries to convince her otherwise, but ariel runs. she goes back to her cave, destroyed as it was by her father’s anger, and thinks.

she’s the daughter of triton. her books never got wet, though she lives in the ocean. she feels a pull inside her, to the land, to somewhere else, but what if – what if –

what if she doesn’t need the sea witch or her father to perform magic for her? what if she has her own?

ursula had wanted her voice because that’s how she performed her magic. singing in this cave had given it powers and protection, and when she saved her prince from the sea – she sang then too, to keep him safe, to guide him back to life and away from death.

so she has magic. she only needs to figure out how to use it.

so that’s what ariel does now. she’s quiet and keeps to herself, and her father and sisters think that it’s because she’s upset with her father, that she’s busy licking her wounds. she’s moved on from that. she has no trident, and is uninterested with fueling her magic with the souls of the damned like ursula has. so she needs to figure something else out.

she does what she’s not supposed to do, and goes where she’s not supposed to go, slipping past the guards and patrols to the one place in the sea that is forbidden to all of them.

the crevice in the earth where what remains of her grandmother lives.

ariel goes to amphitrite, and the sea goddess is so much bigger than ariel, the size of great whale as she curls at the bottom of the sea floor, too old and too tired to do anything more than sleep. “granddaughter,” the great being croaks, opening an eye as blue and as unfathomable as the sea, “you look like me.”

“they say i look like my mother,” she says, and to herself adds: that’s why father can barely stand to look at me.

“you have more of me in you than your mother,” she says, and she shifts and pulls her mass of red hair over her shoulder. “more of me in you than your father does, even.”

“i have magic,” she says, pulling her bravery to the fore as she swims closer to her grandmother, “i want you to teach me how to use it.” amphitrite pushes herself up, and it’s the first time she’s moved in a millennia, and ariel notices for the first time that her grandmother isn’t a mermaid – she has legs.

she has legs.

“you have power,” amphitrite corrects fiercely, “and i will teach you to wield it.”

and so she does. ariel spends her nights by her grandmother, learning to harness the power of the sea that runs in her veins, and sleeps her days away while her sisters and flounder and sebastian grow more and more concerned, but she refuses to tell them why. she refuses to be stopped.

but her heart still aches. she fell in love with her prince, and she wants him still. so she swims to the edge, goes to the beach where his castle resides in the dead of night when her lessons with her grandmother are complete, and sings

. she’s careful not to let any magic leak through, only her voice. she does not want to enchant him. she wants him to love her as she is. so she sings, her voice clear and powerful and cutting through the air. she hopes he can hear it.

then one day a figure walks to the beach, and it’s him, her prince. “hello?” he calls out, “are you out there? are you – please, it was you that saved me, wasn’t it? won’t you come out and let me see you?”

so she does, waves her tail at him until he catches sight of her and takes hesitant, disbelieving steps closer.

“you’re a mermaid,” he says, eyes wide, “i thought i saw – but it couldn’t be.”

“i am, and it can,” she says, heart beating wildly in her chest. he’s just as handsome as she remembered, and she wants him just as much. “my name is ariel.”

“ariel,” he repeats, and pulls off his boots and goes wading into the water, watching her to see if she flinches away from him. she doesn’t, and his strides grow bolder. “my name is eric.”

“eric,” she whispers, and when he’s close enough he touches her, trailing fingers across the bare skin of her shoulder and tangling them in her hair.

when he kisses her, she feels powerful enough to undo the world.

so there’s that now, spending her nights with her grandmother and her prince, and she knows how to make her own legs now, could walk onto land and be made a queen among the two legged men.

but she’s a princess here first, and before she can do that she needs to take care of something.

ursula.

the rotten sea witch with her rotten sea magic won’t be allowed to torment her people any longer.

she tells her grandmother, and amphitrite smiles and says, “an excellent decision, child. i’ve enjoyed our time together, but i think it’s time for me to sleep once more. i’ve taught you everything i can.”

and tears prick ariel’s eyes, but she holds them back. she knew that it couldn’t be forever, that her grandmother can’t die but no longer desires to live and this is the in-between.

“you’ll be an amazing queen,” amphitrite murmurs, and closes her eyes for a millennia more.

this isn’t something to be done in the dead of night, although it would be easier to do it then.

she will make a spectacle of it, she will remind the sea that her people are not to be trifled with.

once upon a time they feared a blue eyed, red haired sea queen with the power to destroy them all. it’s time for them to do so again.

so she drives ursula to the center of the city. her sisters cower and people hide, and her father comes rushing forward to save her.

“you’ve committed great crimes against my people,” she says, not flinching as lightning gathers in the sea witch’s hands, “so now shall a great crime be committed against you.”

