Note: Apparently my page breaks didn't show up on the last chapter. Awk.
Maleficent stayed awake most of the night, flying about the Moors. She must have done four laps over the same glades before dawn. She told herself with the wall of thorns down it was better to be safer. But her mind was not on intruders but on thieves. Human thieves, human jewel thieves. The young boy who had thrown away one of his few earthly possessions just so he might hold her hand and how he could possibly be the same man who lay in the ground now.
"You and your big wings are going to keep me up all night!" Knottgrass complained loudly when Maleficent made her third pass over the pixie tree.
Maleficent made no responses but glided over to the hilltop overlooking the valley from which she watched Stefan's castle—no Aurora's castle. The windows showed no light, save for a few, one of which she hoped was not Aurora, Diaval would make sure she slept, she hoped.
"When I'm king I'll make sure there's a room just for you, with a balcony so you can come and go," Stefan said one night as they sat watching the sunset behind the castle.
"I'll make you a tree," she said back.
"King's don't live in trees."
"And faeries don't live in stonewalls."
When they were children it was so easy to laugh away the hardships their future would bring, because they had both been certain the other would concede. If Stefan knew he couldn't take a faerie for his wife and queen, he never showed it when they were young. And though it had been at the back of her own mind she never let it get much farther. They'd find a way.
And with love's first kiss…prove that true love conquers all….well she would have needed true love for that. And since it was not found in the memory of Stefan she looked for it in the windows of the far off castle, searching for his daughter.
Aurora dreamed she was dancing at a faerie ball with Phillip. It was a far better dream than the one she had while encased in Maleficent's curse. Perhaps it was the magic, perhaps it was her own awful thoughts but she dreamed she was trapped in a black room with no windows and no doors. She heard everything around her, the pixies, Phillip, her father, Maleficent…
Perhaps it hadn't been a dream then. Her body had gone quiet but her mind was a buzz with her flitting about it like a bee desperate to be released from her cage. She'd screamed for her father to hear her, for Phillip, and even her aunties. But when Maleficent spoke, she cried.
"I will not ask you to forgive me…"
She wept instantly, out of anger, out of fear, out desire to see her godmother again and be told it would be alright. And the more Maleficent spoke the more she wanted to see her face. She'd forgive her everything, even though she shouldn't. And waking had been like being born perhaps, sudden light and sudden warmth and there stood Maleficent with tears to match her own.
Waking now felt far more groggy and much like a chore. Instead of warm light she felt the glaring sun, her namesake outside bringing daylight. It gave her a headache.
A squawk from her balcony startled her and through the sheer curtains she saw the silhouette of a raven sitting on the railing. Wherever I went, your shadow followed me.
"Pretty bird," she smiled and Diaval fluttered his wings approvingly before giving her a bow and flying off, back to the Moors. He and Maleficent bickered so often she knew he took every compliment she gave him back to her with a grin.
She swung her legs out of bed and made to get ready, going to the ensuite. The floor was grey marble, the bathtub cast iron and sticking out like a lump of coal in a bed of storm clouds. How was she supposed to get water into the tub she wondered…With her aunties she would collect water from the stream, where would she find one of those in a castle?
"Majesty?" a knock at the door interrupted.
"Yes? Come in," she said, scurrying back into the main room, making sure her dressing gown was folded over modestly.
Into the room walked a rather pudgy chambermaid carrying a tray of food.
"I meant to wake you myself, Majesty," she said, carrying the chair over to an ottoman sitting in front of a chaise longue, "True to your name then, rising with the dawn."
Aurora gave her an obligated smile and wondered how many times that same jest would be made at her in the next few weeks.
She munched on her breakfast while the maid drew her a bath. She ate nearly all of it save the meat, Maleficent didn't eat meat, she'd need to amend food menus whenever she came to visit. And she would come to visit…she hoped.
The bath was more luxurious than anything she'd know with her aunties, though the incense and oils became overpowering at a certain point and she felt a headache coming on by the time the bath was over. She did however, feel far cleaner than any bath she'd taken at the cottage.
"I've laid out a gown for you ma'am," the maid said.
