( slightly backdated to april's theme! ) oo2 ☾ ❝ sleeping beauty... ❞

[mooneternal]

Deep within the silent woods the princess has laid since she was young. Her finger pricked by a cursed needle, she was doomed to sleep. The kingdom had long sinced mourned her eternal slumber, believing she would never wake from her fate, her body now set up as some sort of memorial.

She looked at peace, her hair spread out neatly framing her face, and flowing outwards alongside her still body. Flower petals were scattered around her, seeming like they were almost frozen in place, just like the princess they rested near.

It seemed as though there were nothing more than rumours on how to wake her, and nothing so far had worked...

Comments

... i snorted XD

[waterfell]

The princess of Mercury stares for several moments before her eyes narrow. "You're just as they said," she informs the Princess of Silver Millenium.

|D

[mooneternal]

"I could have still been sleeping in! Ahhhh, I can't believe it..." The princess groans, attempting to turn back over and get comfortable again.

/giggles ilu

[waterfell]

"The time for sleeping was over a hundred years ago," the knight says without sympathy. "Lazy, empty-headed..."

It's so easy to fall into this somehow, criticizing the princess for (if she were more honest with herself) nothing more than failing to welcome her warmly.

[mooneternal]

"Hey, that's no fair..." she whines, seemingly more awake now that she sees her friend a getting bit worked up... "You don't have to say it like that... It was just so comfy and peaceful... I couldn't help it."

[waterfell]

"If you'd rather sleep, go back." The knight juts her chin back towards the bed, stiffly. As though the words sink in only as she says them, she pauses, and adds belatedly, "It's better for you to stay sleeping."

This is true. The princess is an existence that must not awaken. She knew that when she came, and yet- Why had she gone so far, even knowing it was foolish?

[mooneternal]

"Ami-chan..." her voice has a hint of a whine to it, as she sits there pouting. There's no way she can go back to sleep knowing that one of her friends is cross with her. She groans, swinging her legs over the singular bed, and heaved a sigh. "I'm sorry. Don't be angry. I know I should get up, you're right."

[waterfell]

She'd known the truth, and yet when she saw the princess laying there, so still and so quiet, and thought of the girl acting much as she is now, the knight hadn't been able to leave it alone. Foolish or not, there is something in the princess that she can't ignore.

"How long has it been?" she asks, as though the inconsequential question can distract them both. "How long since you fell into this sleep?"

[mooneternal]

The Princess heaves a big sigh, her shoulders sagging with the effort. "I don't knoooww..." her tone is a little whiny; all she knows for sure is that it doesn't even seem like it's been long enough.

She opens her eyes for a moment and looks around her, for the first time becoming aware of her surroundings. "Hey... wait a second... where are we?!"

[waterfell]

The knight, too, glances away from the source of her confusion, and to the trees that surround them. "This is the forest where you were meant to stay for the rest of eternity," she says, without shielding the princess from the truth of that fate. "You were never supposed to awaken."

[mooneternal]

"Never wake up?!" All right, yeah, sleeping in was one of the best things in the world, but sleeping forever?! No thanks! "But if I never wake up how am I ever going to be able to taste the newest ice cream flavours?! Or cupcakes, or crêpes?! No way I can just sleep forever!"

[waterfell]

"This is more important than that!" By now, surely the princess was used to such scolding; and this was even more important than that. The knight composed herself, and continued.

"The curse on you wasn't just your punishment," she told the princess, as if she knew all about it. "It was because when the princess awakens, calamity will befall this land."

She turned to face the one she was indirectly naming as its source. "Why not sleep peacefully instead?"

[mooneternal]

She doesn't mind the scolding; in fact, she somehow welcomes it -- you scold those you care about, after all. But the things that she hears next make her freeze -- "Calamity...?"

[waterfell]

"That's right. The purpose of confining you, the purpose of keeping you away from the prince, the purpose of all of that was to prevent that calamity."

It's hard to stay so calm when she's about to have to admit her own fault, her own fault that couldn't let the princess lie there safely. There's an emotion she can't quite hide to the next words.

"However, I see that was an impossible goal." Nothing, nothing, nothing else had worked, not in so many worlds, so many times.

[mooneternal]

The princess shakes her head. She doesn't want to believe that. This is a world she loves; one that she wants to see thrive into a prosperous future.

But there's something else that she notices, too. This knight is the one who -- "You... saved me."

[waterfell]

"Don't confuse yourself," the knight refutes the very idea. "I never came with the intention of saving you, or helping you at all."

This does very little to reinforce the notion of her own claims, as it leaves open the question of why she did save the princess, intentions or no.

