Ever since the days of Mal's VKs the Isle of the Lost had gotten upgraded over the years. It was the simple things first: the actual fresh food, paint jobs and repairs... then they almost went a step too far almost stripping the Isle of it's own razor edge culture. All often covered in boring Isle High history class.
And then Evie, the VK advocate, found a compromise that let the inhabitants rise from squalor while keeping its funky, colorful identity.
As such this full blood VK and others like her could truly be provided for in Carlos' House, rising from an empty ramshackle warehouse crammed with old bunks, the orphanage made a pleasant home.
To Scarlette it was all a definite god send from going back to the streets after her adoptive 'father' had been arrested.
At thirteen she cut a very imposing figure. Lithe and strong bodied like a lioness, Scarlette was the lion Scar's best. To show her loyalty any in his pack were often dressed of the jungle animals he had once ruled over before usurped, and boasted a scar over one eye.
Senses constantly primed, she picked out many, many features, recognizing some from her mental quarry over polished routine. Eyes out for Princess Persephone and the animal whisperer Eric.
She fidgeted her fingers, itching to take the shining, glinting valuables. Unlike most Scarlette still had to temper that habit. How she wished to one day be able to whip out her wallet and treat her friends to coffee or lunch.
Stipends only went so far, anymore and she would need to get a job. And she was too small and too wayward for many storefronts' tastes.
'Speak of the devil,' she thought, spotting the vibrant heads of her friends.
Rising her own head just a little higher and a sly, easy smile ghosting her face.
"Well I'm off to Dragon Hall," Eric said. The trio were now on the Isle proper.
Scarlette began o ask Persephone about her rumored end of school/birthday ball. For flair she had kept the details very secretive, only divulging that it would be an event out of a fairytale.
Much as the eager butterflies drove her dizzy, she had also been a little wary from the start. Inviting someone like her would've been awkward, most street rats didn't get happy endings. Though her fears had eased one weekend afternoon where she'd placed her faith, allowing the plum haired princess to cover her eyes.
When they'd stepped off the train it was to Belle Brooks Boulevard, a darling little walkway of exquisite boutiques where all the royals shopped. This was where girls like Persephone got their photos on magazines!
She'd expected a forceful hand and eager, shrill peals of laughter, only to receive a soft nuzzle by her knuckle on Scarlette's cheek.
Smiling as she did discreetly point out her eyes shining with pearly tears.
Blinked away, and only then did Persephone whisper that they didn't have to, she loved Scarlette, and she was beautiful and magic in a way she herself was not. Despite all the fairy magic in the world.
Persephone had beamed playing Fairy Godmother yet more than that, she'd remained honest the whole way through. Letting her pick a dress of gentle, lip balm pink, fleeting to flower petals at its skirt and a delicate fur shawl.
They'd laughed, in some ways the concept was ridiculous but she'd bought the thing. And Scarlette had felt like royalty. If, for a moment.
"I want it to be an event of true love and fluttering hearts. Dancing in the moonlight to equally enchanting music, where any girl could be a princess and boys get the confidence to buck up and say the words already," she described in a bliss far from the real world. Until that whole, totes not big drama.
Scarlette didn't bother to conceal her laugh, but a lady was a lady and so she buffered with her palm.
"Ahh, I get it now, you did all that so Eric would dance all pretty with you and finally say; those. Magical. Words," she gasped, breath stolen away in the fantasy. "Oh Persephone I love you, how I adore you, let's be together forever," she quoted from her dearest friends diary, collapsing on herself in a fit of indulgent giggles.
"Aghhhh, stop it please! For Hadeees!" the princess whined, under her hands, such waxen, pretty skin gone viciously red. Like some plump, delectable apple.
"Oh but why it is really so sweet," she continued. "A whole Ball just for lovers-"
Persephone dared shove Scarlette along. Almost into a vendor, whom she graciously apologized to.
"Not purely for that reason," she defended.
Finally letting herself breathe, Scarlette gave a patented look.
"Right, also because you don't have the nerve to do it yourself," Scarlette added.
It was amusing to see how she pouted, fuming inside, completely lacking for a response. Completely turned around and lovesick, sweet and sticky and hilarious to watch. One of the few assurances Scarlette had that her friend was human.
"Ridiculous I- I just don't want his ego to be all popped, the way he would mope and think he was somehow less of a Prince or a dashing rogue, whichever he wants to be I don't even know, if I got to it," she babbled in shrill, frantic nothing. And she had more. "I like him I do, even all his grandiosity and dramatics, seriously. So I want it right, I want it that both of us would be laughing and hugging and cuddling so if it's gonna work it has to be him first. At the start it can be at his terms."
Having blurted all this out, quickly and loudly.
Others had begun to stare.
Yet, something odd was happening also. Persephone's eyes dazzled in acid green stars, flickering around, her friend suddenly gone stiff as bone out of her senses. Completely trapped, panicking, in her own personal dark room.
Then as if in a trance, murmuring the disjointed but unmistakable lines of a spell causing a wide engulfing emerald glow.
Only Scarlette knew to shut her eyes. Chancing a glance after a few seconds she still had to blink spots out of her vision. Coming into view Persephone's skin still had the slight luster of a mirror but she herself looked weak. Around the two girls their gawkers still held their eyes to their hands. 'Maybe then they'll mind their business,' she thought savagely.
All the same a knot of worry grew just a little bigger, tallying today's incident as the 5th in six months. "Come on let's go before they get their sight back," Scarlette whispered.
Persephone nodded at the idea.