"Ten years from now...I will be doing my mirrorcast show...and helping people with all matters of L-O-V-E love."
Briar Beauty stops painting her nails (a fableous shade of pink with neon green accents to match tomorrow's outfit) and glances over at C.A. Cupid. She is sitting at Briar's desk, absent-mindedly eating a cookie while writing.
"What are you doing?"
Cupid doesn't bother looking up, still scribbling away. "Thronework. I have to answer the question 'Where do you see yourself in ten years?'"
"In the mirror." Briar's response is instantaneous.
Cupid laughs at her joke. Hopper Croakington II, who is sitting beside Briar, sorting through the nail charms he had dropped earlier, also laughs. But his laughter is loud, sarcastic, and annoying. Briar grabs a pillow and smacks him with it. It's met with a yelp and the sound of hundreds of tiny little things hitting the floor and scattering.
"Briar," he whines, "look at what you did! Now I'm going to have to start all over."
She eyes the nail charms strewn across her bed and floor without a hint of sympathy. "You wouldn't be cleaning them up at all if you weren't so careless." She reopens her nail polish bottle, turns back to her nails, and gasps. "Look at what you did!"
She thrusts a manicured hand into Hopper's face, showing off her smudged wet nails. He smirks.
"Well, that wouldn't have happened if you weren't so careless," he repeats mockingly.
She sticks her tongue out at him. He returns the favor.
Cupid groans at their antics. "Ladies, please. Some of us are trying to work here."
Hopper lets out an indignant noise at her words, but Briar just sighs and grabs her nail polish remover. She looks over the nails on her right hand and sighs again when she realizes none of them can be saved. Her sigh turns into a yawn.
Cupid hands her a cookie and she perks back up. "These cookies are so good, Hopper. Where did you get them?"
"Oh, um...so, Cupid, what do you think you'll be doing in ten years, anyway?"
Briar gives him a look over the weird topic change, but he ignores her. Cupid blushes at the sudden attention.
She waves him off bashfully. "It's not really that interesting." Then, she turns back to her paper, facing away from her friends.
Cupid only acts like this when it comes to one thing, or rather one person. Hopper waggles his eyebrows. "Judging by that response, it must be fairy interest-OW!" He yells as another one of Briar's pillows connects with the back of his head. "Will you stop doing that?"
Briar rolls her eyes. "Will you stop being so annoying? But for real, Cupid, you can trust us with your juicy secret."
"It's nothing like that! In fact, I plan to be doing everything hexactly the same. Including hanging out with my fairy best friends."
Hopper raises an eyebrow at her declaration, and Briar takes a suspicious bite out of another cookie. They know Cupid is hiding something, they know that it involves one (1) Dexterous Charming, and they are not about to let it go. When Cupid sees this, her shoulders slump in defeat.
"And I'm married to Dexter. And we live in a charming little house, with our two beautiful children. And the hamster."
Hopper starts cackling. Briar valiantly tries to hold back her own giggles as she fawns over how cute she is. Neither one of them helps with the dark red blush taking over Cupid's face.
"Did you really write that for your thronework?" Hopper asks between wheezes.
She blanches. "No! Of course not. Why would you even think that?" Her voice tapers off as she adds, "I just...vaguely hinted at it."
At that, Hopper's laughter reignites in it's intensity, and this time Briar can't fight the urge to join in. Cupid frowns at them, but its effect is dimished by the chuckles she lets escape. Nonetheless, her friends aren't being fairy nice to her right now, laughing at her like this, and she makes sure to let them know. She includes a critique on hexactly what friendship skills they need to brush up on.
Briar has the decency to stifle her laughter as she apologizes with a giant smile on her face. "I'm sorry. It's just so cute how flustered you get with your own love life." She wraps Cupid up in a hug.
"Yeah. You're totally going to find your true love, you've just gotta learn how to not worry about it so much." Hopper tacks on before joining the hug.
"And we'll be here for you while you figure it out."
"Thanks, guys." She hugs them a little tighter before letting go. "So, what're your future plans, Hopper?"
He jumps like he is startled at the question.
"I haven't put a lot of thought into it. Uh, I'll just be doing princey things anyway, right?"
Cupid and Briar share a look. Cupid opens her mouth to say more, but Hopper cuts her off.
"So, what do you want to do in ten years?" he asks Briar.
She thinks about pushing him for an answer first, but decides to entertain the distraction. Forcing Hopper to open up about what's bothering him never goes over well, it's better to let him talk when he's ready. Besides, talking about herself is always a fun time.
Briar smiles as she thinks about all of the fun things she'll be able to do as an adult, when her demeanor suddenly changes. Her expression darkens and her shoulders slump. "I don't think it matters what I want to do when I already know what I'll be doing."
Hopper winces. He'd asked the question without thinking. And now he feels his heart sink into his stomach. He reaches out to comfort her, but Briar moves away.
Cupid breaks the silence. "It does matter. It matters to us."
Briar begins to cry. "I want to be there. With you. All of you. I want to be there for the parties and the spellebrations, and for the little things, too. I want to live with you. I want to grow old with you. I don't want to go to sleep and wake up when it's all over."
Cupid grabs Briar, pulling her into a crushing hug. She doesn't say anything, just holds her. Hopper joins them with trepidation. He doesn't want to make this worse than he already has. But they don't push him away, and so he stays and holds on a little tighter.
Someone pulls them down, until they are all sitting on the floor. From where she is, Briar can see the nail charms that lay forgotten under her bed. It's kind of funny how her two biggest problems right now are 1) that her manicure has totally been messed up again and 2) dying before she really gets to live. Because she has seen her mother. She has seen the effect of her curse. She may be alive, but she wasn't living. They sit and they hug until Briar's tears run dry. She lets out a yawn.
Like she is tired. Like the crying had sapped all of her energy away. Like at any moment she can fall asleep for one hundred years.
They all think it. None of them say it aloud.
"We won't let that happen to you." Hopper says instead. But he sounds worried.
"We'll find a way to stop the curse. And if we can't, we'll just have to wake you up. We're great at that." Cupid adds. But she sounds unsure.
"It's okay," she tells them, already slipping away from them, slipping back into her usual cheery self, eyes slipping closed, slipping further into exhaustion. "I don't want you to waste your lives like that. The best thing that you can do for me is to live your life hexactly as you want. Which means you need to figure it out Frog-Boy."
"I want to open a bakery."
"What?"