I can never go too long without some Disney writing. This one accidentally swallowed up my entire soul so oh well.
For fun facts this was inspired by a gifset of Dr. Facilier and the Hades and Persephone myth.
IF YOU CAME FROM TUMBLR, A, you're the best, and B, start from the line break in the middle.
Part 1 - Persephone
Chapter 1
Lottie's Happily Ever After sure was taking its sweet Louisiana time.
She understood patience and keep-it-together girl and hold onto your biscuits because prince charming's on his way, but he was late and her breasts weren't going to be so perky forever. At first it was perfect and simple to grow up slow and marry a little prince and she she and Tia would be real sisters and no one could say squat to her about 'that coloured girl' because they would be family. Until someone mentioned that by the time little Ralphie was going to be eighteen she'd be nearly thirty and there were age gaps and there were age canyons.
So while that ship hadn't quite sailed, she sure would love to be swept her off her feet and solve all these little issues. Except she just wasn't goodat sitting on her pretty butt and waiting, because she was gotta-have-it-now and she wanted what she wanted.
Of course, everyone said that wishing on stars past the age of twelve was silly, and Lottie knew chances were her prince would come into town on a train and not a white horse, when she sawthat Evening Star twinkling in the sky, right next to its lover like destiny and true love and all those things were real, those wishes slipped out of her like hiccups. Please make me a princess please make me a princess oh please make me a princess! But you know that stubborn star wouldn't even give her a beignet and she was running outta patience.
That was why she went to the fortune teller, in as many words. Her shop in a sleepy backalley with a newly-painted sign and deadeyed masks that stared out of their hollow black sockets. Everyone had said, Tia most of all, not to mess with shadow magic, not even once. Except Tiana had her happily ever after; she had her prince and one heck of a prince he was. Lottie figured that there just hadto be enough magic in the world for her too.
"I want you to read my fortune," she told the witch, who sat across the table like a puppet on strings with her headdress and all of four teeth and wicked twinkles in her eyes. "But make sure it's the right one."
"Fate's not your pet," the crone squawked. "The crystal sees only what is there." To Lottie it looked exactly like a big glass ball and not like any kind of magic that was going to solve her problems for her, but she paid anyway.
"All I want is my future," she stated, full of big intentions. "One with romance an' true love and me being a princess as long as I live, okay?" The woman looked like she was swilling her teeth around in her mouth, then parted her lips in a gummy smile.
"Very well," she crowed, pulling up her sleeves. When she sat sat her wrinkled hands on the ball it let out a noise like cats going down a blackboard and Lottie screamed. The old woman shook like a bolting pony, which wasn't a good sign, much less the eerie light that was filling the globe from within, as if it was going to burst like a balloon and all the magic would drown them both. Then with a soft pop it was gone and the room was still again.
"Is that it?" she piped.
"Do you truly want what you ask?" the old woman rasped.
"I do, I really do," she blurted. Wishing on magic was the only thing she had, when she had it all already and it still wasn't enough. A deep laugh echoed up from under her feet, as if it were eavesdropping down there inside her purse.
"Go!" the woman snapped with sudden fear, as if recognition had struck her. "Powerful forces would grant your wishes."
"Isn't that a good thing?" she retorted, noticing how the shadows were getting deeper, like a leak was letting them in.
"Leave!" the woman bellowed, her braids flying back with the force of her terror. "Do not return!" Lottie hopped up like a bunch of bees got up her skirt and ran outta there as fast as her high heels would take her.
The street should have seemed bright after being inside such a dark little shop, but instead it was all sepia. Had the world always been this colourless, she wondered. Maybe she'd been blinded by the colours within. Still, she ran home and got under her covers and tried very hard not to think about it all. It was just a silly parlour trick, she told herself. The fortune teller only wanted to scare her.
In a night she'd forgotten about it, and laughed with her friends and went out for coffee and cakes and it was all just a strange thing that had happened but not really happened. It became a story to tell for laughs, until the moment Tia grew ten years into her mother and outright scolded her.
Lottie found herself pleading, as Tia wanted to up and take her straight down to Mama Odie all the way out in the Bayou just in case. It seemed too serious and intimidating to act like it'd been real. It was nothing, nothing she said so many times her mouth was tired of it, until the words meant nothing. Tia was finally convinced, and when the next rush of customers came through she was off again with springs in her shoes, just Lottie and Naveen catching her dust.
"Don't frown," he cooed in his melted-chocolate voice that still stoked Lottie's fire even though he was her best friend's husband and that was okay but it didn't mean he was any less of what he was. "She's only worried for you."
