Author's Note: Okay, I've decided to throw my hat in with all the wonderful Rumpel/Belle stories that are popping up. The chapters will be short but they will flow together to make an actual story and it will not be random one-shots. I'm hoping by keeping the chapters so short, I'll be able to update it as often as my other one, if not a little more. Be kind with your reviews...this is my lame attempt at being poetic.
The Curse Breakers
Chapter One
She remembers planning wars in her bare feet but it seems like a lifetime ago and then some. To pass the time, she takes off her hospital slippers and draws maps of mountains, rivers and sea with her toes in the dust on the floor.
Ogres are not men...
She wonders who would have said such a ridiculous statement. Of course ogres aren't men or else they wouldn't be called ogres. Did ogres even exist? Perhaps in that lifetime when she planned wars in her bare feet and not here, in this cell that smelled of bleach and loneliness. There were days when she wished they would give her medication like the other inmates. She can hear the nurses and orderlies in the other cells, twice a day, with fake, cheery voices.
"Take your vitamins. They'll make you feel better."
One day, she pounded on the walls and shouted, "They're not vitamins!" They didn't feed her for two days and so she stopped pounding on the walls and speaking truth. But she still wished for the medication. She would hide it and use it to place her armies on the dust maps. However, they don't medicate her here. They just wait for the insanity to take hold eventually but how can it when time stands still? The sun rises and sets but it's always the same day. That's why she's stopped keeping track. Instead, she dreams while awake and picks apart the dreams.
There's one in particular that always comes when she's lonely and frustrated by cold, white walls. She can never get a picture in her mind but she sees a man sitting at a spinning wheel. He just spins and won't look at her but she can hear dialogue, distant and whispery.
"Why do you spin so much?"
"Because it helps me forget."
"Forget what?"
"I guess it worked."
She tries so hard to place the man, the place, even the voices but she's always left with the feeling like she's pulling the gossamer wings off a butterfly. Whether it was a memory or a dream, it was something precious that shouldn't be torn apart by her fractured mind. So she goes back to drawing in the dust. She tried writing but the only thing her fingers wanted to create was a word she couldn't even pronounce. She tried writing it today, to see if her mind could produce it and without fail it did.
Rumpelstiltskin.
She hears the click-clack of the dark lady's heels coming down the hall. Very rarely does the lady come to call. She swipes the odd name out of the dust and curls up in the corner of her cell like the good, little girl she isn't. The woman opens the little window on it's rusty hinges and peers in with her dark tunnel eyes. They stare at each other for a few heartbeats (seven, she counts) and the dark lady speaks.
"Do you know why you're here, Miss French?"
Words want to come flying out of her mouth but they become lodged in her throat so she shakes her head instead. The words don't make sense to her anyway. The woman gives half a grin and the metal window shuts with finality. The sounds of heels on concrete dissipates and she's left alone again with her dust.
She goes back down to the floor and writes the words that are twisting her vocal cords, sharp and pointy, as if she swallowed a rose bush. But even written they still make no sense.
I stole the heart of a beast and keep it in a chipped cup.
She shook her head, wiped the slate clean and decided to go back to planning wars in her bare feet because peace time never lasts.