Great Fit of Rebellion

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Disclaimer: I do not own the Winx Club.

Life had sucked before Stella had met Bloom. Oh, she knew how to be happy but there was a difference with being happy and being happy.

Happy was enjoying something for a short duration, like getting drunk with your friends on the weekend or going on a shopping spree and spending a sinful amount of cash and then regretting it as if she had eaten a truckload of ice cream in a minute.

Happy…well, that was…she wasn't quite sure what that was like. She supposed it involved an unbroken royal family. It wasn't official but she knew without a doubt that Mom was going to move away from the Imperial Palace. Her mother had already entrusted her with the kingdom's royal heirloom: the sceptre of Solaria. So that meant only one thing: her mother Luna was no longer the trusted queen of King Radius, her father. It wasn't official but Mom's actions needed no explanations.

Princess Stella lay on her bed, despite the sun having risen hours ago. She was a sunshine type of girl, or else she wouldn't be the fairy of the sun and of the moon, but the cloudless sky outside did not reflect her current mood. Deafening thunderstorms and torrential rain would have fitted but Magix was practically incapable of even drizzle without it being controlled by the Meteomagic Office, for it was them who assured the eternally sunny slightly cloudy even temperature all year round.

Last year, she had begun her Great Fit of Rebellion in reaction to her parents' separation. She had known when she was very young that her parents were not happy as they should have been from what she had read in her fairy tales. She had years of preparation to accept the eventual separation of her parents.

BUT IT STILL FUCKING HURT.

With every parent that she had ever met, she had seen the faces of her father and mother on them, regardless of whether or not they were good parents or not. She just couldn't help it. If the royal couple of Solaria could not learn to make their relationship work and make their own happiness, how could other couples do it?

Apparently, Mike and Vanessa could do it. And they had done it with an adopted daughter, a daughter not of their blood!

During spring break of her first year at Alfea, she had returned home to find…well, nothing that resembled like a family. Her mother and father could not even stay in the same room and talk to each other civilly. Every word pointed at each other was screamed in angry or dripped sarcasm. Stella had only returned to Alfea, broken into even more pieces.

From the end of spring break to the end of the school year was when her Great Fit of Rebellion started. She had never spoken to anyone about how she felt about her parents separating. She had bottled it up until one day, she was stuck in the potions laboratory and she had poured all her feelings into the swirling pink mix in front of her.

Blue blood of a dragon for boiling rage, werewolf fang for ferocity, harpy's feathers for cruelty, a pixie bone for death, enchantix fairy dust for potency, a lock of her hair to represent her parents.

It wasn't a real potion; it wouldn't do anything but it did make a pretty shade of pink. She supposed that it was the fairy dust that had done that.

The end result: an explosion that destroyed the lab, severe burns on her part and an expulsion from Alfea.

Before she had landed on Earth, all summer she had ran away from realm to realm, trying to run away from her identity, from her relation to Luna and Radius. She had spent only a week at the Imperial Palace and saw that nothing good had come out of it. They had argued about who was the cause of her Great Fit of Rebellion and had never once considered talking to her without accusing the other parent.

She had stayed on Earth for an entire week before some yellow ogre had found her and without warning, started to attack her in the middle of a busy street. She had led it to a secluded park and fought for her life.

Then Bloom had jumped in from nowhere, helped her defeat the yellow monster and had brought her home. She had lived on Mike and Vanessa's couch for all of fifteen hours, resting and healing but what she saw between the two made her envious of Bloom. She wanted to jump into Vanessa's arms when she offered her food despite disbelieving her daughter's story about being a fairy. All Vanessa wanted to do was make sure she was well fed and cared for, not whether she was a fairy or princess or whatever.

Mike, he had come home and actually talked to his wife civilly about the affairs at the fire station and then had intently listened to Vanessa and her frustrations about her flower shop. Stella's parents had never done that! Stella had cried and Vanessa had asked if something in her body had hurt. Stella had shook her head and kept silent about her feelings.

No matter, Stella had returned to Alfea to repeat her first year with Bloom in tow. Bloom was like the little sister that Stella had always wanted in a way. Bloom's parents were the parents she had always wanted. It had taken a lot of willpower to not cry when they said, "Stella, you're always welcome to come back here, remember that," like she was one of their own despite the fact that she was the one spiriting their daughter to another world. They radiated unconditional love and she wanted to bask in it.

When I marry, I want to marry for love and be like them, she thought resolutely. She did not want to be a repeat of her parents, she vowed. She wanted a man that would be totally honest to her, who would trust her, who would play as hard as he worked, who would value family, who would love her for being Stella, not Princess Stella.

Now, if only she could find someone just right who would understand her desire for that kind of happiness. If Bloom could experience this kind of happiness, than surely Stella could experience it too.

She hoped.

Latter Note (August 20, 2010): This is originally posted to see what the reaction of this piece was, like with all my other writing. Unfortunately, it goes deeper than that.

This piece is extremely personally because I poured all my frustrations into Stella's character because she of all the Winx Club character's is most like me. I say that I don't like Stella because she resembles me the most. I am currently going through my third "separation" in my lifetime and at this point in life, when you are most self-aware, it hurts infinitely more than if you had been a five year old child. Every separation has been punctuated by a move to a new home and no child should experience the instability of knowing where home is and is not and knowing who to love and to not love.

So yes, Stella is feeling what I am feeling. I have a hard time believing that happiness exists anymore. I have been experiencing melancholy all this summer.