"This is a story of rebirth..."
"Fluff, hun, that's not how the script goes."
"I don't like the script's diction, though. I mean, aren't you supposed to be saying this part?"
"Didn't we both agree that you would be doing the introduction?"
"Losing a game of rock-paper-scissors isn't the same as a mutual agreement."
"Ah, yes. But the terms of loss had been previously agreed upon, so speak up, Fluff."
"Sometimes, I really hate your snark."
"Oh...you know you love me."
"I do...most of the time."
"Wow. Well now my poor feelings are hurt. If you don't want me to die of a broken heart, you should probably read from the script."
"Fine, you sly fox. But I'm reading it my way."
"Well...go on..."
"...Oh...well, once upon a time, the sun hovered in the sky-"
"Do you mean to say the sun doesn't still hover in the sky?"
"No-!"
"-because I can go check right now to disprove that claim."
"Look, that was just for storytelling purposes. Just let me tell the story."
"Ha! As you wish, Fluff."
"Well...Once upon a time, the sun hovered in the sky, its gentle light guiding the creatures beneath. As lovingly warm as the sun was, however, the beings in its realm were not quite as so. Some bared their fangs at one another, while others utilized the threat of social downfall to maintain their threshold of power. Seeing this as overseer of the kingdoms beneath, the sun grieved, for it only wished its creatures to happily coexist.
"One day, a drop of sunlight rolled off the cheek of the sun. Parting wispy clouds of pure white, a tear of gold dripped down and kissed the earth beneath.
"Coincidentally, at the same spot the sun's rain had fallen, had been a single carrot. This is where our story truly begins..."
She groans as she pushes through the ferns, just hoping she won't have to pick out the leaves later from her hooves. As she traipses through the undergrowth, she contemplates her purpose. After all, she honestly doesn't need this. It's just insurance, really — in case something goes wrong. Although she really doubts anything could go wrong, considering the precision of her minions.
But there's never anything wrong with having an insurance policy, she assumes.
The unfortunate thing is: insurance is surprisingly hard to get. Turns out, you can't just check in to your friendly neighborhood insurance company and ask to purchase some liquid sun for two reasons: companies barely exist — none of the two existing ones have anything to do with insurance — and insurance doesn't even exist in the 17th century.
Unfortunate, really.
There's also the problem of: if no one sells sunlight, then how is one supposed to get it?
Liquid sunlight is difficult to find, and aimlessly wandering around has done her little good. Sunlight really doesn't just fall anywhere.
She pushes through yet some more ferns and miscellaneous plants, griping all the way. If she doesn't find this darn thing within the next few days, she's just going to have to give up and proceed with her plans without the-
A burst of brilliance ignites in her vision, and the night sky is suddenly engulfed in golden hue. For a brief second, she forgets everything, gaping at the beautiful eclipse of night and day.
But then she brings her eyes from the sky and back down to the earth. With a smirk on her face, she scrambles forward, underbrush crunching beneath her hooves.
Just a bit ahead, there's a sprout of leaves with a fluorescent green glow and she just knows that all her waiting has finally paid off. There are pebbles in her hooves, leaves in her wool, but she doesn't care.
Because she can finally end this search and begin her ultimate plan.
When she's only a step away from the plant, the green of her eyes matches its ethereal green. Slowly, she raises a hoof towards it, breath catching slightly in her throat. Delicately balancing the leaves between two hooves, she gingerly plucks them from the earth.
The world once again bursts into shades of gold, and she can only gape at the splendor.
They're more beautiful than anything she's ever seen before. They shine splendidly in the moonlight, so brilliantly that even the murky air around them seems to glitter. They're a ray of a sunlight she can physically hold in her small hooves. They're carrots.
They're...carrots.
She knows at this part she's supposed to test the powers of the sun, but she hadn't anticipated she would have to change the chant according to...carrots.
Wasn't sunlight normally attracted to flowers?
Why carrots?
Of all things...carrots?
"Well, um..." She coughs, patting down her wool. "Not sure how this song will go, but I guess I could try." She looks frantically around her slight figure, in search of something that would require healing.
Not a scratch.
Now she wishes she had just walked head-on through the underbrush, because then there would have been small scratches at least somewhere on her body. But no, aside from the occasional leaf and clump of dirt, she's in mint condition.
How ironically unfortunate.
Well, there's that crack in her hoof she got several years ago after running from a cheetah. While she would like to point out that outrunning a cheetah is not impossible, it's very much not recommended. She's quite confident to say she's probably lost a lung from that excursion.
But there's a crack in her hoof, and she's going to fix it. With some magic carrots.
Her life just seems more and more ridiculous the more she ponders over her circumstances.
Again, she clears her throat, ready to rock the night with her singing.
(She's kidding; she's far too awkward to pull that off.)
Quietly and hesitantly, she sings, closing her eyes shut.
...Carrot...gleam and glow,
Let your power shine.
Make the clock reverse;
Bring back what once was mine,
What once was mine.
She cracks open one eye, breath cradled in her cheeks. Then...she takes a bite from a carrot's leaf.
Her body begins to tingle, and she can feel the warmth of the sun embracing her entire figure. The universe whispers gently in her ear, and for a second, she swears she can just barely touch an infinite source of knowledge.
There's a gentle breath of air on her hoof, just where it's cracked. It feels like it's being kissed by the sun's rays and she can feel the crack stitching itself together again.
The world flashes from gold to midnight, and suddenly she is left with nothing but a repaired hoof and the taste of sun on her lips.
It works. It works. She's overtaken with joy, but it lasts for a brief moment because just a little bit in the distance, she can hear a muffled speech. A bright beam of light blots her vision.
"I think I saw something!" One of the voices is gruff and drawing ever nearer.
