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kimvvantae · 6 years ago

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Umbra; 12

➜ being ruled by an ancient commandment, your sole purpose is to serve. you were born to protect the king with your life, tied by an everlasting oath; you are nothing but a shadow, a silent and insignificant being. he appears to you like the sun, the warmest and brightest star in the sky, and gives you a chance to live. it is then that your entire universe starts to orbit around this sun, and you decide that you are truly willing to die for him.

pairing: King!Taehyung x (f) hybrid!reader

genre: royalty au, fantasy, angst

warnings: descriptions of violence, blood and death that might be triggering.

word count: 14k

A/N: here is the greatest umbra chapter so far to make up for the looong wait. as always, after finish reading you’re invited to stop by my inbox and let your opinions uwu enjoy!

➜ Chapters: check up masterlist in bio!

I stared at that strange woman in silence, completely shocked.

My mother?

I analyzed her features carefully. She was a dragon hybrid, there was no doubt of it. She was probably the oldest dragon I've ever seen; people from my race usually don't live long, for we either die serving our masters or giving birth. But that woman? Although her appearance did not indicate it clearly, I could feel that she has lived long. Two entire cycles, perhaps?

And her appearance…

Her hair color was slightly darker than mine. We were around the same height. Our skin color was the same…

I could see myself looking at her.

My mother?

Ehmerald stared at me with hopeful eyes.

But if she expected it to be a heartfelt meeting, she was wrong.

I could not forget the fact that she invaded my mind and kidnapped me - nor the fact that she was the apparent leader of a rebellion that just attacked the Capital with evil energy. We had no emotional connection. I never wished to know anything about my parents, and I lived my life very well alone. She couldn't just expect me to cry, hug her and call her mom.

My expression turned into stone.

“The entire truth?” I said, voice as cold as ice. “Then where am I?”

“Inside the Baïkarh forest,” Ehmeral was quick to reply. “This is the base of our organization.”

I looked around again. There were many hybrids, and my sharp ears could hear more voices throughout the forest - thousands of people. They were quite smart. The Baïkarh forest is almost impenetrable, for it is protected by trolls and dryads, spirits of the trees. But how did they manage to convince these spirits to let them settle here? As far as I knew, spirits of the forest are holy and pure, they would never let these murderers in. Perhaps they managed to devoid all these beings as well? Just the thought of it made my blood boil in anger.

However, I couldn't just start a fight right here, although my instincts were begging me to do so. I was in the core of the rebellion and had to use this chance to know everything about them. That was the best opportunity I would ever have.

“Why did you bring me here?” I proceeded to ask, trying to control the anger on my voice.

“Because it was about time to let you know about everything,” Ehmerald said. “Jungkook told me about the things you did.”

I turned my head and glared at the rabbit-boy. He was still as pale as paper.

“He did?” I said, unable to control my aggressiveness.

Jungkook flinched.

“Don't blame him. Jungkook was just following my orders. Therefore, he did no harm to your friend; she is safe at the palace. As Jungkook already explained, he just used the bracelet to call your attention.”

“How long have you been observing me?” It was time to glare at her instead.

Ehmeral sighed. There were many mixed emotions on her eyes, but mostly joy and guilt. “It will be better if we talk with more privacy. All of you, back to work!”

The crowd around us started to dissolve, although with some hesitation.

“More privacy? Why should I go somewhere alone with you? You didn't hesitate to invade my mind, what else could you do?” I immediately stepped back, fists tightened.

“Y/N, I just did that because I needed you to be here. You wouldn't come willingly, would you? Moreover, I was not aggressive nor saw anything on your mind.” When Ehmerald noticed my body was still tense, she sighed. “I am not locking you here. You can go away if you want; none of us would be able to stop you anyway. Or… you can stay and listen to me.”

“And why would I do this?”

“Because I have the answers you want. I have the truth.”

I hesitated.

I have been wanting to know the truth for so long. I remembered about Taehyung's promise - he said he would tell me everything he knew. But… could I trust him?

Could I trust that woman?

The answer was clear in my mind: I could not trust anyone. And because of that, I decided to listen to her. I would listen to her version of the facts and his. Then, maybe I would know in which version to believe in.

Although Taehyung already had more credibility with me. That woman conjured obsidian soldiers and tried to kill him, someone I actually had an emotional connection with and cared about. Her, otherwise?

I exhaled to try to calm my nerves.

“And what truth would it be?” I finally asked.

Ehmerald seemed satisfied. She started to walk slowly away from the clearing, expecting me to follow her, and I had no other choice but do so. Everyone had obeyed her order, so we were considerably alone.

“The truth about our race. About our past. About the History of the world,” she started, voice serious. “The truth that they have been trying to hide for thousands of years.”

She stopped in front of a great rock in the middle of the forest and stared at it. I stared too, slightly confused.

“Tell me, Y/N,” for some reason, I didn't particularly like to hear her saying my name. “What do you know about the so called Dark Years?”

I furrowed. Where this conversation was leading me to? “It was the era when our race ruled. We… we almost annihilated mankind.”

“Well, this is a lie.”

I almost gasped.

“What?”

“Y/N, keep in mind that everything you know is a lie.” Ehmerald was way too serious and, for some reason, I felt my inner temperature decreasing. “That story they told you… about dragons being evil, elves coming to establish the peace and punish us - that is all a lie, a lie so well built that has been carried for millennia.”

She stepped up and passed her hand on the surface of the great rock. When she did it, I finally realized it was not a simple rock; it was actually the ruin of something old. A building, maybe?

The rock had some things written on it, along with drawings, so old that it was impressive that these drawings survived for such a long time. Some of the things written were in long forgotten languages, but after analyzing more carefully, I recognized the dragon language as well, what made me widen my eyes slightly.

“Magic is one of the most important aspects of the Universe,” Ehmerald started. “It keeps the balance and can be molded on our will. Humans and hybrids can learn magic, but us, dragons, are born with it inside of us. Because of this, our race was a part of the Council, millennia ago.”

Ehmerald pointed to the gravures on the surface of the rock. The drawings were old and unrealistic, but I recognized the form of dragon.

“We did not rule by ourselves. Dragons, elves, fairies and mermaids were part of the Council, for we were the only races naturally born with magic inside of us. The Council was formed because humans were always starting battles and wars, and it was necessary to settle peace in the world. The Council was supported and cherished. There were no divisions such as kingdoms, and the lives of millions were not put on the hands of a single man. They used to take decisions wisely. For a long time, the world lived in peace because of them.”

I analyzed the surface of the rock as she spoke. Written around the gravures were actually songs and poems cherishing the Council she was talking about. There were also many names… the names of the dragons which were part of this Council. Hundreds of names. For how long this Council existed?

“Each of the four races had one specific task. The dragons, as the strongest race, had the duty to protect. The elves were the wisest, so they were peacekeepers and would usually speak for the Council. Fairies took care of everything regarding nature. The mermaids which were part of the Council would make accords to keep the peace between the people of the land and the people of the sea.”

I felt goosebumps as she spoke… it was almost as if I could feel the soft breeze of ancient times caressing me. Voices whispering. I could almost hear conversations, people taking decisions. Laughter and cheers of thousands. Times of peace.

Why all of that felt somehow familiar, even though it was the first time I heard about it…?

“The world lived in peace for a long, long time. No wars, no poverty. The Council members were different from the Kings and Queens of our days; they worked for people, they were not saw as better or superior. Only the ones that proved to be honored and strong enough could bear the responsibility of being a Counselor.” Ehmerald had a faint smile on her lips. Perhaps she could feel the breeze of the past, just like me? “But… things started to change.”

Her smile vanished.

“Not everyone supported the Council… some of them wanted to possess properties. They did not accept to be equal as everyone else; they wanted to rule. They wanted to be better.” Ehmerald's hand dropped to her side, fist tight. “But to be better, they needed to be stronger than the four races… and this is when the dragons have fault.”

I blinked, confused. “What did they do?”

Ehmerald sighed. She pointed to a particular name on the rock - the last name on the list. Opal.

“This was the last dragon of the Council. She is our direct ancestor, our Mother.” Her voice sounded bitter. “One of these people that wanted to end the Council understood that they had to be stronger than us, dragons. And to do so, they needed to know our powers. Our language.” Ehmerald sighed. “This man was called Merlin.”

“What?!” I exclaimed, shocked. “Merlin?! But - he is a hero!”

“And for certain perspective he really is. Their hero, and our murderer.” I could hear the hatred on Ehmerald's voice, the deep crimson of her aura. “Merlin seduced Opal. The Council did not go against it; what problem a marriage between a dragon and a human could represent?” She scoffed. “They had many children. Half human, half dragon.”

“Dragon hybrids,” I whispered. So, that is what happened? I was always told that my race existed because dragons raped human women in the past…

“In those years, Merlin learned a lot about the dragons and our magic… until he mastered our language. Not only that; he was the first person to use magic in wrong ways. He was the first to absorb energy from Helheim. Merlin got so strong that no one could overpower him… not even Opal and other dragons.”

The breeze of the past suddenly got colder… a chilling cold. Instead of laughter, I heard screams of fear and pain.

“Merlin taught other humans and created an army of mages. Their first step was to kill all of the dragons in the Council. They were the strongest, so without the dragons, it was easy to completely destroy the Council. They settled a new government, separating the continent in five parts; the Five Great Kingdoms of our days. But it was not easy. Many wanted to be rulers too, so that is when the First War of the Clans happened. The world was drowned in battles again.” Ehmerald crossed her arms, her eyes still glued on the rock. “After the five clans managed to win the war and take control of the kingdoms, it was time for the second step.”

“And what it was?” It was quite a stupid question, for I already knew the answer.

“Annihilation. Genocide.” The atmosphere felt even colder now. “The first race to disappear was the fairies. They were completely extinct. It would be unwise to try to kill the mermaids, because they are too many, so a war happened between land and sea. In result, the mermaids undid all the accords and decided to isolate themselves deep in the oceans; as long as they didn't intervene on the issues of the land, they would not represent any danger. The elves… they couldn't be killed. So, instead, Merlin and his people found a way to lock them back in Alfheim.”

“They didn't ascend on their free will…?”

“No. They were expelled from Earth. The elves were victims, just like us. And the dragons…” Ehmerald hesitated before continuing. “They were hunted until the last one of them was killed. What lasted was Opal's children… and this is when our curse begins.

“These new Kings and Queens wouldn't be so easily obeyed if the world knew about the genocide they promoted. Loved leaders are more respected than feared ones. They started to spread all the lies we know today, lies that took thousands of years to be made, so well made and believed that many don't even question them. They put the dragons on the role of villains. They made everyone believe that elves were deities, beings similar to gods, when in fact they were just another race that suffered. The good elves ended the Dark Years in which the bad dragons ruled. They got rid of all the evidence of the truth; books, temples and old buildings, the songs and poems people used to sing. In the meanwhile, hybrids were put as unholy beings, inferior to humans. And us, dragon hybrids… we were still too powerful to be killed. We were still useful. We were put in the 'holy role’ of guardians.”

I felt as if the ground was slowly crumbling under my feet.

“Why?” I whispered weakly.

“To have us under their power. To make us submissive. They made us believe that our ancestors were murderers, that we were dirty with innocent blood. They indoctrinated us so deeply that many of us died in the name of Kings, treated like slaves… no, treated like animals.”

Ehmerald looked at me in the eye, and I could see the hatred on her eyes.

“We were the guardians of the world, but they made us believe that we are nothing but shadows.”

Her sentence felt like a blow in the stomach.

For a moment, I felt dizzy. I didn't know what to do with all this information. It meant that… my entire life was a simple lie? I have been used? Not only me; all of my brothers and sisters.

I remembered all of the punishments, all the humiliation. I always believed that my role as a guardian was an honor. I always believed that I deserved all the suffering because my ancestors were monsters and I was a monster myself. I thought that I didn't have rights, that I didn't deserve recognition, that I couldn't let myself have bonds with people and care about them. I believed that a dragon hybrid does not deserve any happiness. God, I was willing to be sacrificed when King Taejun died…

All because of a lie?

A part of me still struggled. Why should I believe this woman anyway? She could be just lying to me. But something deep inside of me felt the pain of her words… something ancient and caged. Something that awakened that day, when Taehyung offered me a chance and I took a decision for the first time in my life.

It was the pain of my ancestors.

These voices I heard in the back of my mind sometimes were not mine. They were of my ancestors, trying to whisper the truth. Trying to make me understand.

She wasn't lying.

“Although the lie was spread, they couldn't hide the truth from everyone. They forgot to destroy things like this,” Ehmerald said, pointing fo the rock in front of us. “There are still some proofs hidden. Documents. Stories going from generation to generation. But they know about it, too, and they try to shut our voices so the truth will keep unsaid. Many have died because of it.”

I suddenly remembered of what Jungkook told me - his entire village was burned down… he said his parents used to tell stories about the dragons. So, they were killed because they knew the truth…

“I… I was not like you,” Ehmerald's voice was quieter now. “I was not trained to be a guardian. My only duty was to procreate. Just like all the rest of us, I thought it was a sacred duty. I did not understand that what they were doing to me was not right… however, it took me a long time to get pregnant. I did not impregnate when I reached my full dragon adulthood. So, during most of my life, instead of getting rid of me, they decided to keep me as a healer in Niflheim.”

“What? But… the probability of dying when you impregnate after the adulthood is too high,” I said, eyeing her suspiciously.

“I thought it was true, too. But I worked as a healer at Niflheim and started to notice something wrong. I helped so many women to give birth… all of them were perfectly healthy, during their entire pregnancy and after they give birth. But when they told me to leave the room…” Ehmerald closed her eyes for a moment, having bad memories. “They would always tell me to leave the room. And when I came back… they would be dead. Always. Not even one of them survived. How could it be right?” She shook her head slightly. “This is just a stupid excuse. Women are naturally stronger than men because we are born to bear the pain of carrying a child. How could these dragons die that way? I just found out the truth when I got pregnant.” She then smiled and looked at me.

“Who… who is my father?” I asked hesitantly.

“His name was Jaejoong. He was Athena's dragon-guardian.”

My blood went cold.

No.

“J-Jaejoong?”

Ehmerald nodded softly. She had a faint smile on her lips - and because of that, slowly, I felt as if a knife was being buried in my heart. “It… it wasn't supposed to happen. I should impregnate from another man. But Jaejoong…” she chuckled softly. “He was far from being sweet, but he cared about me. Jaejoong was the strongest guardian of his generation. It simply happened.”

I knew it. I knew he was the strongest of his generation.

I tried to control my nerves once again.

“That’s when things started to change, Y/N. I should not feel anything towards you; I was just 'accomplishing my duty’. But I already loved you. I was not supposed to love, but I did. And I finally realized how wrong things were the night you were born.” Ehmerald stared at me again. “Do you have any idea of how special you are?” I frowned. Honestly, I didn't know what to expect anymore. “Y/N, you were born during a Red Moon. I am sure you know what this means.”

Yes, I knew.

A Red Moon is a rare astronomical phenomenon. During a Red Moon, magic becomes stronger.

“I was sure everything with me was fine. I had a normal and healthy pregnancy. But, when you were born… I finally found out. All those women were killed after giving birth. It is their way to control our race, to make sure only few of us will live. They make women give birth and they kill us afterwards so we won't make too many children. And they tried to kill me, Y/N, but I managed to escape. But I was too weak… I was severely hurt. Even today, I am not fully healed of the injury. I am not as strong as I should.”

“And you left me behind.” I said, and I couldn't hide the pain in my voice anymore. “Why did you leave me there? Why did you leave me to suffer, to believe I was nothing but a shadow?”

In that moment, Ehmerald's eyes were filled with tears. She approached one step. “And I will always regret this, my child. But… I did not know you were alive. You are a female born during a Red Moon. You are too powerful. All these years, I… I thought they have killed you the day you were born, and all these years I thought it was my fault, because I was not strong enough to save you.”

Ehmerald gulped, dried her tears.

“I… spent days wandering through Baïkarh about to die. But the dryads helped me. They took me to this place, the rebellion, and they took care of me. They told me the truth. Since then, I have been working. I am the leader of the rebellion today, but I was not the one who created it. This rebellion exists for more than one hundred years now, but it has never been so strong because of all of our efforts. We spreaded the truth; we told hybrids that they are not inferior, we gave them hope. We have an army of more than twenty thousand now; some are here, some are in disguise inside cities. After all these years, we can finally free hybrids. We can avenge our ancestors.”

When Ehmerald looked at me with that gleam on her eyes, I knew something bad was about to come.

“And that's when you become important,” she stepped closer to me. “Our people has been mistreated for centuries. The best way to restore peace is to establish the Council again. Only during that time we had peace and justice. And in order to make this-”

“You need to kill the King.” I interrupted her.

Ehmerald just nodded.

“The Kim Dinasty has been the cruelest ever since they took the throne. It is about time to take the power out of them and give it back to the rightful owner.”

“For who? You?” I couldn't help but scoff. “I heard about your plans. You are the chosen one, isn't it?”

“No. You are.”

I was about to say something, but as I heard those words my mind went blank.

“What?!”

“It used to be me, but it was before I knew you were still alive,” I could see that Ehmerald was choosing her words carefully. “We don't want monarchies anymore. Enough of Kings and Queens. Unfortunately, fairies are extinct and the elves are far from our reach, but we still exist. During that time, they would choose the strongest of the dragons to fulfill the role of a Counselor… and it currently is you. You are a well trained female. You were born during a Red Moon. The strongest of our ancestors were also born during Red Moons… Y/N, you are the chosen one.”

I could just stare at her, speechless.

Ehmerald must have saw it as a good sign, because her smile widened.

“I have been waiting for this moment ever since I found out you were still alive. My child, I heard about what you did… Jungkook told me how you stood for the hybrids at the palace. Not only that; we found some hybrid kids some hours ago. They said they were freed because of an angel… it was you, isn't it?” She looked at me with pure pride on her eyes. “You understand our situation. You are able to fight for all those who can't with your power. This entire army - they're all at your disposition. If you give them any order they will-”

“This is ridiculous.”

Ehmerald was taken aback. “W-What?”

“This is ridiculous,” I repeated, stepping away from her. My expression showed everything I felt: confusion, disbelief and revolt. “You want to put me as the leader of this… this Council? I'm not stupid. This is the same thing as a Queen.”

“But more members will be added as we restore the Council-”

“You don't even know me,” I interrupted her again. “This is the first time we meet. How can you just put me as a leader? You don't even know if I'm trustworthy. This is not how a leader should be chosen.” I scoffed again, unable to control the aggressiveness in my voice. “You just want to use me. Since you're not so powerful, you want to put me where you wanted to be. I'm just a puppet, another piece of your game. You just want to use me the same way I've been used my entire life.”

“Y/N, that's not true-”

“And how hypocrite can you be?!” It was my turn to speak. “You're saying how these humans from the past were cruel, killing the Council members using wicked energy, but then you do the same?! You tried to kill the King using obsidian soldiers… how many people you sacrificed to-”

“We didn't do it.”

I was found speechless again.

“Of course it was. The cursed rock, the shapeshifter and now the obsidian soldiers - it was all you.”

“Shapeshifter? What are you talking about?” Ehmerald frowned.

“The wolf that has been observing us-”

“Jungkook was my spy at Capital. He has been observing the King and you. Y/N, I don't know what you're talking about.”

I stood still there. Ehmerald really seemed confused.

“Stop pretending! You were also the person that attacked my mind that night. Who else could be powerful enough to attack me like that?!”

“Y/N, I understand that all this information is shocking, but I don't know what you're talking about. The only time I ever entered your mind was to knock you down, and I was only able to do it because you were severely weakened. And the obsidian soldiers - it is a mystery to us as much as it is to you. Do you really think I would sacrifice someone to conjure them? Do you think I would use the type of magic that condemned us millennia ago? I'm sure you can feel how my aura is free from any type of evil magic!”

Her question was almost useless, because I couldn't feel anything unnatural coming from her. No reminiscents of Helheim. She was clean.

If the rebellion was not behind the attack with obsidian soldiers… if the shapeshifter was not on their side….

Then who was it?

But I could not think of it at the moment. This rebellion didn't try yet, but they wanted to kill Taehyung - and this I could not forget.

“You are crazy. You're all crazy.” I said, stepping away from her. “Don't follow me.”

I turned around before she could say anything else, disappearing in the forest.

I don't know how much time it has passed.

The forest was damp and terribly hot, but I couldn't care about the temperature. I could see that it was evening, however I did not know how much time has passed since the attack. I doubted Jungkook would be able to carry me to Baïkahr so fast, so two days, probably?

My medallion has disappeared. Taehyung and everyone at the Capital must've had no clue of my whereabouts. My first instinct was to fly my way back to the Capital...

But, for some odd reason, I didn't.

I distanced myself from the rebellion's camp after walking hours through the forest. It was hard to localize myself inside Baïkarh; the natural magic of the forest is so intense that it makes your senses dizzy. I could even smell the faint scent of something similar to pollen in the air. There is a reason why people said that Baïkahr was the entry to Alfheim.

Many animals crossed my way, but none of them represented danger. Animals can feel what I am. Not only that; the spirits of the forest can feel who has bad intentions and who does not. Because of it, they let me in peace.

