Disclaimer: Descendants does not belong to me.
It all started when she decided to take a nap this afternoon.
She is too old to be doing that. She hasn't been put down for naps since she was an infant, but she put herself down for one today. Napping has become a once a month habit for her over the previous few months. Ever since her questions about the food situation on the Isle had gotten increasingly desperate (and her mother had taken her for an interview with Ben's dad so that he could try to reassure her himself that they are trying) and they sort of explained that they did not know exactly what was happening but had been trying to make it better, she has taken a nap on the afternoon of the day that the monthly shipments of supplies are supposed to be distributed.
She does not want to wait until it is night to find out if this is the time that something worked. It is not as hard as she thought it might be to go to sleep in the middle of the day. She spends so much time working toward sleeping as little as she can get away with that she is also rather tired, and the ease with which she falls asleep when she gives herself the option on those afternoons shows it.
She has been disappointed each and every time she has tried this napping experiment, but she still tries again as each new month rolls around. Her mother was, after all, an embodiment of hope - and not even the never ending frustration she feels with the situation between her and the Isle has beaten a desire for better things out of her. The Isle may reduce her to tears on a regular basis, but that does not mean that she wants to give up - she can't really. She knows that she can never really get away.
This month proves to be disappointing yet again. She knows it is her fault that she feels as badly about that as she does because she had been extra hopeful this month. She will be seven in just a few days, and she had somehow got caught up in the thought that maybe birthday wishes would be enough to push her mother and King Adam's efforts through whatever it was that was blocking them. The fact that it didn't work just made things more sad.
Her posture reflects the way that she is feeling (it doesn't matter since no one on the Isle has ever known that she was there - let alone seen her). Her shoulders are slumped and her arms are wrapped around herself in defeat as she lets it sink in that, once again, none of the children in front of her have received the monthly packages that shipped out of Auradon this morning. She knows how hard her mother has been trying (how hard King Adam has been trying), but none of the security measures have been successful in getting around whatever (or whoever) on the Isle is meddling with things.
She is so very tired of nothing making things better - not even the sight of a wrapper of one of the now empty little packages of animal crackers that Aunt Ella bought for her to hide in the trash blowing by in the breeze makes her feel anything other than sad. It hurts, and she is tired of hurting (she has been tired of hurting for so long). She's going to cry again - she can feel it. The tears will still be pouring down her cheeks when she wakes back in her bedroom. Her mother will see her and know and be sad all over again. Her eyes will still be red rimmed when she crosses the garden to have dinner like they are supposed to tonight, and Chad will know that something has happened and be worried and angry like he always gets whenever something about the Isle is mentioned (the way he has been ever since the night when she cut up her hands and the adults all found out and the two of them can't keep it all secret any more).
Why doesn't anything ever work?
She turns away from the group that is gathered in what passes for a school on the Isle and finds herself three steps away before she realizes what she is doing.
She freezes in shock when she realizes what has happened.
She moved away.
None of the children had moved away, but she had.
She stepped away herself instead of being dragged along in the wake of whichever child she had happened to be attached to when she appeared.
This is . . . unexpected (and amazing and potentially frightening all at the same time).
She's never controlled where she went in her sleep before. It had, honestly, never occurred to her to try. She doesn't know why. There have been so many times that she was so afraid or wanted so badly to close her eyes and stop up her ears and not know any more what was occurring in front of her, but she has never so much as turned her head away before. Moving here has always been something that happened to her
She falls asleep back in her life and wakes up in theirs. She never decides. She is just there. There is one child or another that she seems to be attached to on each occasion and she only moves if they do. Which child it is changes each time she goes to sleep and she has no way of knowing which it will be (she wonders if it has always been whoever needed help the most in that moment and that is why she always sees so many bad things when there have to be some good moments on the Isle, don't there?).
It has always been that way, but it would seem that it is not that way anymore.
She can move. She can wrench herself free from following and seeing and not being able to look away.
If she were older or calmer in this moment, then she might ask why now, but she doesn't. This is too much a gift to be shattered with too many questions. She is just going to use it. She doesn't need to know how it is working as long as it is.
Something has shifted and she can move about at will. She tests it out to see if there are any boundaries, but she doesn't encounter any. She walks all over the place. No one sees or hears her - just like every time that she comes to this place. She goes where she pleases and nothing stops her.
It has never been like this before or if it has, she has never realized.
If she can do this, then what else can she do?
She does not know, but she is going to find out as quickly as she can.
She shivers, and she doesn't know why. There are so many possibilities. There are so many things to try. She needs to remember to breathe because she realizes that she has been holding her breath as she tries to determine what to try next.
She inhales, tries to make sense of everything spinning in her head, and wakes.