“foolish girl,” the sea witch snarls.

triton is yelling. he won’t get there in time.

he doesn’t have to.

she doesn’t need to sing anymore. instead she lifts her hands and pulls ursula apart without ever touching her, not only renders flesh from bone but also sets free the souls she’s been hoarding, reverses the magic done to those who’d fallen into the sea witch’s trap.

they all stare at her, her people, her father, and her sisters. she looks to triton and says, “i’m not a little girl anymore.”

he opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “i can see that.”

all at once everyone’s perceptions are turned sideways about their youngest princess. she commands a power that even her father doesn’t have access to, she’s not depressed and dreamy – she’s powerful young woman who knows exactly what she’s doing.

so she does what she wanted to do, she gives herself legs and steps onto the sand and launches herself into eric’s arms. she becomes his bride, and the rumors run rampant of what she is, of where she came from, but they can’t prove anything and so they rule.

they live long, happy lives. ariel is his consort, his advisor, his wife, his tactician, and his best friend. all those years reading drowned books have certainly paid off. she ages herself along with her husband, bears his children and then teaches them they ways of her – their – people.

her husband dies, and she disappears, like the stories of selkie women that everyone whispers around her. their children give their father a sea burial, and vow to see him again one day. what they know and none of their subjects do is this – their father’s body isn’t in that casket.

she returns to her ocean, her legs form into her glittering green tail, and she goes home. she uses her terribly powerful magic, and brings her husband with her. she went from princess ariel of the sea to queen ariel of the land, and now she’s back again.

she’s not quite a teenager, but neither is she the old woman she pretended to be on land. she’s returned her and her husband to the prime of their life, and as she gained legs to be with him, he now gives his up to be with her.

eric becomes a merman, and a prince by virtue of being ariel’s husband.

she returns to her family and her world without missing a beat, and they all welcome her as if she never left, treat her husband with kindness and respect.

because they all know.

it doesn’t matter that she’s the youngest. when, far in the future, triton’s reign ends –

ariel’s reign will begin.


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1 year ago

cinderella: redo

so i was watching cinderella while doing my nails and waiting for them to dry which was clearly a Mistake because now i can’t help but think -

the evil stepmother was always evil, okay. say her abuse of her own daughters was different than that of cinderella’s - but it was still abuse. giving them impossible expectations, telling them they were never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough. and then she gets married, and anastasia and drizella are ecstatic because this man seems kind and warm and maybe just maybe he can temper their mother, maybe with him around she won’t be so cruel. so they’re on their very best behavior in the beginning, they do just as their mother taught - they trot out their best upper court manners in an attempt to get their new stepfather to like them. but it just comes off as cold and snooty and they’re trying, they are, they’re just bad at it. and they see how he is with cinderella, the smiling girl their own age, and they are jealous. they don’t mean to be, they try not to be, they know it isn’t becoming of young ladies. but she gets hugs and kisses and affection and they get rulers slapped on their hands when they reach for desert and sharp jabs to their sides when they slouch and - soon they hate cinderella, not for anything she’s done, but for what she has and they dont

but then her father dies. and it’s all a tumble of things and cinderella is crying and they’ve lost their only chance at escaping their mother’s clutches and it’s terrible. and everything settles and there’s no reason to be jealous anymore but resentment is hard to let go of and they don’t know what to do. they’re only kids too after all. and they’re so terribly bad at comforting people, they can do flowery words and know all the right bows but cinderella is so sad and they just don’t know what to do with that, because they’re supposed to be sisters but they’re not even friends

and slowly but surely their mother starts abusing cinderella, starts making her a maid in her own home, and she’s their mother, what are anastasia and drizella supposed to do? she rules them with an iron fist, and cinderella doesn’t even like them anyway, it’s none of their business.

except one night anastasia crawls into her sister’s bed in the middle of the night and wakes her up. “i was thirsty,” she explains, eyes wide and shiny, and they’re bad at this with other people but drizella has no problems with pulling anastasia into her arms. the younger girl clutches her sister and continues, “i was thirsty and i went down to the kitchen to get some water and - and cinderella is still up! she’s doing the dishes, and she should be asleep, mom is going to make her make breakfast in the morning and -” she cuts herself off with a hiccup and whispers, “it’s not fair.”

“life isn’t fair,” drizella says, echoing one of their mother’s favorite phrases. but her sister is staring at her with wet eyes, and it’s not like their mother is likely to get up before sunrise anyway, she hates waking up, so she pulls herself and anastasia out of bed and off they go.

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1 year ago

The Power Of Saturday

The Power Of Saturday

Saturdays are ruled by the planet Saturn.

The weekends are the only days in the English language that start with their planet ruler's name. This makes it easier for me to remember what planet correlate with the weekend days no french translation needed. I came up with a new community name the Cosmic-Care Campers so let me know what you think of that? Leave a star emoji 💫 in the comments if you like this community name! If you like Comsmic-Care Royals leave a crown emoji 👑 in the comments! If you think i should keep brainstorming community names comment an thinking bubble emoji 💭

What do I mean when I say Saturdays' are ruled by Saturn?

It means the aspects or traits of Saturn tend to influence the day's overall energy

What are the aspects or traits of Saturn?

Structure, restrictions, discipline

What can I do to utilize this energy?

Shadow work through journaling, dancing or meditating. Weekly Reset- make a list of to dos for the week ahead. Also cleaning your house, work area or email.

For me what I do to utilize Saturday's Saturn energy: I clean out my email into categories files. Also I delete the ones I don't need until I'm between 0-5 in my primary file. I make a todos of things I need to get done for the week ahead.Then I give them different due dates so I'm not overwhelmed. I try to clean my house a section at times with breaks in between each room. This is what works for me, if you find a Saturn inspired activity that works better for you do it!

Challenge of the week: Try cleaning your house, work area or email on a Saturday. Tell me how you feel afterwards?

Honorable mentions: Thank you for following

Ciao,

Grazie y’all Cosmic-Care Campers for taking the time to read my post & journey. Please like, comment and follow me to get updates when I upload a new post.

Likes, comments and follows are appreciated, recognized, and welcomed


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