The gown looked complicated and uncomfortable. She eyed her clothes from home longingly. But no, she had to dress this way. This was her home now. She was queen, she had to look like a queen, follow her peoples' customs. They didn't feel like her people though, that was the problem itching at the back of her head. The faerie creatures would let her wear whatever she wanted…One more day in her old gowns couldn't hurt. She had nothing formal planned today anyway.
With a comfortable dress securely on she answered the door the next time there was knock, a new face was there, not the chambermaid but a very stiff looking male servant.
"Your Majesty, you have a guest here to see you," he said.
"Maleficent?" she said hopefully, peeking her head out the door.
"No."
Of course not. Maleficent would never go through the string of formal and proper steps to come see her. She'd fly to the balcony and be done with it. No more humans than necessary involved.
"It's Prince Phillip from—"
"Phillip?"
She was just as giddy at that prospect but for an entirely different emotion. She felt her cheeks heat up and her stomach bubble in a very pleasant way. She saw him down the hall, sitting rigidly and nervously on a cushioned bench. She went walking right up to him.
"Hello."
He jumped to his feet, stumbled slightly, and as soon as he regained his balance he turned his face into a dashing smile.
"Hello Aurora."
They'd gotten past the part where she was a princess days ago, and now queen as well as the part about Maleficent and her aunties. With all the explaining out of the way there was room for…what exactly? She knew the emotion she felt had a name and she knew it was about this age that girls started feeling it. She'd read enough storybooks as a girl to know a love story when she saw one.
They walked the gardens together for the morning. She recalled his fumbling apology to her, a week prior, for kissing her without permission while she slept. He insisted he'd done it because he'd been told it would wake her but admitted—much to Aurora's fluttering stomach—that he did want to kiss her. And since then she'd been waiting for the moment he chose to try it again. She wanted to actually be able to kiss him back.
"You're telling me you've never been actual, proper horseback riding before?" he said.
"No, I missed out on all the normal princess things living out in the forest," she said. The only time she'd rode a horse was to get as far away from Maleficent as she could.
"Well that's it, we're going."
"Going where?"
He took her hand and pulled her out of the garden quickly and eventually out of the castle and towards the stables, ignoring the odd and knowing looks many of the staffers were giving them.
"This is Samson," he said, gesturing to the grey horse beneath his hand. The horse was gorgeous, not a musty gray but a color that reminded her of the air after a rainstorm with a mane that shimmered a darker shade. The horse was groomed and well muscled.
"Hello," she said, offering her hand out to Samson who sniffed it once before nudging it, prompting her to run her hand down his nose.
"He's a good horse and would be honored to take you out on your first real horseback ride," he said.
Phillip held out one hand and Aurora offered her own. He pulled her over, with one hand wrapped around her hip he lifted her up. She let both legs stay to one side, sidesaddle, that's the way princesses and queens rode. Once she was steady Phillip pulled himself up behind her, taking the reins in either hand.
With his arms encircling her she allowed herself to lean back a bit and relax and she could almost feel his smile as they set out at a light trot.
"She slept perfectly sound," Diaval said, "Not a single stir all night. I'm not sure what you were afraid of, nothing could touch her in those walls."
It's the walls I'm afraid of.
She said nothing back to Diaval, but kept up her walk through the glen, stopping to heal broken branches and diseased leaves as she saw them. Diaval followed silently, stopping she stopped, and starting again as she did.
"How did you sleep mistress?" he said after a few moments of only the sound of crunch grass beneath their feet.
"Fine." Not at all.
She looked out to the sky where deep blue clouds were gathering in the canvas behind Stefan's castle. She stared long enough to see a flash of light within the clouds and a few seconds later a low rumble cut through the air and make its way to her and Diaval.
"There's a storm on the way," she said.
"I am a bird you know I can tell too," he scoffed. She rolled her eyes.
"Come on," she said, getting up and walking briskly.
Aurora hated thunderstorms from childhood when she'd scream and cry about it to when she was older and would hold up under her covers. A crown would not change that.
"Where are we going in a storm?" he said.
"Aurora."
