a/n [For Rachel (supernovas) for Caesar's Palace's Back to School Exchange.]
Like all great stories, let's start with once upon a time…
It was mid-winter, about four o'clock, and very, very cold. The little prince stood barefoot on the stripe of damp sand left by the receding tide. His chubby fingers poked at each rock and shell and kelp bulb he could find. Sometimes, the shell poked back.
"Mama, Mama!" he called, waving stout arms around in the air. "What's this?"
His mother, wearing a coat and trying to get the boy to put on his, stopped fussing and stooped over the mysterious shell. She smiled, slowly.
"It's a crab."
The prince was in awe with her voice. He grabbed up all her sweet, melodic words and shouted, "Crab, crab!"
He ran circles around the frightened creature, chanting it's name over and over, picking himself up when he stumbled. He was laughing, and his mother bushed off her jeans and smiled with him.
"Yes, little prince. Crab."
.
Sometimes she'll see him in the way the water glimmers under the rays of the sun. The sparkles mimic the way his eyes lit up whenever he smiled. She'll think about him when the moon sets and she climbs into bed alone, and when her little prince looks up at her with those green eyes, and when its cold and the fire warms a different pair of hands.
Sometimes she'll hear a small voice ask, "Mama, why are you sad?" and little hands and feet will curl up with her on the couch.
He watches her, she thinks, as she looks down at her son and brushes her hand through his hair. "Just remembering," she'll answer him.
And that's enough. For now.
.
The little prince grows anxious as his birthday approaches. He'll wander around in circles or forget to jump out in time when a wave comes his way. Tomorrow he'll be ten, and he's not sure he's ready for that yet.
He's toying with a piece of rope, twisting it and bending it, but not doing anything else.
His mother watches carefully from the back porch, the sandwiches for their lunch in her hands, as he tosses the rope into the ocean, just to see what will happen. After a slight hesitation, he runs in to retrieve it, shaking it the best he can in an attempt to dry it off.
Then he notices her walking toward him with a basket and a blanket, and his nerves leave him and the rope falls from his hands. They spend the rest of the afternoon sitting under the midsummer sun, and he watches his mother laugh, and everything is all right.
.
He was five when his teacher told the class a story of a mermaid and a prince. He listened silently with wide green eyes. It was a majestic story with magic and tails and happy endings and a true love's kiss.
That afternoon, when the other kids were running around the field, the boy searched for flowers in the tall grass. He knotted them together and tested the size and held in gently with both hands until the end of the day.
"Mama, Mama!" he cried when his mother came to pick him up from school. He held his hands out, showing her the wilting flower chain. "Look what I made!"
She bent down and pretended to examine his project, teasingly poking at each knot in the stems. "Beautiful. Is it for me?"
Her son nodded vigorously, shoving the flowers closer to her. "It's a crown. 'Cause you're a queen. Right, Mama?"
And she slid the flower crown onto her head with a smile because she wasn't a queen, but she'd be one for him, if only for his grin and applause. And he grabbed her hand and escorted her home, instead of the other way around because, as her son had so sweetly put it, "A queen needs a protector and that protector is me."
.
She once knew how to look out at the stars and see the constellations that he had taught her, but then he faded away and she couldn't see the lights anymore.
Now, she looks at the night sky and counts all the spaces in between.
.
"Mama? Why does the sun go away?" her son asked, pointing to the pink hue over the horizon. "Does the water eat it?"
She found herself laughing at the possibility, and that her son thought of it. "No, little prince. It goes away so it can come back."
He picked up a bit of sand, letting it fall through his fingers. "Why?"
"Well, because, it has to come and go. Everything else does." She stumbled over her words.
Although her son nods, because it makes perfect sense to him. "Can I build a sandcastle?"
"It's getting a bit late, don't you think? How about tomorrow?"
Hand in hand they walk back to the house, lit against the dark sky with a single porch light. They sway back and forth as they draw to it, not in any hurry, and she hums a tune her mother hummed to her. And maybe they don't have all the time in the world, but the sun will rise tomorrow, and that is enough.
.
The little prince could never understand why his mother would cry when it rained. For the longest time he thought the sky poured because she did, not the other way around. But he did know that her tears would slow when he crawled into her lap and wrapped his arms around her middle.
Then all of a sudden he was too big to sit where her legs crossed and he didn't have another plan. So he sat in front of her with a hastily made sandwich and they would each take a bite, and whoever took the last bit lost. She always let him win.
.
It's harder when her little prince goes off to school. She has a fourth of the day to herself, and that is too much time to think and wander. Usually, she thinks of him and his fingers threading through her hair like they always were.
And she'll laugh into thin air and ask what he's doing even though no one is around to hear. Yet clear as day, he'll tell her he's just braiding it, and his lips will press to the back of her head as they both laugh.
Her son notices her tied back hair when she picks him up. He touches the ends of it when she bends down to give him a hug.
"How was your day?" she'll always ask, a smile lurking behind her eyes.
"Great! Guess what I did!" he'll reply, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"All right, what did you do?"
The little prince will launch into his story, but his mother, his queen, is looking at the sky, lost in thought. Her messy braid bounces against her back with each step. It takes her a while, but she always braids her hair when her king can't. It's been that way for a long time now.
"I like your hair," her son mentions when they get home. "It looks like a fishes tail!"
"Thank you, little prince," she'll answer quietly, because that was exactly what he would have said too.
And it wasn't really a happily ever after, but they lived, and that was that.