And if these spirits let the rebellion settle here… it meant that they also could not feel anything evil from them.

This made me think.

Everything Ehmerald told me was too overwhelming. It meant that the History of the world was a lie. It meant that… my sole existence was a lie. All the things I held onto, all the things I believed and fought for… it was all a lie.

Just lies.

They made me believe in lies. They made me think I was unworthy of respect and mercy, they made me think I should die for a man that never cared about me - because King Taejun never cared about me. The same way King Hugo did not care about Hoseok, and King Satoshi did not care about Yuta…

How many of us died during all these centuries? We died thinking that we deserved it. We lived our sad and painful lives thinking that men that did not care about us were the center of our Universes, the ones we should fight for. They killed innocent women. They punished us for simply existing - and we submissively thought that we deserved it.

And what she told me about my father. Jaejoong...

I've never been so enraged during my entire life.

It was deeper than rage. It was hatred.

As a hybrid, it was impossible to simply say I couldn't understand the rebellion after hearing the truth. The world deserved to know the truth; hybrids had to be freed. But what she said was still madness - the chosen one? I was nobody's leader.

And she still wanted to kill Taehyung.

I couldn't let that happen. Not because it was my duty, but because I had feelings for him. I knew Taehyung in a way that none of them did; he was different from his predecessors. He was fair and good and-

Or perhaps you're just being carried away by your feelings.

What if my perception was distorted because of my feelings for him? Taehyung was the first person that showed me some type of kindness - well, the first person after Yoongi and Chuu. What if he was someone I refused myself to see? Taehyung was always mysterious, always doing things I couldn't understand. But he said he would tell me the truth…

What truth?

What I still didn't know?

What should I do from now on? Go back to the palace… but what would I do then? Demand my answers and…? Keep being his guardian? I couldn't do that - not after everything. I refused to be a guardian anymore. But staying with this rebellion was also out of question. They wanted me as a leader, and this I couldn't be.

I sat in an old trunk and held my head. I felt so confused it made me dizzy. Too much information - it felt like someone threw a brick on my skull.

“What do I do?” I whispered to myself - a strangled cry, almost inaudible.

“Well, sitting here and complaining is not an option.”

I gasped and immediately lifted my head as I heard the voice, my hand instinctively searching for the hilt of the sword on my hip, just to remember I was disarmed.

But when I understood what was in front of me, I calmed down.

A dryad looked at me with crossed arms, leaning casually on her tree. She looked like a young human woman: incredibly beautiful, her long hair the color of soil, comfortable in her own skin even though she was completely naked. Her appearance could not fool me, though; I knew she was much older than it seemed, judging by the size of her tree. Her eyes reflected wisdom and some kind of evil playfulness.

(Dryads are known for fooling people by seducing them just for fun, so I could understand that evil playfulness).

“Why do you look surprised, drákon? I don't see powerful beings like you walking around my forest everyday. Of course I would want to talk a little,” she said, tilting her head to the side and smirking.

I straightened my posture. Drákon. It's been a very long time since I heard someone calling me like this. “What do you want?”

The dryad giggled. “Oh, there is no reason to be so suspicious of me. I don't play with females, even though you are very attractive. And, besides… I can see that your heart is already someone else's.”

Your heart is already someone else's.

My shoulders fell, and I felt my cheeks getting hot. It meant that… my heart was already Taehyung's?

“Gosh, I don't see a face like this in centuries. Are you suffering because of love?” The dryad giggled again, endeared. “It's okay, little one. Unfortunately, we can't choose who we fall for.”

“But I'd rather not fall for someone that might be my worst enemy,” I whispered weakly.

The dryad’s face softened. She sat by my side by the trunk; she smelled of the soil right after it rains and dew.

“We heard you talking to your mother,” she said softly, making me remember that this place was in fact full of dryads and this one was the only brave enough to appear.

“You spread the news very quickly,” I said sarcastically, what made her laugh.

“Of course. It's been some time since something interesting doesn't happen.” The dryad looked at me with seriousness on her eyes despite her faint smile. “You got to know the truth of the world. It is sure shocking.”

Silence fell over us for some seconds. “Do you remember the times of the Council?”

She nodded. “Yes. I was still just a bud, but I remember very well.” Her gaze was distant, eyes that saw ancient memories. “My sisters did not need to hide in Baïkarh back then; we were everywhere. The fairies would always stand up for us and protect us. These were good times.” She smiled softly. “Can you hear them?”

I could. Just like before, I heard distant laughters, female voices singing lightheartedly. I could almost see those female figures running around the trees, playing hide and seek, smiling and talking.

“After the fairies were killed, there was no one to fight for us. We are not strong creatures. Because of it, we were forced to live here in Baïkarh. This is the only place a dryad can live in peace… we have full control of the forest. No one can enter without our permission.”

“You confuse those who enter here to protect yourselves?” I questioned softly. She nodded.

“There are secrets here that no human or hybrid should know.”

“But you let the rebellion get inside. There are thousands of people now.”

“They respect the limits we demanded. Besides… if they want to establish the old way of things again, then there is no reason to be against them.”

“You support this?” I was quite shocked.

The dryad looked at me in the eye. Her serenity was so intense that I could even feel myself calming down slowly.

“I have lived many centuries already, little one. Perhaps when you reach my age you'll be able to understand me. I saw more suffering than happiness during my life, and I know how your race was the most punished. What they are trying to do might not be ideal, but it is the first time in more years than I can count that I saw something that can finally free us.”

“But… they are aiming to kill someone innocent. They are preparing for war. It's going to be a bloodbath either way.”

Of course - I did not know if Taehyung was really innocent, but a part of me held onto that wish tightly.

“Then you have to do something about it. You're the person that can see things from both perspectives. You can stop this war before it even starts.”

I took in her words.

The dryad leaned slightly closer to me.

“Can't you hear them, little one?” She whispered. “Can you hear their voices? These are your ancestors. They are watching you intently.”

Again - I could hear them. Their voices floating in the air around me. I could hear the echoes from millennia ago; somehow, although many centuries made us part, I was still connected to them.

“They are waiting,” she continued. “Because, after so long, someone is able to break the cycle. You can break the cycle. You can make things different. You can finally give some rest to your ancestors that have been suffering endlessly.”

We sat down in silence. I could hear the sounds of the forest - small animals running, birds chirping, insects flying or crawling, the wind touching the branches and leaves above. I could hear the voices. They were unsettled, angry.

They yelled for justice.

I nodded softly.

“I don't know exactly what to do,” I said quietly, “But I'll try to do something.”

The dryad smiled again. That playfulness was back. “Gosh! The last person I talked to was a young woman, too.”

I frowned. A human entering so deep in Baïkarh? “When was it?”

“I don't know,” she shrugged. “I am a tree, so yesterday for me might be ten years. She was in deep pain. Because of it, me and my sisters helped her.” she sighed, frowning her brows. “Sometimes I wonder what happened to her…”

I nodded softly, not really paying attention to what she was saying. It might be small, but talking to her made some things feel clearer inside of me.

“I have to go,” I got up from the trunk.

“You are young however wise, little one. Not only the ancestors, but also the living are counting on you. Me and my sisters give you our blessing.”

I bowed my head respectfully. “Thank you.” I was about to turn around, but stopped midway. “By the way, what's your name?”

She smiled and tilted her head. “It is Rubra, little one. Come back here any time. Although your heart is taken, we could still have some fun…”

Instead of falling to her charms, I turned around and started to walk again. Rubra was right. Complaining like a little kid would not take me anywhere.

It was time to do something.

It took me some more hours to find the rebellion's camp again.

As I approached and people started to notice me, they would immediately stop anything they were doing - forging weapons, cooking, running around with papers that looked like maps - to look at me. It still felt strange; I was not used to be the center of attention. Especially not this kind of attention. They looked at me with such respect…

Now, I could understand why Jungkook had that reaction when he realized I am a dragon. I could understand the things he told me; Jungkook for sure was expecting me to be a rebellious leader like Ehmerald… not a submissive guardian. But, like the angry and rebellious person he is, he couldn't explain things to me clearly, spitting all of his anger instead.

I wasn't angry at him anymore.

But Jungkook still didn't know it, because he literally flinched the moment he saw me approaching.

The young man widened his eyes, avoided my gaze. Everyone around us was suddenly silent, watching what was about to happen in expectation.

I looked around for a moment.

“Your sister,” Jungkook frowned in confusion when he heard me saying quietly but strongly. “Heejin. She is here, right?”

The rabbit-boy seemed surprised that I still remembered what he told me about himself and his sister's name. He nodded.

“Take me to her.”

Jungkook did it without complaints. He guided me through the camp - and, again, the people that crossed my way would stop to watch in silence.

After some more moments, Jungkook showed me a particular giant tree.

And there was a girl sitting, leaned on the trunk, rolled up in covers.

I would have guessed she was Jungkook's sister even if he hadn’t said anything; their resemblance was obvious. Same fair skin, same black hair, same dark-grey rabbit ears and even their eyes and lips had the same shape. Heejin was some years younger, though.

And she was… simply sitting there.

A blank expression, staring into nothing.

Jungkook approached her slowly, as if he was scared that if he moved too brusquely he would break her.

However, he was the one looking fragile.

“This is Heejin,” he said in a weak and quiet tone. The sadness and love on his eyes as he stared at his sister was heartbreaking.

I approached, too, and crouched down in front of her carefully. “How long has she been in this state?”

“Ever since I found her, one year ago,” he said. “She… she doesn't do anything. She doesn't speak, doesn't move, doesn't interact with anyone. We have to clean her and feed her. It's almost like-”

Jungkook choked on his own words, but I knew what his unsaid sentence would be. It's almost as if she's dead.

I sighed. Heejin's eyes were staring directly at me, but she wasn't seeing me. She didn't even blink. Expressionless, motionless.

Trapped inside her own mind.

Carefully, I place my hands on each side of her head.

“What are you doing?” Jungkook asked, confused and worried.

“Don't worry. I won't hurt her,” I reassured him before closing my eyes.

Her mind offered me almost no protection.

Shattered. Destroyed and hurt.

I pushed a little bit further-

A dark place. My steps echoed around me. It was endless - endless darkness. Pitch black.

I heard a sob.

Finally, I recognized the figure of a girl crying. She was hugging her own legs, sobbing uncontrollably. Small and fragile, hidden in the farthest corner of the mind.

Slowly, I crouched down and touched her shoulder.

She turned around, startled, her eyes wide. Tears still trickled down her puffy cheeks.

“W-Who are you?”

“I came to help you.” I tried to keep my voice as serene as possible, afraid to shatter her consciousness even more. “You've been suffering a lot.”

Heejin nodded weakly.

“There are people that can help you out there.”

She shook her head vehemently, grabbing her legs even tighter. “N-No. They will hurt m-me!”

“Nobody will hurt you, Heejin. You are safe. And your brother- he misses you.”

Heejin looked confused for a moment, but then she remembered. “J-Jungkook? Is he out there?”

I nodded encouragingly. “Yes. He is waiting for you… and he won't let anyone hurt you anymore.”

I saw her conflict. But the mention of her brother made a spark of hope glow on her eyes.

She nodded almost imperceptibly. “Okay.”

I smiled and placed my hand at the top of her head.

“Heejin. Wake up.”

I opened my eyes and retracted my arms.

For some moments, Heejin still looked the same.

But, slowly, her eyes focused.

She frowned. Blinked once, twice.

She looked around.

“Jungkook…?” She called quietly, voice hoarse, when their gazes crossed.

He was barely breathing.

I stepped backwards to give them some space. Jungkook's eyes were impossibly wide and glowing with tears. Slowly, a big smile - the biggest I've ever seen him opening - adorned his features until his eyes almost closed and two crystal tears trickled down his cheeks.

“Heejin!”

I felt myself smiling, too, as Jungkook embraced her small body in a tight hug; Heejin still looked confused, but hugged him back with her thin arms. He was really crying now, sobbing uncontrollably. How long this young man has been holding back these tears? How long he has been acting strong, trying to ignore his sadness and loneliness, wondering if he would ever talk to his only remaining family again? How long he has been holding onto bad feelings only?

Jungkook was finally letting it all out now - and this time, it was due happiness. I was seeing a glimpse of the real Jungkook: a kind-hearted man.

It also took me some moments to realize the small crowd gathered around us. They watched in awe, chatting between each other. “How did she do that?” “She awakened Jungkook's sister!”

“My child, how strong are you?”

I immediately stood up again and turned around as I heard Ehmerald - that strange woman that was still too hard for me to see as my mother. She had some hesitation on her gaze, but mostly admiration. I couldn't understand this woman that barely knew me but seemed to care about me so much…

“We've been trying to heal Heejin since Jungkook brought her… and you did it in the blink of an eye,” she said.

“I'm just helping a friend,” was all I said.

Ehmerald watched me in silence for some moments. “I'm surprised that you're back,” she said. I was aware that everyone around us went silent, paying attention to our conversation, and she was aware, too. “Did you think well about what we talked?”

“Yes.”

And that was true.

I did think well about it. About everything.

My entire life, I used to believe that my master - King Taejun - was my purpose in life. He was the reason I would wake up every morning. He was my sun, the center of my particular solar system. After he died, my sun became Taehyung.

But I have changed.

I was not just an insignificant planet wandering through the Universe, always needing a sun to orbit around. I finally understood.

Taehyung wasn't the center of my solar system…

I was.

But I was not the only important thing. In my particular solar system, there was my family - Yoongi and Chuu. There was Jungkook. There were my ancestors, waiting for me to finally free them from their suffering. There were all these people around me, all the hybrids, the ones I have learned to care about, the ones that, just like me, deserved freedom - deserved to know the truth.

There was Taehyung.

And there was still an endless Universe surrounding me, full of planets I didn't know and didn't understand yet. An entire Universe to be discovered.

Some things were still right. Being a guardian was indeed in my blood, just the way my ancestors were the guardians of the world. I wanted to protect and fight for what was right.

But I couldn't stay hidden in the shadows anymore.

I was not just a shadow.

I was my own sun.

“Will you accept our offer?” Ehmerald asked, hopeful. It seems that everyone else held their breaths, waiting for my answer in expectation.

I stared at Ehmerald right into her eyes.

“No.”

Everyone gasped in unison.

“What? But, Y/N- after everything I told you?” Ehmerald stuttered.

“I didn't say I wouldn't help,” I cut her, speaking louder so all of them could hear me. Silence reigned above the crowd again. “Someone once told me that if you have the power to change things yet you chose to do nothing, then the fault is also yours.”

I made sure to send a significant look to Jungkook. His puffy face was surprised as he heard me speak.

“So, yes, I will help. But it will be on my terms.”

Ehmerald seemed uneasy. “And what are your terms?”

“You want me to kill King Taehyung, and this I can't do.” Murmurs of disapproval crossed the air. Again, before Ehmerald could say something or their chatter became too loud, I walked at heavy steps to the center of the clearing where they could see me better.

“Listen well, all of you,” my voice echoed loud and clear. They immediately went quiet again. “You really think that killing a King will solve all of our problems? It won't. It will just lead us to a war.”

“We are ready to fight,” someone said, being accompanied by murmurs of agreement.

“But this is a war you can't win. Ëlv'en has the greatest army of the entire continent. Not only that; if a war really begins, Ëlv'en will call the allies. It is Vanaheim, Nidavellir, the Islands of the West and many more - and not to mention the Royal Mages. They usually don't get involved directly in conflicts, but if they do, then it's over. Do you really believe that twenty thousand men with no formal training will stand a chance against Ëlv'en and its allies? A war for you means suicide.”

The silence around me was morbid. Thick, almost palpable.

“Killing the King is out of question. Even if you kill the entire Royal Family, the military will take over and this you can't win.” I made sure to look right in the eye of the people around me. “Besides, what you're planning will lead nowhere, because what you want is revenge, not justice. Simply putting the blame in a single man without even knowing if it's really his fault is not fair. I am the only person here that actually knows the King, and I can say he is not the monster you all think he is.”

And I hope I am not defending him for nothing…

“And what do you plan to do?” Ehmerald was the only brave enough to ask.

“I will go back to the Capital. I won't tell anything about the rebellion or your location, and you won't make a move until I say otherwise. I might not be the leader you all expected me to be, but I am the only one that knows what we're dealing with - and I want freedom and justice as much as you do, but I believe that we can achieve it with no deaths. I just hope you can trust me for now.”

They looked at each other in silence.

I knew they had no reason to believe me at all, but I was right back them: they feared me. They respected me. The single fact that I am a dragon seemed to be enough for them.

But no one had no chance to say anything when a young man entered the clearing running, ignoring anyone around, breathless and with hurry covering his features.

“Lady Ehmerald, one of my ravens is seeing something…”

“Calm down, Hyunjin,” Ehmerald said, the boy finally stopping to recover his breathing. “Explain it properly.”

“Something happened in Athena,” he said. “There's a big commotion going on. The King's about to make an announcement.”

A cold shiver ran my spine.

Something told me bad news were coming…

“Show me,” Ehmerald ordered, and they immediately left the clearing at a rapid pace. I followed them, as well as many other hybrids.

We followed Hyunjin and Ehmerald until they stopped in front of something I didn't recognize immediately - a copper basin filled with a thin layer of water. Many people gathered around the basin, quieting down to hear whatever Hyunjin has to show us.

The boy closed his eyes, visibly calming down and relaxing his muscles.

He touched the thin layer of water with his fingertips.

At first, nothing happened - but the water fluttered. It took some moments until the images on the surface of the water became clear: an aerial view of the front square of Athena's Royal Palace. Hyunjin's raven view. We noticed when the bird landed somewhere near the palace.

The front square was crowded and it rained. The entire scenery seemed to be painted in a somber shade of grey. We saw it when the familiar face of King Hugo appeared at the front doors…

A face distorted with pure hatred.

“My subjects, I come in front of you now as my soul bleeds in pain.” King Hugo's deep and powerful voice echoed. It sounded distant to us, however I could imagine the impact his voice caused in all these people there. Just like his face, his voice overflowed anger and deep pain. “The Royal House is mourning. Today, my older daughter Serena, the heiress of Athena's throne, was found dead.”

A collective gasp - both in Athena and around me.

“My daughter was murdered,” he continued, his voice failing and husky. King Hugo indeed looked shattered in a way I've never saw before. “And we already know who are the culprits.”

Before he even spoke again, I already knew that something was extremely wrong.

“Ëlv'en sent a murderer to kill our princess!”

The collective gasp was even louder now.

“What?!” Ehmerald exclaimed.

“This is… this is wrong,” I stuttered. It couldn't be serious. “Ëlv'en has no reason to kill Athena's princess…”

“This was found woven in the murderer's clothes,” Hugo lifted his hand, showing Ëlv'en's military symbol in all directions, so everyone could see. The chatter between the subjects there became louder and angrier. “We accepted their Entourage here months ago. We offered them our hospitality and trust - but this is what they did! But this time, we won't accept their insolence. They have committed the worst of all crimes. This time, Ëlv'en will pay.

“I challenge King Taehyung for a combat.”

I almost couldn't breathe.

The crowd in Athena roared.

“We will be waiting for these cowards at the Colosseum until tomorrow's sunrise. If they don't show up, then it means war. It is time to end their supremacy over the continent; we won't bow down anymore. If we win the combat, then King Taehyung and the entire Kim House will have to die. Ëlv'en has awakened their worst nightmare! They asked for war - and war they will have!”

The crowd roared louder than ever.

Hyunjin almost passed out, exhausted. The image dissipated from the water.

“You did well, Hyunjin.” Ehmerald said, patting the boy's shoulder. “Now, go and rest.”

Everyone around me went silent.

“That's impossible.” I murmured to myself. “Taehyung would never do this. He's not stupid. Why would he want to kill King Hugo's daughter…?”

“I also don't believe it was King Taehyung,” surprisingly, Ehmerald said. She had a somber gaze now. “Someone is trying to throw one kingdom against the other.”

“Who?”

She looked at me seriously.

“The same people that attacked the Capital using obsidian soldiers.”

Another shiver.

Who were these people? Why were they doing this?

King Taehyung and the entire Kim House will have to die.

“I have to go,” I said hurriedly.

“What- why?” Ehmerald questioned.

“Didn't you hear? King Hugo challenged Taehyung for a combat. He needs me.”

“You still want to help him, Y/N?” The woman in front of me seemed almost offended. “You still want to be his slave?”

“I am nobody's slave.” My fists tightened. I noticed how some people decided to step away from us in fear when they heard my tone. “You don't understand. I'm doing this because Taehyung is a good person.”

Ehmerald seemed about to answer, but then she looked at me as if she finally realized something. And I saw… pity in her eyes.

“My child, he seduced you.”

“What-?”

“That's what he wanted, don't you see?” She stepped closer and I stepped behind to keep a distance. “He made you fall for him to keep you loyal.”

“You are wrong.” I wanted to punch her at this point.

“Y/N, King Taehyung is engaged to Princess Sana. Don't you understand? He's going to marry her. He's just using you. What will you be? His secret prostitute? Because Princess Sana is the one he'll marry, not you. Don't let him use you like this!”

I could just stare at her, mouth ajar.

