QLFC, Chaser 1, Round 2
Main Prompt- A Whole New World - Aladdin
Additional Prompts- (color) orange, (character) Pansy Parkinson, (object) umbrella
Word Count- 2281
Pansy was eight years old when she saw it. The constant drizzle had faded to only a very rare sprinkle and for the first time in Pansy's young life, she dropped her umbrella and peered up at the endless gray above her world. At first she squinted for fear of a surprise drop of rain, but slowly she forced her gaze wide and unafraid. Ahead of her, children were stomping in puddles as the matrons scolded them and ushered them out of the streets, but Pansy let their voices fade away, her head tilted so far back she was sure to unbalance herself. If she did fall, her green dress would be wet and ruined, and her braid would unravel and frizz. But in that moment, unlike all the moments that came before, Pansy did not care about her clothes or her hair.
For in that moment, the clouds parted just so, and Pansy saw a glimpse of the sky. The blue sky.
There... and then gone.
One of the matrons shouted at Pansy. "Cross the street, m'lady. Hurry now."
Pansy lifted her umbrella back into place and strode across the wet cobblestone road as if she hadn't just witnessed a miracle.
But she had.
Pansy hoped and prayed for another glimpse of that miracle, for the clouds to part anew, and show her this world that existed beyond her own. But that colored crack in the sky never returned. Her world remained in the dreary, endless drizzle, just as it always had.
She wondered if she'd made it up. She considered that it had merely been a dream. She decided that it had all been in her head.
And eventually, Pansy stopped looking up.
It hurt too much.
Pansy clutched at her umbrella handle, the rain coming down in thick buckets that urged her to sprint to the carriage rather than take an elegant stroll, like normal. Still, running was not the Parkinson way, so she held on tight to the carved wood around her knuckles and weathered the storm like a princess.
Because Pansy Parkinson was a princess... no matter how unwanted she was by the prince.
Pansy's rage burned her from the inside out when she thought of Prince Draco. Prince Draco, who was to marry soon. Prince Draco, who was to marry some other girl that wasn't Pansy. Some other girl from the Underland. Some poor commoner who'd never even seen a tree before today! Some girl with a stupid Underland name like Hermione!
Prince Draco was an idiot.
Draco, you imbecilic fool. You wouldn't know a good princess if she was literally sitting in your lap. To scrape the bottom of the barrel so much that you actually make a hole— you moron! You may have been born into the family of stars, but you'll never catch a glimpse of them if you're always looking down—
Something like the wind caught her umbrella and dragged it away from her body. Pansy held on for dear life, not wanting to lose the only thing keeping her dry in this downpour. Suddenly the wind shifted and forced her umbrella back the other way and out of her grasp. She screamed, all the pent-up frustration she'd built up over the last four hours being stuck inside with the new royal couple bubbling up her throat like acid.
She could swear the wind was laughing while she stood there, teeth chattering and fingers pruning. She screamed again, completely and utterly done with this day, this rain, this world!
That's when she saw a man literally shift into existence… and slam right into her.
Pansy was on her feet in one moment and in the next she was lying on the wet grassy ground, breathless and bruised, the sky a forever endless dark gray above her.
"Bloody hell, I—wow, I was going way too fast. Shit, oh… um… Hey, you okay? Oh my— Miss, can you hear me? Can you see me? Hey, how many fingers am I holding up? Miss? Oh my Gods... Fred, George, help! Come down here and help!"
Orange. His hair was orange. Like… really orange. It reminded Pansy of a fire, of the most vibrant orange in an oak log fire replicated endlessly in a ring around his head. It was the brightest color Pansy had ever seen. It was otherworldly.
"What did you do?" came another voice out of Pansy's line of sight. Not that she could look away from the man on fire.
"What did I do? I told you I didn't know how to control my speed yet! And there's way more water than when I practiced last week."
"Stop making excuses."
"Yeah, you're just a clumsy oaf is all."
"You're both gits. Now help me. I think she's hurt."
On either side of the oak wood fire rose a birchwood flame, the oranges more red in hue, like the sweet potato pie the Parkinson's cook made for Pansy's birthday every year.
"Hey, you okay?" asked the left flame.
The right snapped a finger in her face and Pansy startled back, groaning at the ache in her ribs. She slapped his hand away, her gaze finally coming back into focus to see the details of the faces before her. The two on the ends were identical in every possible way, down to the freckles on their noses. The one in the middle was taller by at least a head and his eyes were a blue Pansy never thought she'd see again.
"Ha! George, she hit me," said the right.
"Well done," said the left, nodding his approval down at Pansy. "Fred was due a good slap. Next time make it the face though."
"What's your name?" asked the middle.
Pansy blinked a couple of times, and her breath was barely a whisper when she answered, "P-Pansy."
"Pansy?" reiterated the middle boy. "I'm Ron. Sorry I—uh… knocked you over and stuff. Do you think you're able to stand?"
The twins held out their hands at the same time, and, fairly certain this was all a dream, Pansy took them. They hoisted her up effortlessly, like she weighed less than a feather even though she was currently soaked to the bone in a large taffeta ball gown. Further proof that this was just a dream.
Maybe she slipped and fell into a coma. That would be the cherry on top of this perfectly awful day.
Ron steadied her with hands on her shoulders. "You good?"
Pansy huffed testily and knocked the man's arms away from her. "I'm fine." The rain had thinned but still came down steadily. "No thanks to you. Who even are you?!"
Fred— or George, for Pansy had already lost track— snickered as he straddled something invisible and leapt out of existence. Pansy could only stare at the spot the man had just stood with horror-stricken interest.
"Wait, what?"
The other twin grinned at Pansy before crossing his arms across his chest and falling back and disappearing, like he'd never been there at all.
