Well festival season is over for me *sob sob*, I did have a great few weeks of moshing out to music, getting yelled at by drunk guys and indulging the the most delicious yet extortionately priced food known to man, but alas, that has ended. Anyway, I'm back writing agains, so I was all like: new story? Yeah? Yeah. I know I've been getting a lot of requests to get the flip on with the ones I've already got out, but every so often I think of something else I want to do, and I normally forget things soooo yeaaaaah...
Okay, so I know the whole Cinderella thing may be a little over done, but I really want to get in on this un-original yet full-of-potential-for-character-development classic fairy-tale. I want to stay true to the original, yet, um… You get the drill.
Seeing as it's me, it's pretty damn clear that Flora will be playing the part of Cinderella, but I'm not going to use Rose/Miele as an 'ugly step sister', although she is Flora's sister, she's very pretty, and I want to keep the characters in character . … Having said that, I want Flora to be a con artist. It'll make sense, maybe. I also want to mention that I haven't really read any of the Cinderella based fanfics on here, so if someone has used the same characters as me (aka Cassandra as the stepmother) it is purely because they are most suited for the role, not because I'm being a sneaky biatch.
This story is going to be named after the song 'Before the Dawn' by Evanescence: And maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away, we'll be lost before the dawn. I thought it was appropriate because of the whole getting back before midnight thing.
Before The Dawn
Linphea. As calm and as peaceful as it sounds. Fresh forests, clean fields and crisp waters take up the majority of the space, and the people were as calm as you would expect. The main business was producing fresh food and shipping it off to other places. People would grow their own produce, take it to their nearest 'Business Station' and from there it would be taken to the centre of everything, a city called 'Mithweald'. Eighty percent of the food submitted was packaged in bio-degradable packing and shipped to other places, like Domino, Solaria and Zenith, but the other twenty percent was sold in Markets within Mithweald, as it was at the centre of everything, people were kept busy and prices were rising higher. Haggling was common, but supermarkets and convenience stores were not. They tended to keep their business out of the city, as it was a place of tradition; people visited for the royalty and not much more.
You see, Mithweald was either a place of nobility or a place of poverty. The King and his family lived in a beautiful castle situated on the top of a hill overlooking the city. Other noble families could afford to live in mansions and manor houses without struggle, but the working class who spend their days working in packaging plants and their free time haggling for food in the markets.
Flora was a girl who knew both worlds well.
Flora's father wanted her to have everything. She was tutored in six languages, had extensive science, specifically botany, and music lessons. Last but not least she was showered with expensive gifts and a lavish lifestyle. Flora liked her life, loved learning new things and felt lucky, but knowing that she was loved was the most important thing to her, at the end of the day, she was happy to just spend time with her parents.
She didn't think much of it when her mother first got ill.
Her mother would keep the home up coughing in the middle of the night, but insisted it was just a cold.
It was a long and painful situation, but after three years Flora's mother died of lung cancer.
Devastated, Flora's father desperately tried to fill the hole in their lives.
Enter Countess Cassandra and her daughter Chimera. Cassandra had coincidently just lost her own husband, and was left a fair sum of money. Enough for her and her daughter to live comfortably in a nice house without doing much work for the rest of their lives, but the woman had quickly grown bored.
One night she was sitting in a bar on her own, drinking a glass of red wine and eyeing up her company. Not so far away from her sat a handsome man with green eyes and slick back brown hair. He had a melancholy aura surrounding him, and seemed not to be paying much attention to anyone else.
"Excuse me sir, you seem sad, would you like to join me?" This was all the man needed to here. Polite, sympathetic and social-able: a perfect new role model for his daughter. After not much time, the man was charmed but Cassandra's charisma, she was friendly and easy to talk to, not to mention her long blond hair and striking features.
Arrangements were made in a hurry, Cassandra and Chimera moved in with this man and his only daughter., and everyone moved on with their lives.
Flora didn't care much for her new family, and she knew the feeling was mutual. Cassandra's attempts to bond with her stepdaughter were… Not existent. In fact, the only sentence she ever uttered to Flora other than hello was: 'You certainly have a lot of… things, don't you?" Flora never responded. She wasn't happy with the change, but she still loved her father and appreciated that the only reason he had found someone new so quickly was because of her; she didn't doubt for one moment that he still loved her mother more than Cassandra. As long as she had him, she'd be fine.