No. Intentions were never what mattered most. It was the results. And right now, her results are all wrong. She isn't even sure what to do next; worse, she isn't even sure what she will do next.

[mooneternal]

Serenity seems to move with a grace that she hasn't shown up until this point, sitting up to the edge of the bed, her barefeet hanging thanks to the height. "Even if it wasn't your intention... you did. And now that I'm awake... if there's anything I can do -- I want to help protect this place."

[waterfell]

"There's one thing," the knight agrees, after a long silence that grows nerve-wracking.

"Don't look at the prince." Unbidden, the absolutely crazy notion of running away with the princess herself actually flits through her mind, before she tells herself it's insane (and not even something she wants - right?) and shakes it off with a quick shake of her head.

[mooneternal]

"Eh...?" to say the question caught her off guard would have been an understatement. For a moment, she sat there, blinking in disbelief. No one was supposed to be aware of her entanglement with the prince so how did...?

"But... I..." Serenity looked down, ashamed that it was something she couldn't agree to. This one request... the most impossible thing for her.

[waterfell]

The knight nods as if this answer is expected. Once again, the princess has chosen the prince- and only the prince, willing to throw everything else away.

"Everything else you claim to love will pay the price," she says simply. That's the other half of this choice of the princess.

[mooneternal]

"Everything else..." she repeated the words, watching as her hands began to twist their way through her long hair nervously. She was fidgeting. "But... Ami-chan... do you think -- you could follow something like that? If -- if it was someone you loved..."

[waterfell]

"That depends," she said unhelpfully. "It depends upon whether I care for anything else in this world at all."

The princess, she's lived these years believing, does not; and thus, she was able to destroy them all for the sake of the only thing she cared for, Endymion.

[mooneternal]

Serenity's head shakes gently from side to side. "I don't want to see anything like that happen... I want everyone to be able to live peacefully. So that's why... I want to believe we can all be together. That... that's not wrong, is it?"

[waterfell]

"It is wrong." The words inject cold realism into that ideal. "It was that thinking that allowed the tragedy to occur to begin with, and will allow it to repeat."

Perhaps it was normal for the prince and princess to want a future with each other. Love, or what passes for it, was meant to be normal. However, telling themselves that, and putting that above everything else, was what made them forget the people destroyed by their carelessness of anything but each other.

[mooneternal]

"Then..." she pauses for a moment, "if you had the choice to make sure that the world was saved -- or to be with someone that you cared about... you would choose the world, wouldn't you?"

[waterfell]

"I'd choose the world," the knight affirms. This is not hypocrisy. Whatever her mixed motives, one of them had been that very reason: saving everything at the expense of one life. And in the fate she knows she avoided, she would have done the same - or tried to.

Even in the past life, while the princess had clung to her prince, the rest of them had been forced to fight the very men they'd come to fall in love with.

[mooneternal]

Of course, she knew that answer was coming. But... "Then... if it's because of me that you say all of this will happen... why would you save me?" when she lifts her gaze this time, she's searching the knight's face for an answer. Words that the other might not speak.

"You could have left me here alone. But... you..."

[waterfell]

"When I saw you there," she admits as much of the truth as she can, "my body moved on its own."

There's no other explanation, no lingering tenderness she's willing to consider or delve into. The brush of their lips, and the caress she'd given the princess' cheek, she can't deny. But she can blame the princess for being the one at fault. She can say it was more manipulation.

Except she doesn't. That simpler explanation suffices instead.

[mooneternal]

A soft, almost hopeful smile crosses the Princess' lips. It's fragile somehow -- but she holds onto it. "Wouldn't you -- want to live in a world where everyone can be happy together? Isn't that a future you want to believe in, too?"

[waterfell]

The knight falls silent, and glances away as though considering this, as though envisioning it.

The world she'd thought she was fighting for at first: light, laughter, and perhaps even love. A life among friends and family. A life where she wasn't considered a slave, or a weapon. A life with challenges they'd face together, where she'd grow from a girl into a woman.

But it's the wrong life. It's a life built on - she believes - lies and deception and half-truths and concealment.

"I believe in a future that exists, instead," she says finally.

[mooneternal]

"I do too," she reaches forward, with the intention of taking Mercury's hand in to her own. "I believe that future can exist... I've seen it. And I know... that we can make it come true. As long as we all stay together... we can build it with our own hands."

[waterfell]

The knight stares down at their joined hands, lost in quiet thoughtfulness. In a way, it'd be easy to follow her body, to grab the princess by the hand and take them both away from here.

But she's gotten good at putting her duty first. And her duty, even before the royal house, is to the kingdom. She takes her hand away.

"I'll build it with my hands. I don't need to be told that."