A/N: My teacher gave me a project to rewrite a fairy tale as though a character had a mental disorder.
So this is Snow White with OCPD and run via the Rule of Funny.
Snow White Rewrite
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a kingdom in the mountains. Everything was perfect. But one day the king decided that he had to have an heir, and the queen—quite bothered by all of this—wished for a child because she actually didn't like her husband all that much. And people there had never heard of storks.
"I wish for a child with lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony, and skin as white as snow," said the queen. Whether she knew that she was describing a child that would look like a whiteface clown, no one ever found out. "Preferably soon."
And because Nature would never have been so cruel as to give the named features to a boy, who would be teased for the rest of his life, she was blessed with a daughter.
Then the queen died in childbirth, the king had an attack of stupidity and remarried to an obviously evil sorceress, and everything got worse for the poor little girl who was, by that point, quite forgotten.
At some point, the king stopped showing up at parties and balls and the nobles were all very suspicious about it. People found out later that he'd retired and gone to a seaside somewhere far away to get some sun, never to return. But whether he got eaten by sharks for being a horrible father isn't important. This story, after all, is about the little girl he irresponsibly left behind.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
"Who's the fairest of them all?"
"You, I guess," said the mirror, which didn't have a face but could make disdain perfectly clear in its voice. "I mean, you're the only person I see all day."
The queen ignored this. She was very good at ignoring things like it. It came with being a vain queen who owned a magic mirror that spent a lot of its time talking back to her. While the simple solution would have just have been to get another mirror and enchant it herself, one can't expect sense from someone who looks for advice in her reflection.
Meanwhile, something strange was going on in the courtyard.
Down below, a seven-year-old girl was painstakingly scrubbing the dirt from the palace steps. If she had been slightly older, she would have wondered why she bothered. The floor was always going to get dirty again and the outside steps even more so, and it wasn't like anyone was going to eat their dinner off the steps even if she did manage to clean them to the point where they could.
But then, she was seven, and such things were slightly above a socially-deprived child's comprehension.
"Hi there. Who are you?"
The little girl, having been named Snow White by her dead mother and absentee father, looked right up at the strange man looking down at her and said, "Who wants to know?'
"I'm a Prince!" said the man, and Snow White thought he looked more like a princess than any prince she had ever heard of. And his lips…she'd never thought Nature would have been cruel enough to do that to a boy.
Somewhere in the background, a couple of chipmunks started sniggering.
Snow White stared up at the man with wide eyes.
"Um…what's your name, servant girl?" The Prince tried for a reassuring, princely smile. He really did. It wasn't his fault that Nature had given Snow White a little voice in her head that really hated strangers.
Snow White took one look at the creepy grin and hit him in the face with the nearest thing she could find. This meant that the Prince was whacked over the head with a broom, a bucket full of soapy water, and a brush made of straw and, apparently, needles. The little girl ran away screaming.
The Prince sat up a while later, bewildered and in pain. "What did I do?"
Several months later, the Queen stood in front of her snide magic mirror and said, like she did every day,
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
"Who's the fairest of them all?"
"I actually have a different answer today, my queen!" The mirror said in a mocking tone. It coughed as though to clear its throat, if it had one. "Queen, you are full fair, 'tis true, but Snow White is fairer than you."
"Good, I—what?" The Queen blinked. "Isn't she seven?"
"The point stands," the mirror retorted. "And you have no idea how great it is to be able to say something else for once. Sheesh."
"In that case," the Queen said, thinking hard, "clearly, the solution is to kill her!"
"…Wait, what?" said the mirror, but the Queen was already running off to find someone to do it for her. The mirror grumbled, "Some sorceress she is…"
"Huntsman!" the Queen called, rushing down to the lower floors where they kept all of the commoners. Even a castle far, far away needed someone to do the dishes.
"Yes, my queen?" said the Huntsman, who was actually named George but had never seen that name used. He was thinking about leaving to go and find someplace where they'd never heard of huntsmen, just so he could.
"Kill Snow White for me," said the Queen.
"Wait, what?" said the Huntsman.
