Prologue: Once upon a time...
"Thereupon the wedding of the King's Son and the Sleeping Beauty was celebrated in all splendor, and-"
"... they lived happily ever after," finished the blond girl with curly hair and sea-blue eyes the fairy tale told by her mother. Her eyes shone like only those of a child could and she put her little hands dreamily on her cheeks. "I wish that one day a noble prince would save me and then we would get married in a beautiful castle and everyone would be happy."
"Well, I hope you do not have to sleep for a hundred years to achieve that." The blond girls sister nudged her in the side and made a funny face at her. The older girl's hazelnut brown hair fell confusedly over her forehead as her mother playfully stroked it and added in shock: "And all of us with her."
"Oh, you're stupid." The blond girl huffed, letting her bangs fly for a second, then rolled closer to her sister on the soft bed mattress, so that they were both lying side by side. "I know Cath is dreaming about it, too."
"Oh, yes?" The older sister raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Yes. Of a noble knight in shining armor, who protects you from all danger and is always there for you." The blond girl chuckled, seeing the face of her older sister, whose cheeks now had a delicate shade of red. "Look Mom, Cath is blushing."
The young woman gazed amusedly down at her two daughters, lying close together on one bed in their pajamas, one still giggling, the other glaring angrily at her sister. "Enough for today, you two. Time to go to bed."
She carefully folded the old storybook and put it back among the other books on the shelf as the brown-haired girl climbed off her sister's bed and laid herself in her own. The white blanket made a cozy rustle as she stuck her slender feet underneath it.
"Mom?" The younger sister had already pulled her blanket up to her chin, holding a blue fabric rabbit in her small fists. "Can fairy tales really come true?"
The hopeful gleam in her eyes made the young mother smile and she sat down on the edge of her daughters bed. Carefully, she brushed one of her blond curls from the girl's face and answered in a soft voice: "Maybe not as we hope. But there is one thing fairy tales give us that we can always believe in." She raised her eyes and looked over to her first-born daughter, who was also listening to her mother's soft words. "That in the end everything will always be okay."
With that, the young woman leaned forward and blew a kiss on her daughter's forehead, before she got up again and put her hand onto the light switch next to the door. "Good night, you two."
"Good night."
The warm, yellow glow of the corridors light faded slowly, until it was only a thin line on the wooden floor of the bedroom, which was first filled with the irregular rustle of the bedspreads and pillows and then finally lay in perfect peace.
The blond girl pulled her blanket even deeper into her face and put her head to one side. For a while she stared motionless into the darkness she knew her sister was lying in her bed in. Then: "Cath?"
A muffled hum came out of the blackness in front of her. "What is it, Lizzy?"
"We do not want to leave each other," the former whispered this sentence, as she often did after the two sisters had read the fairy tale Snow-White and Rose-Red. It had become kind of a secret sentence, that has united the two of them like an invisible bond. And for the little girl it seemed to be exceptionally important at the moment that her sister completed this quote before going to sleep.
A devoted rustling hinted that the older sister also had put her head in her direction. The words were just a soft murmur over the hem of her blanket and yet they could not have sounded louder and safer to the blonde girl:
"Not as long as we live."