The Twilight Twenty-Five:
Prompt: #6
Pen Name: Maddie-the-Muse
Pairing/Character(s): Rachel Black / Paul Lahote
Rating: K
Word Count: 43
Photo prompts can be found here: /round-eight/prompts
Like many other little girls, when Rachel Black was a little she dreamed of living a fairy tale life. Imagined meeting a handsome, dashing young man who would sweep her off her feet and win her heart, and whisk her to some far off land where they would live happily ever after in a castle.
When she got a little older, her dreams changed. She gave up the dreams of happily ever after depending on a man. She was determined to be the hero of her own story. She studied hard to get a scholarship to Washington State and left La Push, for what she hoped would be for good.
It has been four years since she has been back on the reservation. These days her life feels more like a dark comedy than a fairy tale most of the time. In an ironic twist of fate, it was a handsome young man that was behind her decision to stay in the town she had fought so hard to get free of. And despite his treating her like a princess, he was not, in fact, a prince. No, he was more what one would think of as the antagonist in a fairy tale; the big bad wolf, minus the bad.
If she spent too much time thinking about that little detail, she started to feel like her sanity was slipping through her fingers, but looking around at the life they had created for themselves brought it all back into focus.
Her English degree from WSU had allowed her to earn her teaching certificate through correspondence and she had been fortunate enough to land a job at Forks High School last year. Paul worked for her little brother at the garage and things had become quiet enough that they only shifted out of habit and to burn off excess energy rather than out of the necessity of protecting the tribe. Perhaps their biggest accomplishment was that she and Paul no longer lived with her father. Even if they had only managed to move next door after Mrs. Tucker went to live at the retirement home in Forks, they had their own roof over their heads and a warm bed to sleep in at night.
Looking down at the white plastic stick with its urine soaked felt tip in her hand; she couldn't help but think that the restful nights were numbered. Soon their quite little house would be filled with the sounds of cried in the night and the patter of little feet, and she couldn't be happier about it.
Maybe this old house could be a castle after all.