sing sweet nightingale

Elsa had a poor imagination.

       Oh, she could conjure up elaborate palaces of ice and an entire army of snow people and each would be different than the last—that was different, that was something that was hers and hers alone, and she was unsurprised that the ice that burst forth from her fingertips when she was creating was as different each time as every single snowflake that fell from the sky—

       But the fact remained that there were a lot of things Elsa had never done, there was only so much you could do when you kept to your room, and some things—well, she couldn’t so much as imagine doing them.

       Dancing, for one. At her coronation, it had seemed shamefully easy to excuse herself. I don’t dance; she had never learned, unless you counted leaping across her room in an attempt to recreate the graceful moves of ballet dancers she’d admired as a child. She’d seen Weselton dance, too, and maybe that would have counted in his book, but Elsa wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. Even now, when she was learning to dance from various tutors, she was shy, and it was the done thing to wear gloves at a ball, and Elsa was embarrassed not to know any of the dances here.

       It’s warmer than I thought, quipped a voice in her head, light and loving. Anna: how she longed for her little sister at her side right now.

       The air that rushed into her lungs when she slipped out onto the balcony was light as a cloud, cool as a drink of water. The Queen of Arendelle hadn’t realized how stifling the ballroom felt until now; she breathed as deeply as her corset allowed, like a fish that’d been flopping weakly on land, and felt her very veins tingle with the relief of cold.

       That was before she saw her. The immaculate dress, the hair that reminded Elsa of her sister, the ring on one hand that shone in the light from indoors.

       ”Your Highness—!” Elsa swiftly curtsied. “I congratulated you earlier, but I didn’t get to say how sorry I was that I missed your wedding.”

          If Cinderella was being truthful, which she nearly always was, she wouldn't have remembered if the other royal had attended her wedding or not, even if she was wearing some bulbous gown of vermilion that would have stuck in anyone's memory. So much of that beautiful day had been reduced to hazy, dream-like memory, with only short splices of clarity in between. 

          Having been nothing but a sorry dish maid mere weeks ago, to be called your highness by anyone was jarring, but the feeling was even more potent when it came from a Queen, and with all of her grace Cinderella found herself smiling quite meekly, her hands clasping politely in front of her bodice, feeling plainly intimidated. She possessed a simple elegance that was impossible to duplicate - no matter how desperately her heinous step-sisters may have wanted to, privately - but she wasn't vapid; she was  becoming increasingly more aware of her newfound responsibilities as Crown-Princess, and they filled her with as much excitement as they did a vague dread, and yet --- there was Queen Elsa. Precisely her own age. A ruler. How could Cinderella not feel small?

       It had occurred to Cinderella                     sometime during that night’s ball                     that this was, in fact, not a dream.                     It had been weeks since she had married                           — though it felt more like days —                     and yet, when she gazed about the glittering scene                     she had to convince herself that the waltz she heard                     was plucked on real musical strings                     and the shimmering tiara upon her head                     had weight and a density to it                     and, in all, this new life of hers was a                                      final, tangible reality                     rather than the hazy daydreams of a dish maid.

Still, as blissfully happy as she was, Cinderella decided to take a rare moment for herself. She slipped from the side of her Prince with the promise of returning soon and maneuvered herself quite carefully through the glimmering crowd, finally finding                        s o l a c e in the form of an apparently empty balcony. She closed her eyes against the cool night and a smile pulled gently at peach-colored lips but when footsteps sounded behind her the look turned confused.

—     “I could go for a some  t e a.    Would you like a cup?”

gentlecinderella started following you

      “Do you think flying would be                  a difficult task?”

Mrs. Brisby clasped her hands together and gasped. The food piled before her enough to last her and her family for a week, likely more with how little Cynthia and Timothy ate. Better yet, she wasn’t stealing it.

"Oh, bless you," she said, turning her attention back to Cinderella. "Thank you so very, very much…"

         "Oh my."

A hand rose to touch her own parted mouth, and she blinked in surprise.

[ quickly, the red head froze, taking a step back. a frown made its way onto her lips, a brow slowly lifting. ]

                ❝ no ——- not really.. ❞

[ blue hues move back to the flame. ]

"Well, yes, I suppose it is very beautiful."

          [ Cinderella always had the blue ribbon             for being the most gentle and kind but             it didn't keep her from being firm with the girl. ]