“I am leaving now,” I repeated, my voice low and menacing. “For your own well being, I'll pretend you never said this.”

Everyone around me stepped away and I heard many gasps and exclaims as I started to shift into my dragon nature. The pain of wings growing, the sound of my cotton shirt tearing apart in my shoulder blades, all of my senses becoming sharper, the air around fluttering because of my power.

It was the first time I shifted into my dragon nature in front of others.

I was not ashamed.

“I will try to find out what's going on. Whoever is trying to start this war for sure will be against the rebellion,” I said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Again, I ask you to stay here. I will come back as soon as possible.”

I did not wait for them to say anything; my wings extended and, with a strong gust of wind that made everyone's clothes and hair wave, I flied up until I was above the top of the trees, going higher and higher.

The sun was beginning to disappear in the horizon. King Hugo said he would wait just until sunrise. If I flew fast enough, I would be able to reach the Neutral Zone where the Colosseum was placed…

Taehyung's life depended on this.

Mine depended, too.

Because Kings don't fight battles. When King Hugo challenged him, he wasn't exactly challenging him.

Combats are a way to prevent wars. Instead of millions of soldiers dying in the battlefield, two soldiers are chosen to fight - a mortal fight where one of them will inevitably die. A champion is chosen.

And it is a millennial tradition that the chosen champion is always the King's dragon-guardian.

Nervousness hit me for the first time.

If everything went wrong, I would have to fight against Hoseok…

And only one of us would survive.

“If you lose today, Y/N, we will have a war. And all of it will be your fault.”

My eyes snap wide. I feel sweat forming on my hands due to nervousness.

“Do you want to live knowing millions of people died because of you, Y/N?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“So, what do you have to do?”

I inhale deeply, controlling my nerves. It is no time to be nervous. It is no time to be scared.

It is no time to fail.

“I must win, Your Majesty.”

I can slightly see my master nodding his head. “Good. Then you know exactly what to do.”

With this, the King leaves me by myself.

I lift my head and tighten my fists. My master put all of his hopes on me, and I can’t let him down. I won’t. I will prove to him, to Counselor Gilliard and to the whole court that I am the best guardian the King of Ëlv’en could ever have.

I inhale and close my eyes momentarily.

When I open my eyes, the heavy doors open echoing a loud sound and I walk forward with determined steps.

When I enter the Colosseum, my opponent is already waiting for me, standing in the center of the arena. He is way older than me, an adult dragon, much more experienced, much taller. I'm not sure if I'll be able to win, but my master's words echoes in my mind. I will fight with all of my forces, all of my power.

My opponent is Athena's dragon-guardian - the strongest in ages.

His name is Jaejoong.

The sun was almost rising when the glass dome appeared ahead.

The Colosseum was built in the Neutral Zone - a small island right in the center of Mitras, the greatest lake of the continent, so great it was mistaken as a sea centuries ago. The Neutral Zone is used in times of war, a place when enemy kingdoms can meet. It is also a disarmed zone. The only ones that can use weapons are the champions. I could already feel the presence of many people inside the grey building, the place so familiar to me. I've been there several times. The situation around the continent has always been worse than what most of the population thought. During the past decade, the danger of wars exploding suddenly was great - all of them prevented by the combats.

From far, I could already feel Hoseok's presence, and I knew he could feel mine.

But the person I was looking for was nowhere at sight-

“Where have you been?!” Was what I heard the moment my feet touched the ground.

Counselor Gilliard radiated anger, hurry and nervousness, his old face even more distorted and ugly than usual. Behind him, soldiers and other counselors stepped closer as well, however some decided to keep distance as they stared at my wings, hesitant.

“Where is Taehyung?” I questioned sternly before Gilliard could say anything, what made his face distort even more.

“Who you think you are to pronounce His Majesty's name out loud?!” The old man exclaimed, outraged.

“Just answer my question. I don't have enough patience to deal with you right now.”

The old man looked more shocked than ever. I always kept my head down around him, although my hate towards that man existed since the day we first met; I would not do it anymore.

Slowly, his expression became darker, the mask of self-control hiding his true feelings. He has always been like this. So well controlled, so well calculated. “His Majesty did not come. He has many issues to deal with at the Capital, including the royal wedding that cannot be delayed anymore.”

For a moment, I went speechless.

The royal wedding?

Of course, I could understand that Taehyung had many problems to deal with, since the Capital has been attacked just a few days ago and now he was under accusations of murder. But…

Something wasn't right.

Challenged kings always are present to witness the combat. It didn't matter that he had a wedding soon, it could be delayed considering the current circumstances.

And…

Taehyung knew it was a mortal battle, right?

He knew I could die fighting, right?

Did he authorize the combat even then…?

“It does not matter. Because of you, we were about to face a war. How dare you disappear like this?! And you even got rid of your medallion!” Gilliard stormed. “If you survive, what you must do, you'll be severely punished. Now come on, the sun's almost rising! The combat must begin!”

Gilliard grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the Colosseum, being followed by all the others. Finally, I noticed that General Namjoon was one of them - as it was traditional of the current general to be present on this type of event. Our gazes crossed quickly, and what I saw on his eyes was much different from what I was used to; no aggressiveness, no despite. Instead, I saw some type of grief.

Because everyone knew these could be my last moments.

Immediately, the assistants started to put the armor in me - the ceremonial armor, which I only used in “special” occasions. They tightened straps and leashes to the point it became painful until the complete armor was at place, handing me also a shield and a sword.

When they left, I was alone with Counselor Gilliard in the room. The same room I’ve been with King Taejun, the moments before the fight when he would speak some words to me.

Gilliard wasn’t supposed to be the one doing this.

Hoseok was just at the opposite side of the arena; I could feel him close. Nervousness hit me all at once. After the combat with Guardian Jaejoong many years ago, Athena and Ëlv’en never had such a harsh situation again, so no combats were claimed. I never faced Hoseok in a real fight, but I already knew how strong he was - dare I say, even stronger than Yuta. Hoseok had an angry fire burning inside of him all the time, and he used his strong feelings to fuel his powers. Definitely wouldn’t be an easy fight.

However, that’s not what made me hesitate.

I always provoked Hoseok, saying that he could not stand a chance against me in a real fight. We were anything but friends and all of our interactions were aggressive. I always tried to keep him away because I knew what we would have to do sooner or later in our lives. But, in the moment I was about to face him in a real mortal combat, I finally realized: I didn’t hate Hoseok. He was truly annoying, but I had no reason to hate him. I didn’t want to fight a brother of mine. After everything I’ve learned, I wanted nothing more but for him to know the truth, too, to be freed from this curse that haunted all of us.

I didn’t want to fight him and I wouldn’t fight him.

“I won’t do this.”

Counselor Gilliard seemed shocked. “What?”

“I said that I won’t do this.” I turned around and faced him, fists tight. The sole reason I even stepped inside and let them put the armor in me was that I knew I would have to fight to get out of here. “Something’s wrong. Taehyung should be here. I don’t see why he would even accept this challenge when he clearly is not the culprit. What is going on?”

“Do you think you have the right to refuse?” I could almost see his face fuming at this point. “If you simply go away, a war will begin!”

“And who will stop me?” I stepped closer to him menacingly, making Gilliard step back. His face went pale. “You?”

He gulped.

This was the moment of my mistake.

Perhaps discovering the truth made me too arrogant. I thought that no human could defeat me - especially Gilliard. How could that old, thin man fight me? How could he be stronger than me, faster than me, smarter than me?

I turned my back to my opponent.

And, before I could act, I felt a slight sting in my upper arm - a small gap in my armor, too small for a blade to penetrate.

Gilliard was holding something I've never seen before. It looked like a tiny glass tube with a needle attached to its tip.

“What is this?”

An ugly, mischievous smirk appeared on his decrepit face.

With rage taking control of my actions, I pushed the man backwards violently until his back shocked against the wall, my forearm pressing his neck so he could barely breathe. “What is this?!”

Gilliard let a strangled chuckle past his dry lips. “It's a v-very interesting mechanism. It p-permits me to… inject fluids directly on the bloodstream through the needle.”

Confused, I stared at that strange thing on his hand again.

Inside the small glass tube, there was… the reminiscents of a greenish liquid.

No.

An overwhelming dizziness almost made me lose balance.

Gilliard coughed when I let him go and massaged his neck. The room seemed to be twirling, my limbs felt weak.

“You bastard!”

Was all I could groan between gritted teeth before I completely lost balance and fell to the ground.

The potion I already knew so well… the potion to make me as weak as a human.

Gilliard chuckled again as, slowly, he approached. I could only see his feet.

“You were always so obedient, Y/N,” his voice made me shiver in disgust. Low, hoarse, evil. “I have to be honest. Seeing you finally stepping up for yourself is somehow a relief. I always wondered… how such a powerful creature could be so submissive? It was a delight to see you… obeying us like a trained hunting dog.” The familiar pressure seemed to be smashing my skull, bringing tears to my eyes. “But I saw the moment this rebellious little part of you was born. That day in the dungeons. I knew I shouldn't have let Taehyung talk to you.” He sighed. “Now, I have to clean the mess I made.”

Gilliard crouched down in front of me and our gazes finally met - satisfaction on his features as he watched me struggle to breathe, my limbs burning like fire while the potion ran throughout my bloodstream.

“Knowledge is dangerous. Keep the reins tight and the slave will think their entire life that they are blessed. But show them just a little bit of compassion… and this is what happens.” Gilliard shook his head slowly in disapproval. “I always kept your reins very tight, Y/N, but I knew that it wouldn't be enough. I tried to warn Taejun many times. We had so many chances to get rid of you, but he never listened. His stubbornness was what led him to his death after all.”

My heartbeat had increased, sweat flowing on my forehead. Hate was all I could feel. Red hate. “Y-You… you are the responsible behind Princess Serena's death?”

Gilliard's silence was enough of an answer.

My fists tightened.

“You incriminated your own K-King just to make me die in the combat?”

The smirk on his lips widened.

The dots connected as I stared at him.

I chose you that day to protect you, Y/N.

They wanted to get rid of you.

And everything started to make sense.

The cursed rock. The attack. I always thought they wanted to kill Taehyung, but he was not their target.

I was.

They were trying to kill me all along.

“W-Why?” I stuttered. “Y-You are condemning Ëlv'en. If I die here, Athena will win and they will rule the c-continent. You are betraying your own kingdom!”

The old Counselor clicked his tongue as if he was trying to explain something to an oblivious child. “There are more important things to protect than Ëlv'en's supremacy. But I already said enough.” Gilliard stood up again. “Take your sword and shield, Y/N; it is time to fight. I advise you to at least make some effort. It will be realistic if you bring Athena's guardian some struggle before he kills you.”

Gilliard left the room and locked the door.

I crawled, leaned on the wall and got up with struggle, my legs shaking, my breathing irregular and my vision blurry; I could barely move my wings anymore. My strength and powers were draining slowly. This potion is the only thing capable of weakening me. Before punishments, I always had to drink it, and it seems that injecting directly on my bloodstream made the effects spread faster.

How stupid I was?

I didn't stand a chance against Hoseok like this.

Desperately, I tried to reach him through our mental bond. However, this time, he blocked me so well that I couldn't reach his consciousness.

No. I couldn't stand it. I could not die like this after everything.

He had to hear me. If not psychically, then physically.

I took the sword and shield from the ground in time to see the heavy doors opening to the great arena.

And there he was.

Many meters away, at the opposite side, Hoseok entered the field. The red armor matched his hair, as well as his enormous crimson wings. His face was barely visible through the helmet, however his eyes seemed to be tearing me apart - vertical pupils, irises that seemed to be made of lava. Each step of his combat boots echoed. Hoseok's presence filled the Colosseum with raw power which I could feel deep in my bones. His entire form had a red hue, almost as if he was burning in fire.

It was the first time I felt scared of Hoseok in my entire life.

Trying to hide my weakness, I stepped inside the field as well. My grip around the hilt of the sword was not strong enough and I wasn't as confident as he was. The Colosseum was the same as always - incredibly big, a high glass dome above our heads. Despite the many seats around us, only a few people were present to witness the fight - Ëlv'en's and Athena's royal entourages, sitting in opposite sides. King Hugo was present. Taehyung was nowhere at sight.

A deep silence reigned around the place.

We stopped in front of each other at the very center of the field.

“That’s not how I expected our next meeting to be, Y/N,” Hoseok said and, despite the cold voice, like before, I saw something quick on his eyes.

Hesitation.

And something more.

I finally realized. Hoseok didn't hate me. Although our encounters were always anything but friendly, our aggressive banter was probably the only social contact Hoseok had with other people. He didn't want to kill me.

Perhaps I had a chance…?

“Hoseok-”

“The rules are clear,” I was interrupted by the referee's loud voice. “This is a battle in which the only acceptable result is the death of one of you. In case both of you end up deathly injured, the one who dies last will be the winner. All ways of fighting and magic are acceptable. You may start at my signal.” The referee walked back to his safe spot at the grandstand. “May the elves guide your souls to Valhalla… or Helheim.”

Hoseok was in position to fight.

All of my hopes died when I looked at his eyes.

It didn't matter if Hoseok had any type of strange affection towards me. He was a trained dragon, his brain worked the same way mine used to work. He had a duty, he would accomplish. Winning a combat was the best way to honor our “masters”. Nothing would stop Hoseok.

“Fight!”

He attacked.

I managed to block his attack with my shield. Hoseok twirled around, ready to repeat his attack and our blades shocked against one another for the first time, the impact it produced so strong that a gust of wind flew through the area and made everyone's clothes and hair waver. Hoseok brandished his sword in a series of strong and precise blows, forcing me to step backwards every time. I could still keep up with him for now, but my strength was disappearing by the minute. In my normal state I wouldn't even be sweating, but a few minutes into the battle I already felt tired. One second slower than him.

And Hoseok didn't even had started. He was just warming up.

When we were almost at the corner of the arena, Hoseok kicked my shield away; the iron object flew meters away, leaving my body unprotected. Before I could do anything, Hoseok twirled himself in the air and kicked my stomach with such strength that I could feel my guts being smashed. Just like the shield, he sent me flying backwards violently until my back hit the wall, making the rock structure behind me crack with the impact.

I fell.

My lungs weren't even working properly anymore. A sharp pain spreaded from the place he kicked; my vision was even more blurred. Hoseok approached me at heavy steps and dropped his shield - it was useless anyway.

“Are you just playing around with me, Y/N? When will you start fighting?”

I didn't answer.

A shiver indicated me that Hoseok was about to use his power. I saw the sword he carried take a similar color as the hue around him as he conjured a destructive spell. Not good. With more struggle than the usual, I managed to roll away from the attack the moment his sword hit the wall, metal crossing the rock easily in the exact place my head was one second before.

My entire body screamed in pain when I got up in time to block his next blow with my sword, the blade now shining with the same spell, however weaker than his. The friction of the conjured blades produced something similar to electricity, the sound echoing all around. Now, we were both holding our swords with both hands, we were more free to move around. And it was bad, because Hoseok wasn't even tired yet - and he was one of the fastest people I've ever known.

He was unstoppable. Attack after attack, he overwhelmed me. What should be something I could handle with ease became almost impossible; second after second, I got weaker. Even my wings seemed to be too heavy, my senses becoming as slow as a normal human's.

With another strong kick, he made me fly back, however this time I somehow kept standing. But Hoseok dropped his sword and all of my (slow) senses screamed. He was conjuring a spell between his hands - a ball of fire, his favorite element. If I were one second slower, I would have been incinerated; crouching down, my hands touched the floor and I conjured an earth wall in front of me - the exact moment Hoseok released that intense magic, a strong gust of fire that made the Colosseum shake strongly; my earth wall was ridiculous near his attack.

When it finally stopped, I was about to get up and take my sword again.

My eyes widened.

He was already behind me.

My vision went black when he punched my chin with such strength that, again, I was sent flying up. Hoseok extended his wings and flew towards me, making me shock my body against the dome until I heard the glass crack.

The acrid taste of blood invaded my mouth. His forearm was locked on my neck; I could barely breathe. I felt as if my skull was cracked somewhere.

“If you just defend yourself like this, I will kill you sooner than I expected,” Hoseok groaned, his face too close to mine.

Desperately, I searched for his eyes. I couldn't just let him kill me like this; but how could I say something? All this time, I didn't represent any kind of danger to him. Hoseok could kill me at any moment.

Why didn't he kill me yet, though?

Because he wants me to fight seriously, I realized. To him, the combat haven't even started.

So, if fighting meant I would still have a chance, then I would.

Reuniting all of my strength, I kicked him back so strongly that Hoseok had to leave me. I almost fell directly to the ground, but my wings worked in time and I managed to land, although clumsily. I was out of breath, my lungs weren't working well anymore - and I was sure I had at least two broken ribs. There was still some power inside of me. Not enough to overpower him, but enough to at least keep up fighting for some minutes until I could somehow penetrate his mind.

Our weapons forgotten, the fight proceeded to be hand-to-hand. Since our bodies worked differently, the fact that Hoseok's body was slender by no ways meant he was physically weak; this man could destroy a concrete wall with his bare hands. My force could match his in my normal state, but in that moment, I had to focus not to scream in pain every time he landed a blow. Pain was much more apparent after drinking this potion. I shouldn't even flinch, however Hoseok already made me feel like a punching bag.

“What's wrong with you? Are you trying to provoke me?!” He groaned at some point. He was getting angry. “Fight for real!”

His anger grew and his attacks as well. All the time I was just trying to keep him away from me, making air spells to force him backwards so I could have even one second to recover my breath. Blood trickled down my chin, I was limping, and even the metal of my armor was smashed in some points. I was two minutes away from losing all of my powers definitely. This was leading me nowhere.

The royals above just watched the fight in silence. Judging by my state - bleeding while Hoseok was barely sweating - there was already a winner. A discrete victorious gleam covered Gilliard's eyes.

It just fueled my hatred.

“Hoseok- y-you have to listen to me…” I tried, unable to hide any of my suffering, which Hoseok saw with awkwardness. A guardian should never demonstrate pain, not even on their dying breath…

“It is no time to talk!”

More blows. Hoseok wouldn't stop until he saw me dead. This is exactly what I would have done before I met Taehyung. It did not matter that I was his partner, it did not matter that, by killing me, Hoseok would be decreasing the chances of our race to still exist. If his “master” told him to kill me, then he would with no hesitation.

It also didn't matter that I could see that this situation hurt him.

I could barely defend myself anymore; my arms were too weak, my legs shaking. I have never been so humiliated in a fight; just trying to defend myself stupidly and barely being able to do so. It was nowhere near close to the warrior I am. Hoseok wasn't even trying.

“Get up!” He yelled when I fell again. I could understand that he was confused. He didn't want to kill me so easily like this. “Get up now!”

A kick on my stomach that made me roll. I embraced myself and coughed, spitting blood. Being punished was nowhere close to this. All of my punishers were humans… I have never been beaten up by a dragon. Every punch and kick of his was ten, twelve times stronger than a human's.

Hoseok watched with a scowl on his face as I got up, shaking and stumbling. My nose was broken, my arm, my ankle, some ribs. Many cuts all over my skin. Drops of blood falling to the ground.

I sighed weakly.

“H-Hoseok-”

“Fight with me!” He yelled and attacked again. I could not even lift my arms anymore. “Will you just die like this? You're not even trying! Will you accept your death so easily?! Where is your honor?!”

I sobbed. “H-Hoseok-”

“Fight!”

“I c-can't-”

“Fight!”

I gasped loudly.

Silence.

My entire body was shaking. I… I couldn't move anymore.

Hoseok buried the sword deeper inside of me. I coughed, and my blood hit his armor.

With a grunt, he took the sword out and stepped back. I fell to the ground again, pressing the wound in my stomach with my hand.

“This won't kill you yet,” Hoseok said.

“The opponent can't keep fighting,” the referee said. “We already have a winner. Guardian Hoseok, execute your opponent.”

I coughed more.

Is this it? I would die in such a shameful way?

I couldn't even offer Hoseok a decent fight.

He looked down at me, and my blurry vision caught his hesitance again. He was disappointed because he thought I would've been better. And he was…

Was that sadness?

I would die after everything I went through? After everything I discovered? I would die without seeing Yoongi and Chuu one last time? I wanted to laugh. How stupid I was. In the end, I would be just another dragon dying in battle in the name of my king.

Taehyung…

I wish I would have seen him one last time, too.

I wish we could have the opportunity to sit down and talk as he promised.

I wish I could hold his hand again…

Hoseok started to lift his sword.

It was the first time I saw him showing genuine feelings. He didn't want to kill me, however his duty was beyond his wishes. I also wish I had some time to tell him the truth. What if Hoseok was also freed from this invisible weight that haunted me my whole life? What kind of person would he be if he knew all the things he could do - if he tasted freedom, just like me? Perhaps we could even be friends…

“I didn't want things to end up like this,” Hoseok whispered, so low that only I could listen.

If my brain was working properly, I would have said something meaningful. But everything I did was whisper his name again, nothing but a strangled cry.

Hoseok was about to decapitate me.

I closed my eyes tightly, helpless, and waited for whatever was about to come.

But the blade never touched me.

“I can't feel your power,” he said, confused.

“Guardian Hoseok, execute your opponent so we can finish the combat,” the referee repeated.