Cassandra had one ambition: to be royalty. To her luck, this was a dream more than in reach. The king had one son, Prince Helia. He was fourteen years old, the same age as Flora and Chimera. In Linphea it was tradition for the king to hold a ball where all the eligible bachelorettes would attend and have a chance to mingle with the prince, or maybe meet another noble from Linphea. Unfortunately for Cassandra, Flora would also be attending. This was bad news. Flora was such a well-rounded girl, not to mention she had the exotic look that was meant to epitomise a Linphean, talk about the perfect catch. She was certain that one-day she would have to stand and watch the prince be taken in by Flora's pathetic charm.
A small chance for the royal life wasn't enough for her, and she was prepared to go to whatever lengths necessary to increase that chance, even by a fraction.
The day before Flora's seventeenth birthday, her father died.
The household woke up to find his limp body lying in front of the fireplace.
Cassandra took all the life insurance money almost too happily, and the authorities never found a will. Flora lost all her privileges, lessons and possessions. It soon seemed like a waste to spend much money on Flora at all, after all, she was just an orphan. So, out of the goodness of her heart, she set up a charming little room for Flora in the attic, and kept her alive and healthy (more or less) on the condition that she worked as the house's maid and never told anyone who she once was.
No-one questioned Flora's decline in class, truth be told, no one recognised her. There was some talk that a distraught daughter who had just lost her only parent left had fled for a new life, but most of the nobles new what had happened, and they didn't really care. Flora was nothing without her parents and wasn't entitled to anything. They didn't want much to do with someone of the working class. Flora wasn't allowed to talk about who she once was, to everyone who didn't know, she was a maid and nothing more.
Flora was broken; she had let everything get to her.
There wasn't one person in the whole world that cared about her.
That is, until Cassandra put her in charge of buying the groceries at the markets.
"You really think I can haggle? It always looked scary to me." Flora had been called to the dining room where Cassandra and Chimera were eating breakfast.
"Get over it." She rolled her eyes, "Just get what we need with the money I give you, got it?"
"Yes, yes."
"Every morning from this day on, do you understand? I don't want to have to remind you."
"Yes,"
"Okay, off you go."
And that was that, Flora went head first into the hustle and bustle of the market place. Fresh fish, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, pastries, anything you could want. It was all locally produced and organic, that was what Flora loved the most about Linphea. She checked the list Cassandra had given her.
"Peppers, squash and tomatoes." She walked to the vegetable stand and caught the vendor's attention. A short-ish balding man with a gold tooth smiled slyly at her.
"What can I do for you, pretty little lady?" he asked coyly.
"Oh, I… I need some peppers, some squash and a few tomatoes," she answered shyly.
"Okay, let me just calculate your total… That comes to eight credits exactly." He grinned. Flora gasped.
"No way!" she exclaimed, "That's almost all the money I have! I have so many other things I need to get!"
"Oh, so you're insulting me, is that it? Don't you think my produce is good enough for your money? Is that it?"
"No no no, I never said that, I mean… I guess if that's what it costs then…" Flora sighed and reached into the pocket of her dress for the money Cassandra gave her. Suddenly, a girl grabbed Flora's arm and looked at her angrily. Flora looked the girl up and down. She was very pretty, blonde and had these big, light brown eyes. She was wearing a long, pink satin dress. A contrast to everyone else's dull clothing.
"You have no idea how mad mum is going to be is you mess this up, we're running thin as it is and if we loose any more money because of you, you know where you're going." The girl hissed, "Your first day in the markets, and you screw it up!"
"Y-yes… I-I'm sorry…" Flora was beyond confused; she had never seen this girl before. How did she know what she was doing? The vendor looked at Flora with pity. He knew it was tough to get by in the markets, maybe better than anyone.
"Wait wait wait, listen, I'll give you a first-time customers discount. Two and a half credits, take it or leave it." He sighed.
"Oh my gosh, that's fantastic, thank you very much!" Flora happily handed him the money and took her vegetables.
"You got lucky." The girl sneered and pulled her around the corner and out of sight from the vendor, and then to Flora's surprise, burst out laughing. "I can't believe you were going to pay so much for those things! They're were worth about three credits at best!" she sniggered, "Look, you're obviously new to this system, so I thought I'd cut in and help you out. No harm done." She smiled.
"Thank you so much, I knew I'd be awful at this," Flora said gratefully.
"No problem, I can even show you the ropes if you want me to,"
"That would be great! Hey, what's your name?" Flora asked. The girl giggled.
"Why, they call me… Estella!" She said with a flourish.
"They call you Estella? What's your real name?"
"… Stella," she smirked. "Estella is more of an alias around here, if I have to use my name, I use Estella. What's your name?"
"Flora." She said simply.
"So, Flora, are you shopping for yourself or are you working or whatever?"
