This happened totally out of the blue when my cousin and I were wrestling and his nail cut my arm and all I saw was the tiny drops of blood. Oops. Well, hope you enjoy!
Blood
My distaste for blood has always been a great one. I despise everything about it, the stench, the metallic taste, the cries and whimpers of pain that had always accompanied it. I had experienced blood five times in my never-ending life, and each of those times I had vowed never to cause severe bodily harm anything ever.
1) Mother
The day had been icy and the winter had been harsh, refusing to relent it's power to spring. Five-year-old Maleficent watches as her mother and father curl up in bed everyday, both too sick to do much else. Usually common colds didn't affect the family much, so little Maleficent didn't understand why her parents were suffering so much from it. She herself was doing just fine.
Her parents however, were paler than usual, the color of their skin whiter than a sheet of parchment. Their eyes were dilated from the magical drugs that the pixies had placed in their system to keep them from hurting or ailing. They each ran fevers that, when broken, would soak through the mattress with their sweat. Maleficent was absolutely forbidden from getting too close, and she was most definitely forbidden from giving them hugs or kisses.
Maleficent simply sat in their room with them, reading human books and parchments, or playing with her toys, and listened to them wheeze and whisper in hushed voices.
"Mummy?" Young Maleficent asks one night, when her mother has been in the washroom a bit too long. Maleficent toddles to the small wash room, her wings unbalancing her chubby legs. "Mummy?" And, disobeying the rule, the child pushes open the door.
The first thing she sees is the crimson red liquid. Maleficent, curious little thing she was, steps closer into the room. "Mummy?"
The next she sees, is her mother's horns. This was odd because their horns were to never come off of their head. Thistlewit had once told her, when a three-year-old Maleficent had tried to rid of them because she couldn't fit through the low-hanging crawl spaces of their small castle.
The last thing she witnesses will be burned into her memory forever. Her mother had ripped off her horns apparently and slumped to the floor behind the dressing curtain. She was dead.
Maleficent's first instinct is to scream, rousing her father. Almost immediately, she is placed into the care of Balthazar while the pixies swarm the washroom, each of them with horrified expressions. The young brunette could hear her father wailing, could hear her own cries, but everything was blocked from vision because Balthazar had placed one of his branches in front of her eyes.
That was the day she lost her mother, and not long after, her father set their castle on fire in hopes of killing himself. He succeeded.
I didn't touch my horns ever again after that, only to wrap and unwrap them.
2) Stefan
They were washing in the lake after a long day of outrunning the mudbogs slings of gooey dirt. Well, Stefan had been trying to outrun them. Maleficent had flown above, dodging and darting to evade them. She was quite good at that, seeing as getting mud stuck in her wings would require hours of preening and days of an awful crick in her neck from trying to see had she missed any.
Stefan however, wasn't as fortunate to have wings and instead had long, gangly legs that could do nothing to escape the wads of mud. It had gotten stuck in his hair, his mouth, eyes, and a few very unfortunate places that Maleficent had to turn around for him to wash.
"I bloody hate mudbogs," he murmurs, submerging his face into the water. When he comes up, the days dirt and sweat are gone, floating in the water instead. Maleficent hands him the thin bar of goat soap he always has to bring along to get the hard-to-reach places. "I bloody hate them."
"Oh, it's not so bad. The mudbogs just like fun," she replies. Seventeen-year-old Maleficent was quite head over heels in love with Stefan, but she would not stand for him to discriminate her people. She had grown up with them, they had raised her. She couldn't let him down talk them, lover or not.
"Says you! With the big fluffy wings and the ability to fly higher than they can throw," he huffs. Maleficent laughs and kisses his forehead. "No amount of kisses will get me to forgive them."
"I beg to differ," she whispers, before grabbing the back of his neck and pulling his mouth into hers. They kiss for awhile, until Stefan has to come up for air.
"Ah, they're forgiven," he sighs. Maleficent giggles and lifts a little in the air, hovering.
"Come on, you. I have a surprise!" She says. Stefan stares at her quizzically before stepping out of the lake. Now, here you must know, the rocks around here are jagged and sharp, and must be carefully weaved through. Mostly because Maleficent had made this her personal bathing spot and she didn't want anyone spying on her nude – not that they would, here in the Moors. Of course, while pondering the 'surprise', Stefan slipped on one of the smoother rocks and tripped, his arm becoming impaled by one of the sharper rocks.