"Kill Snow White for me," the Queen repeated, pronouncing each word carefully. "Bring me back her heart and I'll throw in a nearly-new horse."
"…Um, your wish is my command?" said the confused Huntsman, who had been taught manners even if he sometimes had no clue why the nobility gave such strange orders.
"Good. Here's the box," said the Queen, who shoved a red box into his hands and promptly ran off to invest in skin creams without mercury in them.
The Huntsman looked at the box. Then he looked at the nearby pig, who was staring at him with soulful piggy eyes. He looked at the box again, then back at the pig. He shrugged and tossed the box over his shoulder.
He left to go warn Snow White that her stepmother was out to kill her, and that she'd won that bet about it.
"I knew it!" Snow White said when the Huntsman told her the story. "I knew she was out to get me!"
"Yes, well, here's your five gold coins," the Huntsman said, handing a few pieces of gold over. The little girl tucked the coins away in her hidden dress pocket. "What are you going to do now?"
Snow White paused. "Well, I suppose I could run away, but I have no idea where to go. Do you have any ideas, George?"
The Huntsman thought about it. "There's always the forest. It can be rather scary, but I'm sure you'll be fine if I take you most of the way."
"You're just going to leave me there?" Snow White squeaked.
"It's better than being chopped up and fed to the Queen's vultures," the Huntsman pointed out. "And there's a group of friendly dwarves in the forest if you look for them, too."
Snow White still looked skeptical, as well as rather alarmed. "And what about you?"
"I'm going on a very, very long vacation," the Huntsman told her. "Fighting dragons for a living would still be better than working for the Queen right now."
"Okay. So, we head to the forest tomorrow?" Snow White asked.
The Huntsman nodded. "Grab your things. The Queen never told me where I was supposed to kill you, anyway. I'd just as soon run away from her, screaming at the top of my lungs."
"Thanks?" Snow White promptly wandered off to pack what possessions she actually had, while the Huntsman went to pack his own things as well. It was going to be a long, long day tomorrow.
The next day, Snow White and the Huntsman came to a conclusion about the forest. It seemed like a nice enough place, once you got past the evil-looking trees and the spiders the size of cats. At least there weren't any venomous snakes or patches of poison oak. It also helped that most of the wildlife seemed to like Snow White, even if the Huntsman wasn't quite sure if the chipmunks were planning on eating her or not. Too much friendliness from animals tended to put him on edge.
"If you keep going in that direction, you should be able to find the dwarves' cottage," the Huntsman said, pointing in a seemingly random direction.
Snow White nodded.
The Huntsman went on, "Don't talk to strangers unless they're as small as you are and have beards, all right?"
Snow White nodded again. "Thanks again for saving my life, George. I hope you have fun becoming a dragon-slayer somewhere."
"Good luck to you too, Snow White," said the Huntsman, shaking her hand. "Now, off with you."
Snow White began her trek through the woods. The Huntsman set off in the other direction to find a suitable fake heart to fool the Queen. It wasn't like the woman was all that smart to begin with—she'd actually come to the same Huntsman who'd practically raised the girl in order to find someone to kill her!
On the way home, the Huntsman found a wild boar to take home for dinner. He let the cook have the rest of the pig and gave the heart-box to the Queen.
Then he made sure to run as quickly as he could for the border.
Snow White walked through the forest.
She walked for a very, very long time.
She walked for long enough that she was sure her shoes were coming apart while still on her feet.
And for every single step the little girl took, she was being trailed by every cute little animal in the forest. She was sure of it. Sometimes she turned around very quickly and caught a glimpse of a furry white tail or a pair of beady black eyes belonging to a squirrel. They were definitely following her.
Snow White shivered. She hated being followed.
"Could you please just go away?" She whirled on her heel and shouted at the treetops, spotting a pair of robins flying away. "Following people isn't nice!"
Clearly spotting a loophole in her demands, a pair of chipmunks bounded onto the path in front of her. They sat there, staring up at her with their tiny black eyes. It was like they were judging her.
"Well, what?" Snow White asked. "I'm busy trying to find the dwarves' cottage and I don't have anything to feed you."
