How Gothel Retrieved Her Flower

Being an old women sometimes had its advantages. Few people noticed an old woman walking just about anywhere, especially if she was carrying a broom, sweeping the floors.

Gothel was looking for the Flower. She desperately needed her magic, golden Flower. She was aging and it was getting harder to move and function. Her body was breaking down. It was beginning to hurt a lot too.

There was far too much hubbub to try to get her Flower back. Not that it had been left as a Flower. It had been turned into a tea and drunk by the ill queen. That was understandable, that is how all other medicinal plants worked, but the Flower worked in other ways.

That the baby was born with sunshine golden hair was god sent news, she may be able to still have access to its power. She had thought the queen would be infused with the power, but the Flower sounded like it was in the hair of the baby. She wondered why as she waited for the sun to set so she could run her plan. But that made things easier.

Getting into the palace hadn't been all that hard. No one noticed a querulous old woman, and she even asked a few of questions of a gossipy maid. She'd just swept the yard and then walked inside and sweep the halls until she had found the royal nursery.

Maybe a piece of the hair would sustain her. She hoped it would, she had never dared harm the Flower, it was too precious. She really didn't want to take a child. Kidnapping was a terrible crime.

But they stole her Flower. They destroyed her Flower. She didn't think the power was gone, but maybe it was.

She had to know!

Later in the dead of night she snuck in over the balcony. It had been a terribly hard climb in her aged body.

And they had left the balcony door open, how nice of them.

She sang softly and lo, the babe's hair glowed just as the Flower had. She was becoming young again. She pulled out her scissors and snipped a piece off, but it turned brown and all her years came back.

She faced a terrible dilemma. Take the babe and live or leave and die. She had nurtured the Flower for centuries, but to take an innocent child...

They stole my Flower. My Precious Flower! Mine! I must live!

She grabs the child, who wakens and cries. The king and queen awake, and with a flourish of her cloak, Gothel vanishes over the railing of the balcony.

"Solara!" screams the Queen.

"Stop!" Commands the King. "Guards!"

Gothel leaps from the second story balcony, beginning the song even before hitting the ground.

She screams, as her legs break with loud snaps, when she hits the ground, curled protectively around her Flower. Sobbing out the rest of incantation, she is healed and young again.

She runs for the sally port she left unlocked earlier and had used to enter. The baby is still crying, but Gothel stuffs a finger in the baby's mouth and the baby soon quiets as she sucks contentedly.

Gothel ducks down several alleys, as guards run past to the bridge.

Gothel carries the baby in her arms, cradling her most precious Flower. She is heading to the harbor. She is trying to move fast, to stay ahead of the guards. She knew the bridge was the fastest escape route, but the most heavily guarded. She had arranged a rowboat earlier in the day.

At the harbor she encounters a palace guard.

"Halt, who goes there?" He's heard the alarm and was the first to the harbor, the second most likely place for someone trying to escape. He had his sword out.

"Just little old me," tries Gothel in a sweet innocent voice. Trying to cradle the baby nonchalantly in her arms in front of her. She knows she doesn't have long before more guards arrive and seal the harbor. A simple bluff often works.

The baby begins to cry.

The moon comes out from behind the clouds revealing the long, shiny blonde hair of the baby.

"You're under arrest." shouts the guard moving closer, holding the tip of his sword in front of Gothel's belly. There was only one baby with hair that long and shiny in the kingdom, the Princess Solara. This woman must be trying to kidnap the princess.

Gothel freezes.

She has to keep her Flower, there was no other option. She would die without her Flower, she would do anything to keep her Flower. A desperate plan comes to mind.

In a fluid series of motions, she shifts the baby to her hip, and pulls out her scissors, trying to deflect the blade and lunging forward.

Even in her young state she isn't strong enough to do more then move it slightly to one side, the guard is too powerful, but it is the side away from her precious Flower. That is enough for her for now.

She continues to move forward impaling herself on the sword.

The guard looks shocked. No one throws themselves on a sword like that.

Screaming, as she feels the sword slide out the back of her body, she takes another step and is close enough. She plunges the scissors into the eye of the guard, who is too shocked to try to block her or even cry out before he dies.

They collapse in a heap.

Gothel rolls away from the guard, and with a scream pulls the sword from her own body. Shifting the crying baby to her belly, she holds the precious hair to her injury and weakly pants the incantation, finishing it strong and young again. She wrenches the scissors from the brain of the palace guard and adds his dagger to her booty, she needed more then scissors to protect herself, but the sword was too big.

Hearing heavy boots on the cobblestones Gothel quickly runs to the dock and the boat she had chosen earlier and dives onto it, paddling away as they find the body of the guard she killed. A cloud covers the moon, a fog forms and she disappears into the night.

The baby is asleep again so she covers her Flower with her cloak and rows down the shore in her darkened rowboat. Reaching shore she pushes the boat off and starts inland. She can't go home, she needs to find a new place to live, a hidden place to care for her Flower.

Trudging over the broken ground. Some place she can protect her precious Flower forever, and keep it safe from those who took it and destroyed it once already. She gently smoothed the hair of her Flower.

She sets off into the forest. Hoping to find some place safe enough for her Flower to thrive in.

So what was going through Gothel's mind as she stole the baby whose hair was infused with the wondrous power of the Flower?

Besides you can go all kinds of badass when you can carry healing magic like she is. That was sort of fun.

She comes of as fearsome when she goes nut like that.