“I… I can't feel your power,” Hoseok repeated as he hadn't heard the referee, his brows furrowing in a bewildered expression. “What's wrong?”

Hope sparkled inside of me again. With all of my remaining forces, I tried to speak. “T-The pot-”

“Hoseok, execute it,” King Hugo's voice thundered around the Colosseum.

But Hoseok still seemed to not be listening. He analyzed me and blinked, looking very confused - until I saw when things made sense on his mind.

He widened his eyes slowly.

“You have been weakened.”

“Hoseok, finish this. Execute it,” King Hugo repeated, his patience going short.

“Someone weakened you before so you wouldn't be able to fight against me,” his arm dropped to the side. “That's… that's not fair.”

“Hoseok!” Now, the small crowd all looked at each other, confused. I couldn't see them, but I could hear their chatter.

“This is not a combat. This is an execution,” He concluded as if he couldn't believe his own words.

“Guardian Hoseok, I am telling you to finish the combat!” Hugo's voice was beyond angry.

I saw Hoseok sighing. He tightened his fists and, for a moment, I thought he would follow Hugo's order. But I saw his inner conflict. And, when our gazes met again I saw… resolve.

“No.”

A collective gasp.

“What?!” King Hugo stormed.

“Your Majesty, it was not a fair combat. Guardian Y/N was not in conditions to fight. We should wait until she heals, so we can have another fair combat-”

“Shut up!” With the corner of the eye, I saw Hugo getting up from his seat, furious. “You don't tell me what to do! I told you to execute it!”

“I- I can't do this, master,” Hoseok said. It was being painful for him to stand against his King for the first time. However, he didn't flinch. He just kept his gaze glued on mine.

“Execute it now, Hoseok! I am ordering you!”

“No. Executing someone that can't defend herself is unfair and dishonorable.”

“You just obey me! Execute it!”

For the first time, Hoseok looked up at King Hugo right in the eye - jaw clenched, fists tight, eyes burning.

He dropped the sword. The metallic sound echoed.

“Nothing is above honor.” Hoseok said. “Not even you.”

I almost could not believe my eyes.

“You will pay for your insolence, Hoseok!” King Hugo stormed again. He seemed about to explode. “This is high treason!”

“Execute me too, then,” I really could not believe my eyes. Hoseok took off his helmet and dropped it too. “I prefer to have an honored death than to keep living knowing I killed a sister of mine unreasonably.”

Everyone from both Entourages were talking at the same time by now, with King Hugo being the loudest. I heard steps of many soldiers entering the arena, coming closer to us.

Hoseok… he really went that far?

I looked at his proud, irrefutable figure. This man… he was stronger than I ever imagined…

At first, I thought it was my blurry vision. Or perhaps my brain stopping to work.

There was a huge shadow beyond Hoseok's head.

No… beyond the dome.

It was approaching.

The deafening sound of glass breaking all at once.

I had time to cover my eyes with my weak hands. People screamed, the soldiers looked up, confused, spears in hand.

Hoseok was shocked.

I looked as that gigantic winged creature screeched - a sound so terribly loud and disturbing that everyone had to cover their ears.

A… a white griffin.

The creature landed and looked around, sending a menacing gaze and grunts towards the guards that did no dare to step close.

And, riding the griffin…

“GILLIARD!” Taehyung yelled, his voice so loud and deep and menacing that the entire arena went silent. He got off Alpha at heavy steps, his entire aura glowing with anger. “What did you do?!”

I shivered. I never heard Taehyung talking like that. He was completely possessed by crimson hatred.

“King Taehyung, we thought-” the referee tried, his voice growing scared.

“You thought wrong!” No one was even breathing. “I did not authorize this combat!” Soldiers were slowly recovering their shock and approaching. “Whoever touches her will die!”

They immediately stopped on their tracks.

I wish I could have heard what happened next, but my brain was giving in. Too much pain to bear. I didn't understand what was happening anymore. I… I just wanted a silent place to sleep…

Sleep…

The last thing I saw before being dragged to the darkness of unconsciousness was Taehyung's figure hovering over me.

400 notes · View notes

theashofwkm · 5 years ago

Text

A Siren’s Call (Part One)

Summary: In which the surface is off limits, but her voice is so addicting he just can’t help himself. little mermaid!au, sorta

Prompt: Goretober, Underwater

Warnings: blood mention, death mention, reliving tragic memory, law breaking, sneaking out. Despite warnings, all of these are vague and I don’t think this qualifies as actual angst.

Note: day six! sorry again for the lack of read more! tumblr sucks. also why are titles so hard?

———

Bubbles drift upwards lazily, floating to the surface. Skimming around smooth-scaled, smooth-skinned creatures that swim through the currents. Gurgling from the deepest depths up to crashing waves and free air.

The city of the mer is stunning. Gleaming and glittering from reflections of far-off sunlight. Abuzz with life and teeming with happiness, with joy and peace, except for one.

There’s a prince, handsome and beloved by all creatures of the sea. Set to inherit the throne, to inherit his father’s trident and the swell of power that comes with it, to become king. He is the most beloved creature, most beloved mer in all of the sea.

He does not wish to be king. Having little interest for the throne, for the trident, for the power the title holds and the rules he’ll be bound to. Being king is an honor, but it also a duty and a burden and all he’s ever craved is freedom. The binds of prince are loose, but they’re still far too tight. The ones of king are even tighter. He has no interest to be bound to the ocean, or anything else.

The prince is a creature of the ocean, born and bound to its waters, from the sea foam on the surface, to the deepest chasms unexplored.

It’s improper that he holds love for the land.

It’s a secret, of course. Something he keeps even from those he trusts. Secrets have a way of coming to light and while an ally could help, they could also hinder.

Land is forbidden, the surface ordered off limits years ago, for good reason. Humans had learned about them, had slaughtered who they could, the numbers staggering.

The Queen had died in the chaos, protecting her only son. It’s wrong for him to hold such fascination with what killed her. He knows humans are cruel, remembers the wash of his mother’s blood clogging the water around him, remembers the warmth of it. He remembers her death, knows that humans have no mercy, but his fascination holds.

Guilt is what’s really keeping his secret.

Rumors would spread through the castle if they knew the truth. He’d be a king without care for his people. An untruth, but that is what they would see him as. For a ruler, royalty, the people’s perception is everything.

He cannot go to the surface often. Princely duties keep him chained to the sea’s floor, eyes watching him in fascination and reverence, a barrier to the world above. Oftentimes, he lays on the floor, looks up and pretends that he’s looking at the sun, feeling the wind and the air.

There’s fond memories of the surface, behind the guilt. It used to be a place they visited, where they laughed and sang and played music.

Music that was illegal now.

The Queen, his mother, had been so gifted in that department. Her voice had soothed even the grumpiest of listeners. It never failed to send him to sleep as a merling. It was a blessing, until they lost it. Then all music was banned, for the reminders it brought of the kind Queen they had, the Queen they lost.

William hardly remembers her voice. The memory of her scream and her blood is far more vivid. In banning music, the king had taken away any good William had in his childhood, leaving him desperate for something he should hate.

They’d left his mother at the surface. His memory of her is clearer there and maybe that’s why he’s so fascinated with it. Her ghost lives where sky meets ocean, leaving her dead to the place she’d called home. Nothing but a ghost the people were forbidden to acknowledge.

He thinks his father is going about mourning her wrong. He can hardly remember music, what it sounded like, how it made him happy. The only place he can really remember her is the surface, where he simultaneously feels free and like he’s drowning.

There’s a human castle, not far from the home of the merpeople. It’s far less impressive, of course, made of tall, weathered stone and not glimmering gold. There’s a certain charm to it nonetheless. He watches it on his short stints to the surface.

One day, a beautiful melody is heard as he breaks the surface gasping. He can feel the cold spear that drove through his mother, the warmth of her blood as it spilled out into the water. Every time he breaks the surface of the waves, he feels her die all over again.

This time, though, there’s a lovely sound greeting him. Shamefully, it takes him a few moments to realize that it’s singing. It’s been so long since he’s heard it, and his memory of it is weak, quiet.

Turning his gaze to the castle, he sees a girl, standing on a balcony and quietly singing to the amphitheater of the ocean, where nothing visible listens. Waves crash and slosh against the shores, the only music accompanying her voice, the crow of seagulls her background vocals. It all echoes over the gentle rolls of the water.

She’s pretty, the girl. Her hair reminds him of the deep chasms that stretch down into the earth, the ones with no bottoms, so deep that no one dares to explore it. Her dress is also dark, a contrast to her pale skin. He’s bewitched, flicking his tail to drift closer to the girl and the castle full of humans.

Humans he should detest but doesn’t. Oh, he’s tried, but he’s never succeeded. Now, listening to the calm voice of this one, he doesn’t think he ever will.

Nostalgia cinches around his chest, a faded memory of his mother coming to mind, her fingers dragging though his hair as she sings him to sleep. A feeling —safety, comfort — settles over his heart. He can’t remember the last time he felt sated, at peace.

It’s the orange tint of the sun that brings him back to himself, sun lurking low over the horizon, William has to his eyes off her form. Her melancholic song comes to an end with one last drifting hum.

His gaze lingers for a moment, etching her sad beauty into his mind before he turns and disappears under the waves. In a current, heading home, his mind whispers her song to him, hoping to keep the peace it had made him feel while he dives into the chilly waters of home.

Half a moon phase passes before he has to come up for air again. For a glimpse of the girl he shouldn’t be thinking about. She’s there, thankfully, on the same balcony, with a man. The moon leers over them, the vice around his heart loosening a little as he recognizes her, the panic of his mother’s memory duller then it usually is.

Black sky stretched above them, speckled in white, her laughter sounds, light and pleasant, barely audible over rough waves. A storm is coming, clouds inching their way closer from the far off horizon, invisible under the dark sky.

The man is dark haired, like her. He laughs too, in a deeper tone, exchanging unintelligible words with her. They seem comfortable together, the girl happy, and the sight brings a smile to William’s face.

He shouldn’t be smiling because of a human. Yet, with her laugh turning her face to the sky, showcasing her joy, he smiles anyway. They leave after only a few short moments, but William remains, turning his eyes to the night sky.

It’s amazing that it can look so different without the sun. He arches his tail up, ogling the way the soft light bounces off the scales. Water drips from his fin, and he reluctantly lowers it back to the water, casting one last look at the castle as he dives under and returns to his home.

Sneaking into his bedroom, he wonders who the man was, who the girl is. He’s infatuated with her, her voice an addiction he can’t escape.

He’s in trouble.

Only a couple days pass before he has to see her again, far too soon after his last visit, but her memory begs for his return. Breaking the surface is relieving, the memory of his mother distant as he spots the girl again.

The girl is there, on the beach, so close that he has to shirk behind a rock to avoid catching her attention.

Sand sinks beneath her slow, loping strides. Waves roll out to kiss the soles of her feet before receding just to do it again. He notes that her eyes are as dark as her hair, her dress still dark, but scattered with white stars, more casual then last dress she’d been in. She drifts aimlessly, sand squishing beneath her toes and the hem dragging beneath her heels.

She begins to sing. It’s enchanting, to hear it when she’s so close. She’s doing so absentmindedly, a sound between humming and singing, but it’s still beautiful, to the boy who hasn’t heard it in over a decade before he heard her. He peers around the rock to get a better look.

Towards the end of the small stretch of beach, there’s a log. Driftwood that had come ashore during a storm, most likely. She takes a seat, leaning her elbows onto her knees as she stares at the horizon.

William inches around the rock a little more. His tail makes a splash behind him as he does so, excitement making holding it still difficult.

She stops singing, gaze swinging over to William, who’s wide-eyed but otherwise hidden. She stands, eyes pinned to him as she says a soft “hello?”

William ducks behind the rock, but stays above water.

“Who are you?” Her voice is placating, soothing. He doesn’t want to leave, wants to hear it some more, but she’s not supposed to see him. Humans aren’t allowed to see them.

Swallowing deeply, he peers his head around the rock, hyper aware of his tail and that it stays hidden. He looks human, for the most part, above the waist. As long as that’s all she sees, she shouldn’t learn what he is.

“Hi,” he whispers, flopping a hand in a sad attempt for a wave. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“It’s alright. Were you listening to me sing?”

Red-cheeked, he nods. “Your voice is pretty.” His fingers dig into the rough stone shielding him. He’s not supposed to be here, talking with a human. He was breaking all kinds of laws, coming up here.

“Thank you.” She laughs a little. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before, though. My name is Celine.”

Blinking, William replies, against his better judgement. “I’m William.”

“Hi William.”

“Hi.”

They idle in silence for some time, simply staring at one another, awkwardness thick in the air. She clears her throat. “So,” she says, “what are you doing here?”

“Uhh. I just came to see the castle.” A half-truth. He’d came to see one who lived in it as well.

Something about his words twist her smile in an unhappy way. “Ah, you came to see the Queen-to-be in person, huh?”

“Queen to be?” He tilts his head.

She nods, her posture stiffer and her back now straight. “Yes. I’m the princess. My coronation is upcoming.”

Something in his heart aches, empathetic. He examines her posture, her bitter tone. “You don’t want to be Queen?”

“Not really.” She shakes her head, sighing as she sits again. “It just seems like a lot of unnecessary circumstance and grandeur. A lot of rules to follow.”

He hoists himself up, half dangling off the rock, half leaning against it so he can be better seen. “And it just seems like a waste of resources, doesn’t it?” They’re busy planning a big, proper celebration? Won’t let you have two seconds to yourself without a guard at your side?”

“Yes!” She nods enthusiastically, groaning. “You have no idea how exhausting it is.”

Laughing a little, he shakes his head. “I have some idea, trust me.” He remembers the wall of guards he had to sneak by, the bribe he paid to the gatesman, his father’s voice echoing through the halls. Water laps against the shore, against his back. “It’s nice to just get away for a bit, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. Not that I don’t love it, it’s just— it just gets a little stifling at times.”

“Yeah.” He smiles ruefully, sadly. He knows all too well.

Smoothing her skirts, she looks up at him. “Why don’t you come out of the water? I’m sure it’s cold.”

His fin twitches, fingers clenching. “I’m fine here.”

“Alright,” she shrugs, eyes sliding away from him. “Tell me something,” she says suddenly, head rocked back and facing the sky.

“Like what?”

She smiles. “Anything.”

Hours pass, sun dragging across the sky. Pinkened sky, blazing sun, they become something very close to friends. Forging a bond with a stranger, someone that both know they shouldn’t, but that they do anyways.

She doesn’t want to be Queen. She’s being pushed to take her throne and a husband, except there’s no man she’s held any interest in.

“This is probably the best time I’ve had in a while,” she says, mulling over her thoughts audibly and breaking the comfortable bubble of silence. “It’s too bad you’re not one of my suitors, you’re easily the best of them.”

William’s breath catches. He flounders for a response, his mind blank.

“Princess!” A far off cry sounds, her name in a deep tone. She slumps, putting her face in her hands.

William glances down the beach, lowering himself into the water nervously. Instinct screams at him to dive, to swim out of sight.

“Duty calls,” she says, standing to brush sand off her dress. She turns to the voice, but stops herself from taking a step. She looks at William, the strange boy in the water. “Will I see you again?”

He hesitates. He should say no, leave now that he’s seen her up close, held a conversation with her. This is too close, too far past the line, law shattered behind him. “Same time tomorrow?”

Celine nods. “If I can get away.”

Sand flies under the heels of the guard, who sighs once he spots Celine. “Princess,” he says, “you’re needed back at the castle.”

Her gaze turns to sea, barren and empty. She follows the guard back to the castle, to civilization hungry for a glimpse of their future ruler at an overly fancy dinner.

William’s head peeps up over the water as he watches her walk away, guard at her side. His mind turns, heart reaching out to her, her struggles that he understands. He wants to come back, to get closer to her. Her last words play in his mind.

It’s too bad you’re not one of my suitors.

An idea flashes across his mind. He bites his lip, draws blood. Eyes darting between the castle he’s been admiring for months and the water beneath him. He makes his decision.

Diving under the water, he swishes his tail powerfully, rocketing himself downwards, into cool depths and past his own castle. The light shimmer of his home fades as he enters the one place more forbidden then the sea’s cover.

He enters the kraken’s lair.

———

Masterlist

Ooh, a cliffhanger. What will happen next, I wonder? Y’all will just have to wait. Let me know if you liked this, though!!

TAGGING: @pleaseletthisjimbetaken @electricprincess888 @berrie-b @mackenziplier @gerardwayslips @risiskifi @cawestad @theinvisiblespoon @californiakxng @just-another-starfish @superawesomeamazingname @moonstonefox12 @bones-and-tomes @am-i-heaven-or-am-i-hell @itsbumblebunnybee @noisyfreakpersonlover @nightmarejim @schuyleryette @withjust-a-bite @statictay @muraae (tags are open and I think I’m right in not tagging the WKM list because this isn’t explicitly WKM?? Idk.)

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asktheheartsprincess · 6 years ago

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Solo Para: “Do You Regret It?”

OOC Mun note: I recommend listening to the instrumental version of Zack Hemsey’s “See What I’ve Become” while reading this:

Fairy Godmother looked at her expectantly as they sat in the Rehabilitation Center. Ardenzana, Queen of Hearts, balanced a cup of tea before her, looking at the eyes of the so-called “villains” around her. Many were cowed and embarrassed, staring at their laps in shame that they had come to this. Fairy Godmother had these sessions with them, sessions in which she asked them to confess to their manifold wickedness with one another. It was so she could keep tabs on their “progress” in the program, and decide which of them was fit to be released back into the public. As though they were diseased, quarantined until they were healthy enough not to infect the general population.

And infect them with what? Ardenzana wondered. Respect? Pride? Self-esteem? Perhaps this world would not need fairy godmothers if people were allowed to believe in themselves and their work and not shamed.

Ardenzana gave a barely perceptible shake of the head as she took a sip of her tea. She knew what Fairy Godmother expected her to say:

“Yes. I’m terribly sorry. I’ve done awful things. I’ve killed hundreds of people. I could never hope to earn the forgiveness of King Ben. I’m not responsible enough to rule. I give up my crown to him.”

But oh, how *wrong* the fairy was. How *naive.* The pathetic look in her eyes- almost pleading -did she forget who she was dealing with? Ardenzana’s green eyes fixed on the fairy’s, and fire blazed in them.

Fairy Godmother may have forgotten, but Ardenzana never would.

Ardenzana, newly crowned Queen of Hearts, sat in her throne room, making her proclamation to the astounded members of the court before her:

“Any who defy the laws of Wonderland will pay the ultimate price. They will lose their heads and their lives, and it will be done publicly so others may see the cost of breaking the law.” She drummed her fingers on the golden armrest, waiting for their reaction. She’d carefully considered her options before making this decision, but she’d known that the queendom could not remain in the state it was at her own mother’s death. The three noble houses had members who, instead of taking charge of their duties as they had vowed to do, were becoming corrupt, profiting off others’ pain. It wasn’t that Ardenzana believed criminals should have luxuries- she didn’t, and they didn’t deserve them. However, neither should nobles be lining their pockets with gold from families trying to give their loved ones what little benefits they could receive in prison.

That would not do, and since her mother’s warnings had not put a stop to the practice, Ardenzana would scare them into it if she had to. And unlike her mother, Ardenzana was not a woman of words only.

It was a fine spring day, not long after the queen had made her announcement, that she’d first had to put it into practice. Ardenzana’s spies had identified a count running a side operation to provide prisoners with blankets, and he was charging 5,000 Wonderlandian crowns to ensure their delivery. The blankets themselves barely cost 20 crowns. Wonderlanders weren’t starving by any means, but this was practically extortion. 5,000 crowns could buy someone a house.

No, no- this wouldn’t do.

So when the count was dragged before her, whimpering and pleading for his life, barely able to get her honorific out in the correct order, she held up a hand.

“Stop. Just stop. You do yourself a disservice, blubbering in this way,” the queen gazed at the man without an ounce of sympathy, “and you’ve done the people of Wonderland a disservice with your actions. I warned you- as I warned everyone -of the changes to the law. You ignored them. You ignored me. And as I warned everyone that day, I am not to be ignored. Neither are my laws,” she nodded to her guards, and said carelessly, “Off with his head.” The words weren’t shouted, as later descriptions would claim- not the first time. The first time, they were said calmly, simply, and the only screaming in the room was that of the now sobbing count as her guards dragged him outside into a courtyard.

Abruptly, the screaming went silent.

Turning to the nobles around her, Ardenzana smiled, “Now, I believe we were scheduled for tea?” The stunned onlookers could only nod, pasting smiles on their faces.

Now, Ardenzana thought with a glimmer of satisfaction, now this will stop.

No one was more surprised than the Queen of Hearts herself when she had to order it again. She’d really thought she’d only have to do it once before people understood she wasn’t joking, that law and order were priorities for her, and she would ensure they were respected. Apparently, that was not the case.

This time, when two men were dragged before her, Ardenzana rose from her throne and backhanded them across the face, “You deserve far worse than what you’ll get for what you’ve done,” she snarled, hoping she’d managed to break a few bones.

