A/N: A random idea I had sprouted. What did Cinderella's pumpkin think about being changed into a carriage?
Disclaimer: Cinderella, pumpkin, characters belong to Disney and various storytellers around the world. I make no profit from this, blah blah blah.
Warnings: er...Sad pumpkins?
At first the pumpkin had ignored her when she called. Closing its mind, it thought of seeds and leaves and damp spring earth—anything but the silky, repetitive sounds it perceived. The echoing cry reverberated inside its belly again and again, bouncing off moist walls and tickling stringy, slippery seeds. Finally the call sighed, changed, and wrapped around the pumpkin, tugging and rolling it in an ungainly manner through the dark vegetable garden. Now, tumbling through the plants, it hears the cabbages moan as its heavy weight squashes them.
The pumpkin arrives at the feet of the calling-one, wet with dew, its leafy vines trailing and broken. The calling-one surveys it with her sharp eyes. It whimpers silently. The calling-one steps toward the pumpkin, raising her arms with a rush of swift, cold air.
When she drops her trunk-like, thick arms, the pumpkin feels relieved. Its seeds are safe. Then a ripping, tearing, yanking, wet feeling digs its way from its stem to its base. The feeling bubbles inside it, pushing and shoving and inflating the pumpkin to three times its natural size.
Underneath this rapid growing-pain, hundreds of sharp pricks begin to poke inside its belly. It wishes the calling-one would stop before she kills its seeds, its darling little ones. The pumpkin feebly waves its vines as a third terrible pain drapes itself over its sides, suffocating the fleshy wall. The skin shrivels and gapes wide, moving and smoothing into a doorframe. Dewdrops gather into clear sheets of window-glass. The snaky green vines twirl themselves into golden wheels, into bronze runners. The soft wet flesh inside the orange interior plumps into cushions to rest weary human feet. And, as a finishing touch, the seeds sidle out of the doors and window to the ground, where they await a magic word.
The pumpkin gives a shrieking cry of inanimate rage and despair. Wobbling from side to side, it wishes—oh, how it wishes—it had legs and arms and magic spells like the calling-one, to be able to protect its children from harm like the calling-one could if she chose. Its precious treasure scattered like common acorns on the dark ground! Its children, its seeds, obediently deferring to the magician standing there! It feels them drying, dying, never to grow and thrive live. Never to feel the soft afternoon breeze on their skin again.
The calling-one smiles and pats its smooth side, and calls to the seeds. They spring up like attentive dogs, glimmering and sparkling, transforming into fiery, cold gems, all facet and no dew. They rise into the air and drape themselves around the pumpkin, their glorious reflected light making it glorious too. The pumpkin thinks how much more beautiful its seeds were than these lifeless jewels, how infinitely more precious.
Beaming, the calling-one turns away. The pumpkin doesn't care. It ignores the world as the coachman climbs to his perch, as the prancing horses rear and snort, as a soft star-white slipper steps into its shady inside.
As the pumpkin-carriage clatters away, the calling-one smiles at a job well done, rolling down her sleeves and vanishing.
To my lovely (or not) reviewers:
Beautiful Mind: Hey hey hey, too much time? Excuse me. Writing time is not "free time". But thank you for reviewing anyway.
BA-DA-BOOM!: I'm glad you thought it interesting...and well-written, too? A bonus! Yippee!
Teperehmi: Thanks!
Princess SimbiAni: Is it funny in some way? It's not supposed to be. Still, thank you SO MUCH for all the reviews!