𝐀 𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍'𝐒 𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐘 - Cinderella AU

VI - and I have a change in mind

vi.

THE MOON SEEMED TO COME out from hiding behind the clouds just for her, it seemed to Isadora Tremaine. It wasn't a sharp crescent like it had been the last time she had fully been at liberty to observe the largest gem in the night sky-it startled Isa how the moon changed. It was now fuller, rounder, bigger, mightier. It waned and waxed, went through phases and emerged with its everlasting and unchanging glow each time. If it could do it, so could she.

But then again, who was she to compare herself to the moon?

"It appears the moonlit waltz was not quite the epiphany as my cousin so claimed," The dark foreign prince holding her spoke, his low tone making his baritone heavier-and the goosebumps on her skin wilder in response.

Isa blinked, gazing into his eyes curiously.

"For it appears my lady is quite taken with the moon itself than me," The prince smiled, his teeth gleaming in the dim light. "I feel small-quite a strange feeling I must admit."

Isadora laughed, her eyes briefly falling on the original spinning couple still on the ballroom floor. Prince Charming and his mystery lady. To Isa, it seemed like they had been dancing for ages, forever locked in time.

"I apologize, your highness," She managed, meeting the prince's intense gaze again. "I just-the last time I saw the moon it was but a mere crescent."

The royal's brows furrowed slightly. "Does my lady not have leisure time to spend on the sky?"

Leisure time? Isadora didn't know what to make of the term. She didn't work, but she wasn't at leisure to. She didn't remember ever being at leisure. Maybe perhaps before her father's death she had known leisure. After his death her life had been a pre scheduled routine that she had been forced to stick to.

Breakfast, study lessons, piano lessons, sewing, lunch, etiquette lessons, dancing lessons, dinner and then the lights were switched off. Everyday it had been the same cycle over and over until she had completed her academic studies and that portion of her life had been replaced with harp lessons that Lady Tremaine had forced her to saddle on. Her training had started at six, when her father's coffin had been lowered into the ground. Training to be an accomplished wife to a wealthy husband who did not have consumption and would not die without leaving her anything as had been her mother's case.

In all her life, Isadora Tremaine had not discovered even her hobbies. She had an acute idea of what portions of her curated days she had enjoyed, but she could never dwell on them when the clock struck and she had to move on to something else.

After Archie's arrival into her life, Isadora had torn herself out of the complexity of the routine she was being grinded into by her mother. She dropped all the lessons-piano, singing, the etiquette which had convulsed into the borders of the imbecilic-she replaced all of that with caring for Archie. And gradually she had dropped out of a routine entirely, her attention fixed continuously on her four year old. Lady Tremaine was infuriated, but the woman didn't stop-instead fixing her own attentions on Lucinda to make the girl somehow become accomplished for two.

In culmination, Isadora Tremaine was a mother, and she didn't have leisure to pursue idle fascinations with a son's future stark in her mind.

"I do not," Isa managed when she realized the prince was waiting and she hadn't spoken.

She turned her eyes away from him. The foreign royal spun her around gently when the music took a gentle dip, before bringing her back to face him. A wind blew a piece of her stray hair into her face as she looked back into his brown orbs.