A/N: Ilsadora Silverstein^^
"What are we going to do now?!" Jeanette asked, pacing the floor of the kitchen in Viviana's house.
Viviana, true to her word, had met both Jeanette and Santiago at the palace gates before returning home, saying she had to meet Elena and explain things to her. Jeanette and Santiago had tagged along and absolutely refused to leave, even after Viviana told them it really wasn't necessary for them to follow her. Now, Viviana had her head down on the table as Jeanette paced with Preisha, and Santiago calmly sat across the table from Viviana.
"What do you mean, what are we going to do?" Viviana mumbled to the table. "Is it not obvious?"
She propped her head up and gazed tiredly at Jeanette, who shrugged.
"No soy una genia." [I'm not a genius] Jeanette mumbled. "Eres tú" [That's you.]
Viviana sighed. "I'm flattered Jeanie, but you really think too low of yourself. We're going to do exactly what we told that bastardo we were going to do. We're going to go to the edge of Remembauri, and talk to Ilsadora."
"Talk?!" Jeanie yelped as Santiago wrinkled his nose. "I don't want to support violence, but that sounds even more insane than killing the former Queen. What makes you think she'll talk to us? She's nuts! She cursed a baby child to die! And she'll kill us before we can say surrender."
"That was a long time ago." Viviana insisted, tapping the table. "Princess Isabelle is eighteen now. 18 years of banishment and isolation may have made Ilsadora see the error in her ways. If anything, she'll want to help us."
"If anything, isolation destroys minds. Ilsadora is likely even crazier than she was 18 years ago." Santiago mumbled.
Viviana groaned. "Come on, guys! Think positively."
"If you are serious about this, we need to be realistic. Not positive." Jeanette eyed Viviana like Viviana was the crazy one, instead of Ilsadora.
And, maybe, Viviana was.
After all, no one else would voluntarily travel across kingdoms to meet with an insane woman who had once cursed a child to die.
Viviana was about to try and give more support to her points, when the front door opened and Elena Morales walked inside, her house keys dangling from her finger as she shut the door behind her. Elena stopped dead when she saw the group of teenagers congregated in her kitchen.
"Hi there. I wasn't expecting all of you. Did the sleepover go ok yesterday, Viv?" Elena asked, throwing her keys onto the kitchen counter and shrugging off her coat to hang it on the back of a chair.
Viviana cracked within an instant. She had kept a secret from Elena for 24 hours... a new record. And now she couldn't resist the pull demanding her to tell her mother everything she had done since the end of school yesterday.
"I want to save Princess Isabelle!" She blurted, and both Jeanette and Santiago slumped in defeat.
Elena frowned thoughtfully, a crease appearing in her forehead.
"We all want to save the Princesa, Corazon. But that just isn't possible for most of us. We just have to support her in the only way we can."[Again, Corazon=heart. Princesa=princess]
"No! You don't understand, there is a way." Viviana pleaded and Elena sighed.
"Yes, I know, the application. They won't accept you."
Viviana crossed her arms. "We don't need a dumb application! We can save Princess Isabelle without the crown's help."
"Cómo? El rey tiene más recursos. Necesitamos él. Los sueños deberían ser alcanzable, ser esto importante." [How? The king has more resources. We need him. Dreams should be attainable, to be this important.] Elena said sternly. Viviana knew her mother was agitated when Elena swapped to Spanish without a second thought.
"No, he doesn't. You're all forgetting the one person we have that he does not!" Viviana shouted, throwing her hands up. "I know we haven't seen her in forever, but that doesn't mean she ceased to exist."
Jeanette and Santiago gaped at each other.
"You aren't serious!" Jeanette exclaimed. "She ran away and abandoned us, Viv. The likelihood of her helping us is just as likely as Ilsadora deciding not to kill us."
"So very likely then." Viviana insisted. "Because Ilsadora will not kill us."
"How can you be so sure?" Santiago asked, his voice quiet compared to the rest of them.
Viviana paused. "I... I had a dream. Three years ago. I shrugged it off, but now, I think it was more than what it seemed."
Elena sighed. "Things often are. Come on, let's go sit down to talk about this. I think this will be a long, and persuasive, story."
***
Three years ago.
Viviana fled the room after giving Princess Luna the rose, her face burning.
Agh, that was embarrassing. I really should think things through more.
It was obvious that Princess Luna did not like roses anymore. Preisha had been mistaken.
And Viviana was going to tell her familiar as much.
She walked back to her bag several minutes later after trying to douse her blush with water in the bathroom. Preisha stirred inside irritably, likely reflecting Vivana's own mood by accident.
"Preisha!"
"Yes? Are we going now?" Preisha asked. "Because I'm hungry for cinnamon rolls."
Viviana huffed and ignored her familiar. Preisha would eventually pick up on her thoughts and figure out why she was so upset. Until then... sugar to soothe injured pride and embarrassment didn't sound like such a bad idea.
***
That night, after taking a late flight with Elena back home to Nazeen, Viviana still couldn't sleep despite the late hour.