She panics, dropping the carrots on the dirt floor. Shaking, she tries to kick some stray leaves on the carrots, but in her haste, never completely covers the vegetable enough to mask the distinct glow. Without checking, she clops away in a rush, uneasy to be caught by the Royal Guard before ever beginning her master plan.
Just when she's run for at least two minutes, however, she can hear two gasps in unison, followed by a "We've found it!"
She swivels around in shock.
No, they couldn't have-
"We need to bring this to the Queen, quickly!"
"No," she hisses.
Those pesky royal brats were always going to have to get in her way, weren't they?
"See, at this time, the queen of the Western Kingdom had been gravely ill from the pain of childbearing. So they said, 'Let her have cake.' They chopped up one of the golden carrots and gave her a magical carrot cake.
"And a few days later, a beautiful, healthy baby bunny was born. To celebrate her birth, the King and Queen launched a flying carrot lantern into the sky. And for that one moment, everything was perfect."
She clicks her tongue, heart beating straight out of her chest. The Queen's baby had just been born the night before, and midnight always seems like a good time to break into a castle, right?
Wrong.
She can't see a single thing, and she's sure the guards are just as incompetent during the day as they are at night. After all, she's stolen an entire diamond from them once, right under their noses.
So, why did she think it would be a good idea to go castle-climbing in the middle of the night, when she could just as well do it during daytime?
The answer to that is she probably wasn't thinking at all.
Every time she moves an inch upwards, she lets out something along the lines of "Oh, blueberries" or "You lousy sack of plums."
Honestly, castle-climbing would be a lot easier if she had opposable thumbs. Except joke's on the universe because she doesn't and she has no idea why she's risking her life in order to obtain some carrots.
Carrots.
She recalls the popular song "When Will My Life Begin" and would like to pitch a spin-off titled "When Will My Life Make Sense."
And the more she attempts to climb a stone castle with her bare hooves, the more she's convinced the answer is: Never.
She latches onto another stone, but it refuses her; just as she places one hoof on it, a section of it crumbles, and she's left falling to her doom.
By doom, she means she falls one foot. The foot that she jumped up to to begin her epic journey to the princess' room.
Clearly, castle-climbing is not working. Maybe she should just go back to being a traveling hermit for another drop of sunlight.
Ha.
Ha.
Funny.
She hears something slam open to her left, and she's immediately alert. A whistling guard carrying a lantern waltzes into a-
She smirks. Surprise, surprise. There's a secret staircase. And the guard left the door wide open.
She tip-hooves up to the entrance. With a quick glance left and right, she scurries up the staircase.
It was an agonizing ten minutes, but she's finally made it up the stairs.
If she's lost one lung from outrunning a cheetah several years ago, she's definitely lost the other one just from climbing up these stairs.
Taking a deep breath, she peers around the room. The King and Queen are sleeping soundly, and tucked snugly in the corner is the baby's cradle.
She smirks.
Quietly as she can, she cautiously inches towards it.
Soon. Soon. Her plan is so close she can just taste the power.
Cradled in the baby's tiny paw is a single golden carrot.
Gazelles, has she never loved seeing a carrot more.
Leaning into the child's crib, she, in a falsely loving tone, begins to serenade it. "Carrot, gleam and glow." She motions towards the carrot, which to its credit, indeed begins to glow. "Let your powers shine." She pushes the carrot out from the bunny's hand and begins to take a few steps back. "Make the clock re-"
Suddenly, the light begins to dim and she can feel the carrot lose its radiating warmth. She swivels her attention from the sleeping baby to the carrot in hand.
No. How is this possible? This didn't happen the first time she had-
The baby lets out a soft whimper in her sleep. Rolling in bed, it begins to feel around. When it finally touches something in the corner of the crib, it lets out a small giggle and pulls it close to its body.
The thing is a carrot. A regular carrot. An orange carrot.
Or, at least, it was an orange carrot.
Cradled in the child's arm, the carrot begins to take on a golden hue.
Even as she sees this with her own two eyes, she can't believe it. But the once golden carrot in her hand has begun to rot, and now there's a child right in front of her that possesses the ability to produce goldencarrots.
Rotten carrot or infinity carrots?
Infinity carrots it is.
The next minute seems to go by in a blur. Suddenly, the child is in her arms. Suddenly, erratic wailing resounds far too close to her eardrums. Suddenly, she can see two new pairs of eyes on her followed by a collective gasp. Suddenly, she hears the word, "Guards!" but it's already too late. Suddenly, she has somehow survived a jump from the tower's balcony to the castle floor. Suddenly, she has stolen into the night.
Her mission is finally a go.
"Bellwether broke into the castle, stole the child, and just like that — gone."
"Oh, the injustice! I just swoon wondering what happened to that poor baby. By the way, way to reveal Bellwether's identity."
"Her identity wasn't even supposed to be a secret."
"Well, what's the fun of a mystery when you give it all away? I mean, spoiler alert, Fluff."
"This story isn't a mystery. And you already know the ending. You're part of the story."
"That reminds me; when will I finally make my appearance?"
"Hmph. With that attitude, I'll make sure you don't pop in any time soon."
"What? Hey...hey. I was just joking around, Fluff. Hey! Don't hop away from me!"
"Well, if you want to appear soon, you better hustle, sweetheart."
A/N: Thank you very much for reading! Hopefully you can tell by now that, while this is entirely based off of Tangled, I'm trying to add my own personal touch to it. Apparently, my "own personal touch" means carrots. Oops? If you enjoyed it or even laughed once, please tell me! Haha, I'm trying to figure out how to balance my crack style of humor with decent prose.
Thank you again for reading! Hopefully, I'll be able to get the next chapter up soon! Also, I know I give the indication that Nick is going to appear in the next chapter, but he's actually showing up in the third chapter. He didn't hustle enough.