Disclaimer: I only own Kasinna Juan. Everything else belongs to Gaston Leroux.
Princess Aurora reclined demurely within the womb of her aromatic cradle, adorned with lilac gossamers and webbed in rose thorns and buds to ward of they who come. Around her, sweet pucks and forlorn pixies made their rounds, kissing her alabaster temples and using their sweeter breath and hands to pacify the troubled tempest within her silken feet.
Her room? Homage to Demeter! Shocks of gold abound upon the amber facades surrounding her tiny little trundle, veils of carnation hue shielded her reluctant lids from stringent day. Sprigs of willow and lily and honeysuckle were vigilant sentinels at the corners of the room.
All still.
All protecting their sweet Aurora.
While not too far away, the princess's foil lurked in contempt.
Her name was Kasinna, but that was no matter. From birth, she and Gaea had conversed and settled upon something: names were meant for princesses, ones who deserved to be glorified by the day. Kasinna, in all of her accentuated features, was a stork, nothing else. Vacant, listless honey eyes; farcically elongated nose; lips as featureless as a pair of tongs. Long limbs that were neither plump and decent like a duchess's nor lithe and sleek like a ballerina. Useless. The height of a man, the build, the will. Yet, sadly, not the physical traits. Her eyes and convictions lay in shadow, just as she did at the moment, because of her skirts.
Marvelous.
And not more than three paces from Aurora's cradle was a realm of Hades, Kasinna's working chambers by night. Where swaggering men clambered raucously up and down ladders to musty curtain rigging, their jugs of claret and coarse booze littering her repulsed toes. Where a man by the name of Joseph Bouquet roared at her, pitched her down trapdoors, and never failed to remind her that as a woman (especially as a stagehand), she was a dreg. Where rosin scattered like the authentic dust of a road. Where garish girls in gaudy garb and glitz zipped by her, jeering at her masculine boots and countenance.
How she hated them.
As she hated Aurora.
As she hated the theater.
For when every other seventeen year-old lass watching Prince Charming emancipate Princess Aurora from the tomb of her own eyelids fluttered their own in yearning, she turned a cold eye.
There were no princesses.
An hour ago, "Princess Aurora" had been spotted screeching in the streets, clamoring for a bobby to arrest her abusive beaux.
As "Prince Charming" had been seen boozing up with his chums and cock fighting in the cellars.
Kasinna mopped the ruddy tip of her swooping nose, eyes wandering towards the irregular length of her feet. She flexed them. Were they only smaller, more slender, perhaps she might be Princess Aurora, if not only for two acts.
But sadly....
She flinched at the resounding ovation before the stage...and the booze bottle than shattered and nipped at her ear.
"Juan, damn you!" Bouquet barked, his eyes listless with the contents. "Close the bloody curtain! Close it!"
"Go to Satan's lap, Joseph!" she retorted, catching her fingers on the wiry cables, her thumb bleeding bitterly before she caught it in her mouth and nursed it.
And Princess Aurora and her lovely Prince lived happily ever after.
Wherever that was.