plumiere finding each other across lives, stories, and universes
The little tin soldier falls into the flames. Wait! says the paper ballerina, and follows after him. Every story says they melt.
"What's your name, mademoiselle?" The boy is young, sixteen, dressed up in cockeyed gold scraps he found at some village fête. She is fifteen and wearing a feather the Queen left in the sewing room.
"Plumette," she says, and stares hard at the sun to hide her grin. He sees her looking and tries to strike a dashing pose.
"Tell me a story," she begs, up on the roof long after everyone else is in bed, and they're in their twenties and cross-eyed in love and if they weren't dating other people they'd be in each other's arms this minute. "One with a happy ending."
"Happy endings?" The boy is dramatic and despairing. He would ask Plumette to the ball in a minute if she would just stop seeing that damn Armande from the stables. There are twenty thousand stars in the sky and he can't see the light in one. "There are no happy endings. What's that one I told you before? The brave little tin soldier and the paper princess he loved? I never finished it, did I, the little lovers on the nursery tabletop. They fell into the fireplace; a draft catches her, or gravity propels him. They burn. They're on fire and they burn."
"Oh," says Plumette, thinking this is a gloomy tale, and not watching her hand creep over the shingles to catch his.
"Of course it didn't end that way," says Lumiere, a dark night when his candles barely burn. They're glowing, slowly, in the dark. "I would never tell a tale that dark. In this winter? No."
"You did! They burned. Or they melted? I can't remember." Plumette tries hard to remember every minute of when she had hands, when he was a bright gold poppinjay with a blue-eyed face, when his hair was auburn and she was dressed all in white. Now she floats beyond his reach, her feathers slowly falling away.
"Never, never." Lumiere has forgotten the story, watching her. Who cares for a paper princess? Who cares for a fairytale? My god, she's beautiful, and he's alive here to see it. "Come here, mon coeur."
"Lumiere! Your flames!" He's burning too bright. His flames are inches high, throwing their shadows huge on the wall. For half a moment they look human.
"Yes, so there were flames. Who cares? The soldier was made of metal, strong and stern stuff! And the beautiful paper princess—she would be too beautiful to burn. Maybe they were in the fire. The fire didn't touch them."
Ten days after the end of the curse, and Plumette isn't over the joys of being herself again. She was looking at the stretch marks on her thighs earlier in the evening, the little wrinkles at the edges of her eyes—dear god, she thinks, I'm beautiful, and pushes the candle closer to the mirror so she can see every little thing. Lumiere, sneaking up behind her, kisses her head and smiles into her neck.
"Lumiere? What happened to the paper princess?" asks Plumette, letting down her hair and dropping her feathers. He's forgotten the tale, but something about it keeps drifting through her mind.
"The what? Oh, the princess." He hasn't a clue what she's talking about but something nudges him—a princess, cut from paper and lace, floating over fire. Did she have feathers? Why not, why not? "Oh, she's dancing still. She floated over the flames and dragged her lover after her. Who can resist a good breeze? Anyone as beautiful as she was, cut from the best paper with her beautiful lace, she could survive anything."
"Ah, well, he's susceptible to fire—but she makes him brave. Dance with me, darling. I do not burn you anymore."
Melting, dancing, floating, burning—who knows which way the story goes? But in every version the boy follows the girl. And this version is no different.
