Hi guys, here's my take on how Queen Clarion and Lord Milori met, and how they grew up together. All properties belong to Disney. Enjoy ;)
Chapter One - The Winter Woods
Once upon a time, when pixie hollow was very young, two fairies met and fell in love…
In the magical world of Neverland, beneath a behemoth and beautiful tree, lived the immortal realm of Pixie Hollow. Here, thousands of fairies and sparrowmen trained to change the seasons on the mainland and bring light, colour, rejuvenation and beauty to the human world. However, Pixie Hollow had two sides. One, a large and diverse field divided into the seasons of spring, summer and autumn, with flowers and trees reaching hundreds of feet high compared to the tiny fairies.
On the other side, past the summer meadow and beyond the autumn wood, lay a vast wonderland made entirely of ice and snow, with enormous mountains and ice glaciers grazing the top of the sky. While intricately painted butterflies and blooms of every colour filled the fields in summer, beautiful bobcats prowled the snowy landscape and roared into the misty winds in winter. It was an icy land of secrets, a misunderstood world that held a pride for all things cold.
However, no fairy from the shine or snow possessed any interest in what lay on the other side of the great unknown, and were much happier to keep to themselves. In the warmer seasons, fairies were assigned talents at birth such as water fairy or garden fairy or animal fairy, whereas winter fairies were optioned with frost, snowflake or hibernation fairy. Each world was so similar and yet so different, both under the leadership of their own beloved ruler. But they weren't always rulers. They were once young adults, young adults whose star-crossed-love resulted in a tragic ending…
The Queen was gifted to Pixie Hollow by the first laugh of a baby princess, and the breeze had picked up the petal of a chrysanthemum flower and carried it all the way to the second star to the right, and straight on 'till morning. When she landed in the pixie-dust tree on the warm side, she had sprouted gorgeous golden wings made of pure pixie-dust. The entire assembly gasped in amazement as they realised that their queen had arrived at last. She had long, honey-coloured hair with gentle curls, and when she stepped into the ring of talents, every representational item had merged into one and re-manifested themselves as a shimmering golden crown that landed gracefully atop the young queen's head. The crowd cheered and bowed to their new queen, a fairy to be named Clarion.
At the same time, the petal of a snowdrop was picked up by a strong gust of wind and sent to the winter caverns where Milori was born, with large silver wings unlike any other sparrowman. The winter fairies bowed to their new ruler, and Milori inherited all the talents of winter.
With lives so different it was not surprising that the Queen of the warm side, and the Lord of Winter never met. But fate decreed they would.
Years later, when Clarion and Milori were older but still young, about 17 years of age, they saw each other for the first time...
Sitting in the private study of the library was like being glued to a blanket. The window near the ceiling hadn't been covered in years and the sun filled every inch of the room, making one's vision wavy with the heat and able to see the very dust that floated through the air.
Clarion had had enough of kingdom management. The day had been dragging on ever so painfully long, and the room was cramped, dust-covered, and boiling. Towers of books surrounded her, and she was expected to get through all of them by tonight. She could not take another moment of transcribing ancient fairy lore in the stuffiness of the study.
The Stuffy would be a more appropriate name, she thought.
Letting out a loud, frustrated sigh, she buried her head in her hands then banged her head on the table. How could her guardians condemn her to a full day of this? The ministers were kind. Redleaf was her favourite, being the oldest and wisest minister, and Hyacinth was closest to her in age and was like a brother to her. But how could they not see that she needed a break from all of this once in a while? It was enough to drive her mad.
So, making up her mind, she peeked over the stack of books in front of her to make sure she was alone, then made a dash for the small window and flew off, leaving a small trail of pixie dust in her wake.
Right at that moment, Hyacinth entered the room. "Clarion, I-" he stopped when he realised the little queen wasn't here. "Hmmpf." he grumbled to himself, and set off to find her.
Clarion flew through the open air of summer. Her golden wings shimmered in the sun and cast a small rainbow onto the water below her. She hovered lower and reached out a hand to brush against the bubbling brook, and little fish jumped in and out of the water as if to say hello. Clarion smiled.