The first chipmunk bounded over to her and sat at her feet. It squeaked. The second one sat back and tried to make itself look smaller.
Snow White looked down at the chipmunk. "Can you lead me to the cottage? There's probably food there."
The chipmunk perked up, chattering mindlessly about something. It bounced off ahead of her, followed by its more timid companion. Snow White followed, but only because she'd been going in that direction anyway. She certainly wasn't going to trust a pair of furry forest creatures to lead her anywhere.
Then, quite suddenly, the chipmunks dashed off into bushes to the sides of the path. Snow White paused, trying to figure out what had spooked them, and looked back over her shoulder.
Behind her, big and furry and full of sharp teeth, was a wolf. It approached, drooling.
Snow White froze. Then, staring down the big predator, she threw her lunch bag at it. The pack split—the seams had never been that good to begin with—exposing a few chunks of ham and coarse rye bread. And as the wolf ate, Snow White edged her way out of its line of sight and, once hidden, ran away in a panic. Once she was far enough away, she started screaming in addition to running.
The Great Outdoors didn't seem like much fun anymore.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
"Who's the fairest of them all?"
"You, my queen," said the mirror in a bored tone. "Not. Snow White is still the prettiest person out there. Even if it's more a matter of 'cute' versus 'creepy.'"
"Snow White is still alive? But the Huntsman brought me her heart!" the Queen shouted at the mirror. "I even ate it."
The mirror made a gagging sound. "Seriously? Your Huntsman's probably halfway to the next continent by now. Who wants to stick around for a crazy queen and kill a little girl?"
The Queen scowled. "There's just no good help these days. Where is Snow White?"
"Apparently lost in the woods," the mirror informed her. "There was a little incident with a wolf, a pair of chipmunks, a backpack and three chunks of ham. It wasn't pretty."
"So she's dead?" The Queen sounded confused.
"Nope," the mirror said. "But given the odds, it's not looking all that great."
"Oh," said the Queen. "Well, I'll come back tomorrow. Tell me if she's dead yet then."
"Sure thing, my queen," the mirror said as she left. The mirror sniggered. "I probably should have mentioned that it was bad odds for the wolf…"
Usually, the seven dwarves in the woods generally didn't spend much time in the forest itself. They were much happier either in their cottage or underground, where they generally dug for gems all day.
But today, they'd decided to leave the mine early because Dopey had picked up a cough, which tended to screw up their underground seven-part harmony. Not that Dopey ever really kept time with the beat of the picks and shovels, but he tried. Giving up the day as a lost cause, they headed home to warm-ish water and enough dust to choke on. At least there was food waiting for them.
"Hi-ho, hi-ho—hey, there's a wolf!" said the leader, Doc, cutting off their song in mid-note. The other dwarves, having been walking in a perfect line one step behind, promptly ran into him and each other and ended up knocking every last one of them to the ground.
"It's, um, er…chasing a little girl?" said another, Bashful. His voice tilted up at the end because none of them had ever heard a little girl that sounded more like nails on a chalkboard than a human.
There was a moment of brief, rather loud discussion about whether or not they needed a new throw rug.
Doc straightened to his full height of three-and-a-half feet and raised his pickax. "Let's go get it, men!" The rest of the dwarves, save one, gave a ragged cheer and charged after the beast and the little girl.
Grumpy muttered something nasty under his breath before stomping off after them.
And so, Snow White was rescued and adopted by the seven dwarves. The wolf got to live on as a hearth rug, the girl got a family of very short, busy men who lived in an impossibly dusty house, and the Queen was totally oblivious to both of these facts. The mirror had managed to conceal the girl's continued existence through a lot of lying and false reassurances to the sorceress, but it couldn't go on forever.
The trouble started when Snow White turned fourteen…
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
"Who's the fairest of them all?"
"You know, asking me for the ten thousandth time isn't going to change my answer," the mirror snapped. "Honestly, some people never learn…"
"I am still the most beautiful, aren't I?" the Queen pressed.
