The Green Light (Sleeping Beauty fic)
People call me “Sleeping Beauty.”Though my aunts were desperate to keep it a secret that the curse on me was actually fulfilled, even to the point of putting the entire kingdom to sleep, it didn’t take long for me to mention how I didn’t know how I ended up in the highest tower’s bed or for Phillip to tell his father about how he fought a dragon to get to me.I don’t know who came up with the nickname “Sleeping Beauty,” but I hear it every time I talk to the servants in the castle Phillip’s father had built for us, every time we visit my parents or his father, every time I go to visit the townsfolk in our now-united kingdom.No one understands what happens to me at night.They all understand Phillip’s nightmares about thorns and fire and dragons, but no one can understand mine. No, they think it was easy for me. Just a few hours in an enchanted sleep and then awakened by a kiss from my true love. What could be simpler?They don’t know about the green light.Every night I lie in that large, warm bed next to Phillip, wrapped up in those soft blankets, and the green light returns, even before I close my eyes - if I ever close my eyes at all. The green light, softly calling me up the circling stairs, forcing me to follow.I’ve told everyone that I don’t remember what happened after my aunts gave me the crown. Even Phillip. Even my parents. Even my aunts themselves. After all, there’s already so much change that I’ve had to grow accustomed to. Living in a castle so large that I often get lost in it. Getting to know my parents and watching them shed tears over every day we spent apart. Finding out that my aunts were fairies. Even my name changed.Aurora. Sometimes I say the name to myself, trying to get used to it. Aurora. It’s a beautiful name - it feels like it would belong to a princess, but even though I carry out my royal duties every day, part of me still expects that I’ll wake up to the smell of wood and water back at the cottage and be Briar Rose once again.Of course, “wake up” implies that I get to sleep first instead of lying in the dark for hours, listening to Phillip’s sleep-breathing and trying to let that relax me and drive the green light out of my mind.I’m probably not supposed to remember the green light. In stories, whenever someone is put under a spell that controls them, they don’t remember it later. Was this part of Maleficent's revenge, ensuring that the curse would still follow me even if I awakened from that enchanted sleep?Maleficent might have been crafty enough to think of that.Phillip told me about how he was there when I was cursed, how he hid behind his father and wondered why Aunt Merriweather couldn’t completely undo the curse and if that meant good really wasn’t as strong as evil after all. I feel like I remember Maleficent even though I was only a baby when I saw her. Maybe it’s because my aunts have told me about her sinister face and sharp black horns and devilish mannerisms, but when I imagine her, it feels more like a memory than a creation. Is that another part of the curse?I wish I didn’t remember the green light and how it pulled me up those stairs as if I were a horse being yanked along by its reins. How I heard my aunts calling me but the light wouldn’t let me answer. How somewhere in the furthest reaches of my mind, I knew what was happening to me. The faraway part of me that was still me screamed through the light’s fog, tried to fight back, regain control over any small part of my body.“Don’t touch anything!”In that moment, urged on by the loving, terrified voices of my aunts, that distant, lucid part of me broke through, granting me control of that arm, but only that arm, and only enough control to pull back, yet in that single moment, I knew. I knew there was an evil force surrounding me, choking me, wanting something from me.No, no, I wouldn’t let it have me . . .“Touch the spindle. TOUCH IT I SAY.”The voice screamed into my spirit. Though I had never seen a spinning wheel before, wouldn’t have even known what a spindle was were it not for the voice, I knew I had to touch the spindle, there was no option not to touch it.Even though that tiny lucid piece of my mind screamed through the fog not to do it.I guess sometimes I cry when I dream of the light, since some nights Phillip wakes me, telling me I was having a nightmare. He never asks what the nightmare was about - he simply holds me and caresses me and kisses me, letting me feel safe in his arms until he drifts off again and I remember that the green light will return.Twice I’ve woken in the hall, lying in a heap on the stone floor, sore as if I’ve tripped and fallen. Each time my mind filled with panic, wondering if the green light returned for real and lured me out into the dark to kill me before the more rational explanation presented itself.Of course I haven’t told anyone about those incidents. Can you imagine the panic that would spread throughout the kingdom if they knew their future queen sleepwalked? Phillip and I frequently go out into the kingdom and visit the people, and though they call me “Your Highness” to my face, I always hear that nickname on their lips. “Ah look,” say the men in the tavern, “there’s the princess, Sleeping Beauty.”“Come on, sweetheart,” says a mother to her child, “let’s go meet the princess, Sleeping Beauty.”“Oh, doesn’t Sleeping Beauty look ravishing today?” say the women in the dress shop.I don’t mind the nickname, not too much, anyway, but every time I hear it, the irony bites at me and I wonder what they would say if they knew the truth about my nights.Sleeping Beauty is afraid of sleep.THE END
EsmeAmeliaSolo
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