We knew from the moment the guard had opened the door that they had found her. No words passed between us. There was nothing to be said. Nothing to be done.
For a moment, my husband and I just stayed where we were, letting the news sink in. It seemed like we'd been waiting for this day for all our lives. We'd had our share of frauds along the way of course. Girls who were too old, too young, who didn't have the same face, the same hair, the same eyes. Sometimes it was too painful, sometimes we wondered if we should just give up our search and abandon our hope of her returning altogether. But then at night we'd dream of our baby girl, and remember how hard we had worked to bring her into the world, how hard my husband had searched for that magic flower and we refused to stop believing. She had to be out there. And someday, somehow, she would return to us.
It was unnecessary for the King and Queen to run to meet the princess, in fact it was normally the guards who had the job of escorting the candidate to our chambers, but something inside told us that we couldn't wait for this one. Had it really been only last night that we'd lit those lanterns, praying that this might be the year when the lost princess would finally return? It almost felt like a distant dream now. Or maybe we were still dreaming, we didn't know.
We only stopped running when we'd gone up the stairs to the balcony. I turned to my husband to see mixed feelings of excitement, hope, apprehension and uncertainty in his eyes, as I knew, were the same things reflected in my own. We'd been waiting for this moment for eighteen years now. A long time for anyone to see their daughter. There was no telling what we would discover when we stepped through that threshold, what she would look like, what she would be like, or if she would even remember us. But…we were ready for it. We knew no matter what happened we would get through it. Just like we'd gotten through for the past eighteen years, we would.
The doors opened, and the young couple at the balcony, for it was two people instead of one, turned to face us. I found myself staring, transfixed as I inched passed the threshold and into the sunlight. The girl who stood before us did not look like a princess at all. Heaven forbid, she wasn't even wearing shoes! And her hair...it was short and brown, not at all the beautiful golden, blonde of the baby girl I had carried in my womb for nine months. And yet…there was something compelling about her, something that made me widen her eyes as I walked down the steps to take a closer look.
There was just something different about her. Maybe it was in the way she was holding herself, maybe it was in the way she looked straight at me and didn't try to explain herself right away like all the others. She seemed so scared, so innocent, so young, so…familiar. Slowly, I stepped closer. Her face was heart shaped and freckled. Her eyes were green, round and expressive. "Just like my eyes," I realized. I passed a hand over her oddly cropped hair, and that's when it clicked, that's when I knew.
This is my daughter.
Feeling as though a weight had been lifted from me, I smiled, and then I hugged her. I let eighteen years of restrained love come out into that embrace. I knew it was her, as a mother I knew, and in that moment I was only glad that we had waited, because of all things, this moment was a moment worth waiting for. The lanterns we lit would no longer be to commemorate our missing daughter, but to celebrate the day that she had returned. The streets would be filled with music and dancing. Corona would be a place of life and happiness once more.
I heard my husband laugh as he came to join us, knowing for the first time in eighteen years that our family was finally complete, he was a father once again. But we had left one person out of the equation.
I was well-aware of who the infamous Flynn Rider was of course. My husband and I had been up all morning with news about him stealing the princess's crown and then breaking out of the dungeons to avoid his appointment with the gallows. He'd been on our wanted list for sometime…but maybe, maybe if he was the reason our little girl was here right now, then we could possibly overlook his execution and turn over a new leaf.
I smiled, holding out my hand to the handsome bandit and then pulled him in with us. As long as he had brought our daughter back safe and sound, we would be sure to treat him like he was our family, too.