Pansy's eyes flashed immediately to Ron, expecting him to disappear, too. But he didn't and their eyes met and the rain stopped.
"Are you sure you're okay?" asked Ron. The question came off more brash than Pansy was expecting from a guy who she very clearly dreamed into existence.
Pansy sniffed and stood up straight in her wet frock. "Like I said, I'm fine, no thanks to you."
Ron rolled his eyes. "Okay then. I was just asking."
"Well don't. Just go back to wherever you came from and leave me be. I was doing just fine before you came out of literally nowhere and knocked my favorite umbrella out of my hands—"
"You lost the umbrella well before I lost control of my abilities. Fred and George are really good at Wind."
Pansy blinked at the sudden end to Ron's sentence. "Wind?" she asked.
"Yeah, it's a game they made up. We try to steal as many Overworld umbrellas as we can in one rainstorm. Fred has the record at fourteen."
There were so many things wrong with those sentences, and Pansy couldn't help but think her imagination wasn't this good. Was this possibly... real?
"Who are you?" Pansy asked again, this time with more sincerity.
"Oh, I— You know, I probably… See the thing is, I'm not supposed to tell you… things..." Ron's words trailed off. "You'll forget me the moment I leave anyway, though…" he muttered.
"Hey!" shouted Pansy sharply. "The rain may have stopped but I am still very wet and cold, so tell me already. I don't have all day."
Pansy had all the time in the world.
Ron smirked. "I'm from Nirvana."
Pansy shrugged. "And that's supposed to mean something to me?"
Ron's smirk faded. "You know. Nirvana. City of angels? The heavenly kingdom?"
"The what?"
Ron seemed clearly taken aback by Pansy's ignorance and that was the only thing keeping Pansy from actually punching her hallucination in the neck.
"Wait— so you haven't… wait! Do you not know about the place above the clouds?"
Pansy's heart skipped a beat in her chest. The endless blue is a myth. The stars are a myth. The endless blue is a myth. The stars are a myth. The endless blue is a myth. The stars are a myth—
"I saw…"
Ron met Pansy's gaze and she went silent before she could utter the full secret. It had been a secret for nearly two decades. She hadn't told anyone about the crack in the gray. She'd barely acknowledged it to herself.
"You saw?" prompted Ron.
Pansy swallowed around a painful lump in her throat. Just thinking about that day… it felt like it happened yesterday, not twenty years ago.
She had to tell someone.
"I saw the endless blue," she whispered.
Ron smiled. "The endless blue? Cool name. I mean, it's not endless, but still cool—"
"The endless blue becomes the stars and then it goes back again," interrupted Pansy. "And it does this forever, every single day without fail. So… in other words, endless."
Ron's humored grin gentled into a fond pull of the lips. "You're cute."
Pansy blanched at the adjective. She'd never been referred to as cute before. She wasn't sure how she felt about it.
Ron glanced around, a nervous but excited grin on his face. "Would you— no." He huffed, his eyes shifting to the ground. "I can't. I can't. I cannot. I… can. I totally can. Hey!" Blue met dark brown and Pansy nodded without conscious thought. "Hey... do you want to see it?"
Her heart gave a shuddering thud against her ribcage. This wasn't real. This wasn't real.
This might be real.
"How?" she breathily asked.
Ron narrowed his eyes in thought before snapping his fingers and disappearing. He immediately reappeared holding Pansy's lost umbrella. "Here you go."
Pansy wrapped her palms around the handle like the device was merely an extension of her own limbs. "Okay, how?" Pansy asked again, her voice laced with just barely contained hysteria.
"It just needs a bit of magic and we should be up and away," Ron muttered absentmindedly as he sprinkled some kind shimmering dust onto the umbrella's base. "There."
He took a step back to admire his work, though Pansy didn't see any discernible difference. Maybe Ron could see some things she couldn't.
What a scary, yet exhilarating, thought that was.
"Are you afraid of heights?" Ron asked.
"Not particularly—"
"Great! Hold on tight!"
"What— OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" Pansy screamed as the umbrella lifted her into the air as if she weighed nothing. As if she weighed less than nothing. It should be impossible. It wasn't.
Ron floated up next to her, keeping her on track as they rose higher and higher, the ground beneath Pansy's feet growing more distant by the second. After a while, Pansy decided to stop looking down.
It hurt too much.
The place above the clouds was everything.
The first thing Pansy saw was the endless blue. It stretched in all directions but under her feet, though the same clouds that were dark and gray and dreary from underneath, were white and fluffy from above. It was like she existed inside a crystal snow globe and she thought nothing could be better than this.
She didn't know how long she and Ron floated there for, but eventually the light started to shift and lessen. The bright thing Ron had called the sun seemed to be disappearing behind an invisible wall and some of the sky lost its blue hue, turning other colors, other beautiful colors.
Pansy gasped.
"It's called a sunset," stated Ron. "It's what happens between the endless blue and the stars. It's the transition period."
"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," whispered Pansy, unable and unwilling to keep the raw emotion out of her voice, the one so in awe of the majesty before her, she couldn't help but believe all of it, every single wonderful bit, to be as real as the blood in her veins.
"It's my favorite."
Despite all its magnificent beauty, Pansy tore her gaze away from the sky and looked at Ron. In doing so, she realized his hair was the same color orange as the sunset.
"Who are you?" asked Pansy.
"I'm Ron."
Pansy held out her hand. Ron took it. "Nice to meet you, Ron. I'm Pansy." They greeted each other with a firm handshake, a smile on both of their lips. "Thank you for literally running into me."
Ron snorted. "Any time."
"When do the stars start?"
Ron laughed and Pansy joined him.
"Soon... real soon... any minute now..."