Word Count: 1,582
Once upon a time...
Prince Armin walked his horse through the forest. He'd been on a hunting expedition, searching for a silver doe when he thought he saw her, splitting off from the party. Now it was twilight, and the sprites were coming out, sparkling in the shadows and creating an air of magic. In fact, the entire forest felt heavily magical in general. The greens were too deep a hue, the wind hummed softly instead of whispering. The flowers never bloomed, only budded and died.
He grew curious. Everything had a soothing, sleepy quality to it. It was as though the earth were deeply asleep in this one spot.
Armin adjusted and tightened his grip on his horse's reins, leading it on. He remembered a legend of a kingdom that fell into a hundred years' slumber.
He looked up towards the sky and saw a beautiful silver quarter moon in the sky, barely visible between the tangled boughs of the trees.
"Beautiful," he breathed, allowing his eyesight to adjust, and hundreds of small, faint stars appeared to him as well.
He lowered his sights again, and looked far ahead of him. The silhouette of a ruined castle was just barely visible in the depths of the forest.
Suddenly, Armin heard a sharp crack, like the snapping of a dry stick. He whipped around to see who was there.
It was a girl, around his age. She wore a red cloak and a simple wicker basket hung from her arm. She regarded him dangerously. A sleek brown wolf with piercing green eyes emerged from behind her and snarled at him. The girl spoke a few quiet words to it, and it settled.
"Wh-who a-are y-y-y-you," Armin stuttered, grasping the hilt of his sword with his free hand.
"My name is Mikasa," she calmly said, then motioned to the wolf at her feet. "This is my fiancé, Eren. He has been cursed by a witch to look like this. We're hunting for her, as we have for the last three years. Who are you?"
Armin clenched his left hand into a fist, looping his horse's reins over his head placing his right fist shakily over his heart and his left behind his back in a salute. He his voice trembled slightly from fear as he spoke. "My name is Prince Armin Arlert of the southern Kingdom Shiganshina. I was hunting for a silver doe when I was separated from my hunting party."
Eren slunk over to Armin as he spoke, and frightened, he began to shy away.
"Don't," Mikasa warned. "He's not going to bite. Just sniff. He does that with strangers."
And sniff he did. Eren's wet wolf nose tickled Armin's legs, and it made him nervous.
"He seems fine, Mikasa," the wolf finally said, and Armin screamed, dropping the salute.
"HE CAN SPEAK!"
Armin could've sworn Mikasa rolled her eyes at him, but it was too dark to tell for sure. "Well of course. Just because he's cursed doesn't mean he's not human, if you know what I'm saying," she told him.
Eren chuckled. "Nice to meet you, Armin," he said, giving him a friendly headbutt.
"N-n-nice t-to meet you, t-t-too," he stammered in response, then turned around and motioned to the castle in the distance. "I-I'm h-h-heading to that c-castle over there. W-would you l-like to come with me?"
Eren plodded back to Mikasa and rested at her feet as she responded with a glance in the direction of the castle. "It looks rather… suspicious; as though there's another Cursed in there. Even if the witch isn't there, we should check it out. Just in case there's clues to her whereabouts."
Armin adjusted his grip on his horse's reins, switching his grip from his right hand to his left. "Let's get going then?" He said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.
Mikasa shook her head. "No, I think we should make camp for the night. The moon's well above our heads, and we should probably get some rest before going on an adventure."
"Oh, okay," Armin said, and began to tie his horse firmly to a nearby tree.
"You idiot, what are you doing?" Eren barked.
"Aren't we going to camp here for the night?" He nervously replied.
"Armin, look at your surroundings," Mikasa chided. "Rocks everywhere, uneven ground… Probably an anthill somewhere here too. You wouldn't want to sleep here, would you?"
Armin blushed. "No."
"Beginner's mistake, it's fine. We did that on our first night of adventuring," Eren explained, leaping on top of a nearby boulder. "There's a good area a few meters away, we should just go there."