"Well, actually, there's this pretty blonde in the next kingdom over…" the mirror began, stopping at the look on the Queen's face. "She's stuck in a curse, if you must know. Something about sleeping for a hundred years until the right young idiot blunders along to kiss her awake."
The Queen glared at the mirror. "Close enough, isn't it?"
"On a technicality, yes," said the mirror in a bitter tone. "Can you go away now? I happen to like looking at the wall, and you're in the way."
The Queen looked like she was going to tear her hair out in frustration. After a certain point, the mirror had gotten more vicious in its taunts. The Queen didn't know it, but the mirror generally disapproved of stupid people, vain people, and anyone who sat in front of it for slightly too long. There tended to be a lot of overlap.
And the kind of people who'd try to have their stepchildren killed for what amounted to no reason, but that was kind of an afterthought in the mirror's little world.
As the Queen was about to leave, the mirror added, "By the way, Snow White is still alive. I lied a few years ago, just so you know."
The Queen shrieked in disbelief and rage and ran from the room.
If the mirror had eyes, it would have blinked in confusion. "She didn't even ask me where the girl was." Then the mirror turned its attention back to the wall and promptly forgot about anything else it had to say.
Meanwhile, the Queen was sifting through the books in her study in an attempt to find some way to kill that blasted girl once and for all. Her pet raven took one look at the woman's expression and decided that now was a great time to take up migrating. The Queen, of course, didn't notice.
"The ingredients for a peddler's disguise are…mummy dust, black of night, an old hag's cackle, and a scream of fright." She paused with her finger still on the last line on the page. "How in the world do you get mummy dust? I have everything else for sure… Oh, well, I must have some around here somewhere."
She walked by the dungeons, glancing at a skeleton in one of the cells. It had a water bowl just out of reach of one bony hand. Rather idly, she kicked the bowl so I ricocheted off the bones and shattered the skeleton's arm. "Weakling," said the Queen, and laughed. Then she entered her laboratory and began mixing ingredients.
Five minutes of horrific transformation later, the Queen had become the Hag. She threw her head back and laughed like a madwoman. Her pet raven fled in terror.
"Now, for the corset…" the Hag said gleefully.
In the woods, the dwarves were starting to have trouble with, among other things, soap. In their cottage, there used to be a dust problem, but then Snow White had moved in with them and the dust had mysteriously vanished. As if it was some kind of cosmic exchange, though, the dwarves had gotten soap on the stairs a lot more often. Dopey still hadn't quite recovered from that last fall.
The dwarves elected Doc to deal with the problem. Even Grumpy did—he generally didn't like dealing with Snow White's odder moments if he could avoid it anyway, but the show of actual support was rather strange. It must have been serious.
"Snow White?"
"Yes, Doc?"
"Er…the men and I are a little worried that this whole cleaning thing is getting a bit out of hand…" Doc began, looking up.
"I think it's fine." Snow White said, and Doc had to look even further up, because she was sitting among the rafters next to the chimney and scrubbing the ceiling with a brush and a bucket of whitewash, which was apparently supposed to get the smoke-stained ceiling to stop looking so gray.
And it wasn't even the silliest thing she'd done in the name of cleanliness, either.
"It'd be nice if you didn't hurt yourself doing that, though." Doc pointed out.
"I'll be fine." Snow White insisted. She'd never gotten hurt before while cleaning, though she had fallen out of an apple tree once and sprained her wrist. She still didn't like apples much because of it.
Doc coughed. "Yes, well, we still don't want you to put yourself in too much danger for a few stains on the ceiling. Also, the men and I will be going out for a few hours to work at the mine. Remember not to talk to strangers or let anyone in the house, all right?"
Snow White looked down and nodded. "All right." She scooted along the edge of the beam and swung herself off once she was in range of the upper landing of the stairwell, which was probably how she'd gotten up there in the first place. She bounced down the stairs and came to a stop next to Doc.
"And be careful with knives and cooking in general when we're not around." Doc added. "The roof caught fire that one time and…well, you know."
"I'll be good, Doc." Snow White said, kissing him on the forehead. "Thank you."
