who is to rule?

                ooc. Catch me crawling out of the pit just to say I took my entire blog concept of a historical AU Auradon and turned it into a fanfic retelling the entire story of the Descendants trilogy and the introductory chapters have been posted HERE and it’s fixing all of the plot holes, expanding on the lore and adjusting things I didn’t think made sense and having deeper character explorations and interactions so like check it out or not I don’t care but that’s where this blog’s at now

                The world was a dizzying doubled blur that Jas wished would pull itself together and stay still as he lay on the floor staring up at the rafters, a low, long groan easing out of him as his bonny boys and girls laughing above him. He didn’t mind, it was the man who laughs in stride that comes out on top again. Then he hears his brother.                 ”Sod off, Sir Slut-Drop,” he barked, laughing a bit as he eased up into a crouch, rubbing the back of his head and jostling his shaggy mane of black curls. Perhaps the only thing that stood between him and cracking his head open in that moment. “Yer’ just jealous of my talents,” he said, lurching upwards with the helping hand of one of his crew, and then teetering forward on the heels of his boots before he found polarity.                 “Pussy-whipped and jealous, isn’t he mates?!” he crowed to the jeers of his crew. “Or is tentacle-whipped more accurate depending on your day-to-day fancy? I don’t know what Melusine has down under that skirt. Might be a beak to match that other prissy witch’s little vagina dentata the Tremaine boys talk so much about.”

                He was stumbling as he stood on one of the tables of the Chip Shoppe, a pilfered half-empty bottle of his father’s prized wine from ‘old England’ in his hand, and the two others he had already finished knocked over by his restless feet as he sang out. Only a few members of his band sang with him, all seated around him on stools and pushed him back into balance when he leaned too far one way and then to far to the other. He by no means had an unpleasant voice, and he loved to strike up a tune whenever he got deep enough into his drink.                 “We’ll rant an’ we’ll roar, like true British sailors,                 We’ll rant an’ we’ll rave across the salt seas,                 ‘Till we strike soundings in the Channel of Old England,                 From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-four leagues!”                 Though no sooner had he uttered that last syllable, his foot came down on one of the overturned wine bottles. With a shout and in a flurry of a ratty red frock coat and mane of curly black hair, a stream of wine sloshing across the room from the bottle in his hand, the captain’s boy careened to the floor.

                ”How do you feel about a little trip?” Pandora asked, peering out the window she stood by, arms crossed and lips pressing into a thin line.

                In the comfort of the academy apartments she shared with Pandora and the boys, Eve had set up her station. A collection of vials, alembics, burners and flasks, Eve watched carefully at the bubbling mixtures waiting for changes in colour and other reactions, a dropper held steadily in her hand above a rounded flask. Then the knock at the door came.                 ”What?” she called, paying no mind to her usual lady-like demeanour in her annoyance. “Come in,” Eve called, setting the dropper down safely on a petri dish

                ”Tried to break in, did we?” she spoke, her upper lip curling in disgust. “Just what exactly were you looking for, I wonder?”

                “At least what stands between me and my freedom isn’t a prepubescent boy,” she sneered, how she loathed to think of James’s failures. At first she’d been led to believe he had stayed in Neverland of his own accord, but to hear it was all because a boy wouldn’t let him leave had left a bitter taste in her mouth that remained to this day when James was mentioned. Her obstacles were that much greater to overcome. "It would have worked all the better had you been sent to the continent instead of that horned harlot and her band.” At the very least then she would have someone to help her on the outside, to charm a mermaid’s daughter, to steal a trident or a wand, anything to calm the seas long enough for her to pass. “Still milling about with the cuttlefish girl and that dolt of a boy?"

                “I think the corset will do it sooner, heights aren’t so foreign to me.” She might not be able to manage much magic here, but she can still dream herself across the sky even if she can’t get her feet off the ground. “Wnat exactly is someone of my particular persuasion, may I ask?”

                Grimhilde kept her gaze locked on him, green eyes boring into his as she took a long, deep drink from her wine glass. She didn’t answer, for a moment at least, as she thought and swallowed. A fairy tale he called it, how he had no idea.                 “Everyone out there is the same as those in here, the only different is they have resources, and we squabble over ours. Kingdoms are built in three ways: cooperation, courtship and conquest, and when the second doesn’t work then the latter will have everyone on bended knee, yet what we need is the first. Why argue over fruits and grains, when we can divide them equally among us but keep a portion to grow our own? How many tradesmen can be counted among those who followed their masters and mistresses here, not utilising their talents to build and grow this place?                 The standards of kingdoms may not apply here, and so we must make our own. If everyone is to be equal, then so be it, yet we must be comrades and collaborate if we are to succeed. My plan is one that will work if nothing else does, yet the old and tired prefer to dream of past freedom, the younger of us should look towards the future.”                 And if she has to kill every other villain on this island to see that future, then so be it.

                “Oh I say it is,” the beggar answered, “witches and wise women are alike, what would your parents all have done birthing all of you? Witchery and midwifery often go hand in hand.” Truth be told, if Beatrice had been more optimistic she would have hoped the people on the Isle would have learned to utilise their talents more aptly beyond hospice. “In Occitaine they have honeyed wine, rich and velveteen on the tongue and throat,” she said, gaze wandering off into the distance slightly as she fixed her stick into the crossroads of four cobblestones. “Entire vineyards boasting farms of bee hives just to make enough of it. And the consistency was so finely bordered you could dip bread in it and come back with with a layer of sweetness, but not so thick you couldn’t easily drink it -- like thickened, malted milk you have with ice cream.” Beatrice’s sense came back to her when she realised she had drifted for a moment, blinking and turning back to look at the boy, then his flask in her hand. “Better than this swill by tenfold.”

                "...and I think I’ll take the whole bolt of that, and two meters of that,” Eve spoke, watching on as the old woman running the fabric stall placed one bolt of black linen on the top of the table, before taking another to cut the length she asked for on another behind her. Eve already carried a number of boxes and bags with her, fill with groceries and reagents her mother had requested, and then bags filled with feathers and ribbons and trims and lace she had gotten from other stalls in the market and the weight of it all was already bearing down on her.                 Pursing her lips, Eve thought for a moment. She wouldn’t come back for the fabric later, the woman would probably just keep her money and sell it off again to the next person who stopped by. It was looking out over the walkways over the marketplace that she saw opportunity.                 ”Gil!” Eve called out, immediately adjusting her postured, slumping back under an imaginary weight, heaving the boxes up as if she were struggling more than she was, and the expression of a damsel in distress emerging on her face. “Can you lend a hand?”