The blood that followed after came in pools, enough to turn the lake a light pink color, and the color only darkened by the minute. Stefan screamed, his other hand reaching up to yank the rock from the ground. He was sobbing and screaming, throwing Maleficent's concentration.
"Shut up!" She snaps, grabbing his arm. "This will hurt. I'm going to give you something to staunch the blood. When I say go and I rip out the shard, I need you to press down on your wound." She created a small towel out of the nearby leaves with her magic and handed it to him. Stefan nods and Maleficent hands him a stick to bite down on.
"1… 2… 3!" She rips the shard from his arm and she can observes Stefan biting hard as he presses the towel down. Weaving another towel, she cleans the wound before using a bit of magic to close the wound. A scar forms, angry and red. Stefan kisses her after that, murmuring thank you's in between, and they fall into the lake again.
I lost my virginity that night. I was a fool. A damned fool.
3) Me
Maleficent had been surprised to see Stefan, especially since she hadn't seen him since her twenty-third birthday. He had come, his eyes filled with distress and fear and told her all of the Kings plans to overthrow the Moors and vanquish her. She had pitied him. She had pitied him because he was suffering and broke, living under a greedy King who deserved no forgiveness.
So she had welcomed him. They had retreated back to her nest, where several bouts of love-making sessions ensued. And when they were tired and trusting of each other again, they had moved to the lake, the lake where they very first slept together.
They talked. Maleficent told him entertaining stories of the Moors and the mudbogs who had been suffering the consequences of ambushing her. Stefan told her about the Kingdom and it's poverty, told her about the despair the entire land was experiencing.
"Thirsty?" He had asked. So innocently. So blasted innocently. She had trusted him, and taken the drink. Sleepiness had taken her not long after.
And she woke with blood streaming from her back. There was pain, excruciating pain everywhere. Blood poured from her back, staining the grass and rocks below. Most of it was long since dried, but some of it was still fresh and streaming. Maleficent let out a cry, a scream of pain and betrayal as she felt the absence of her wings. Desperately, she channeled her magic to fix them, bring them back, but all that did was stop the blood flow.
Stefan had stolen them. He had stolen what was rightfully hers.
And she wanted his blood for it.
Until this day, I'll never forget the patch of dead grass where my blood had killed it. Faerie blood is deadly, don't you know?
4) Aurora
The next time wasn't until a long time after, seven years after the curse and the christening had taken place. Maleficent had been watching little Aurora run after Diaval while the pixies napped inside. Imbeciles. One should never leave their hatchling alone and unsupervised, even she knew that.
Diaval made a very exaggerated plummet, and for a second Maleficent's heart skipped, thinking that he had hurt himself and was falling from the sky. She raised her hand to change him human so the impact would be less, but at the last minute he swooped back into the air, giving a small tug on one of Aurora's strands of sunshine hair.
Maleficent despised the little beastie. She wasn't sure if it was because the young girl was all ever Diaval talked about, and it was quite annoying, or if it was because she was the bastard of Stefan. Both, most likely.
Suddenly however, Aurora trips over an thick root in attempt to catch him and goes falling to the ground. It's not long after until her wails are heard and she is laying on the floor crying, dirt covering her face and blood gushing from a bad scrape on her knee. Maleficent would laugh if the look of absolute excruciating pain hadn't coated the young girls face. Now she pitied her. That won't do.
Diaval stops cawing gleefully and starts screeching, unable to help the child in his raven form. Aurora wailed and cradled her knee, pressing her hand to it and trying to stop the blood from flowing. Clever beastie.
Sensing a small threat – and wishing for the beasts cries of anguish and Diaval's annoying screeching to cease –, Maleficent used a bit of her gold magic to heal the knee. It was a dangerous feat, seeing as Aurora could not know of her existence – or, she could not know yet – but the girls wails stop and she reaches out to the raven, her tears still flowing freely down her now filthy cheeks. Diaval caws in relief and briefly, his beady raven eyes catch Maleficent's gold-green ones. She rolls her eyes and curls back into the tree, and he pecks delicately at Aurora's elbows and knees, flitting around her looking for other scratches to tend to.
