She was going to see him again. It had been a while, too long. She'd met him in the street and still shivered at the feeling of his warm hand brushing her arm, his breath unsettling her hair, his voice whispering in her ear, "Meet me There."
She'd known what he met; they'd spoken of it before. They could be alone in the dark, with the moonlight flooding down in streaks of pearly light from the heavens. She was breathless for his touch on her arm again, his voice echoing through the air.
She walked through the tall grass, silvery in the pale lighting. It wavered in the slight breeze, swaying to and fro, like a dancer, bending and swirling to the rhythm of music. Mist hung in thin shrouds, periodically forcing the scenery to fade away into nothing more than an empty space.
In a short time, she reached the clearing at the top of the hill. A marble floor was at the top, reflecting the moon's glow, with pale marble statues to match, but often upset by growing brush covering the sacred surface. Creeping vines climbed across the floor and over the statues, with blood red roses and thorns.
It was a grand place once, now lying in glorious ruin, dimly illuminated, but reflecting every ounce of light it received, multiplying it tenfold. She stretched out her hand to touch one of the dark roses that lay over one of the statues, wanting to feel it with her own skin. The petals were silky and smooth between her fingers, but after only a moment her hand seemed to slip on one, colliding her flesh with a thorn.
She was left with a torn wound and blood streaming like a river down the palm of her hand and over her wrist, crimson red. She took a step back from the roses, standing to wait and wiping the blood on her apron. She stood. She waited. The night air was beginning to cool; she felt goosebumps rise out of her skin. She waited. He'd come soon.
"Aida."
His voice was like the sun finally breaking through days of dreary clouds. "Aaren!" she exclaimed, spinning towards his voice and rushing at him, nearly throwing herself into his arms. She felt them slide around her waist, strong and muscular. "I've missed you," she said, pulling away only enough to look into eyes. They were a clear, icy blue. For a fleeting moment, it reminded her of the moon and the marble, but his hair was gold like bright summer and his smile...his smile was the world to her.
He nodded and pulled her closer and brushed his lips against her forehead and down her nose and around her cheek, before finally finding her lips. Within a moment, she was lost in him, in his kiss and his arms and his warmth against her.
Then she felt stronger arms clamped around her shoulders and ripping her away from him. They were being torn apart; she fought, screaming and scratching and twisting around, but she couldn't pull herself from their grasp. Then she realized: Aaren wasn't fighting them with her; he was only watching her demurely.
She felt confused, clouded, in a dream. What was he doing? He loved her, he'd asked her to come here to see him, why wasn't he helping? "Aaren!" she cried out, looking into his eyes, asking why.
His gaze flicked from her to the men pulling her. "Take her away. You know where." His voice had turned to stone, and he turned his back to them, walking the other way.
The other men pulled at her harder, tugging her away from the place, away from Aaren. "Aaren!" she screamed his name now, louder and louder until her throat felt like gravel. She was pleading with him, mentally willing him to look at her, to speak to her, something!
He turned around at last, looking at her with something she'd never seen in him before. Contempt, maybe, or perhaps only pity. "I'm sorry, Aida," he said quietly. "We were never meant to be." He turned away again, and again, she was dragged away.
Her screams echoed through the night.
She was skipping rocks in the stream. The water was calm and still, a plain of blue reflecting the sky. Giggling, she picked up a smooth flat rock, feeling the hard smoothness under her fingers. She swung back her arm and threw it, propelling the small rock out and over the water.
Three splashes rose and fell back in ripples on the surface, growing outward in widening hoops, everlasting circles. Her brothers could skip farther, but she'd beat them, someday. She moved to turn the other way into the sunlight, brown mud squishing beneath her feet.
A shadow fell over her face instead of sunshine, dimming the world before her. Her heart beat faster.
She was picking flowers in the meadow, twisting white daisies into long chains. Their centers were bright and yellow, and she was warm in the summer sun. She tied their stems tightly together and carefully placed her finished chain around her neck.
She felt like a princess and the field, spread wide before her, was her kingdom, reaching to the forest on the far side. A smile curled on her pink lips, dimples pushing in to her cheeks. She reached into the grass for another handful of daisies.
Her hand caught on a thorn bush, ripping through her skin. She pulled her arm back with a cry. Blood ran through her fingers, slipping crimson between the cracks. The shadow fell again, over her, reaching forward with spindly fingers as if to touch her. She stepped back and swallowed, heart beating faster still, pounding deep within her chest.
She walked down the road, just thinking of him. She hummed softly to herself, running her fingers through her chestnut hair, pondering hair ribbons and lace, what colors matched best with her eyes. She had to look her best, to see him. Heaven knew he always looked his best.