"Oh, I'm a maid. I'm just shopping for my step mo-boss."
"Your step-mother?"
"L-last year… I guess you could say things got bad." Flora smiled a little, "What about you? You look so fancy…"
"It's all part of the act, my dear," Stella twirled, "Sometimes I go for the poor orphan 'who can't afford to live' look, and other times I go for the whole 'my family is rich and if you give me free food we'll get you great business' thing."
"But… How can you afford clothes like that?" Flora asked in awe.
"I don't." She put simply, "I live here with my dad, but my mum owns a dress shop in the country, she made this for me and sent it to me on my birthday." She smiled.
"Oh, have your parents separated then?" Flora asked sympathetically. Stella nodded slightly.
"It's no big deal," she grinned suddenly, "How about you? What's this about your Step-mother?"
"Oh, it's nothing! I am very happy with my life and I love everyone and I am happy to help around the house hold in any way I can even if getting thanked is a little bit too rare and my step-sister is a snot-nosed brat who has all my things and won't let me see them and even if my step-mother stopped all my tuition because 'it was a waste of time and money for me', I mean, COME ON! LIKE MAKING SURE ALL HER SHOES ARE PARALLEL TO HER DRESSING TABLE ISN'T A WASTE OF TIME?" Flora kicked down a trashcan and started stomping on the rubbish.
"WHOA! Calm down!" Stella pulled Flora away. "That's some serious baggage! Come on, lets go somewhere else." They walked into an alleyway and sat against a wall. "NOW you can vent."
"My father owned the Biover packaging plant and my mother was the royal colour advisor, she arranged flowers and kept the palace looking traditional. But… My mum died of lung cancer and… My dad married this woman called Cassandra; she moved in with her daughter, Chimera. I didn't really like them, but I moved on. Then… My dad died."
"Are you serious?" Stella asked quietly, "I'm so sorry."
"It's been a year." Flora stated. "It hurts but… You get used to it."
"How did your father die?"
"Sudden adult death syndrome. In other words, they don't know."
"So… I'm guessing that Cassandra hired you as a live in maid so you wouldn't have to go to an orphanage."
"That's about right, expect, I don't get paid."
"THAT'S STRIAGHT UP BULL CRAP!" Stella exclaimed, "Can she even do that?"
"Legally, yes. Until I'm twenty-one, but I don't have enough of an education to get a proper job, so I'm pretty sure I'll be stuck with them for the rest of my life."
"Your father must have left something to you, anything?"
"They never found a will, everything automatically went to Cassandra."
"That's horrible."
"I'll get her back one day, you can bet on it!" Flora laughed. "So, about showing me the ropes…"
"Uh, oh yeah!" Stella enthusiastically cleared her throat, "Around here, there's a sort of rota. For the course of the year, sellers from each part of the country all come up, starting with Anemone in January and ending with Poinsettia in December."
"I see,"
"Different towns mean different people," she said slyly, "Every few weeks new vendors come, and that gives people like us to play any card we want. Like I said, I either go for the starving orphan or the privileged girl who can help out with the money sitch. What could you do?"
"Uhm… I could…" Flora tapped her chin, "Pretend to be… Lost?"
"What good would that do?"
"It would distract them?"
"… That's not a bad idea actually. You could pretend to be lost, and I could take the goods…" She pondered, "Let's try it out! What do you need next?"
"Salmon."
"Okay, the fish stand is right around the corner. You run up, be really confused and lost, and I'll take a fish." Stella grinned. Flora gulped. "Be a good actress."
"O-okay!" Flora nodded and walked out on to the street. She started to breathe heavily and stumble about a bit, she ran aimlessly to the fish stand. "H-hallo! Bi-bitte, ich brauche hilfe!"
"Uh, I'm really sorry miss, I only speak English! What was that? Um… Do you need help?" The vendor worriedly replied. Flora continued to make vague hand gestures and desperate noises.
"HILFE!" she kept yelling out. She glanced to her left and saw Stella a little in the distance carrying a salmon in a plastic bag and giving her the thumbs up. "… Aufwiedersehen…" she said slowly and then ran off as fast as she could.
"No way Flora! That was awesome!" She gave her the salmon, "How did you learn how to speak German?"
"I was tutored in a few languages when I was younger."
"That's aweso-… Hey!" Stella suddenly yelled at a pale girl with dark hair, carrying a flute, "YEAH YOU! I KNOW YOU!" The girl turned a little whiter, and then turned on her heels and ran. "OH NO YOU DON'T!" Stella fumed and ran as fast as she could after the girl.