"You'd better, little missy!" Doc said, smiling. He readjusted his hat. "See you at dinnertime!"
Snow White smiled back. "Make sure to tell everyone that I'm going to have a gooseberry pie ready for them."
"I will!" And then Doc was gone, closing the door behind him.
Snow White promptly ran back up the stairs and returned to her ceiling cleaning session. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three—"
CRASH. There was a high-pitched shriek from the kitchen.
Snow White jumped off the beam again, feeling vaguely anxious about skipping out in the middle of her cleaning session for the sixth time, and ran down to see what was the matter. "Dopey, is that you?" she called.
She found the smallest of the dwarves at the base of a stack of dishes, which had fallen over and half of which had broken either on the floor or on his head. He looked like he was about to fall over.
"Did Doc leave you here on purpose?" Snow White asked as she got the dwarf a roll of bandages.
Dopey nodded, looking ill.
"Was it to look after me?" Snow White checked his head for cuts, but found only a fairly ugly bruise under Dopey's mass of curly brown hair. It was better than she had expected.
Dopey shook his head. Then he started going cross-eyed.
"Then is it about the Stair Incident?" Snow White helped him to his feet.
Dopey nodded hesitantly.
"You need to be back in bed." Snow White said seriously. "And I'm really sorry about that. I didn't know you'd be going down the stairs before they dried."
Dopey was escorted to his bed by the very stern fourteen-year-old, who promised to bring up some soup for him once she was done cleaning. Then she went back to her ceiling.
Someone knocked at the door.
"Oh for the love of…" Snow White stomped down to the front window, leaned out, and shouted, "We don't want any!" It was a habit she'd picked up from Doc when he yelled at people out to buy the jewelry the dwarves made sometimes. Grumpy sometimes joined in when that happened.
Then she slammed the window shut and finally, finally went back to her cleaning in peace.
Meanwhile, the Hag sat outside and wondered what in the world had just happened. She ended up having to run back to the castle once she realized that the dwarves would be back soon anyway.
That night, Snow White told the rest of the dwarves what had happened. Grumpy, being who he was, instantly suggested that they leave someone behind (aside from Dopey, who wasn't much use at the moment) to scare off the creepy door-to-door peddler. He was ended up being chosen for it.
The next day, the peddler woman had a shiny comb. Snow White, seeing that it wasn't symmetrical, told Grumpy. Grumpy chased the woman off their property with a pickax. On his way back, he put up a sign that said, quite clearly, "NO WIZARDS, WITCHES, KNIGHTS, PRINCES, TROLLS, OR DOOR-TO-DOOR SALESPEOPLE ALLOWED. THIS MEANS YOU."
"Why isn't this working?" the Queen wailed to her mirror, which seemed rather amused by the entire affair. "I've tried all my ideas!"
"It's not working because dwarves aren't stupid and neither is your stepdaughter," said the mirror, almost to itself. "But you are. Granted, they're all a little odd in the head, but you're just dumb."
The Queen scowled at it. "Well, then, why don't you come up with something?"
"Try poisoned apples. I hear they're all the rage," the mirror said sarcastically. To itself, it added, "Well, no, I'd actually use a crossbow if I had arms, but you were asking what I think you'd do next, aren't you?"
The Queen leapt from her chair in triumph. "That's it! I'll poison an apple and give it to her while saying it's a wishing apple!"
The mirror would have stared, if it had a face to make expressions with. "Wait, what?" She'd gone and infected another perfectly normal plan with her stupidity.
But the Queen was already off to make another disguise and something to kill Snow White with. The mirror sighed. "Honestly, I try so hard sometimes, but people are just so stupid!"
Snow White was trying to make another gooseberry pie, having realized slightly too late that feeding eight hungry people with one pie and a cauldron full of soup was impossible. So, this time she was going to be ready for the dwarves' appetites. She was making two pies, a pot roast, and enough apple juice to fill a barrel. It would probably be enough.
Dopey was trying to help, but there was really only so much a concussed, beardless dwarf could do when it came to keeping small animals out of the kitchen. The starlings were particularly annoying.