And that was that needed saying as she waved her fingers and turned him back into a raven. They took off in flight together and glided over the human kingdom, banking together, turning together, twisting to catch the last rays of sun together. Flying with Diaval was her favorite thing in the world she was not afraid to admit (not to him of course). She envied him his wings so much over those sixteen years, the second her wings were back she wanted nothing more than to fly next to him and release all the envy and anger that had built up in place of her wings like a phantom limb.
So they flew to the castle, keeping to the cloud line to stay out of sight of the guards who would misunderstand. She must have looked a gargoyle on the parapet when she landed down. She waved Diaval forward to make sure no servants or ladies-in-waiting were in Aurora's room.
She dropped down onto the balcony and lightly pushed past the sheer curtains at the entrance to the room. She did not see Aurora, not at first, missing her for the lump underneath the covers where she ought to be. The lump was breathing and when a particularly loud gust of thunder shook the stonewalls it jumped and curled in tighter on itself.
Maleficent sat down on the edge of the bed and extended her hand.
"Oh beastie," she sighed and rested her hand where she knew Aurora's head to be.
The queen popped out of her shelter and immediately launched into a hug, gripping Maleficent tightly around her torso beneath her wings. Maleficent stayed stiff but allowed a wing to come around the girl and enclose her.
"Godmother, you came," she said. The word "finally" was hidden in there somewhere.
Above them Diaval nestled himself into a top corner of Aurora's wardrobe, flittering his wings a bit before settling there. Another crack of thunder went off.
"Can we go to the Moors tonight?" she asked, letting go of Maleficent but moving closer to her at the sound. Maleficent frowned, the girl desired home in the tree she'd slept in for the first week after Stefan's death.
"I'm afraid the Moors will not be a safer place from the storm."
"Tell me a story then."
"What kind of story?"
She laughed before she said it.
"A fairy tale."
Aurora's bright smile was worth the bad joke and Maleficent pursed her lips to try and keep from smiling back.
"I don't know any of those beastie," she said.
"You could…tell me about my father."
The silence that came after was not dangerous, but just sad. She knew Aurora would ask one day, growing more and more curious now that the wings had returned and her hair was down. Diaval would not tell her, as much as he doted on Aurora he would not betray his mistresses secrets.
"That's not a story for a stormy night," she said. And Aurora accepted it at once, perhaps relieved that her godmother's temper had not flared at the question.
Instead they stayed silent, Aurora curled up in her bed, laying against Maleficent's outstretched wing. Maleficent herself found sitting on the bed terribly uncomfortable and yearned for her own tree back home. But Aurora lay still against the feathers, not asleep, but content in the protection her godmother's presence afforded her. Every now and again she'd flinch at the flash of light inevitably followed by a crack of thunder.
"They're not all that frightening," Maleficent said.
"Lots of people are scared of thunderstorms."
"Lots of humans."
She felt Aurora bristle at the statement but the girl said nothing. Maleficent wondered if she should amend it.
"The thunderstorms renews the ground and the trees and the flowers, destruction is part of what makes the world beautiful," she said. "No flower ever bloomed because nature was kind to it all its life."
"Destruction…and beauty," Aurora echoed lazily, eyes closing and yawning.
Maleficent watched her until she was sure the queen was fast asleep. She had always been so still in her sleep, never tossing or turning once she was dreaming. And so it was now, her head pillowed in the feathers of Maleficent's wing, her one hand outstretched towards her godmother as if to hold her arm while she slept.
As carefully as she could, Maleficent retracted her wing from beneath Aurora's head, allowing the blonde crown to fall down lightly on the pillow. With a gentle pull of her hand she lifted the comforter up and over Aurora, making it snug around her. It was the closest thing to an embrace she could give the girl.
And she watched her sleep awhile. She rested her hand against Aurora's warm forward and retracted it as if blessing her to sleep. She stood and watched over her.
"Sleep Aurora," she whispered before she made to leave.
She gave a quick hiss towards Diaval who woke instantly, flying over to rest on his mistress's shoulder. And after one last look to make sure she was safe, away they flew as the dawn cut through the dark on the horizon.