“Y-y-your Majesty,” the first man entreated, “We didn’t know-” the second man merely howled in pain from her backhand, and she switched her gaze back to the first:

“You didn’t know? How could you not understand? Are you not just monsters, but tulgey idiots as well? Do you not comprehend the meaning of the word ‘no?’ I doubt such a thing is true. And the last thing you need to add to your charges is ‘lying to the monarch,’” disdainfully, she looked down at the pair, who were murmuring apologies to her, “Stop. I am the last person you should be apologizing to. You will apologize to the girl whose innocence you stole,” it was this time that she did shout, her face red with rage, “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!”

And Ardenzana made sure it was the last thing they did before the axe fell.

Some people in Wonderland were happy with the changes, as crime rates plummeted in general. Though others, Ardenzana’s spies whispered to her, were not. This perplexed the queen. She was finally putting the queendom in order, finally obtaining the peace that had so eluded her mother. What did people have to be displeased about? Still, the queen mused, people were entitled to their opinions. So long as they didn’t break the law, she wouldn’t bar people from speaking their minds.

A herald bowed to her as he entered the room, “Your Imperial Highness, Your Grace, Your Excellency, Your Royal Majesty. This month’s list of execution orders, awaiting your approval.”

“Thank you, Rabbit,” Ardenzana nodded regally before accepting the parchment, reviewing the names and list of associated crimes. She’d presided over the trials herself, of course, so none of this came as a surprise, but she wouldn’t forgive herself for any mistakes, so she always reviewed final lists before commanding a sentence be carried out.

“Ardenzana,” a soft voice called to her, and the queen turned, a genuine smile creeping across her face as her husband entered the room and kissed her. She missed the way his eyes grew a shade darker at seeing what she held in her hands.

“Rhombus,” the Queen of Hearts kissed him back, “You’re back early.” The king had been off to visit some old military friends, and while she always loved seeing her husband, she hadn’t expected him to return for another day or so.

“I know,” Rhombus said, running a hand through his hair and trying to figure out how best to explain, “Darling, I heard some rumors-”

“Rumors?”

“Yes,” Rhombus gulped, “that other monarchs are not as...understanding of our policies. That they might be considering,” he chose his words carefully, “interfering.”

Ardenzana practically crushed the pen in her hands, because she knew exactly which monarch her husband was referring to. Taking deep breaths, she suppressed the rage spiraling up within her and said:

“I do not interfere in that man’s realm, however horrendously acquired it was. I expect him to give me the same courtesy.”

With that, the queen signed her name to the parchment and called to the herald, “Off with their heads.”

There had been no mistakes.

Shaking her head as she returned to the present, Ardenzana took another sip of tea. It had been a full two minutes since Fairy Godmother had asked her the question, and the tension in the room was so thick it could be cut with one of her daggers (if only they’d let her have them, she fumed). The queen supposed she could lie to the loathsome fairy, but what would that gain her, in the end? What freedom was it, if her realm remained under the rule of Auradon? Despite the mermaid’s song, walking in the streets was not worth the price of her queendom. No, Ardenzana would gain nothing from lying- though Corazana might.

Setting down her teacup, Ardenzana said slowly and distinctly, “I know what you wish me to say. I know what you people wish I would forget. But I do not forget. I do not forgive. I was born the eldest daughter of Incenzana, Queen of Hearts, and I had 1,892 unbirthdays until my accession, at which point I became- and I remain -Her Imperial Highness, Her Grace, Her Excellency, Her Royal Majesty, Ardenzana of Wonderland, Queen of Hearts,” her voice growing more and more passionate, Ardenzana continued, “I vowed I would do what my mother could only dream of. I have kept that promise. So, to answer your question, while I have three regrets in my life, no, I do not regret my rule in Wonderland. It is the greatest honor anyone could have, and it is not something that I will give up, ever,” rising to her feet, she could barely hide the glee that filled her at Fairy Godmother’s look of outraged shock, “so you can stop asking me. You are asking me to lie, while preaching to me I should never lie. So here is the truth,” she bent close to Fairy Godmother, “if we were in Wonderland right now, what you and your old king have done would be defined as war crimes. And I don’t like criminals,” leaning so close the fairy could feel Ardenzana’s breath on her face, the Queen of Hearts practically hissed, “And you know what that means: ‘Off. With. Their. Heads.’”

Then she swept out of the room.

#solo para #queen of hearts #ardenzana #wonderland #solo #ooc: ardenzana demanded this happen

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spiderneds · 6 years ago

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Something Is Starting Right Now (Tony Stark x Reader) The Little Mermaid AU

requested by @winterierwriter

songs used:

Part Of Your World (Reprise) (The Little Mermaid)

Once Dance (Deleted Song from The Little Mermaid)

You were the princess of a kingdom under the sea, but that was the opposite of who you dreamed of being. All you wanted was to live on the land with all of the people. And it just so happened that the first human you’d ever spotted was the first (and last) one you’d ever fall in love with.

His name was Tony, and he was a prince. You watched him celebrate his birthday on a boat with his kingdom. He was dancing with his dog, who he called Jarvis.

You were hanging off of the surface of the boat, completely mesmerized by the scene unfolding in front of you. You sighed and tilted your head. “I’ve never seen a human this close before,” you hummed. You tilted your head as you asked your friend, a seagull named Rhodey, “Oh, he’s very handsome, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, “he looks kinda hairy and slobbery to me.”

You rolled your eyes, knowing he was looking at the dog. “Not that one! The one playing the snarfblatt.”

“Silence! Silence!” The music on the boat stopped. “It is now my honor and privilege to present our esteemed Prince Tony with a very special, very expensive gift.”

Tony slapped the man speaking on the back. “Stane, you old beanpole, you shouldn’t have!”

“I know,” the man replied bitterly. “Happy birthday, Tony.”

The cloth draped across the gift was pulled off. Everyone clapped as a giant statue of the prince himself stood on the boat, posed and perfectly carved out of marble.

“Uh... gee, Stane. It’s, uh, it’s really something,” Tony said.

“Well, I commissioned it myself. Of course, I had hoped that it would be a wedding present.”

“Oh come on, Stane, don’t start!” Tony cried. He took a seat on the side of the boat. You pressed your back against the side of the ship so he wouldn’t see you. “Look, you’re not still sore because I didn’t fall for the princess, are you?”

“Oh, Tony, it isn’t me alone. The entire kingdom wants to see you happily settled down with the right girl.”

“Well, she’s out there somewhere,” Tony replied. “I just haven’t found her yet.”

You smiled, looking up at him with lovesick eyes.

“Well, perhaps you haven’t been looking hard enough.”

“Believe me, Stane, when I find her, I’ll know. Without a doubt, it’ll just hit me. Like lightning!”

At the same time, somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled. It made you jump.

One of the crew members shouted, “Hurricane a’coming!”

You gasped, looking at Rhodey with a terrified expression. He held on tight to the side of the boat with you; the wind was already picking up.

The people on the ship were hurriedly trying to secure their boat or hiding. Waves clashed against the side of the ship, knocking it back and forth. You held on tight, but Rhodey-

“Whoa, the wind-” His wings let go of the ship. “___!”

You reached for him, but you couldn’t see him through the rain anymore.

Waves washed up on deck, taking crew members with it. One of them knocked you off the side of the boat. You landed in the water. You hurriedly swam back up to the surface, eyes wide as a strike of lightning hit one of the sails, making it burst into flames.

it overtook the entire ship way too quickly. To make matters worse, the ship was out of control and hit a cluster of rocks. Every man left on deck fell right off the side, plunging into the water.

Tony was with them.

You gasped, but saw him resurface. He was pulled onto a small paddle boat with several other men. They rescued Stane, who was struggling to stay above water.

Tony turned his head when he heard barking. It was coming from the ship, where his dog was still trapped.

“Jarvis!” he shouted. He wasted no time to dive right back into the water. As Stane screamed for him to get back on the boat, he swam to the ship to rescue his dog from the fire.

He climbed up the side. You swam around in circles, unsure of what to do. You wanted to help him.

The boat was bending and breaking and the fire was growing. You watched as the dog got tossed overboard and safely put on the paddle boat, but Tony was still up there. You held your breath-

And with a loud boom! the entire ship burst into flames.

Smoke went everywhere, and you were horrified. You swam right towards it, dodging pieces of the ship that were now floating or sinking in the water.

On one of the wooden boards, you saw the prince, draped unconsciously over it. He slipped off the small plank and into the water. You dove in, swimming after him

Your arms went around his body and you pulled him up, using all of your strength to bring him to the surface so he could breathe. You pulled him all the way to the sandy coast.

The sun was rising when you laid him down. He wasn’t moving, and you worried about him.

Rhodey landed next to you.

“Is he... dead?” you asked him.

“It’s hard to tell,” Rhodey replied, wings shrugging. He hurried over to the other side of the prince and held his foot to his ear. He sighed and shook his head. “I can’t make out a heartbeat.”

“No look!” you cried. “He’s breathing.” You touched a curl that stuck out on his forehead. “He’s so... beautiful.”

You touched his face, shaking your head. Your father had told you humans were dangerous, but how... how could this man be dangerous?

“What would I give to live where you are?” you sang, moving his head gently so you could see his face. “What would I pay to stay here beside you? What would I do to see you smiling at me? Where we would walk? Where would we run? If we could stay all day in the sun... just you and me, and I could be, part of your world.”

In the distance, you heard barking, followed by shouts of: “Tony! Tony!”

Still half asleep, the sun was shining on the prince’s face. He touched the mysterious hand on his cheek. His eyes fluttered open, and for a fraction of a second, he saw the most beautiful face staring at him.

And then, just like that, she was gone.

He sat up, holding his aching head. He felt his dog licking his face and Stane’s arms lifting him up. He stood on his shaky legs.

“A girl,” he breathed. “A girl... rescued me. She was singing. She had... the most beautiful voice.”

Stane laughed and patted Tony’s shoulder. “I think you’ve swallowed a bit too much seawater. Off we go.” Putting Tony’s arm around him, he helped him back to the palace that stood on the rocky ledge of the beach.

You were ducked behind a slab of rock, hiding from the barking dog. Happy, the crab that followed you around everywhere, was next to you - along with your friend, Peter, the guppy.

“We just wanna forget this whole thing ever happened,” Happy said. “The sea king will never know! You won’t tell him, I won’t tell him. I will stay in one piece.”

But you weren’t listening. Once the dog hopped away, you slid up on the rock, peeking over.

“I don’t know when,” you sang, “I don’t know how, but I know something’s starting right now! Watch and you’ll see... someday I’ll be... part of your world!” You lifted up on your arms and the waves washed over you. You’d never felt more powerful - more ready to tackle your dreams.

You knew you would do anything to be a human, and you were right. That very night, you traded your voice for a pair of legs. Happy and Peter warned you not to trade with the sea witch, who was known for being evil, but you were desperate. It was your only shot at a happily ever after.

So you took it.

They brought you to the shore before your lungs ached too much for air. You washed up in the shallow water, sitting against a rock and plucking seaweed out of your hair.

Your heart nearly leaped out of your chest when you saw the legs that had replaced your green fin. You crossed your leg so that it was propped up on your knee.

“Well, look at what the catfish dragged in!” Rhodey shouted, landing on a rock near your head. “Look at you! I mean, look at you! There’s something different!”

You nodded.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “I got it. It’s your hairdo, right? You’ve been using a dinglehopper, right?”

You bit your lip and shook your head.

“No? No, no... well, let me think. New... seashells? No? I gotta admit, I can’t put my foot on it right now, but...”

Happy groaned. “She’s got legs, you idiot! She traded her voice to the sea witch and got legs. Jeez, man!”

“I knew that,” Rhodey mumbled.

“___’s been turned into a human,” Peter said. “She’s gotta get the prince to fall in love with her, and he’s gotta k... he’s gotta kiss her!”

While they were talking, you were focusing on learning how to stand up for the first time. Your legs were wobbly and you weren’t sure how to balance yourself with two fins. You held your arms out, trying to gain your footing.

“And she’s only got three days!” Happy said.

You slipped, falling right back into the water. You sat up and pulled your hair off your face like a curtain.

“Just look at her,” Happy griped. “On legs! On human legs!” He gasped. “My nerves are shot. This is a catastrophe! What would her father say? I’ll tell you what her father’d say. He’d say he is going to kill himself a crab, that’s what her father will say! I am going to march myself home right now and tell him just like-”

Panicked, you scooped him up and held him close to your face. Pleadingly, you shook your head.

“And don’t you shake your head at me, young lady,” he scolded. “Maybe there is still time. If we can get that witch to give you back your voice, you could go home with all the normal fish, and just be-” He stopped, seeing the sad look in your eyes. “And just be... just be... just be miserable for the rest of your life.” He sighed. “Alright, alright. I’ll try to help you find that prince.”

Overjoyed, you kissed him on the cheek. You placed him on the rock.

“Oh boy,” he said, shaking his head. “What a softshell I am turning into...”

“Now, ___, I’m telling you,” Rhodey said, grabbing a sail from a pile of wreckage. “If you want to be a human, the first thing you gotta do is dress like one.”

Minutes later, you were wrapped up in a sail to make a new dress. You fluffed up your hair a little and turned, checking out the way the dress hung off of your body - and around your new legs.

“You look great, kid. You look sensational,” Rhodey told you.

A second later, you heard familiar barking. Tony’s dog, Jarvis, came lunging forward. He chased after your friends until they hid and then chased you right up the side of a rock. You tried to push him away, but he hopped up on his back legs and licked you right on your face.

“Jarvis!”

You looked up when you heard his voice.

And you saw him.

He knelt down to pet his dog and then raised his head up. “Quiet, Jarvis. What’s gotten into you, fella?” He saw you and his expression changed. “Oh. Oh, I see.” Slowly, he approached you.

You brought all of you hair to one side, desperate to look good.

“Are you okay, miss?” he asked. “I’m sorry if this knucklehead scared you. He’s harmless, really-” He really got a look at you and paused. “You... seem very familiar to me. Have we met?”

You nodded excitedly. This was going so well!

“We have met!” he replied. “I knew it!” He grabbed your hands. “You’re the one! The one I’ve been looking for!”

Your heart nearly exploded. He had been looking for you.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

You lips formed your name, but no sound came out. Horrified, you touched your throat. How could you tell him who you were now?

“What’s wrong?” Tony asked. “What is it?” You touched your throat. “What... you can’t speak?”

You shook your head.

“Oh. Oh, then... you couldn’t be who I thought.” He frowned.

You did, too. If only you could tell him...

You got an idea. You tapped him and he watched you as your arms flailed around, trying to explain where you came from with just your gestures.

“What is it? You’re hurt? No, no... you need help?”

Frustrated, you moved your arms out faster, and-

And slipped right off the rock.

Tony caught you in his arms. “Whoa, whoa there! Careful. Easy.”

Your arms were around his shoulders. You looked up at him shyly.

“You must have really been through something,” he said.

You looked down.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll help you. Come on,” he said gently. He kept an arm around you as he brought you the way he came.

You looked over your shoulder, grinning as Rhodey and Peter both nodded and smiled encouragingly. Happy was tucked away in the rope that went around your makeshift dress.

They told you that you were the first person to make Tony laugh in a long while. You were the first person to make him stop and stare for a while. You were the first one to catch his attention, to make him think about someone else.

You heard that he really liked you.

Tony decided to take you out on a tour of his kingdom. He took you in a carriage, offering to buy you whatever you wanted. Loaves of bread, hats... anything. He too you to see a puppet show, and then he took you dancing.

And that dance alone made you fall so much more in love with him that it ached your soul.

After dancing, and several other fun things later, he took you on a small boat. Every time he looked at you, you swore he was in love with you, too. He had to be.

That night, on the balcony outside of your room, you stared dreamily at your prince as he played with Jarvis. You had never been more content.

He caught you staring, but he only smiled more. He waved at you.

You jumped back in surprise and backed into your room.

Unknowing to you, he was still smiling, thinking about you.

Yes, he was in love with the girl that sang to him. But was he really? She was just a voice that rescued him. And in that moment, he thought she was the one. But now there was this girl, and she was... she was everything he had ever wished for in a bride.

He blinked in surprise. A bride? Since when did he think about these things? He shook his head, but he couldn’t... he couldn’t shake his mind of her.

You brushed through your hair on your way to bed. You placed the brush on your nightstand, gave Happy’s head a pat, and plopped down on the soft plush that was your bed. You turned onto your stomach and curled up, smiling.

In your head, before you drifted off to sleep, you thought of dancing with the prince again. But this time, in your mind, it was you in a wedding gown, dancing with him in front of the kingdom - on his ship, as his bride.

Even though you were physically silent, your heart was full of song.

There is music in the air, can you hear it? It's in two, no, maybe three or maybe four And I see me dressed in white With two feet that feel so light It's as though as they've never ever touched the floor

You could picture it, dancing with him forever. And it felt so right. One dance, just you and me Beneath the moon, beside the sea One dance and it's happily ever after One dance and you will see We're not so different, you and me Just us two, me and you One dance There are stars that fill the night, can you see them? There are two, or three or gee, a million more And I see in their light Oh me? A dance? All right Just to move and glide with you across the floor One dance, just you and me Beneath the moon, beside the sea One dance and it's happily ever after One dance and you will see We're not so different, you and me Just us two, me and you I would change who I am Change the sea for the sand Just to stand with you I would leap at the chance For a glimpse of a glance Of one dance with you One dance, just you and me Beneath the moon, beside the sea One dance and it's happily ever after One dance and you will see We're not so different, you and me Just us two, dream come true One dance One dance

Your shoulders relaxed and you drifted off into a sleep, happily dreaming of the happily ever after to come. No matter what, things would work out perfect for you and Tony. Because you knew that he was your prince. And you being a little mermaid couldn’t change that.

#something is starting right now #tony stark x reader #iron man imagines #marvel imagines #disney themed marvel imagines #mariah's work #spiderneds work

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tired-bangtan-sonyeondan · 6 years ago

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The Little Merman (Jungkook x Reader) Part 1/2

This is a Little Mermaid AU. It is literally just quotes and song lyrics from the musical. You should listen to it while your read it if you want.

Tags: nothing bad. I don’t even think I cursed lol

Word Count: 6141

Author’s Note: I don’t really have anything to say. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy this cringe fic.

Ariel: Jungkook

Flounder: Hoseok

Sebastian: Namjoon

Flotsam: Jin

Jetsam: Taehyung

Ursula: Jimin

Grimsby: Yoongi

“This is where I belong: beneath the clear wide blue here. I feel completely new here in the world above.” His smooth voice ghosted over the tops of the waves as he breached the surface. There wasn’t a soul around. His family was beneath the sea, probably preparing for some extravagant get together. They always were. No one ever really noticed when Jungkook was gone, even though he was the king’s only son. The only one who cared about him was Hoseok, but even he was afraid of the surface. Jungkook was the only one brave enough to breach the top, and it had gotten him in trouble lots of times before. He didn’t care. This is where he felt the most right- the open air.

He gazed up at the sky, hand shielding his eyes from the bright sun. It was so much brighter up there. “There’s so much light here. Light and space. The sun’s so bright here upon my face.” He moved to float on his back, closing his eyes, just enjoying the warm air.

He finished his tune, slowing down the tempo as to make it last longer, “Life seems to be almost calling to me from this strange new world above.” He pushed himself onto a flat rock that he had deemed his own, not that there was anyone around that would take it from him. He laid down, basking in the warmth of the sunlight. He could get used to this. He continued to hum a beautiful tune as time passed around him.

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“I’ll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue, and it’s hey to starboard heave-ho. Brave sailor beware ‘cause a big one’s ‘a brewin. Mysterious fathoms below, heave-ho. I’ll sing you a song of the king of the sea, and it’s hey to the starboard, heave-ho. The ruler of all of the oceans is he in mysterious fathoms below.” You listened to your boatmates sing as you fluttered around the ship. You were keeping an eye on things as usual. Everyone of them adored you as a captain, but those who were unaware of your skill were weary. A girl captain? And a princess no less! It was absolutely ridiculous. It was unheard of until you. You paused for a minute when you felt a pair of eyes following you.

Turning to the eyes you grab you caretaker and pull him to the front of the ship. “Isn’t this perfection, Yoongi? Out on the open sea, surrounded by nothing but water?” He looks at you wearily. You know he gets seasick, but frankly, you don’t care. Your father should never have assigned you such a wimpy caretaker. You grab his hands and spin him around the ship singing,

“The salt on your skin and the wind in your hair and the waves as they ebb and they flow. We're miles from the shore, and guess what, I don't care!” You release him and he launches himself to the side of the ship, before he can get a word out he vomits over the side.

You chuckle and resume your duties. You join the sailors in their merry tune, unable to keep the smile off of your face. You all quiet when the pilot of the ship recants a tale of the mightest king on Earth, King Jeon, the ruler of the seven seas. Rumor has it, he hates humans and will kill any that pass over his beloved kingdom. Yoongi has never believed these stories, but you can’t help but wonder if they are true. A merciless king is something you have always feared, and that is the reason you haven’t taken a husband, yet.

A male voice calls you. It is none that you have heard before. It is smooth and rich, absolutely beautiful.

“Do you hear that?”

“Enough seafaring, Princess. We have to get back to court to honor your father’s dying wish and take up the crown.”

