Chapter 4: Year Three
Fairytales are allowed to run as rampant as they are marginalized into obliviousness in this world. The books and movies are counted as the first things that should be shown to children. To encourage their imaginations. To give them constructs. To show them morals. To instruct the ways of right and wrong.
But the magic is considered just that.
Imagination. Construct. Moral. Untouchable. Unreal.
The first Halloween was almost staggering. The number of people, children and adults, who had appeared at their door, for candy, dressed as any number of the creatures and friends they'd left behind. A stark reminder that they'd been able, and remained unable still, to find out what might have happened to those left behind.
If those first years, before Emma is walking and talking, led to a first wave of reticence, it had only taken the first purchase to start a landslide. It only takes the first purchase and they are buying all the books, all the movies. Watching them and reading then, as much for Emma, when she's old enough, as for themselves.
Looking at each other over pages in large tomes, or talking over watching's, commenting about all the different choices in all the different telling's. Never making the mistake again of asking a seller, to direct them to the real stories. Never ending the bemusement of them all counting as "fairy stories."
Red being eaten by wolf, and saved by a huntsman. Ella's pumpkin carriage and mice-horses. The witch and the combs in her own story. The endless nameless Prince Charming's to four princess-wives, and his lack of having his own story.
The first time Emma asks if her stories are real, her father tells her that they are as real as she wants them to be. The second time she asks, her mother asks, instead, if she'd like them to be.
The answer, of course, is yes. But, then, she is only three.
