Marchionessofblackadder: she wore white that day
Thrice
Once upon a time, there was a queen and a monster. Evil, perhaps, but evil is relative. Both are loved, so how can one say they are evil at all?
Nevertheless, once upon a time, the queen built a tower without a door. In it, she imprisoned the woman the monster loved best in all the world. To save for later, an ace in the hole. She told the monster his love had died.
But this woman—the monster's lover—could not be trapped. Strong and clever and so, so very quick, she cast a curse of her own. Not at the queen, no. The queen was a powerful sorceress and the woman knew it'd never take.
She cast the curse on herself. And bewitched her hair to grow.
And grow. And grow.
And where her hair touched the ground, it became briars and thorns. So when the queen sent her clerics to test her soul, they plucked out their eyes on the thorns. Bloodied and blind, they could not climb inside.
And so the woman watched from her high tower window the crimson stained nettles below. She took a pair of silver scissors from her vanity drawer, sheared off the rest of her curse-riddled hair and sat herself down to wait.
She wore white that day.
Once upon a time, a later time, there was a dungeon deep within the earth. The queen—somewhat closer to evil, perhaps, these days—imprisoned the monster's lover here, instead, believing if the tower fell, it would break the curse of thorns.
But the thorns' roots ran too deeply in the earth and the curse could not be broken.
Only change.
And so the woman rested in a cradle within the belly of the ground, embraced by thorns still stained with the blood of her enemies. And no matter how she tried, the queen could not get in. She could only pry open a hole in the thatch work of briars and thorns barely large enough for a single eye.
And when she guarded her face with spells and peered inside, the queen found the woman staring back, black eyed and smiling, a dragon in her den.
She wore white that day.
Once upon a time, still later, the thorns pulled back from the dungeon deep within the earth. The queen—evil now, surely—had a swiftly turning war on her mind and could hardly be said to notice.
The woman certainly didn't.
When the thorns opened, they lifted her out of the earth. And she strode across the battlefields in bare feet, over Main Street and Le Prince, past the library and the diner and the bakery with its scent of sunlight and new bread. She walked to where the sky sat draped sweetly blue over a squat little building, opened the door and smiled at the sound of chimes.
Behind the counter, in the far dark and dusty end, the monster looked up from his legers and war plans. He found his lover, whole and hale and so long lost, smiling in the doorway.
"Belle," he whispered and rose and crossed the room so quickly his bad knee did not have time to bend.
The woman raised her arms to pull him down, kissed him with the passion of a thousand writhing thorns.
Outside, bits of falling curse tore rivets in the ground.
"I missed you," she whispered, into the mouth bent against her own.
"Marry me," he whispered back.
The woman laughed. "Alright."
And she wore nothing else that day.