"Stella WAIT!" Flora called and ran behind her. They eventually chased the girl into another alleyway, and Stella managed to pin her against the floor.
"Flora!" Stella said firmly.
"Y-yes…" Flora panted.
"Get me something sharp or heavy…" Stella said with an evil grin on her face. Flora turned pale.
"What? NO!" She pulled Stella off the girl, "What the heck is going on here anyway?" The girl stood up and rubbed her shoulder, from Stella's harsh handling presumably. She picked up her flute and sighed.
"I stole the blonde's purse…" she muttered.
"DAMN STRAIGHT!" Stella yelled.
"You made it so easy!" said Musa, she turned to Flora, "I make money by playing my flute on the streets, and my parents do the same. We split up so we can make more. Stella struck up a conversation with me and was about to give me some money when she handed me her purse so she could tie her shoe. I picked up my flute, my dad's hat with the money I had earned in it, and, well, ran…"
"Who hands a stranger their purse?" Flora raised an eyebrow.
"Okay okay, I was trying to steal from her as well, I was going to grab that hat and run…. I didn't realise she'd do it first."
"Stella, you're no better than her!" Flora held her forehead, "My name's Flora, what's yours?" she smiled at the girl.
"I'm Musa, and thanks from stopping the blonde from killing me."
"I HAVE A NAME YOU KNOW!"
"That's Stella."
"Thanks for clearing that up."
"Flora and I have a thing going now, we're going to be scammers that'll go down in history!" Stella announced proudly. "This lil girly just pretended she was lost and German so I could sneak away a whole Salmon!" she put her arm around the blushing brunette.
"Really? You?" Musa sounded genuinely surprised, "You look way too innocent to play with someone like that…" She smirked.
"I… Uh…"
"Don't make her feel bad! They almost made her pay eight credits for some lousy vegetables; they try to do the same thing to us all the time!"
"So how long have you guys known each other for then?" Musa continued to brush herself off.
"… Maybe… Twenty minutes to half an hour?"
"Oh! I guess I don't need to feel left out then!" She smiled, "If I may, do you think I could join the fun?"
"I dunno, you did steal my purse…" Stella pondered angrily, "But then again, you did steal my purse… Okay! You're in!"
And from then on the three girls met up every morning and gave all the vendors hell. If they were lucky, they could get a days groceries without having to pay a dime, and Flora could just use the money Cassandra gave her to buy a drink or pastry or whatever the hell she wanted.
A year passed, and Flora became close with her new misfit friends. Stella turned nineteen, and Flora and Musa became eighteen without much time between.
Flora couldn't help but think of where she would be if her parents were still alive. She could picture her mother making a fuss about the big ball for the prince and what she was going to wear, and she could picture her father talking her up at every possible opportunity. But today, things are very different. It didn't look like Flora would even be attending… Or so she thought.
A bored prince Helia sat in silence while his father read through the guest list for the up and coming ball.
"Tell me son, is there any one I've missed?" He passed the list to his bored son who rested his chin on his hand while skimming through the names of all the suitably aged female nobility in Linphea.
"Dad, I've met all of these girls. They all suck." He put childishly as he let the list fall out of his hand. His father and a couple of members of the royal staff let out a small gasp.
"I won't have you speaking so frankly young man! Each and every girl on this list has a unique quality and they are very eligible, beautiful and well rounded young women. I thought I brought you up to be more polite!"
"I get so bored constantly flattering these girls, it's like they need constant assurance from me that they're good enough to be where they are! They don't need me to elaborate for them! It gets on my nerves, and furthermore, I can't remember a single time when a girl asked one thing about me. They obviously want the royal title, and it seems to me that they couldn't care less about what I want to do with my future, or want to know anything about me at all for that matter! I don't even want to stay in Linphea for goodness sake!"
"HELIA!" his father stood up and stared the dark haired prince down, "You have a responsibility to these people. Tradition must be kept."
"I don't care anymore!"
"I can't bend the rules for you, but… What would make you cooperate?" his father quickly changed his tune. The king was an impatient man, and therefore avoided argument where possible. He didn't want to spoil his reputation.
"Invite all the 'suitably aged' girls in Mithweald regardless of their class. That's all I ask." Helia sighed.
"I… I…" his father hesitated.
"I just want to meet some new people, before I get stuck with one for the rest of my life."
"… Fine. I make the announcement tomorrow."
"Thank you." Helia smiled slightly.
~A/N~
Sum sh*ts about to go down yo
The next chapter of Anything for you is almost finished, then I PROMISE I'll update Princess + the Pauper