Author's note: This is my first story on FF.net… I originally posted the first bits several months ago but yanked them in a fit of pique. Anyway. In my head it's epic… in real life, it's probably just going to be long. Read/Review. Or, you know, don't. Whatever makes you happy. Dress up as Donald Duck and spank the story if you like, it can't feel it.

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Once upon a time, there was a fair young maiden (and maiden she assuredly was, for at that age she was still a romantic, and her dreams stopped with a single kiss on the dance floor). The maiden had been named Sarah by her mother, who was a butterfly: graceful, beautiful, delicate, and rather inclined to flitter off after a while. Her father does not come into the story much, so suffice it to say that he took for his second wife a woman of good wit and strong body.

Because this is a fairy story, one may guess the result. Second loves always cause trouble in this sort of tale, and this case was no exception. Young girls always hate their stepmothers, after all.

Eventually, as usually happens, another child was born, a boy named Toby. Sarah looked on this one who had supplanted her with what was either loathing or sibling rivalry, depending who you asked. For supplanted she was… where once she had been the woman of the house, now she was demoted to runner-up, second-best, almost-good-enough-but-not-quite. A son had been born. The house of Williams had a male link into the future. The daughter could thenceforth be considered an accessory.

Sarah had two natures, as do most people. The butterfly in her loved the small boy who shared half her blood, and guarded him closely. But the crawling snake that lived in the darkest parts of her heart hated this little, whining, smelling, destructive brat. Someone once said that humans are the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape, which is a truism. It's difficult to say which of them spoke the night of the storm.

For on that night, Sarah made a wish.

It was foolish and unconsidered like most wishes.

Unlike most wishes, it came true.

But that story has been told elsewhere. It's a fine story with kings and knights and questing beasts and allegory and assonance and musical numbers. It is highly recommended. This, however, is a story of what happened after.

The morning after the storm, Sarah cleaned the detritus of the party from her room, and stared into the mirror above her dressing table. She looked more or less the same as the previous night. It rather surprised her.

Months passed, and Sarah thought about her adventures, and replayed certain scenes in her head over and over again. What would have happened if she had just…? But no. She was proud to have been the salvation of her brother, and she made herself be content with that.

Time went on, since time is a creature of habit and doesn't tend to vary her lifestyle. Sarah finished high school and did not proceed onto college, very much against the wishes of her parents. Instead, she packed her bags and set off for points west to seek her fortune. Rather to her surprise, she was an instant, if moderate, success. She would think about this sometimes when she had spare time. Eventually she came to the conclusion that, when you lose what really mattered to you, everything else becomes easy.

She tried not to have spare time. Instead, she developed a reputation as "The Hardest Working Woman in Hollywood." She was invited to all the right parties. Entertainment Weekly did a cover story on her during a week when none of the A-list stars were doing much in the way of drugs, divorce, and dying. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, which she didn't win. She experimented with Scientology, EST, and even (gasp) Christianity. And slowly, she stopped having foolish dreams of castles and labyrinths and knights and princes. She became like most people: living day to day in moderate contentment, ignoring the nameless sadness at the bottom of her soul.

One day, a prince of this world came along. He was a British rock musician with unsettling gray eyes, platinum-blonde hair, and a delightfully self- destructive personality. The wedding made Entertainment Tonight, during which Mary Hart complimented Sarah's Anna Sui gown. And if the marriage wasn't perfect, it could have been worse, and the pair stuck it out for a dozen years. Three children were born, which pleased Sarah. At some point, the British musician realized that his wife had married him for something he couldn't provide. This troubled him, but eventually he found consolation in the arms of a succession of eighteen-year-old groupies. Much like Sarah's father, he doesn't come into the story much, though in many ways he was a remarkable fellow.

Sarah Williams bore three children to the prince of this world.

The eldest, Katherine, was clever and cynical, without a romantic thought in her head. She wasn't as stunning as her mother (who had the face of an angel and a body that could make a saint sweat) but she was undeniably pretty. Her hair was true golden, not blonde, but golden, as though a very clever goldsmith had beaten it out of the actual metal. Her eyes were gray- blue and turned to the stars, and she studied astronomy in college.

Jared, the second, inherited his mother's theatrical nature. He was beyond handsome, with wavy brown hair, brown eyes, and a smile that made thirteen- year old girls swoon. At the age of seventeen, he was already famous (a winner of Tiger Beat's "Sexiest Smile" competition) and costarring in an angsty teen-oriented ensemble drama on the WB (He played Fielding). In personality, he was generous, pleasant, easygoing, and a bit thick.

The youngest was Eric, who was just eleven. It's hard to know what to say about a child that age, before life has a chance to mold them. Suffice it to say that he was cute, moderately clever, and well liked by his classmates. He collected Pokemon cards and was a wicked Starcraft player.

Our story (everything up until now has been prologue, I'm afraid) begins on a wintry afternoon, not far before Christmas. In one world, the sky is gray and lowering, in the other, it's a warm pumpkin hue that casts a golden glow over the dry land. Picture two rooms, as different as two rooms can be. In one, a thirtysomething (well, fortysomething, but she plays thirtysomething in her films) actress sits ramrod-straight on a sofa so as not to wrinkle the expensive suit she wears, and talks loudly into a telephone. In the other, a platinum-haired king of the goblins lounges on a throne (he is a master at this, and by now could lounge on a wire) with his hands steepled before his face, deep in thought. The two haven't spoken in more than twenty-five years. In a few days, their worlds will once again collide.