hurricane → FIVE HARGREEVES ✓

𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐞

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄
—𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚜, 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚎—

     𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍 𝐀 time, Mariana Carson spent her time hidden away in the home she considered a fortress; every now and then, as a child, she would look out from her bay window with a sigh of despair, place her chin in the palms of her hands, and pretend as though she was a princess awaiting her knight in shining armor. She imagined that he would come riding in one day upon a noble steed, a drawn sword in his hand with armor that reflected his bravery. He would be kind, fearless, and he would somehow hold the ability to break her free of the metaphorical chains that bound her to the fortress — or castle, in the dream-state fairytale that she imagined. And when he finally came, she stood from her daze and smiled out to him.

Spencer.

But it was unfortunate that she learned, soon enough, that life would never create such a fairytale for her to thrive in; with life came terrors and limitations that held her back from taking the daring step forward that she imagined she could take. In all reality, Mariana was overcome with boundaries that would never bid her access to the outside world — or, as she'd prefer to phrase it in her storybook, there was no such prince to save her from the depths of despair that loomed within her castle. She would never be saved, and the unfortunate truth was why.

While her loving parents had locked her away in her castle as a means of protection, they never truly told her what she was hiding from. A dragon, perhaps; a dragon that breathed raging fires, and had no mercy upon the soul of others once its fury was released. Mariana imagined that it would rampage outside, burning anything that it so carelessly pleased to, all the while understanding that it was holding a princess captive inside. But, as the usual ways of Mariana's fairytale, she was wrong once again. There wasn't a dragon outside that was bound to the land around her home, nor were her parents protecting her from another person.

They were protecting her from herself.

So it came as no surprise when Mariana had sunken to the floor one day after a tantrum that had flooded her room, and had cried not because of what she'd become — but of what she'd been all along. She was not the princess she had originally imagined, one with a dress that fell to the floor in soft waves of satin, or one with a crown that shimmered when the sunlight hit it in just the right way. Her hair didn't fall in soft locks down her back, and her eyes didn't glisten with easy desire and the hopes of touching the effervescent tendrils of outside grass with her bare feet.

Mariana wasn't the princess of the story.

She was the villain.

And then, out of the darkness that seemingly surrounded her, there was a light. It burned in the distance and slowly grew closer until suddenly she could reach out and see it — really see it. And although she couldn't touch it, she knew it was there, and she reached farther than she ever had before: for the godmother that would take her away, the genie that would grant her wishes, or whatever Godly being that had come to save her. But it was a prince. A prince with no armor because he didn't need any, with golden eyes that reflected the setting sun in the evening sky, who had the practical aura of everything kind in the world. He didn't have a shadow; instead, a trail of light followed behind him like a cape of serenity. Behind him grew flowers that blossomed from the slightest of his brush, as if he had a magic that everything in the world ached to touch — and Mariana was no exception. In fact, it was possible that she wanted to touch him moreso than anything else because she knew that once she did . . .