Sheepishly, Armin untied his horse and led it over to the clearing Eren was referring to. It took him a little while to undo his knot, it was ridiculously complex and stupidly tight. By the time he even got to where the couple was, they'd built a small campfire and were cuddling next to it.
"So Armin, tell us a little more about yourself," Eren suddenly said as Armin plopped down across from them.
"Huh? Well, I'm seventeen years old, for starters. I wasn't to take the throne of Shiganshina for at least four years. Now that I'm gone, though, I'm not sure if I'll return. I've always wanted to be a traveling scholar," he told them. "What about you guys?"
"I'll go first," Eren said. "I too, am seventeen years old. I've been engaged to Mikasa for about four and a half years. It actually started out as an arranged marriage; our parents were good friends before we were born, and then they sort of parted ways. Lost touch, you know? Then, we ended up moving to the same town and getting in touch again. When our parents found out about the other one's kids, well. They couldn't resist, and they arranged a marriage."
"We didn't like it at first," Mikasa admitted. "We were about twelve at the time, and neither one of us was wild about the other gender in general."
"We got used to it, though," Eren laughed, then nuzzled Mikasa's torso. In response, she casually stroked his head, and Eren continued his story.
"So anyways, a while after Mikasa and I got engaged, I was playing in the woods behind my house, when I saw a will-o-the-wisp. I was curious about it, so I began to follow it. It led me to a strange area of the forest, and it was cool and dark, and there was this dark pool of water at the bottom of a hollow. All of a sudden, I felt incredibly thirsty, so I crept over to the edge of the pool, and I was about to take a drink when this old hag appeared behind me.
"She said, 'drink, child. Drink, and you will become more powerful than you could ever imagine.' " Eren rested his head on Mikasa's lap and didn't say anything for a little while. Armin became tempted to ask, but he continued on his own.
"I don't know why I wanted power. Or maybe I didn't want power, and I was just a stupid thirteen-year-old who wanted a drink of water. Either way, I drank from the pool, and after that, there's just a blank in my memory.
"Next thing I know, I'm back near the creek and Mikasa's hunched over me, screaming at me to wake up."
"Ah, I remember that," Mikasa recalled. "I was crying like mad and shaking you. You hadn't fully transformed into a wolf at that point, otherwise I don't think I would've even dared approach you." She then laughed softly and looked up, even though their view of the sky was limited by the trees.
The fire crackled and snapped as the three sat in comfortable silence for a few moments.
Mikasa's expression suddenly turned dark. "My parents vanished that day. I lived with Eren from that point on. It took a while to adjust to his new form as a wolf. Took him even longer before he learned to even speak again. Not long after that, Eren's parents vanished too. That's when we decided to go out and search for the old nag who had cursed him."
The entire story, Armin had been listening in awed silence. Then, a question popped into his head. "Didn't you say you didn't like the engagement at first? And even then, you only said you guys got used to it. So why are you acting so… couple-y?"
Eren laughed lightly. "That's a story for another day," he told Armin, and Mikasa nodded in agreement.
"We should get to sleep," she said, stretching out on the thick grass, using Eren as her pillow.
Armin lay down as well, cushioning his head with his arms and staring at the stars. As his eyelids grew heavy he stared at the constellations he knew well from childhood. Just before he left the world for slumber, a shooting star shot across the sky.
"Beautiful," he murmured before slipping away.
Author's Note i. This was supposed to be a bunch of fairy tale one-shots, buuut it has not mutated out of proportion and is going to be an adventure/fantasy multi-chapter. Yep. You've probably already figured out Eren and Mikasa, little red riding hood and her wolf with a twist, but that's not the only role they're be playing. I'm sure y'all will figure it out as time goes on. But I guess 'till then, sit tight. Drop a follow or favorite if you're intrigued, and leave your thoughts in the reviews, (if that's what you're into~) and have a great day~