“That’s not the life for me, Yoongi. At least, not now when I am still an eligible maiden. The kingdom will go crazy if I am crowned before I wed.” The beautiful vice drifts through the air once more. The pilot warns you of a storm approaching, but his words fall on deaf ears. All you can focus on is that amazing voice. You order your crew to follow the voice-“To the ends of the Earth if we have to.”

The crew forges ahead, song turning to the prospect of mermaids. They grab you, coaxing you into their song once more, as you yearn to find out more about the mysterious fathoms below.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jungkook is woken by and hard tail slap to the face. He looks around to find Hoseok peeking out of the water. “Kookie, you’re going to be late!”

“For what?” He rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He must have sung himself to sleep yet again.

“Your father’s recital, Jungkook! That’s what! The one where you are supposed to reveal your vocal talents to all of the merfolk in the kingdom!”

The boy realizes his mistake, diving into the water as quickly as possible. Hoseok struggles to keep up with him. Luckily, the boy reaches the music hall in time to hear his sisters introduce themselves. Unfortunately, the shell he is supposed to be in is already on stage on front of everyone. It’s ok. I can you swim on. I’ll be fine! You can do this Jungkook. He watches patiently as one by one Aquata, Andrina, Arista, Attina, Adella, and Alana all reveal their sweet voices. Soon, their solos are finished and they begin his introduction. As soon as Jungkook hears his sister’s chanting, he prepares himself. He has prepared for this his whole life, what could go wrong?

“And then there is the youngest in his musical debut. Our youngest little brother, we're presenting him to you. To sing a song that Namjoon wrote, his voice is like a bell. It’s our brother Jungkook.” When the shell opens, everyone gasps. He can feel the tension from his father circulating in the room. He swims as graceful as possible to the center of the stage, sitting on the shell. The room sags in relief. Namjoon raises his baton to continue with the piece. When it is time for Jungkook to sing, nothing comes out. He is trying so hard to sing the notes the Namjoon taught him, but he is unable to. He panics, diving off stage, swimming to his alcove as quickly as possible.

This could not be happening. His voice had just failed him in front of the entire kingdom. His father had to be so disappointed in him. He must have spent too much time above water today. His father would figure it out, and he would kill him. It was absolutely forbidden for merfolk to breach the surface. Jungkook sobbed into his collection of trinkets. Hoseok appeared before him, giving him kind words to cheer him up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What have you got for me today, my precious babies?” The sea witch hissed out, caressing the two eels faces.

“We have some very interesting news, your wretchedness,” claimed Jin. “King Jeon’s only son has made a fool of himself, master,” hissed Taehyung.

“The recital was today, wasn’t it, my precious? What happened? Did the flitty thing not show? He always finds himself on the surface during the most inopportune times.”

“Not exactly, master.” Jimin’s grip tightened on their tails.

“Well, spit it out you imbeciles.” He flung the eels toward the walls of the cavern.

“Your wretchedness, the boy couldn’t sing.”

“He couldn’t sing? That’s ridiculous. The boy has the most beautiful voice in all the land.” Jimin sat down in his alcove, curling his tentacles around himself, completely ready to ignore the pleading eels for the next few hours. They were idiots.

“He was on stage, but nothing came out. Not one note, your wretchedness. His voice was gone.” Jimin shot out of his alcove.

“That’s it! That is how we will make Jeon pay!”

“What do you mean, master?” Jimin pulled them in, explaining his brilliant plan to lure the king in by holding his son and his beautiful voice hostage.

“There’s only one problem. How to get Jungkook to sign a contract with little ol’ me? Jin, Taehyung, fetch me information from the merfolk around the kingdom. Everything is important. This could be the key to Jeon’s undoing.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“If only I could make my father understand. I just don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be so bad.” Jungkook flits around his alcove, picking up certain things that really catch his eye and sing a sad tune of want and loneliness.

“Flippin' your fins, you don't get too far. Legs are required for jumpin', dancin'.” He hugs Hoseok to his chest, swirling him around, unable to stop himself from daydreaming. Hoseok pulls himself from Jungkook’s grasp, trying to talk some sense into him.

“The world above is dangerous, Kookie! You mother was killed by humans!” His pleas fall on deaf ears. His mother was killed by a passing ship. It was an accident. Why couldn’t anyone see that?

“When's it my turn? Wouldn't I love, love to explore that shore up above. Out of the sea, wish I could be part of that world.” He floats down to the bottom of the alcove, lost in pictures of dancing and running.

“You are ridiculous, child.” Hoseok shoots into Jungkook, clearly startled by Namjoon’s appearance. Jungkook tucks his tail under himself, creating the illusion of submission, believing it was King Jeon. When he spots Namjoon, he sags in relief for a moment before interrogating him.

“How did you find me? Did my father send you? You won’t tell him will you? Please, Namjoon. You just can’t!”

“Slow down, boy. I’ve been following you here for weeks. If I was going to tell the king, don’t you think I would have already?” The merman settles down.

“I suppose...but why are you here now?”

“You’re father sent me. He expects you to collect yourself by dinner.”

“I-Thank you, Namjoon. I’m sorry I embarrassed you and ruined the concert today. I just-” The cavern was coated in darkness. Jungkook releases a small gasp.

“A ship!”

“No, Jungkook!” Hoseok knows what he is about to do, but it is too late. As soon as the darkness clears, there is a noticeable lack of merman. The pair swim as fast as possible out of the cavern; it takes him them a while to catch up to the reckless boy. He has breached the surface and is openly gaping at the large ship that is sailing past.

“Jungkook! They might see us! They’ll surely kill us if we’re seen!” Namjoon pleas.

“Not all humans are evil, Namjoon.” The boy inches closer, leaping onto a protruding piece of the ship, still keeping out of sight.

“But your mother-”

“I KNOW! Just stop. Be quiet or you’ll alert them.”

“I’ll alert your father before I alert them.” Namjoon goes to dive, but Jungkook quickly catches him.

“Please, Namjoon. I just want to know why we are so afraid of them. After I witness that, I’ll leave and never return. I promise.” Namjoon looks apprehensive, but if that is what it takes, he will see it through.

“Is that a female crew member?” Hoseok interjects. The pair turn, and sure enough, standing at the helm of the ship is a woman. Her melodic voice carried over everyone else's, giving them orders. She wasn't just a female crew member. She was the captain.

“She’s beautiful.” Jungkook inches closer. He spots a storm brewing in the distance behind her. He must have angered his father. This crew was going to go under.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She felt Yoongi at her shoulder once again. His tired voice was almost nonexistent compared to the low droning of the crew. “We should really turn back miss.”

“No. We shall continue on until I find the owner of that magnificent voice.”

“I’m starting to believe you hallucinated the whole thing, princess. A hallucination is not worth traveling into the brewing storm for. Besides, I promised your father you would be married before your 18th birthday.” “Trust me Grimsby. When I come across the guy of my dreams, it’ll hit me like lightning.” As if on cue, a bolt of lightning hit the mainsail, causing it to burst into flames. You are only shaken for half a second before you begin shouting commands.

“Hurricane a-coming. King Jeon must be angry indeed.” You find yourself really wanting to punch the pilot. No shit.

You continue with your orders.

“(Y/N), take the wheel.” You do, but you are unable to keep the boat steady. There is so much rocking, all you can do is hope no one has gone overboard. Just as you think that, you see a crew mate standing dangerously close to the edge of the ship. You run to him just has he is tossed over the side. You grab his hand, trying your best to anchor yourself in place.

The crew member is quick to thank you, pulling himself. Unfortunately, that is when another surge hits the ship, and you are thrown over the side. The crew member is not as quick to catch you.

“MAN OVERBOARD!”

“PRINCESS (Y/N)!”

The next thing you know you are in dark icy waters. The water is filling your lungs. You try to calm yourself as you are pulled beneath the surface. You hear faint but beautiful voices. Are those angels? Sirens maybe? King Jeon’s mermaids? You resign yourself to the fact that you may never know as you feel your body failing you. Your limbs are tired. You are going to drown.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I can’t just sit here and let her drown,” Jungkook screams. His heart is beating fast. If his father knew-no he couldn’t think about that. He had to focus on saving the beautiful captain of the mysterious ship.

It took him awhile, but he finally pulled the girl onto shore. He sat above her.

“Was I too late?”

“It’s hard to say, but either way, we should head back to the palace or your father-”

“Look! She’s breathing. Oh, guys, just look at her. She’s so beautiful.”

“What would I give to live where you are? What would I pay to stay here beside you? What would I do to see you smiling at me?” Hoseok and Namjoon look at eachother, eyes dark with worry. If Jungkook became too attached, there was no telling what he would do. Just then, a figure came rounding the corner, calling out to someone, clearly looking for the maiden on the beach. The girl began to cough up the remaining water in her lungs, eyes blinking to clear the film collecting there.

The sea creatures dove back into the water, hiding behind a nearby rock so they could listen to the conversation being held.

“Oh, Princess (Y/N), you had me worried sick.”

“She’s a princess!” Jungkook whispers.

“I’m fine, Yoongi. But I could have sworn-”

“No. That’s enough for now. We need to get you inside and under a pile of nice warm blankets. No more seafaring from now on.”

“But-”

“No, buts. You are a princess, soon to be queen. You need to be alive to run the kingdom, and at this rate, you will kill yourself searching for that mysterious voice you heard in the middle of the ocean.”

“Fine. But only until I am wed. That voice, Yoongi. It was real. It had to be.”

“Whatever you say, your highness. Whatever you say.” The man pulled her arm around his shoulder and they headed back the way he came.

As soon as they were out of sight, Jungkook swam back to shore. He ran his fingers through the sand where she had lain, reprising the familiar song of want and longing.

“I don’t know when. I don’t know how. But I know something’s starting right now. Watch and you’ll see. Someday I’ll be…” His voice dies down to a whisper as he is unable to come up with any fathomable way that his dreams could be made a reality. “Part of your world.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the course of the next week or so King Jeon does everything in his power to keep Jungkook away from the surface and with Namjoon rehearsing. It doesn’t take much which he is ecstatic about. Finally, the merman had learned humans were dangerous and were not worth his time. They had been the reason for his lack of voice at the recital. They had been the reason the boy was embarrassed in front of the entire kingdom. At least, that is what the king thought was keeping his troublesome son on the ocean floor. His sisters seemed to think differently.

“What has been going on with Jungkook lately?” Attina asks her sisters one day. They are all lounging around the tidal pool basking in the peace and quiet brought on by Jungkook’s lack of surface activity.

“Can’t you just be happy we have some time to ourselves without father yelling about Kookie doing this or Kookie doing that?” Aquata responds.

“No, I can’t, and you shouldn’t be either.”

“He sure has been acting fishy lately,” Alana interjects.

“I’ll say, swimming in circles, chasing his tail.” Andrina can’t help but bring up all of the weird things he has been doing. “That boy is up to his gills in something.”

The mersisters with the exception of Aquata go back and forth, unable to keep themselves out of their brother’s business.

“It’s more than just a phase, face it, he’s just not himself.”

“Is he ill?”

“Or insane?”

“Is it water on the brain?”

“What has got him bothered so?”

“It’s the bends!”

“It’s the flu!”

“Gosh, I wish we had a clue!”

Finally, Aquata can’t handle it anymore. She has to tell these idiots the one thing they’re missing. “He’s in love.”

“He’s in love?” They respond.

“Pounding heart. Ringing bells.”

“Glory be. Lord above. Got to be he’s in love.” They all shake their heads, feeling stupid that that hadn’t seen it earlier. They are about to settle down when Hoseok comes barreling through. Hoseok was Jungkook’s best friend. He had to know something.

“Hey, Hoseok, do you notice anything weird about you know who?” Attina stops the fish dead in his tracks.

“You mean Jungkook? I’ll say. He acts like he don’t see me. He doesn’t even speak. He treats me like sashimi leftover from last week. You see him late at night tossing in his ocean bed. He’s moody as a snapper. Oblivious as rocks. You swim right up and tap him, he lays there like a lox. As sure as dogfish bites, something’s made him lose his head. And he sighs and he swoons. And he’s humming little tunes. Even has a sort of glow. What on Earth could it be?”

“Any hammerhead can see. That sigh, that glow, that swoon.” The mersisters prompt him to the same conclusion they had just come to.

“OH NO! He’s in love! See his hips. How they swish.”

“Don’t you wonder who’s the lucky seafood dish? He’s found a deep sea hunk, and now, he’s as good as sunk.”

“See him blush. See him grin. Got to be love he’s in.”

The girls beginning to chant about Jungkook and someone swimming in the sea, and it takes everything in Hoseok to swim away. This isn’t good. Everyone can see how Jungkook is acting. He’s surprised King Jeon hasn’t figured it out, yet. If Jungkook doesn’t learn to control himself, the king will begin to question him, and he doesn’t know how long he can protect Jungkook’s human love secret.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life has been so dreary on land. Ever since her recovery, Yoongi hasn’t let the princess out of his sight, and she hasn’t been able to get that voice out of her damn head. One day, (Y/N) voices her thoughts to her servants, knowing they don’t have the answers but really needing to get things off of her chest.

“Where did he go? Where can he be? When will he come again calling to me?” They ignore her desperate pleas, so the woman takes to the beach to watch the passing ships as she laments about the lost boy with the beautiful voice.

“Somewhere there's a boy who's like the shimmer of the wind upon the water. Somewhere there's a boy who's like the glimmer of the sunlight on the sea. Somewhere there's a boy who's like a swell of endless music. Somewhere he is singing and his song is meant for me.”

She takes to the docks, weaving between the sailors before finally mounting her own ship. It is deserted as no one would dare board the boat without its captain, and she was currently banned from setting sail.

“I can sense his laughter in the ripple of the waves against the shoreline. I can see him smiling in the moonlight as it settles on the sand. I can feel him waiting just beyond the pale horizon, singing out a melody too lovely to withstand.”

She knows she can not man the boat by herself, but she still longs for the freedom of the sea, perching herself at the very front of the boat to feel the sea breeze on her face.

“And his voice it's there as dusk is falling. And his voice it's there as dawn steals by. Pure and bright, it's always near. All day, all night. And still I hear it calling...His voice.”

She finally pulls herself off of the boat. She murmurs to herself as she makes her way back to the castle, “Strange as a dream...Real as the sea...If you can hear me now come set me free…”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jungkook was humming to himself in his alcove, admiring the statue of the young maiden that had sunk with the ship she was on that he had collected, unbeknownst of the storm brewing in his father. He had missed dinner, and King Jeon believed he had gone up to the surface once more. He was absolutely furious. His son was going to get himself killed. He needed to be punished.

“Namjoon, fetch Jungkook. I need to have a very serious talk with him.” The crab looked terrified, but hurried out to the alcove where he knew the merman would be. Little did he know, the king had followed him, needing to find out where Jungkook had been hiding out whenever he was reprimanded. What he saw when he entered the cave infuriated him. He kept his presence concealed long enough to hear Jungkook proclaim his longing for the world above once more.

The king revealed himself, shouting, “This is where you belong.” Jungkook scrambled to conceal the statue, replying, “You don’t understand.” The king grabbed his son, flinging him across the cavern. “For once, just listen, will you? That savage brute would kill you in the world above!”

“She’s not a barbarian-”

“Don’t try that same old song! I’ll have you grounded ‘til next year! Am I clear? Don’t go near that world above!”

“I’m not a child anymore!”

“No? Have you lost your senses? She’s a human; you’re a merman.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“I’m still the king here – my word is law! This filth you bring here is the final straw, and push, my son, has come to shove! I’ll make you obey ‘til you do as I say. I don’t care, come what may, but I’ll keep you away from that cruel, harsh, cold, vile world above!” The king lifted his beloved trident, electricity surging through the water, destroying the statue and shattering many of the other objects lying around Jungkook’s sacred place.

“Now, Jungkook if I ever hear that you went to the surface again, I will never let you out of my sight again. Am I clear?”

Through tears Jungkook responds, “Yes, father.” The king leaves Jungkook to sob over the pieces of the princess.

“Jungkook-”

“This is your fault. He followed you here. How could you let him do that, Namjoon?”

“I-”

“Just leave me alone. I- I just want to be alone.”

“Do you-”

“Leave!” The crab sighs, knowing he will not get anywhere with the boy while he is like this. Only one thing could cheer him up: music.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“It’s been a while my babies. What did you bring to me this time?” The sea witch welcomes his loyal servants.

“Master, we have some very interesting news,” sings Taehyung.

“Yes, your wretchedness, the little boy is in love with a human?” hisses Jin.

“Jungkook? The king’s only son? Is in love with a human? Ha! That’s rich!”

“Yes, your wretchedness, he has destroyed his only connection to the outside world.”

“A statue of the princess in a nearby kingdom, master.”

“He has grown to hate his father, your wretchedness.”

“He will be very easy to win over, master.”

“Of course, he will be! I am the most charming in the family after all. Now, fetch the boy and bring him to me. We don’t have much time before Jeon will be looking for him again.”

“Yes, Jimin.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first time Namjoon catches Jungkook out of his alcove, he stops him. He knows the merman doesn’t want to see him, but everyone has gathered to cheer him up. He drags the boy over to the tidal pool where everyone else is waiting. They all greet him upon arrival, but it is easy to tell Jungkook is weary and uninterested. His sisters drag him to sit by them as Namjoon begins his song, knowing he only has a short window of time before Jungkook is lost to everyone.

“The seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake. You dream about going up there, but that is a big mistake. Just look at the world around you, right here on the ocean floor. Such wonderful things surround you. What more is you lookin' for?” The fish swim around him, trying to bring a smile to his face. They succeed for a second, but then, Jungkook is back to his gloomy self.

“Down here all the fish is happy, as off through the waves they roll.” The sea creatures join him.

“The fish on the land ain't happy. They sad 'cause they in the bowl. But fish in the bowl is lucky. They in for a worser fate. One day when the boss get hungry. Guess who’s gonna be on that plate.” All of the fish in Namjoon’s band gather as the crab points out each one’s musical talent.

“The newt play the flute. The carp play the harp.The plaice play the bass, and they soundin' sharp. The bass play the brass. The chub play the tub. The fluke is the duke of soul. The ray he can play the ling's on the strings. The trout rockin' out. The blackfish she sings. The smelt and the sprat they know where it's at. An' oh, that blowfish blow!”

All of the fish interact with each other, really getting into the music. All of them forget the depressed merman they were trying to cheer up. Namjoon hurries to finish his song.

“What do they got, a lot of sand? We got a hot crustacean band! Ya, we in luck here down in the muck here. Under the-” He cuts himself off, hoping to have gotten through to the stubborn prince. “See, child, that's what I'm talking about! You got to put your back into it. Jungkook! Hello? Uh-oh.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jungkook once again found himself in the decimated alcove. He couldn’t bear to part with all of the beautiful knick-knacks. His father had really destroyed him this time. He could never forgive him.He held in his tears for the first time since the incident. He needed to be strong. He had promised himself that he would see her again, so he was determined to make that happen.

He heard the two hissing voices before he saw the eels.

“Poor child,” one hissed

“Poor, sweet child,” the other repeated. “He has a very serious problem, hasn’t he?”

“Hmm, if only-”

“-there were something-”

“-we could do”

“Who are you two,” Jungkook asked, visibly shaken by their dominating presence. The two had a very distinct back and forth, almost like they completed each other.

“Sweet child.”

“Poor child.” “So tragic” “So misunderstood.”

“Dear child.” “Sad child.” “Life's looking-” “-shall we say-” “-not good.” “No.”

“Who will ease her woes and worries?” “Who will help get her man?” “Sweet child. Perhaps the Sea Witch can!” They both exclaimed.

“You can't possibly mean-- Uncle Jimin?” Jungkook backs away, knowing this temptation will only lead to a very terrible ending.

“He knows your dreams.”

“Father says his magic is evil-” but could he really trust the things his father had told him. After all, not all humans were killers “He'll grant your prayer.” No, Jungkook couldn’t disobey his father like that. “Please I have to go!”

“He'll cast a charm.” “A tiny spell.” “Why the alarm?” “No one will tell.” “No one will care.” “It's your affair.” It was so tempting. He could make his own decisions.

“Sweet child.” “Dear child.” “Poor child.” “Sad child.”

“We'll bring you to his lair right now. Bet in half a sec, your princess and you are reconciled.”

“Together-” “-forever.” He had made up his mind. One visit wouldn’t kill him. “Take me to him!”

“Sweet child.” They led the trembling merman out of his alcove just as Hoseok was arriving to fetch him. Hoseok knew those eels. Taehyung and Jin were Park Jimin’s eels. They were taking Jungkook to the Sea Witch’s layer. He had to tell someone. He knew if he told the king he would ruin Jungkook’s life, so he went after the next best thing: Namjoon.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jimin should have been nervous, but he couldn’t find it in himself. He was the most charming person he knew. There was no possible way he was going to let Jeon’s son slip from his grasp.

“This way,” sung Taehyung. Jimin could feel the hesitation radiating off of the boy.

“On second thought-”

“Come in, my child. We mustn’t lurk in doorways. It’s rude. One might question your upbringing.” Jimin chuckled at the boy’s startled look. He had been banished for so long, many did not know of his hideous form. Jungkook had also missed the subtle jab at the king.