She smiled to herself again and imagined his own smile, beaming down at her. How she loved him! She'd spend forever with him, happily. They could be together for years and years, dancing through the flowers, laughing under the sun. She'd give the world for him, and he for her...but the shadow was darkening again, and her heart was in a mad rush.
His ice blue eyes, his back walking away. Her screams and sobs and the dragging, pulling her away. Her heart tearing in two...and the shadows darkening, darkening, a pitch black; night without a single star. Her heart was even faster now, more of a vibration than an actual beat. She could feel it shaking and reverberating through her entire being. The tremors coursed through her body.
A knife cut through her chest, curving slowly in painful, roundabout patterns close to her rapid heartbeat. They were carving lines and patterns, and she wanted to scream, but a hand was clamped over her mouth. Through foggy eyes, she saw a blazing blue-white light bursting out of her chest. The picture faded as she felt crimson blood slipping down her torso. The knife had stopped at last.
Aida woke in the dark. It was a stifling darkness, not the fresh, cool night she was used to. It was dank and closing in around her, silencing her breath like a flame extinguished by water. She didn't know where she was, or why she was there, only recalling visions of a whimsical past, marred in her dreams by a creeping shadow.
Her heart was still accelerated, though perhaps somewhat calmed from before. She could breathe now. She sucked in a deep breath of air and let it out again, trying to clear her head, focus on what she knew, figure out what she didn't.
Aaren...he was...he'd betrayed her. The tears dripping down her face didn't help the pain. She swallowed, trying to put him out of her mind. She could think of him later, when it wasn't so near. When she couldn't remember his breath on her hair or the sweet words whispered close to her ear. Later.
A door swung open without warning, blasting golden light into the room. Aida blinked, more tears spilling as her eyes attempted to adjust to the change in lighting. Two strong men walked into the room, probably some of the same ones who'd dragged her away from Aaren, into the dark.
They came to her again, silently, and pulled her to her feet. She half walked out of the door, relying mostly on their strength to pull her. They went up a flight of stairs, down a grand looking hallway and then outside into a garden, or a courtyard of sorts. They set her roughly down on a marble bench and walked away again.
She looked around her. The sun was bright, but not overpowering; it had to still be mid-morning at least. The air was fresh and sweet with the scent of lilac and jasmine wafting through the soft breeze. The pastel-colored flowers were all around, amidst green leaves. The marble floor beneath her toes was dusted with a plethora of drifting leaves and fallen blossoms.
Footsteps echoed over the ground. She glanced forward. It was Aaren; he was walking forward towards her with the sun behind him, lighting his golden hair like an angel. He sat beside her on the bench. She felt another tear slip down her face as she inched away from him, shrinking far from his touch.
"Aida, don't fear me," he breathed tenderly, lifting a gentle hand to her face to brush away a tear. "I'm sorry for what happened, for any pain you went through. It was just a test. To see if you're fit for the position. Will you be my queen, Aida?"
She was startled. A test? What kind of a test was that, locking her in the dark with horrible dreams and visions? But...his eyes were so soft and blue; it reminded her of the sky in spring, of the sky now. She thought of walking through the streets humming, of picking daisies, of skipping rocks. "Yes," she uttered the one syllable quietly.
His eyes turned to ice again—ice and marble, as the floor beneath her cleared of all but the wildest, overgrown shrubs. The flowers all morphed into blood red roses and sharp thorns, falling in cascades over the broken statues and ruins. The sun faded into the white moon and the sky darkened to night. Her heart beat, beat, beat, like a drum. She screamed—
—and woke again. She was in a room, lying in a crumpled heap with her back against the wall. It was dark, though not as dark as it had been the first time, faded into more of a smoky grey. She sat up shakily and looked around, trying to take in all of what she could see.
A deep voice echoed from across the room, far on the other side. "They want your heart."
Yeah, starting new stories before I finish old ones. Shame on me...but while I'm having major issues with GS, something new. And...different. This is based on Sleeping Beauty...well, not really based, more like built around Sleeping Beauty. I'm kind of writing it on a whim; it was originally a shorter thing for a challenge, but some people wanted me to continue it, so...this is the product! I'm not editing it a whole lot and kind of just going with whatever. It's kind of a NaNoWriMo type of writing thing really, except I'm not that fast and I edit a little bit more than that, to get rid of the really horrid proofreading issues and whatnot. Anyway, I'll stop blabbering, and you can review! I have a few more chapters written, so I'll be pretty prompt with updating, at least for a while. :D