"Pretty bird," she coos, when he finally lands in his lap.
The blood wasn't what did it for me on this one, it was the look of pain on Beastie's face that did.
5) Diaval
Three years after Aurora's crowning, Maleficent is curled in the grass reading and waiting for her newfound lover to return. He had left earlier to go have tea with Aurora and Phillip, but had not returned after his promised three hours. Maleficent had thought nothing of it however, seeing as Diaval and Aurora often lost track of time. Sometimes, she marveled at their likeliness.
They shared a lot of the same qualities. For example, often times Diaval would over exaggerate a situation. Aurora would do that as well, seeing as one time she busted through the Moors with a horrified expression. Maleficent and Diaval had sensed a problem, but it turned out the seamstress had used purple fabric when she preferred a green one, and she didn't want to be rude or hurt their feelings. Diaval completely lost his head, ranting about how green was such a prettier color and why the hell would anyone use purple? Maleficent had simply rolled her eyes and turned them both into dogs. Cute puppies, actually, that the pixies wouldn't leave alone. Neither Diaval nor Aurora talked to her for weeks after.
So she could see how the two would lose track of time. But when nightfall comes along and Diaval still hasn't returned, she begins to worry. He was always back before sunset, and it was even more odd seeing as he'd been gone an entire day. With a boost of her wings and worry on her face, Maleficent took to the headwinds.
"Diaval!" Maleficent yells, her eyes wide and searching for familiar dark locks – or feathers – and onyx colored eyes. Now that Diaval could shape-shift at his own will, she also had to look for the blue magic that followed him and any black animal. Damnit Diaval, I'm taking away your shape-shifting.
"Maleficent," a voice croaks when she's flying over the village. She dives closer to the ground and finds him, curled in an alleyway, bleeding and bruised. "Maleficent… make it stop… make the hurt stop…"
"I am, Diaval," she replies, when her feet finally touch the ground. There was an arrow through his belly, he must have been in raven form when a few wild teenagers had been looking for good fun. His mouth is filled with his own blood, his eyes half-lidded as he watches her. Maleficent places a kiss to his lips and draws away, blood coating her own.
"You look wonderfully sexy with blood on your lips," he chokes. "I hope I didn't say that out loud." Laughing drily, Maleficent rolls her eyes before moving him so he can lie on his side. His cries of pain do not go unheard however, and soon a group of villagers have crowded the small alleyway, trying to see what all the commotion is about. A group of men in particular push through the crowd, their eyes wide. One resembles Stefan in such a way that Maleficent can't help but quietly wonder how many bastard children the long dead King had.
"We didn't know!" The man chokes immediately, when he sees just how badly Diaval is hurt. He ignores the green magic that begins to pour from Maleficent, attempting to defend him and his rowdy friends. "We didn't know he was Aurora's familiar! We thought he was a silly crow!"
"A silly crow? To hell with you, that's more insulting that the beating," Maleficent defends for Diaval. The man beneath her chuckles, raising a hand to brush the strands of brown hair from her eyes.
"I appreciate it love," he rasps. Maleficent returns to her task of removing the arrow, breaking off the head and sliding the spear out through the back. Diaval hisses in pain, gripping her hand tightly as she attempts to fix his wounds. He beckons to the man that had spoken and the lad takes tentative steps forward. When he's close enough, Diaval grabs his collar. "You owe me. So help her in any way she needs," he snarls. The lad – whose name is, ironically enough, Henry – nods and rushes to Maleficent's side. She barks orders at him and eventually the alleyway clears out, the only remaining three being Diaval – who had passed out halfway through the treatment – Henry, and Maleficent.
Unable to channel her clean magic – she could only do so when surrounded by plant life, and she would never use her dirty magic on Diaval – she forces Henry to carry him back to the Moors.
I never, ever forgot the look of Diaval coated in blood in the dirty alleyway.
Until this day, whenever I see Aurora or Diaval, and sometimes Henry when he brings his son to visit, all I can see is blood. Stefan's, Aurora's, Diaval's... all the same. And all I can think about is how I never, ever, want to see blood again.
R&R, friends!