“Oh-sorry.”

“Now, come over here and tell you Uncle what’s wrong.”

“How do you-”

“Just because I wasn’t part of your life growing up doesn’t mean I didn’t want to be a part of it, my sweet. Family is everything. It just so happens that your father banished me before you were born.”

“He must have had a good reason.” The boy backed up, suddenly frightened. Jimin seemed too nice for what his father had told him.

“It was all a misunderstanding. It’s in the past, now. What I want to focus on is the future. Specifically, your future with this princess.”

“If you knew, why did you ask?” “Because, darling, I don’t know how you feel.” “Well...I-”

“Oh, I get it, now. I don’t blame you. She’s quite a catch.” His face turns beet red, and he’s unable to respond. “Well, angelfish, the solution to your problem is simple. The only way to get what you want is to become a human yourself.”

“Can you do that?”

“My dear, sweet child. That’s what I do. It’s what I live for: to help unfortunate merfolk, like yourself. Poor souls with no one else to turn to.” The boy looks skeptical. Jimin knows he hasn’t completely lost him though, so he continues trying to earn the boy’s trust.

“I admit that in the past I've been a nasty. They weren't kidding when they called me, well, a witch. But you'll find that nowadays, I've mended all my ways, repented, seen the light, and made a switch. True? Yes.” He turns his back on Jungkook, swimming towards his precious eels. “And I fortunately know a little magic. It's a talent that I always have possessed. And here lately, please don't laugh, I use it on behalf of the miserable, the lonely, and depressed-”caressing Jin and Taehyung “-pathetic!” He goes to grab something from his shelves, pulling the eels along with him.

“Poor unfortunate souls in pain, in need. This one longing to be thinner-” he gestures to Jin, “-That one wants to get the girl-” he gestures to Taehyung, “and do I help them? Yes, indeed!” His snap turns both eels into beautiful mers, Jin a female and Taehyung a male. Jungkook’s eyes widen. Surely, if Jimin could do that, he could give him legs. Jimin feels his resolve dissolving, but he knows he isn’t there, yet.

“Those poor unfortunate souls. So sad, so true. They come flocking to my cauldron crying, ‘Spells, Jimin, please!’ And I help them? Yes I do!” He swims back to the prince, slinging his arm around his shoulder, so they can watch what unfolds next.

“Now, it's happened once or twice, someone couldn't pay the price, and I'm afraid I had to rake 'em 'cross the coals. Yes, I've had the odd complaint, but on the whole I've been a saint to those poor unfortunate souls.” The eels contort, obviously in pain, before reverting back to their true forms. They hold hold each other and whimper, playing into Jimin’s narrative.

“Now, here's the deal: I will make you a potion that will turn you into a human for three days. Got that? Three days. Now, listen. This is important: before the sun sets on the third day, you've got to get your little princess to fall in love with you, that is, she's got to kiss you; not just any kiss, the kiss of True Love. If she does kiss you before you before the sun sets on the third day, you'll remain human permanently! But, if she doesn't, you turn back into a merman and... you belong to me! Have we got a deal?” He begins to move around the room, throwing ingredients into the cauldron simmering in the middle of the cave.

“If I become human, I'll never be with my father or sisters again!”

“But, you'll have, your man. Life's full of tough choices, isn't it? Oh! And there is, one more thing! We haven't discussed the subject of payment!”

“But I don’t have any-”

“I'm not asking much. Just a token, really, a trifle. What I want from you is... your voice.”

“My voice?”

“You've got it, sweet cakes. No more talking, singing, zip-”

“But without my voice, how will I-”

“You'll have your looks! Your pretty face! And don't underestimate the importance of body language, Ha!” Jimin proceeds with his explanation of how conversation is boring to women and what not. Honestly, he made it up on the spot, but it seemed to have worked.

“Come on, you poor unfortunate soul, go ahead, make your choice! I'm a very busy man, and I haven't got all day. It won't cost much, just your voice!” He produces a gold scroll out of nowhere. The bottom unrolling to reveal a signature line. Jin produces a very menacing skull quill for him to sign. “You poor unfortunate soul, it's sad but true. If you want to cross a bridge, my sweet, you've got to pay the toll. Take a gulp and take a breath and go ahead and sign the scroll! Jin and Taehyung, now I've got her, boys! The boss is on a roll!” Jungkook takes the quill, quickly signing the the scroll, even drawing a little heart under the k.“This poor unfortunate soul.” Namjoon and Hoseok arrived just as the scroll vanished. They begin to shout, but Taehyung silences them both. They are left there to watch helplessly as their best friend loses his voice to the wicked sea witch. They don’t even know what he got in return.

Jimin begins chanting, holding his magic shell above the swirling mixture. “Beluga, sevruga come winds of the Caspian Sea. Larengix glaucitis et max laryngitis la voce to me. Now, sing.” The boy’s beautiful voice floats throughout the cavern, swirling into the shell before silence fills the sea. There is a loud cracking noise as Jungkook’s fin instantly becomes two legs. He gasps, only to find his new lungs filling with water.

“Now swim. Swim. Swim for your life, human child.” He holds what little breath he has, pushing himself up slowly. Taehyung releases Hoseok and Namjoon; they rush to help him. He breaches the surface gasping for air. He collapses on the warm sand before everything goes black.

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murfeelee · 8 years ago

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Bang, Marry, or Kill: Disney Princes

I was organizing my downloads from @silsharkie84’s Disney uploads, and it got me thinking about a conversation I had with someone once about which Disney princes I’d Bang, Marry, or Kill.

And since I have nothing better to do with my life, I decided to make this post.

KILL

Let’s just get the annoying ones out of the way. I would totally kill, because these guys got on my g-d nerves:

10: John Smith (Pocahontas) - freaking bigot. Totally foreshadowed Mel Gibson’s racist-a** tirades. Not only that, but they completely romanticize his story and his FACE, cuz RL John Smith was NOT that fine. At all. I’d totally Marry John Rolfe though; I liked the sequel, I don’t care. At least Pocahontas actually married Rolfe IRL. I doubt she and troll-face Smith were banging IRL though. Unless he raped her, which wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, he’s not even royalty! He and Pocahontas didn’t even stay together in the cartoon, why is he considered a Disney Prince, the hell?

9: Prince Charming (Cinderella) - the man was useless. His castle’s the most interesting thing about him -- and everyone calls it Cinderella’s Castle anyways, so nya-nya. Freaking tool. I mean, how are you so “in love“ with this chick, yet you don’t even BOTHER with asking her name, her address, her zodiac sign...NOTHING. A few dances and you know you don’t know the first thing about Cinderella, but you wanna marry her? Then you couldn’t even be effed to hunting her down yourself -- as if she’s the only wench in the kingdom who wears Size 6 shoes. Would’ve served him right if Lady Tremaine’s feet fit in them just fine! XP (I LOVE Shrek’s Prince Charming though! Totally Bang him! XD)

8: Naveen (Princess & the Frog) - jfc, I’d take Dr. Facilier over this guy; Keith David’s the best. Disney just HAD to go and make their first black human prince an idiot though. Yeah, Naveen’s hella pretty, but he’s broke, shiftless, a frikkin frog for a good chunk of the movie, and did I mention he’s an idiot? I see you, Disney. <_<

HONORABLE MENTION: Prince Hans (Frozen) - THIS SNAAAAAKE! Omg I did NOT see that coming! I would have MARRIED him! Omgomgomg; that was the best part of the whole show, next to that song people won’t let go of. (Pfft) I don’t like Kristoff at all, but THIS mofo...? KILL. On SIGHT. Before it’s too late!

Bang

7: Eugene (Tangled) - possibly the funniest and most fully realized prince (consort) Disney ever made. But the man’s a total clown. I could never take a guy like that seriously. I’M a total clown! I know clowns when I see them! We’d probably have some booze-induced romp and wake up hungover the next day, freak the eff out, and solemnly vow to NEVER mention what happened for as long as we both shall live, amen, pass the toothpaste.

6: Prince Eric (Little Mermaid) - Eric is actually the hottest Disney Prince -- MALE, Period -- I think they ever made. Totally swoon-worthy. And his castle is swaaanky~! But ISTG this Judas has zero sense, and is just as vapid as Prince Charming. You were barely conscious and this girl dragged your guppy butt out of the freaking ocean, and you barely got a good glimpse of her, but you’re ready to devote the rest of your useless life to finding her, rather than getting with the perfectly adorable (though albeit mute) chick WHO IS THE SAME REDHEAD YOU’RE LOOKING FOR YOU BLIND FOOL?!?! Omg spare me. Ursula/Vanessa didn’t even have red hair! So, yeah, he’s an idiot. But a hot one. 10/10, would do again.

5: Prince Ali/Aladdin (Aladdin) - if you’re gonna be a broke street rat, at least be the best street rat, y’know? Aladdin was probably the smartest Disney prince EVER. A bit of a liar, so we’d have to work on that “Do You Trust Me~~” shtick, but yeah. He just had a rough life (thanks to his jerkface SEXY BAMF daddy, Cassim, the King of Thieves, who I would immediately Bang, but not Marry, since Cassim ditched his wife to go treasure hunting and she died and Aladdin had to grow up an orphan all those years, the eff, frikkin scrub). But Aladdin’s freaking cute, so if I was some lonely street ratress I’d tap that. Even though I was squicked out when I heard that Disney based Aladdin’s face on Tom effing Cruise, which made me vomit a bit in my mouth. But yeah.

HONORABLE MENTION: Phoebus (Hunchback of Notre Dame) - He’s not a prince since Esmeralda’s not a princess, but he was hot, and up until Tangled I thought he was the funniest love interest Disney had. I loved his antics with his horse Achilles, and his general reactions to the shenanigans going on in that abysmally underrated show. I can’t decide if I’d just Bang him or Marry him, cuz he made me feel so bad for Quasimodo, who I would certainly Marry. But Phoebus is definitely getting Banged.

MARRY

4: The Prince (Ferdinand/Florian) (Snow White) - The original True Love’s Kiss. We know next to nothing about this dude and his magic lips, but you know what? The woodland animals liked him, and the dwarves liked him (and they hate everybody), and Snow White liked him, so I like him too. And he dressed really well, so he was probably loaded.

3: Prince Phillip (Sleeping Beauty) - I know Sleeping Beauty’s my favorite Disney film EVER, but Phil only barely gets a pass into my Top 3/4, and that’s mostly because 1: anyone who can defeat MY BISH Maleficent is a BAMF, and 2: I liked his scenes with his horse Samson -- which were interestingly enough lampshaded with Eugene and Maximus, AND Phoebus and Achilles -- I see you, Disney! But other than that I thought he was just alright. I didn’t hate him. And 3: I love his impromptu “duet” with Aurora in Once Upon a Dream; dude could sing.

2: The Beast/Prince Adam - I'm just gonna come out and say it: Is it just me, or was this dude sexier as The Beast than he was as a human? O_O

Awwww yeeeah.... I’m sorry, maybe I need to pray for my soul a little bit, but I’m just saying. Beauty and the Beast might just be the greatest Disney cartoon of all time, IMO. The Beast was freaking COOL, fighting packs of wolves and nonsense to save his bae. Also, his castle was THE BEST. Oh, so Cinderella’s castle has a ballroom -- EFF that wack-a** ballroom! The Beast’s was WAY better! It’s GOLD PLATED! He’s got enchanted servants on standby and feasts with FRENCH CHEFS and everything! Not to mention, it’s got a LIBRARY. AND there’s a dungeon. Talk about GRAVITAS. The Beast would totally go medieval on someone, I love it. Belle’s over there crying and mess. I’d be like HALLELUJAH, such a step up from Gaston~~! ^0^ The wild part is that apparently the whole story is supposed to symbolize arranged marriages, where the bride is terrified of her seemingly “beastly“ stranger of a husband, but over time gets to know him and realizes he’s not a complete and total douchelord. Just 75% douche and 25% lord. Which is way better than Gaston’s 100% doucheness, amirite.

HONORABLE MENTION: Kocoum (Pocahontas) - I kid you not, I rage-cried when Kocoum died. This SEXY HALF-NEKKID WARRIOR WITH TATTS OMFG TAKE ME NOOOW! Pocahontas was a complete IDIOT; I’d Marry his #FOINE behind and give him an effton of babies! Sexy warrior babies! *shrill battle cry* That was the most aggravating death ever, Disney. What a waste of good genes.

#1: LI SHANG (Mulan) - I would bite this man. I bought that crappy straight-to-video sequel just so I could keep staring at Li Shang, I’m not even lying. He was fully realized, hot as all get out, could kick the tastebuds out of the Huns, had THE BEST SONG Disney ever gave a dude, and I’m sure I said he was hot, right? Well, it bears repeating. Marry. Wed. Espoused. Eloped. Mated. Bonded. Holy Matrimony. SINFUL Matrimony. Everything. We’re doing it all! SIGN. ME. UP.

Lawd have all the mercy. Make whatever you frikkin want out of me, Shang! (*3*)/

So, how about y’all? Which cartoon characters are y’all pervving over?

#nonsims #non-sims #Disney #questionnaire #RANT ALERT #mini rant

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willreadforbooze · 5 years ago

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Hey everyone!!

Sam’s Update

It’s been Bookconline this weekend and I am loving being lazy on my couch and seeing all these fab folks talking about books.

I’ve also been watching the news and the Twitters about all the protests surrounding the death of George Floyd. First, I am really proud to see folks of all races come together to honor those who were unjustly murdered and to plead for change. I really and truly hope that this is it. That this is the time that the message will be heard and taken to heart. #BlackLivesMatter

What Sam Finished:

Deep Roots by Nick Sullivan: This is the third book in a mystery (?) series, sorta. Boone and Emily are scuba instructors and they hop from place to place, and every time they go, something happens and they get dragged in to it. This one is set in Belize. Nick did it again. He surprised me with the ending. It’s literally impossible to predict the end of his books.

Five Dark Fates by Kendare Blake: I’m gonna be totally honest, I wasn’t going to pick this book up. It’s the 4th book in the Three Dark Crowns series… I was super disappointed in the last one. This is the final installment and it was just as BLAH as the last one. It’s not even worth a full review. My main thoughts are… welp, four books to do exactly what they were supposed to do.

Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha: This is a near-future post-apocalyptic romance. Nina, is a leader in her community. She and her team are archivists and they print books for folks. They use the money to help the community out. Knox is a former captain who is on the run with his team. One of his team has been captured and the blackmailer wants Nina. So Knox tricks Nina and her team into “helping them break into another archive/library” when really he’s taking her to the blackmailer. That’s not going to end well at all. I started this having absolutely no idea it was a romance novel. It felt a lot like a fade to black YA, and THEN things got steamy. Anyway, full review to come but long story short, I inhaled this book. It was very VERY good.

What Sam is Currently Reading:

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb: This is the first book in the Liveship Traders series n the same Farseer world as the love of our lives, Fitz. I really adored that series and plan to keep reading the books in this world. I’ve finally re-started the audio. Let’s see if I’m ready yet.

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow: I literally just started this. I’m in chapter 3. But it’s been pitched to me as a Black Mermaid story and I’m here for that. Especially right now.

Minda’s Update

Feeling refreshed after getting out of town for the week and seeing family. Glad we did it.

What Minda is reading now:

The Jewel Thief by Jeannie Mobley – After being accused of stealing King Louie XIV’s diamond, she only has one chance to convince him of her innocence and win back her true love. I’m 60% done and so far it’s pretty good.

What Minda finished:

Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb – Emmy-nominated TV writer and New Yorker contributor pens a true story as told to her from her grandmother. If you’ve ever had a grandma you were close to , this one is a real tear-jerker.

Ginny’s Update

Happy Monday.

I would already like another 3-day weekend. But managed to actually get some reading done. But I also started an additional three or four books that I put down after about five pages. I’m apparently super picky right now with what actually gets attention.

What Ginny Finished:

You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero: Honestly, this was the worst possible time to read this book. There’s a whole chapter about “Fear is your fault” saying there’s nothing in life that fear should keep you from… and while a lot of the messages were solid the book also felt a little condescending…

More than Neighbors by Shannon Stacey: We received this book as an arc and I will definitely be reviewing. I thought this book had a problem with pacing and tone. Meredith and Cam were perfectly nice, if not slightly predictable.

The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper: Main character’s dad gets accepted to the astronaut program which is being followed by a reality tv show. He falls in love with one of the sons of another astronaut and also deals with his very popular live-streaming news show. It’s a cute and very quick read.

Jinxed by Amy McCulloch: This book was freaking cute. Lacey is a preteen who wants to go to the school attached to the Apple-esque company that created “companion robots” called Baku. She finds a mysterious Baku and suddenly is accepted to the school. This book is at the youngest end of the YA spectrum and was a delight. The stakes all felt real, and appropriately frustrating. This book ends on a cliff-hanger and I’m definitely going to end up reading the next one.

Running Full Tilt by Michael Currinder: This book hurt. The summary on the back probably gave too much away b/c there’s a twist at the end that may have been better as a surprise. Leo, the main character, starts running when his developmentally disabled brother starts attacking him with little warning. After a move, a new school, a strained relationship between his parents, etc, running is the perfect getaway. Leo’s character was incredibly interestingly built b/c he tends to go with other people’s flow in all ways, which makes sense once you take all the portions of his life into account

What Ginny is Currently Reading:

The Vicar’s Daughter by Josi S. Kilpack: I’ve had this on my tbr since my very first bookcon. Cassie sends letters “from” her sister to a man her sister met b/c her parents are determined her older sister needs a match before her own debut. I find this kind of plot to be iffy, it can be done really well or done really painfully. And frankly, I’m worries this might be on the end I don’t prefer.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown: Yeah, another one of these so close to the last one. But hey, that’s how library holds tend to go. I’m liking this one a little better b/c this book deals with “how to live wholeheartedly” which means accepting your faults and recognizing the good. That’s a little more my speed.

Until next time, we main forever drunkenly yours,

Sam, Ginny, and Minda

Weekly Wrap-Up: May 25 – 31, 2020 Hey everyone!! Sam's Update It's been Bookconline this weekend and I am loving being lazy on my couch and seeing all these fab folks talking about books.

#Wrap Up

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how2to18 · 7 years ago

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THE FIRST TIME I came across Taylor Mac’s work I was wandering around on YouTube, caught off guard by a video I haven’t been able to stop watching since. Theater and performance artist Mac, whose marathon show A 24-Decade History of Popular Music is coming to The Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, March 15–24, was covering an old Neil Diamond song I hadn’t heard in decades — a top-40 hit from my preteen years. I was surprised that I still knew all the words. I was even more surprised to see this old chestnut covered so compellingly by a drag queen. Well, a sort of a drag queen. Most surprising was my realization that I had never really heard this song until now.

Covering Diamond’s 1971 hit “I Am… I Said,” Mac — who uses judy (lowercase) not as a name but as a gender pronoun — is dressed in a bell-sleeved white shift draped in a sheer outer layer of white gauze. The wig is blond with long loose curls. The hat is a fuzzy white fascinator, oversized and adorned with tendrils of cascading glitter. The makeup is white mime face paint with sequins glued around the eyes, and overdrawn red lips. The result is a decidedly tilted femininity, and though judy likes to say “comparison is violence,” metaphor is the only way I know to explain. Mac’s costumes — originally self-designed, and currently made by the artist Machine Dazzle — are less pageant drag than glitter impersonating a fountain impersonating every nightclub diva who ever stepped onto a dim lit stage.

In the video Mac performed at Joe’s Pub in New York City, a guest of trans chanteuse Justin Vivian Bond’s (Mx. Justin Vivian’s gender pronoun is v) always sold out alt-cabaret shows. I’ve nurtured an artist crush on Bond ever since seeing v for the first time in John Cameron Mitchell’s film Shortbus; I’ve long been following Bond online, and in some of v’s performances both at Joe’s Pub and on tour. In Shortbus, v’s character is the tall, wry mistress of a sex club who entertains the revelers with a nearly apocalyptic style of belting. That performance hurled me back to my youngest self, sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, leaning into the weekly Judy Garland Show, which ran for just a couple of years when I was only four or five years old. That’s where this sensibility begins in a girl like me from the working-class regions of what was then industrial Chicago, and who came of age too lesbian for straight punk culture and too high femme and gay-friendly for radical lesbian culture. I’m not always sure if any category more precise than queer, or possibly Gaga’s little monsters, will ever do, but I have always been attracted to camp excess and maximalist democracy.

I was wandering through a maze of internet links, looking for more Justin Vivian, when I stumbled into my first turning point moment of Taylor Mac, which was this circa 2009 “I Am… I Said” video. Whatever my particular and ever-shifting queer parentheses, I’d been waiting for Taylor Mac for such a long time.

“My gender is performer,” Mac has said in more than one interview, and in saying so claims a tradition born of adoration and remaking, a path many artists will comprehend. But why judy? The attempt to use such a resonant name as a pronoun is both revelatory and awkward for anyone willing to try. Does the use of pronouns that are not generalities dismiss the collectivizing purpose of pronouns? Who then is a judy, a joni, an aretha, a bruno, a beyonce, and even (oh no) a lower-case kardashian?