Dashing for the sky, she flew on her back and spread her arms out to her sides, letting the cool breeze lead her along, so happy to be free at last. She stopped mid-air and turned to face the wall of snow off in the distance, and knew that beyond it lay the world she was forbidden to see; the winter woods. Although she would never admit it to anyone, Clarion held a secret fascination with the mysterious world of winter that lay beyond the wall of gently falling snow. All she knew was that she was strictly prohibited from going there.
Every young fairy and sparrowman knew that in the early days of Pixie Hollow, when it was only just a few days old, a winter fairy known by the name of Ayaz Aquilo had broken a wing. He had stayed for too long in the summer meadows whilst saving a group of fairies from a hawk attack, and his name became legend in fairy folklore. No one had known about the dangers of winter fairies entering warm conditions, or warm fairies in winter ones back then, and the healing talent fairies had studied Wingology for months to deduct that the two environments were not to be integrated, as warm and winter fairies needed their wings to be in their element at all times or they would break. Clarion shuddered at the thought.
But what she shuddered at the most was Hyacinth's opinion on winter fairies. He had told Clarion many times that warm fairies were far superior, as they saw over three seasons instead of just one, and believed the ice dwellers to be lazy and less valuable. Clarion had argued back saying that having to tend just one season was hardly their fault, as fairy science had proved it dangerous to try otherwise. But Hyacinth still turned up his nose at any mention of winter fairies, and it was this that kept Clarion from truly loving him like a brother.
But secretly, Clarion longed to gaze at what she had only read about in books; the icicles, snowflakes, snowy owls and cavernous glaciers. If she wasn't caught, surely a quick little trip to the winter woods wouldn't hurt.
Clarion flew to the autumn wood, to the spot where the earth ended and the ice fjords began, and one could stand with one foot in autumn and the other in winter if they so pleased. She couldn't believe that a whole other world existed just beyond that falling snow, and slowly, she held out a hand to feel it. It was cold, refreshingly cold, almost pleasant, and she quickly pulled her hand back as a smile blushed her olive skin. Suddenly, she heard the murmur of an animal fairy with his herd of bunnies heading her way, and she dashed out of sight, the red trees and colours of autumn camouflaging her well.
Clarion watched as happily, the bunnies jumped through the wall of snow and instantly turned white as they received winter coats to protect them from the frost. Clarion laughed at their playfulness, but quickly stopped herself before the animal fairy heard her, clearly here to make sure that the fluffy little bunnies crossed safely. When the supervisor was gone, Clarion cautiously ventured towards the snow. Hoping to see more of the playful bunnies, and hearing the voices of the other ministers closing in on her, she decided to cross and venture on. Now was her chance, her chance to finally see what she was forbidden to experience.
Clarion immediately covered her arms to shield herself from the bitter cold as she crossed through. Every breath she took sent a visible cloud of mist spiralling through the air from her mouth. Snow delicately fell around her. It was beautiful. She flew around for a bit, and spied the bunnies off in the distance and watched them play in the snow, jumping off snow piles and rolling about in the winter wonderland. Yet as time went on, Clarion became colder and colder, and had the feeling that someone was watching her.
The young queen ventured further into the forest, but then decided to turn back, as she was freezing... but she had lost her way. Frantically, she flew all over the place, trying to navigate the forest, but every turn looked the same, and she could no longer see the vibrant colours of autumn off in the distance. How far had she gone in?!
What had once captured her curiosity had now become sinister to her, as she knew she could very well be heading further into the woods in the direction she was flying. Clarion tried flying up higher to get a better view from the air, but her wings had gone stiff. She started to panic. As her cheeks began turning scarlet red and her lips turned blue, she feared for her life as she tried desperately to navigate her way through the endless sea of white. She was lost and unprotected in winter, with nothing but a sleeveless dress for cover. She felt herself going limp and numb, and fell to the ground as she felt a pain in her wing. She clutched her shoulder, her lip quivering on the brink of tears, and braced herself to die at any moment...
When suddenly, someone with hair as white as the snow itself grabbed her by the arm and started flying back towards the border at full speed. They flew extremely fast and Clarion's mind, weak with cold, could only figure out the detail that her saviour was a sparrowman. Eventually they made it back to the border and the mysterious figure placed her down on the warm side.