Snow White had just put the second layer of pie dough over the berries, making sure to crimp the edges perfectly, when trouble showed up.
She looked up. She saw the ugliest, most bug-eyed old woman in the whole world. The old woman was giving her one of those strange, eerie looks, complete with raised eyebrow and mostly-toothless mouth. Her mouth was even open in a rather unnerving grin.
Snow White took one look at the woman and flipped the gooseberry pie into her face, screaming incoherently. She slammed the window shut and barred it, locked the front door, closed the other windows, and shouted through the dark, "GO AWAY, YOU OLD HAG!"
The old woman was sobbing.
Snow White felt compelled to add, "Can't you see the sign? No door-to-door salespeople allowed, on pain of an ax to the head."
"I can't read!" the old woman cried, still wailing. "I come all this way into the woods and this crazy girl shouts at me and throws a pie in my face!"
Snow White paused. She supposed that her reaction had been rather extreme, but there was the whole issue of the woman just appearing out of nowhere and that wasn't going to make a good first impression on anyone anyway. And it was a waste of a perfectly good pie…Snow White said through the crack in the window shutters, "I'm not coming out, and you're not getting in. You're that same old woman who keeps showing up even when the dwarves tell you to go away. Just…just go away. There's a river you can wash up in."
The hag said, "What about my poor old heart?"
"If you really did have a 'poor old heart,' the spiders in the forest would have gotten you already." Snow White said shortly. After a moment, she added, "Or the wolves. Or the evil trees. Evil, evil trees. Now, go away!"
"Fine!" the old woman snapped. "You'll never get my wishing apple now!"
"Everyone knows there's no such thing as a wishing apple!" Snow White shouted back. "And no one ever finds a peddler where there are no customers anyway!"
By then, the old woman was gone.
Snow White opened the window again and briefly grieved the remains of her poor, beautiful pie. Then she went back to work, because there had to be a way to make another perfect pie, even if it took her hours to do it.
Dopey, meanwhile, looked out another window and watched as the old woman's form turned into someone or something much taller, straight-backed and blessed with a good complexion while cursed with a bad attitude. He wondered how he was supposed to tell the others about it.
The Queen returned in a rage that night and the mirror chose the exact wrong moment to say, "So, I guess that didn't work out either?"
The Queen threw the mirror out the window. It hit the flagstones and exploded into a thousand glass shards and a voice that said, "Wait, what?"
Then she retreated to her secret laboratory and began to drag out the heaviest tome she had. She flipped it open to the section she'd once bookmarked in case of emergencies, scanning the pages for the most dangerous spell in the entire book. It was called, "Dragon's Shape," and it had been a gift from some evil fairy in the next kingdom over.
The Queen's smile was positively ruthless.
Unbeknownst to anyone other than his horse, the Huntsman crossed the border of the kingdom of his childhood and went to visit the little girl he'd left to the dwarves.
George the Huntsman had eventually become Sir George, and then Saint George. He fought dragons for a living.
"So the old hag is actually some kind of witch?" Doc asked carefully.
Dopey nodded.
"And she had fancy clothes but she still went away when Snow White argued with her?" Doc asked.
Dopey nodded again.
"Well, she's probably going to be back," said Doc.
"This will probably be pretty rough." Grumpy said after a moment or two, when the dwarves and Snow White had fallen silent. "If she's a witch, I'll bet she's got nastier surprises in store. But what's she after?"
"I've never even seen her, so I don't think it's me." Happy said with a touch of nervousness. "Maybe she'll just go away?"
"Probably not," said Sleepy, lying on the couch.
"Is there any chance the witch had a crown?" Snow White asked.
Dopey nodded rapidly.
Snow White frowned. "I think it's my stepmother, the Queen. This is bad."
Bashful whispered something to Grumpy, who shoved him. "I know that! Sheesh. If she's a witch and a queen and she's after Snow White, we'll need to get her out of here."
"I—!" Snow White began, but the dwarves clustered around her.
"I think she should hide in the mines with Dopey." Doc said. "Happy, too."