One of this year’s MacArthur fellows, Obie Award winner, and Pulitzer Prize finalist, and creator of the multidisciplinary, site-specific extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge, as well as the author of the plays Hir, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, and others, Taylor Mac is described as “Ziggy Stardust meets Tiny Tim.” Mac is all about repurposing what we’ve been given, and has explained that judy chose “judy” because neither he nor she seemed right. For a gender identity Mac names “performer,” judy does make sense. Though I am probably more of a joni than a judy (I’m pretty sure I became a writer after the thousandth time I listened to Joni Mitchell’s song “Hejira”) my own first awareness of a creative energy beyond my immediate world was awakened when I was that little girl obsessed with late-career skinny and hepped-up Judy Garland — from Television City Hollywood, Here’s Judy — and then again, later, with some of the same resonances in her daughter Liza, something so frenetically female, smiling but deeply in need, all phrasing and flittering hands — language created for me in Garland’s sharp enunciation of on Shish-ka-bob and breast of squab we will feast in her version of the standard “Chicago,” wearing a scooped sequined top and a long black mermaid skirt.

Gay and trans kids of a certain age, in love with the original Judy, are not the only ones who saw their future bodies in Garland’s glittery phrasing and Liza Minnelli’s lacey camisoles and green fingernails, alcoholism and all. Together the two of them (along with the strange bedfellow contrast of Joni) are probably the reason the smashing masculine apocalypse of punk never drew me as it did nearly everyone else of my time and place. It wasn’t until later, in the fully lived gender blur of artists like lesbian theater collaborators Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw and others associated with the WOW Café Theatre in New York, along with Mx. Justin Vivian Bond and Taylor Mac, that I found, with tearful and jittery relief, the kind of queer art-making this sort of sensibility would grow up to pursue.

Mac’s judy-ness is evident in the Joe’s Pub clip, judy as both pronoun and performance frame. What we call femininity and masculinity are kinds of traditions, like literary genres, deemed sacred because they are handed down, but more so just a matter of affinity, with tremendous room for invention between the binary poles. Mac fills this space with abstract and assemblage art makeovers that include glitter heels, found object collage wigs, balloon dresses, and so much more. The Commedia dell’arte meets drag queen costuming of Mac’s work is physical ridiculousness, playful archetype, anarchic improvisation, adding up to what is both an elaborate theatrical masking and excruciatingly expressive vulnerability.

In a 2017 Howlround interview with P. Carl, Mac said: “On stage the drag isn’t a costume but something I’m exposing about myself; it’s what I look like on the inside.” What comes across is an intimate cracking that is not about femaleness or maleness or even just queerness, but rather contains the skewed breath and teetering balance of human life resisting received scripts. Mac covers the Neil Diamond song, honoring the pathos of a pop ballad about loneliness, but at the same time creating a paean to being an aberrant American seeking radical community.

“I Am… I Said” is a prelude to the work judy is presenting now, the 24-hour durational performance of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music — performed the first time in Brooklyn in a single day, then later in four six-hour segments in San Francisco and Melbourne. (Mac’s company will present the work in four six-hour shows in L.A. in March, and then in June, in Philadelphia, they will present the show in two 12-hour performances.) The last time I checked Mac’s “I Am… I Said” video has 14,000 views — and only about 100 of them are mine. The video is an arresting performance that does not repeat in the current 24-hour show, or at least did not when I saw it. Mac memorized over 300 songs for the 24-decade project, and is still adding more to the list, and has prepared at least 50 more than they are able to use, even with 24 hours to fill. Still, the video is an example of the sort of show audiences can expect in Los Angeles — and one of those fleeting performance passages captured on the web that in any other era would have been known only to the ones in the room where it happened.

Taylor Mac is not your mother’s Neil Diamond. Mac’s pauses and articulations are singular, but layered with indirect references to Judy Garland–style hand movements, shrugs, and conversational interjections, as well as the exaggerated and crass stock character movement of Commedia dell’arte. Diamond’s line about sunny and fine L.A. as carried by Mac’s lighter vocal is casual and bright, but then judy shrugs a little, a sad discomfort coming through, the discomfort of the displacement that sits at the center of the original, but also the queer discomfort that permeates all of Mac’s popular music covers. This queer discomfort immediately hurls the song far beyond the personal. Even within the relative comforts of white gay life today — an awareness Mac does not avoid in the work overall — this discomfort contains a long queer history.

By the time we get to the “I am” chorus we are already deep into classic LGBTQ I am what I am territory. Then, in the verse about the frog who dreams of becoming a king, Mac’s face inverts cinematically from sadness to a smile both sweet and bitter, silent picture facial transitions worthy of The Passion of Joan of Arc. Next judy pokes at the words a bit. In Mac’s story of the frog who becomes a king it’s not just the names but the pronouns that change. But is this the right story? After the hat and wig come off — “It’s not performance art. I just was hot” — the masked revelation reveals another unmasking, and this is where the work is truly subversive. Mac’s unconventional-even-for-drag oeuvre is not at all just an expression of the jittery and singular brilliance of certain iconic American song artists. The work is a critique and rebuilding of the world that both created and killed the likes Judy Garland, as well as generations of Friends of Dorothy. At the end of the song Mac holds up one finger, asking us to wait for it, and then we get another adaptation. “Did you ever read about the king who dreamed of being a frog?”

The performance ends with a knowing nod to the audience, and yes, we absolutely do know then that this is not merely homage, certainly not nostalgia, and never for a moment merely entertainment. The king who dreams of being a frog is a citizen of the universe on the other side of the mirror. This radical faerie view looks back from where beauty, power, community, and art are turned on its head, as we hear in every note of tension and lyric ambiguity in the very last words of the song — “Oh no.”

The king who dreams of being a frog, flips hierarchical power and the-people-are-the-power. The Broadway musical versus performance art on a proscenium stage. The heteronormative narrative versus the recast queered normative. Rehearsed and scripted perfection versus anarchic improvisation, because, as we hear at least once every performance chapter, “perfection is for assholes.” A passive seated theater experience versus what Mac describes as “the art is in the room.”

I saw all four six-hour performances of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music in San Francisco in September 2017, two Friday nights and two Sunday afternoons at the old Curran Theatre on the edge of the Tenderloin, where after the night shows let out the drag queens just done performing in the nearby bars still crowd the diner booths, as in Tenderloin days of yore. I sat (or stood, or wandered to-and-from, for one whole hour wearing a blindfold) in the far-left corner of the first row. My seat was in a limited-view cranny, my usual sort of hideout when I go to the theater alone, so I was left undisturbed more so than most in the front of the house, perhaps less than Mac wants the audience to be — the fact that I wished to hold on to my peculiarities is exactly the sort of human tendency endurance theater means to provoke. Still, even in my part-invisible corner, I was very provoked. I traveled from Chicago to San Francisco just to see this work, and I stayed for 10 days so I could attend every performance. This was my academic job sabbatical adventure and I expected to be glad I went, but I didn’t foresee how profoundly the experience would overthrow me.

In the stage light Taylor Mac possesses the quality of lush mirage, in that the space judy inhabits cannot be categorized, captured, or even fully described. Comparison is violence (I know, I know, joni says) because if one thing can be another then nothing can be its true queer self. Still, I want to fall back on metaphor to describe a queen at least seven feet tall in those spangle heels, a barrel decoupaged with sequined snakes, and a wig made out of wine corks. The show is a new kind of beauty, a vulnerable communion, excess, fear-and-chaos, a reappropriation and a reversal — “More, More, More,” as Mac shouts out in the video trailer for the San Francisco performances. Taylor Mac is like … Taylor Mac is … Taylor Mac might as well be … That I can’t come up with the ends to these sentences proves Mac’s point.

One thing I can say for certain is that Taylor Mac and the 24-Decade History is not a romance narrative, or a tragic narrative, or any kind of narrative. The goal is to flip-flop the message of centuries of popular music in which “the oppressor is forgiven but the outsider is vilified,” and in doing so may be the anti-narrative that resides inside us all, the unconventional beauty that breaks all the other beauties, which is how Mac’s work broke me, in ways that leave me nothing but impatient to build myself anew. Taylor Mac wears beauty spangled across the face. No comparison here; I mean this literally. Mac’s drag makeup is half-spattered, sometimes half-smeared across the forehead and cheeks, but I don’t mean to say judy is a hot mess, because this is a beautifully intentional snub of conventional beauty. If you say beauty is sparkle then fine, judy will give you sparkle, gobs and gobs of sparkle, will choke you with sparkle and then will sparkle even more until the beauty that emerges kills all the other beauty and you will never see beauty the same way again.

Taylor Mac’s endurance performance of this new beauty rerouted my brain and short-circuited my filters and even led me, in my late middle age, to come home and dye my Hollywood-blond hair lavender. Before, I possessed a zone I could always back into, a passive space of critical pause where I could retreat for collapse or respite, able to let anything pass and easily laugh at any ideological discontent. That zone is now closed for renovation. After my return, the first time my spouse Linnea and I went to the opera in Chicago, a big old-fashioned spectacle production in a huge old-world opera hall, every problematic and unquestioned representation (none of which I had failed to notice in the past, but which I had been able to watch through a protective buffer) now made me sputter and want to offer drag-inspired notes. Linnea said: “So that show ruined you for everything, right?” It has. Now I want drag kings and queens wearing installation art to revise every Orientalist opera, kitchen sink drama, and talk show. This is a separatist impulse I suppose, not unlike the dreams of the lesbians I used to know who loved the all-women’s music festivals and for weeks after they came home didn’t want to resume wearing shirts. The feeling wears off over time, that much I recall, but the understanding of what it means to breathe queerly in queer-organized spaces never leaves you.

Thoughts of lesbian music festival spaces are not too far out of sync, even if comparison really is violence, as Mac describes this show as Radical Faerie Realness, and the radical faeries, with their anti-assimilationist tenets, counterculture spirituality, Utilikilts, and solstice gatherings have always seemed to me the most radical lesbian-like aspect of gay-male culture. In the San Francisco trailer, Mac begins with this line: “We are making a 24-decade history of popular music. It is a radical faerie realness ritual sacrifice.” I might have heard this line incorrectly when watching the trailer on repeat, in the weeks before I saw the show. I thought judy said this: Radical Faerie Realness. (Pause. New word.) Sacrifice! I heard the final word as a frightening, yet thrilling, verb command. How I heard it at the show was as a part of a compound descriptive noun, the show itself the sacrifice. Either reading works. The audience becomes part of a sacrificial rite, changed by the mental and emotional breakdown we undergo after the endurance of many hours of challenging participatory performance and exploding drag bombardment. The sacrifice is of our assumptions about both the way we will talk about the American story, and about the way an afternoon or evening at the theater will transpire.

The woman from Massachusetts who sat next to me at all four shows — our whole row in fact was there for all four shows, though the seats around us kept turning over — was seeing the 24-Decade History for the second time. I am envious that she attended the first iteration in Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2016, the only time (Mac is adamant on this point) that the show will be done in a single, performer-immolating, 24-hour performance. I will never forgive myself for not figuring out how to be there too. My row-mate’s partner loved the experience so much she came back this time as part of the show, one of Mac’s Dandy Minions who serve as the genderqueer chorus and crew, slant-beauty clown-angels who fill in all the gaps, from passing out eye masks for our sightless hour the year braille was invented, and ping pong balls for the Civil War sequence, to distributing soup in the Depression-era song breadline sequence, to helping women audience members up on the stage in the lesbian tailgating segment (in San Francisco this was all self-defined lesbians and one self-described straight woman dressed as a clitoris). Yes, even the lesbians are celebrated in these 24 decades, and how often does that happen in any decade? To commemorate Judy Garland’s funeral, the Dandy Minions carry one of their comrades overhead through the audience. During the 1970s era the Minions hold up protest signs with email addresses of politicians in Michigan, encouraging us to rally against the politicians’ role in the continuing water crisis. They argue with the Puritans and dance with the visiting burlesque revue. My row-mate’s beloved was one of those who stripped bare the first night and dashed through the audience naked, one of several nudey babies running free through crowds. In the balcony, some of the audience members stripped off their clothes and joined in.

This show is, on the surface, an hour-by-hour revue, one decade per hour beginning in 1776, of songs that were popular in some sector of American life. Sometimes the songs are familiar, but often they are not. The chapters are less about music than about America itself, a decade-by-decade reversal of the lens, a reenvisioning of country’s making from the point of view of the frog, not the king. Mac creates broad and sometimes hysterical narratives around each period, always with the intention of flipping the lens away from “the heteronormative narrative” and reframing the American story from the lesbian, the dandy, the female, the person of color, or any other outsider’s point of view — vilifying the oppressor, honoring the outsider — always wearing Machine Dazzle’s astonishing costume art, some of my favorites a typewriter bodice, a barbed-wire skirt, a wig made from 3-D glasses, a vulva dress. As the epic begins Mac emerges from backstage in a curly Mylar pom-pom wig and a dress that appears to made out of shiny plastic rainbow flags with a spider-web back piece constructed of metal pipes. It’s 24 hours from here to democracy, and here’s where we begin, singing “Amazing Grace.” We are gorgeous wretches, all of us and our minions, so lost, but on our way to be found.

Two days and 10 decades later and Taylor Mac has worn 10 of these costume constructions, not yet even half of the full gallery. By the close of this 10th decade judy strips down, underpants the only costume remaining — notably theatrical briefs that pick up the spotlight, though the change happens in visible shadow. Machine Dazzle, who calls his costume creations visual sculpture, is also the performer’s dresser, sometimes patting and straightening the accessories before the next song, sometimes closing out the transition with a long kiss on the lips. Machine is another of many stage characters we (the audience, the community, the people of this planet all in the middle of by now) have come to love, in that way one loves family members we’ve just met, yet who seem to have been in our lives for, well, decades. Machine towers in even higher heels and a feather headpiece, while Taylor (at 10 hours in we must be on a first name basis) steps into another sequin and object collage. Not gowns, but installations; judy does not so much dress as effloresce.

I said Mac’s underpants are theatrical, but that’s not the right word, not in this ur-theatrical space. Theatricality is core to the experience of Taylor Mac’s 24-decade musical history of everything and a re-seeing of beauty as well, both drag beauty and people-power beauty. Performance is the tool, but not the point. What I have under-named theatrical is really simply, well, dazzle, pure embodiment, Leonard Cohen’s crack of light that keeps us alive. (Another for our pronoun list. Which of us is a leonard?) That Taylor Mac’s underpants take us deeper into who we are as humans is no accident. Every time judy strips down we are naked too, exposed and earnest, ready to live differently, with no clue what that means but oh so willing to learn. How do we get to this vulnerability and what does this revelation of flesh have to do with democracy?

Earlier in this day-two performance, “Chapter 2, 1836-1896,” the show opens with a boxing ring on stage, where we soon find Stephen Foster and Walt Whitman sparring for the title of Father of Popular song. An audience member stands in for Foster while Mac, as both Whitman and fight commentator, begins in a puffy layered paper hoop dress. Mac belts out the Foster songs and recites rolling and riveting passages of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Beyond, we-the-people (in the house), the ones who’ve already sacrificed one of our own to the boxing ring onstage, are told to join in by shouting Captain, My Captain in support of Whitman, and Doo Da Doo Da to help out Foster, though in this crowd, of course, Walt is the winner. Whitman’s long lines are the embodied and democratic ties that bind in this motley crowd of glitter-beard bears, nuzzling lesbians, decked-out genderqueers, hugging progressives, and the few regular theatergoers among us who had season tickets from the presenter wondering aloud if they’d ever seen judy on TV. (Mac has since that time, after winning the MacArthur, been featured on programs such as the PBS NewsHour, but then, most likely, they had not seen judy on TV.)

Some hours of the show are meditative but this one is delirium, and alters us through the questions asked. Do we acknowledge the racist language embedded in songs that were once performed in blackface? Is this still our formative infrastructure? What will we give up to fix the imbalances? Are we guided by a poet who was one with both the lilacs and the captains? What of our deep cultural underpinnings have we allowed to make and unmake us as Americans? Where are queer alliances clear, such as in the lush love of Whitman’s long song-like lines, and when, such as in Foster’s still relevant protest song “Hard Times Come Again No More,” do we decide to sing along?

Such is the collective experience of Americanness that we undergo during these 24 decades. We sing and then we don’t. We boo and we praise and we throw objects handed us by the Dandy Minions, as Mac sings through, sometimes with commentary, sometimes with a long-armed Liza-with-a-z flourish. We battle it out alongside judy, but who can really wrestle wearing a dress made of a collage of potato chip bags, glossy male-magazine nudes, chess pieces glued to a fabric table cloth, a fabric flower wig, and a green-glitter derby hat? Mac’s nearly naked form, three hours later, is the dramatic progression of all this artful garb, though judy will certainly dress again. The body revealed is queerness itself, here bald and shadowy, but beneath the stage light appearing to be dipped in gold. This queerness is constantly shape-shifting but always aches to be both the seer and the seen.

“I am not trying to teach the audience about history,” Mac said, in a panel discussion at HERE Arts Center, a New York City–based off-off-Broadway presenting house, broadcast online at Howlround TV in January 2017. “I’m trying to unearth something that’s been buried or dismissed or that they’ve forgotten about, or that someone else has buried for them, or that they bury themselves. So, I go hunting for who’s that dandy in the Yankee Doodle Dandy song.”

Through all these dandy searches, and song deconstructions, and so much more, Mac just keeps changing clothing sculptures, singing gorgeously, and queering pretty much anything judy can find to queer. The show is part reconstituted history but also part rambling memoir fragments, part serial storytelling, part drag catwalk, part Project Runway unconventional materials challenge. It’s about democracy because the performer doesn’t own the experience and can’t even fully control what happens: the art is in the room and we are here too, lining up for soup, or donning borrowed drag slips and dresses, or bouncing a gigantic red-white-and-blue penis-shaped beach ball around the ornate Broadway touring auditorium, or rushing the stage to sit with the other lesbians or the other gay bears or the other cis straight men or the other butches. Or we are blindfolded and feeding grapes to strangers, or moving from the front row to the balcony, or from the balcony to the front row, because, in the redistribution of wealth and racial justice parts of the show, we are acting out what America does, and what it might mean to do the opposite. In the process, we are able to inhabit a different America — an embodied, joyful, sexual, justice-loving, truth-saying, art-making, resource-sharing America where our actual beauty is no joke — and we do so for hours and hours and hours on end, enough time for the sequins to really sink in.

All this is why I will never be the same, but also, I blame the take-back-from-Ted-Nugent appropriation prom on the last night, the feel of the sequins under my hands when I danced with the person who touched my arm when Mac asked us to dance with someone of the same gender. Were we the same gender? I shrugged and took them at their word. I had, in the hour before, helped their date back up into the seat just above mine, so we already felt close. We were dancing in order to reappropriate Ted Nugent’s effeminate-men bashing song, “Snakeskin Cowboy.” Mac slows down the song and we queer it up with our same gender or genderqueer dancing and what we’re doing, Mac tells us, is holding our own auditorium-wide gay junior prom. In the P. Carl interview Mac said the prom is “about trying to inspire you to rebel against an obstinate sense of self. So, I’m saying to the audience in those moments, ‘You think you’re this way, now when I ask you to participate, how does that challenge you to think of yourself as a slightly different person?’”

Exactly. I am not a person who dances with strangers wearing heavy cologne and a scratchy sequined gold jacket; nor am I a person who keeps dancing until I feel the drop of that physical wall that we humans keep between us, and necessarily so, as who wants to be so open and loving to everyone we pass on any day, in any city, right? (Oh, but maybe that’s another assumption that has to go. I was worried about hugging a stranger, without finding out even those first few little things that lead people to care about each other, but ended up feeling little bit close, a little bit tender.)

Neither am I accustomed to being passed along by a glittery, half-intimate stranger to yet another stranger, my partner ditching our dance in one of those old movie “do you mind if I cut in” moves, especially when now the new stranger is a cute backstage techy wearing false eyelashes and whose arms and neck are softer than I remember skin being on anyone ever, and who so sweetly smiles at me and says “thank you” when the song is over. I think I am a woman who would never slow dance with a stranger. I imagine doing other more naked things with strangers all the time, but never dream of the too-private space of slow dancing. Yet, here I am, inside this breathtaking public intimacy, a different person than I was an hour before, and meanwhile fuck you Ted Nugent and the gun you rode in on. We made a much more beautiful dress and headpiece out of all you considered trash, and we can’t even see your ugly from here.

In the HERE panel Mac said “artistic expression is a kind of citizenry.” Citizenry is about building and tending to the home, creating and sustaining a geography we all want to live in. In the kingdom of the king who dreams of being frog, and then becomes one, I will reach out to you, blindfolded. Do you feel my fingers on your face? Good. Let’s just stay here for a while and touch each other’s beauty.

Image by Teddy Wolff.

Barrie Jean Borich is the author of Body Geographic, winner of a Lambda Literary Award in memoir, My Lesbian Husband, recipient of a Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction, and, most recently, Apocalypse, Darling. She’s an associate professor at DePaul University in Chicago where she edits Slag Glass City, a journal of urban essay arts.

The post The King Who Dreamed of Being a Frog: Taylor Mac’s Heretical American History in Song appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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