Preisha did not share her struggles. After making up with her familiar, and giving her a cinnamon roll, Preisha had fallen asleep easily roughly three hours ago, curled up in a warm ball at the foot of Viviana's bed.
Viviana huffed and stood up, grabbing her spellbook and opening it on her desk.
She could always study until she fell asleep.
She needed better practice with her levitation spells anyway.
It was only after her book finally budged two inches and weakly hovered in midair that she started to feel tired. Her eyes were heavy, and she allowed the book to fall back to the desk and her head to rest on top of it.
Just a little while. Hopefully Elena won't find me like this in the morning.
Her eyes fluttered shut and a dreamlike fog descended over her vision.
***
A high pitched music box played a mysterious, slightly minor, and unfamiliar tune, as snow swirled with horrific force, creating immense drifts.
An ice castle, with the doors firmly shut, steadily came into view out of the darkness. The music notes were more audible now, growing louder with every passing second the castle came closer.
One of the doors swung inward, and there was no looking back.
Every hallway looked similar. Cold, empty, and lonely, with snow acting as dust in every corner. Yet still the disembodied music echoed, signaling the castle was not nearly as empty as it appeared.
It could not be.
There was always another door, another hallway, another staircase, to walk through, and still no sign of anyone or anything. The castle was steadily becoming a frozen maze, designed to trap and ensnare others in inescapable circles.
Until, suddenly, humanity was found.
An open door showed the source of the music.
It was a room, with bookshelves and pillows and blankets strewn all over the floor in between ice tables and chairs.
A man was rubbing his eyes sleepily, sitting on the floor amongst the blankets, cranking a music box of a spinning ballerina that sat on the frozen floor, so it kept playing. It was likely the only thing keeping him awake. His light blonde hair was past his shoulders, the way ancient fey used to prefer it, and a tousled mess. He shuddered imperceptibly, and pulled his blue cloak tighter around his shoulders as a strong gust of wind struck the outside of the castle. His eyes were fixated on the only other person in the room, once he stopped rubbing them.
His only companion was a woman with icy white blonde hair, held up in a tightly braided crown on top of her head as she sat at one of the ice tables surrounded by a stack of books and a single mug of something that was very faintly steaming. She was turning the wafer thin pages of a thick book that sat open on the table in front of her. She looked more put together than the man, and yet somehow doubly exhausted. Her dark eyeshadow was either meant to look intimidating, or supposed to hide the dark circles around her eyes.
Instead, she just looked defeated, weighed down by an invisible source that slumped her shoulders and the edges of her eyes and mouth.
"Lady Ilsa, we should be done now." The man said quietly, barely withholding a yawn from his words.
"I told you, I'm not stopping, Alistaire. You should get some sleep." The woman replied, her voice colder than the snow outside.
"We fixed one problem. Isn't that enough for one night of decent sleep?"
"No. Never." Lady Ilsa turned a page in the book she was reading. "I can't stop. Not until I save her."
"You can't break a curse if you're dead on your feet." The man, Alistaire, insisted. But his argument lacked force because he seemed on the verge of collapsing himself.
Lady Ilsa looked up from her book, her green eyes piercing, even through a veil of sleep. "Yes I can."
Alistaire tried to protest again, but she shushed him, and spoke quietly.
"Sleep."
It was a command, a magical command, that left no room for arguments. Alistaire fell sideways, onto the collection of pillows and blankets on which he sat. Lady Ilsa waved a hand and a blanket wrapped around him as the ballerina floated through the air to stop on the table in front of her, taking the place of the book, still faintly turning out the haunting high pitched melody.
Ilsa made a face and tapped the ballerina with her book free hand. The music box stopped mid-note, the ballerina freezing instantly.
In the resulting silence, Lady Ilsa stared with a lost and haunted look at the ballerina, before a sudden sob escaped her, and the book tumbled out of her hands and onto the floor with a loud crash. The book was open to a page on curses, specifically lunar ones, but Lady Ilsa wasn't looking at it anymore.
"Why can't I find anything?" She cried to the ballerina, who's painted smile never wavered, though her pink tutu did shift. "Why?"
The ballerina did not give her a response.
"Where did I go wrong? I know I made mistakes, but that was after. Is there really no saving her? Is there no hope?"
Lady Ilsa choked on her own sobs as her head dropped onto the table.
"Isabelle. My little Isabelle. You can't die for my mistakes. I can't... I won't let you."
Lady Ilsa picked up her head, tears clinging to her lashes as she gave the ballerina a murderous glare.
"I promise. And when an enchantress promises something, she never backs away from it."
A/N: so... what do you think? Ilsadora's always a little iffy for me to write. She always seems to be doing something odd. I don't think she's ever acted normally. At least she regrets what she did though.
QOW: What's your favorite video game?
I've been playing Stardew Valley for four hours at a time, trying to get rid of writers block. I can't tell if it's working, but it's fun.
See you next week!
-Eva