Grumpy muttered something under his breath and nodded.
Snow White twitched at the thought. So. Much. Dust…
"Go." Doc said firmly. "If she's after you and she knows you live here, we'll have a trap ready when the time comes. Just get a move on."
"Okay. Stay safe, will you?" Snow White asked worriedly.
Doc caught Dopey's sleeve before the odd dwarf left and whispered something to him.
The five dwarves who were going to stay behind all nodded. Then Happy and Dopey led the girl away and the rest of them got down to work. This trap was going to involve a lot of dwarves' mining axes—the kind with a pickax on the back for prospecting, and a war ax on the front for anybody who tried to stop them. Dwarves could be terribly inventive sometimes.
Something went wrong with the spell. There was a limit to the number of insubstantial ingredients anyone could put into a potion, and the Queen didn't have time to discover it before she tried the transformation spell.
So, instead of turning into a dragon just inside the forest, she turned into a giant snake just inside the castle. The inhabitants of said castle started to panic.
She still headed straight for the dwarves' cottage, because someone as self-absorbed as the Queen simply didn't notice that she was missing a few limbs.
Making a pit trap for a creature a hundred feet long is extremely difficult, so the dwarves didn't bother. Instead, they stayed in the trees near their cottage, silent, as the monster slithered into view.
"That is one big witch," said Grumpy in a whisper.
"Do we have the trebuchet set up?" asked Sneezy, who had a handkerchief over his nose. He also had three throwing axes on his person, which made the other dwarves uncomfortable.
"Yes," said Doc from several feet away.
The snake curled around the cottage, peeking into the windows and flicking its tongue in an out to taste the air.
Someone yelled, "Fire!"
From somewhere in the forest, a chunk of flying masonry ended up landing a few feet from the snake's head.
Then the scene exploded into violent chaos. There was a lot of screaming and shouting and frantic hissing, as well as a particularly powerful sneeze that somehow sent an ax into the snake's tail. The Queen was being attacked from all sides by tiny, hairy little men with lots of bladed weaponry and bad attitudes all around, and they were just fast enough that they avoided her huge, deadly jaws. She was getting angry.
There was a shout from a nearby hilltop—a man on a horse charged right and the snake with a spear in hand.
The Queen tried to bite him, realizing that he looked a lot like the Huntsman who had betrayed her once, and failed when the horse stepped on her head. Then the Queen was angrier still and tried to eat the horse.
An apple rolled into view—it was brilliant red one that the Queen had unintentionally brought with her when her disguised form took over. On it were the words, "FOR THE FAIREST," in big, bold print.
The Queen ate it.
Dopey, standing a long way off and smiling because he'd known it was a poisoned apple, turned back to Happy and continued on the way to the mines. He was, after all, a hobbit-adopted-by-dwarves. It certainly explained why he'd never gotten around to growing a beard, and why he wasn't bald. Doc had only told him last night.
But that's slightly irrelevant, because meanwhile the Queen was choking. Then she fell over out cold.
"Did we just win?" Grumpy asked in disbelief. His ax had gone missing somewhere in the snake's mouth.
"I think so," said George. He turned to Doc. "By the way, how's Snow White doing?"
And so, the day was saved by a dwarvish hobbit, a crazy man on a horse, and a bunch of actual dwarves. The Huntsman eventually took over the kingdom after getting a signed release form from the actual king, whom he had tracked down at some point over the past seven years. The dwarves industrialized and invented the powered mine-cart, which ran on mulch. The Queen was eventually shipped off to a foreign country since no one knew what to do with a huge snake anyway and lived out her life in a circus. The mirror was swept up and melted down, later being used to make a new mirror with a phobia of women in their thirties.
And Snow White eventually settled down in the next kingdom, married a woodcutter, and drove him crazy with her obsessive attention to detail.
The End.
A/N: It was a very...very strange prompt.
So...this story includes references to, in no particular order:
Lord of the Rings
Discworld
The Trojan War
Sleeping Beauty
Aladdin
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles
Courage the Cowardly Dog
And, of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Have fun spotting them all!