"I know," she sighed. She had done enough worrying for herself already. "Say, you didn't remember any middle brothers, did you?" she asked cheerfully, changing that subject before it could gather dust. He chuckled and smiled and promised her she'd get the first one he found, but it was only promises and she knew that. Lottie had a sweet tooth all over, and she just wanted something a little bit more than what she had.
Soon enough, like all her troubles, it was put away and paid no more dues. Lottie's life was back to the puff-pastry chocolate-sunday it'd always been, and probably always would be.
Until the first night without a moon. It'd been a calm day, followed by any other New Orleans eve, until something woke her in dark so thick she couldn't see the end of her own nose.
'Princess,' it whispered on the wind, tickling her hair around her ears. 'Princessssss' hissing like a snake or steam or geese.
"Hello?" she mumbled in a confused croak. "Who's there?" Again it whispered, like the rustling of leaves, but the sounds were so distinct. Princess, it beckoned. "Are you... talking to me?" she dared to ask.
'Come' the voice with a texture of black coffee answered, and she was up out of her bed like it was nails. Before she was scared, she was something else entirely, and when a light appeared at one end of her room like a will-o-wisp, it took hold of her. She walked to the tear of fire, but before she could reach it the little thing vanished, only to be replaced by another further away.
She grabbed a dressing gown and shuffled on her slippers and followed the lights out of her house, off the estate, and further into town. The streets were black and quiet, but there should have been more people. Any people. The whole city was a ghost town – or was she the ghost?
She turned down an alleyway and into a square, and only when the last light vanished did Lottie recognise where she was. Back outside the voodoo shop, which was lit although there were no lamps, no fire. It was as if the very stones were shining.
She'd been told never to come back here, had promised the same, but here she was. Except she couldn't remember much of anything, like why she'd sworn against it or why she was here at all. It was like she'd been sleeping beauty, out on a dreamland stroll.
'Do you really want to be a princess?' the voice crept up out of the cobblestones. It was scary and strange; she was in her nightclothes half-way across the city talking to magical glowing light, but darnit to all she did still want it.
"... Yes," she breathed, and no sooner was the noise on her mouth than something jumped up her legs, wrapping around her ankles. She gasped and then there was another, a thick black tendril that looped over her head. She looked down to see a black puddle beneath her feet, lit with electric purples like cracks of lightning, and her feet had sunk into the pavement.
Screaming and screaming and screaming until her throat was sore, she fell down into the stone like it was a bog or quicksand, thrashing arms which only became more tangled in the smothering dark. Her voice silenced when the shadows swirled up her neck and crawled down her throat, drowning her out as her eyes slipped under.
She woke on hard ground.
It was hot, the kind of heat that pushed at the back of your mouth and made you feel dizzy. All she could see was strange shadows, like the inside of a cave lit from a long way away.
"Mademoiselle," a crawling molasses voice reached out of the blurr, and she strained her eyes into focus. When she saw him she could've screamed, were her sounds not already scratched raw and stolen.
He was tall, taller than any man ought to be, and straight as a skeleton. Elongated hands rested on a cane so narrow it was almost unseeable, a heavy orb between them. Jacket so dark it had no texture, with sharp square shoulders and long tails. Eyes wide and black looked out from a face that appeared half a skull, obscured under the brim of a tall hat.
"S-Sh-Sh." She jittered like she'd got a bunch of rabbits inside her. "Shadow man." She knew who he was.
"If you like," he answered velvetly. About that point questions started running down her tongue and hopping off her mouth like stampeding cattle.
"Where am I?" she piped. "What happened? How did I- I didn't make no deals with-"
"This is no deal, madamoiselle," he purred, and for the first time moved. He didn't walk like a man any more, more like ink pouring around the outline of a man. His steps were strokes of a calligraphy brush. "You are my honoured guest."
Charlotte La Bouff woke up in her own room, sitting bolt upright and feeling tears coarse down her cheeks.
"It was a dream," she gasped, looking around her room, exactly as it should be. "It was a dream. Oh thank lord it was a dream!" She was about to hop out of bed and chase down her dog, or Big Daddy, or anyone; bust them out of bed just to have something warm and alive to touch. However, Stella's basket was empty in her room. She looked to her window and saw nothing outside. Not even the lights of the street, or the city just beyond her walls as it ought be.
"Then keep on, dreamer," his voice had a buzz like hornets, full of venom and fear. "You're not awake yet." He was at the far end of her room, like someone had tipped black paint down the wall and it was him in the streaks and slicks of oil.
"No," she protested. "No." She pinched her arm, then pinched it again. She realised she was still in her dressing gown, and in her bed were the slippers that she'd walked half-way across the city chasing magical lights that led her into his jaws.
"Welcome," he drawled, ridden with sarcasm. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced."
"I know who you are," she stated, and didn't doubt that the reverse was true. "Where am I?" Looking to her bedroom door, she wondered what was really behind the exit he so carefully blocked.
"You're in my world now," he rolled on with the rhythm and blues in his voice.
"How?" she shot. "Why! You put me back, Shadow Man." He laughed to the tune of black pepper and chillies.
"No can do," he denied, and she didn't believe a word of it. "This is what you wanted."
"How dare you say that!" she retorted. "I never did ask for this."
"But you did," he countered musically, picking himself up off the wall and shaking out like a rug that needed dusting.
"Don't you try any of your little parlour tricks on me," she declared, kicking off her fake-covers from her fake-bed and rummaging under the covers for her lost slipper. "I want to go home right this instant."
"You wantedto be a princess," he reminded her. That was true, but she didn't see how it had much to do with anything.
"So?" She dropped her slipper down and stuffed a foot into it, stepped up on her bedroom heels and feeling bigger and bolder.
"So – this is your kingdom," he pronounced. The shock was like water so hot or cold you couldn't tell which was which.
"What?" she gasped, looking up at her ceiling like there might be a rope ladder and a hole she could climb back out of. "This... this isn't anywhere." Just a fake-bedroom with a voodoo man who ought to have been dragged off into hell after what he did.
"You're on the other side," he soothed without any real empathy in his voice. "It might take some getting used to."
"Like heck it will!" she shrieked. She was confused and scared and had had just about enough of all this. "Now you listen to me – I didn't make a deal with you, and I'm not gonna be any princess of whatever it is you think you're runnin', and I bet the Almighty's gonna have a fierce word or two with you when he finds out what you've been doing dragging poor innocent girls into some kinda hell-hole in the backstreets of New Orleans!" His laugh was a rock skimming on the Mississippi, each skip a little further than the last, hopping all the way out before disappearing under the surface.
"I'm the Almighty down here," he jeered. "Big Daddy ain't around no more to look after you, little Lottie."
"Oh I swear if you don't take me back I'm gonna start screaming!" She had her hands balled into fists, like it'd fix anything.
"Would you like to start?" he taunted, and in a step that seemed to pass across a magnifying lens, he was right in front of her, one hand outstretched. He twisted it and there sat a glass full of cold, still water. A mockery of everything.
Lottie knocked that glass out of his hand so hard it flew into the wall and smashed, though no glass or water fell out, and she opened her mouth and let out the kind of scream that usually had every person and dog in a hundred-yard radius ducking for the hills. She screamed so hard her throat opened up and every bit of fear and confusion and anger turned into one solid channel of sound that ripped out of her like tobacco spit and she did not stop until she was getting dizzy.
Except the Shadow Man was still right there, still in front of her with a twisted expression of amusement and pity.
"Did that help?" he queried. She was about ready to bust she was so mad. Nothing made a difference.
"I'm not scared of you!" she shrieked, pitching climbing up the walls like a cat on curtains. "You're just... just a two-cent witch doctor who couldn't keep a bargain and the spirits dragged you off!" She'd been told by Tiana how he left this world, had even been so brave and foolish as to go to the grave and see what was left behind. "I'm not afraid of you and you are going to take me back home RIGHT THIS INSTANT or so help me I'm going to-"
"Justa witch doctor?!" he retaliated, cutting down on her like a buzz saw. "You think they dragged me here because I was worth nothin? You're in my world now," he snarled, "and you'd do to use some respect in it"" Something had been changing in the room. The walls were darkening, radiating a vicious energy, creeping closer to her like they were going to fall in and crush her.
"You take me home!" she screamed. It was the only thing she could do.
"SILENCE!" His voice was hellfire and terror and the war-cry of every man and animal in the world going to battle and dying at the same time. The room was hot, getting hotter every second, and pitch-black shadows were sinking through the floor and the ceiling and creeping at her.
"Seems tou're as stupid as you are loud," he said with a low, glaring attitude, and Lottie was skipping back over shadows to the steps of a dance she didn't know. Maybe, just maybe screeching at him like a parrot wasn't the smartest thing to have done. As she backed against the wall, it occurred to her that it might be the lastthing she'd ever do.
All at once a shadow spread out from under his feet that was ten times his size, and black as anything had ever been. It spread wings across her walls and reached claws along the floor and went for Lottie like it was going to rip her up and swallow her. The Shadow Man stood there motionless, a statue with a sour expression as his creature lunged for her. Lottie topped every shriek she'd made so far, and passed out.