It was pretty wild being drop kicked into a table, Matilda thought, especially by a queen in a long black ball gown. Didn't she know that it wasn't her party? It's a pretty fancy dress to be wearing to something that isn't even for her. I guess that's where the tax-payers money was going to. Her thoughts of the familiar queen were becoming toxic and harmful.
Perhaps it was related to the harm that the queen had done to Matilda in the past. Not only did she kidnap her son, but the queen had broken her heart. This queen of hearts had played hers, and the first time that Matilda had spoken to the queen since their disintegrated relationship had run its course.
Adjusting her glasses and blowing flower petals at the queen, Matilda dodged the slashing of Marie's sharp black nails and pointed, bloody teeth. The red ribbons and golden crown on the queen's head whipped around wildly as she attacked Matilda. As Matilda used her scarf to counter, the back of her mind replayed the memories of her and Marie.
Perhaps it was those memories that further advanced her attacks.
***
They had first 30 years ago, when they were both in their early twenties. It was a month before the new queen would be coronated in the Chateau Du Ciel; this very ballroom. Matilda, the daughter of the previous owner of Toil and Trouble, a spell shop in the town of Graywood, had gone on an expedition with her father.
Headed toward Du Ciel chateau, they were to meet with the Du Ciel family at a banquet commemorating the ascension of the king's daughter to the throne. They were to stay for a month before and after the coronation and banquet, and return back to Graywood via portal.
The moment they laid eyes on each other, the glistening of the golden rooms and elegant décor seemed to dim in comparison to each other; Matilda was infatuated by the soon-to-be-queen's raven hair, her mature and elegant poise, and her glittering crimson eyes, that shone like rubies. Only those who shared blood with demons had the color red for eyes; and vampires were an offspring of demons.
Perhaps Matilda should have taken this as a warning to the eventual heartbreak that she would suffer, but for now her young heart was to fall in love, and Matilda was to cover her blushing face and large round glasses with the long, black, and heavy scarves she wore as her magical trinket.
In return, through the scarves, she noticed that the queen was hiding her own face behind an elegantly flowered fan that seemed to fit the mythical Catrina more than this young, black and red dressed queen-to-be. She wasn't quick enough to avoid the over observant gaze of the young witch, however. Matilda saw the vampire princess' face become as red as her eyes, or close enough.
As the king and Matilda's father caught up together, the soon-to-be queen invited the young witch into the chateau's gardens; elegant expanses of beautifully colored flowers that stood in a magnificent juxtaposition against the dark leaves that was the primary foliage in the Ashland. Her dark face hidden behind the mounds of scarves, Matilda and Marie strolled through the gardens with that awkward silence that happens whenever two with obvious affection for each other are left alone.
The night sky above them shone in a sparkling daze; the stardust seemed to drip out of the sky and into the gardens and the small, glowing, Parisian-esque village that surrounded the manor.
"Do you want to visit the village?" Asked Marie in a sudden bout of energy, revealing a spontaneous personality that Matilda had not known of before, and had made her blush and nod quickly. She almost lost her glasses. So they snuck over the gates to the manor and out of the gardens, and quickly found themselves inside of scene similar to that of a Van Gogh painting;
The starlight that dripped from the night sky was swirling into the artificial lights of the glowing yellow village. The night was alive with the dexterity and the incredible layers of emotion and color that swirl in the minds of those who view the whimsical night in all its glory. Ephemeral infatuation has a way of destroying everything and rebuilding it into something too whimsical to process.
It wasn't long before they stopped running through the maze-like streets of this golden and navy paradise. Settling down at a café and taking in the night air with a cup of tea, neither was sure when they began to hold hands, or what they talked about for the whole night, but once the awkward barrier of insecurity came down on both sides, they didn't stop talking.
Matilda thought she remembered having discussed the soon-to-be-queen's coronation into royalty, but she also remembered the discussion taking a turn there, into becoming less than whimsical and more down to earth. The way the golden lights of the café and the stars hit Marie's face made Matilda swoon in a silent but deadly manner. And no, not that silent but deadly manner.
"It's incredibly nerve wracking," spoke the vampire princess in a trembling voice. "I want to be a good queen... but the more I hear about it, the more it terrifies me. Foreign and domestic policies, charity and donation, discussing bills and legislation with the Ashland parliament... it's all complex and mind-numbing."
"Not in a good way?"
"Well, I mean, I always knew that it would be difficult, but I think now I'm realizing how much responsibility it is. I'm going to be holding the lives of my citizen's in the palm of my hands. I have my own interests and hobbies... but I suppose those will have to wait until I am finished with being queen."
"I know this will be difficult, but I'm sure that you can overcome this trial," Matilda spoke calmly while putting a hand on the vampire's shoulder. Unwrapping a scarf, Matilda placed it around the princess' thin, pale neck, weaving it underneath her hair like a tapestry. "
"Only the sun, the moon, and the stars are permanent, I think," whispered back Marie.
"Not even those, probably."
The following days after their escapade, the soon-to-be-queen, though still stressed about the eventual coronation into ruling, found solace in the witch and her soothing words, and it wasn't long before they kissed.
After that, however, things went downhill.
The day before the coronation, the king had a discussion with his daughter.
Matilda wasn't sure what they talked about specifically, but she knew that the king likely had found them together in some romantic or sexual exchange. The golden marble that Matilda tapped her foot on while she waited, she remembered, ticked like a clock attached to an explosive. In the back of her mind, she expected both the best and the worst; Marie could abandon her duty as a queen and they could run away into the wood together, or Marie could abandon Matilda.
Both were extremes, but the only choices that Matilda could see happening.
Matilda never did look back to ask what was to truly happen; she left the manor before Marie even told her anything. She encountered her father, and burned him off of her in a blazing fit. The fire in her heart was expanding... no, it wasn't her heart; it was her brain. Hellfire expanded inside her mind. It couldn't be in her heart, because that was gone now. The queen of her heart had stolen it.
In reality, Matilda wasn't sure what she expected when she became infatuated in the short month she had been there. She hadn't seen Marie become crowned queen, or the tears that streamed down the vampire's face when she discovered the missing witch. She hadn't seen the loneliness that Marie felt as she married a suitor and had twins with him as she still longed for Matilda's touch. The suitor died shortly after the children's birth, and Marie hoped perhaps that Matilda would come back to the castle one day, but that day didn't come.
As for Matilda, she was a master at portals, and so she transported herself to the Wood, and found an abandoned mausoleum-like structure hidden in the depths of the wood. From there, she brewed her anger into her potions and her studies of magic, becoming herself a potion of anger and emotion, bottled.
She brewed herself in her loneliness, until one day, two small children got lost in the Wood. They weren't more than four and six, lost and lonely in the darkness of the looming forest. It was an act of both saving them, and herself.
Both now had children; but both still wanted each other.
***
The battle was becoming one-sided; the Witch was defeating the Queen through use of both her magic and her memories, though no one knew about the later. Only a few noticed the star child rising in a smoking haze. Eyes burning through a violet haze, Nicolas rose slowly and discreetly. Theo and Selena were the first to notice, along with Noel (who was sitting across the room,) because they were the one treating him.
Previous to his absence, they had been discussing in a strangely detached and apathetic manner their surprise and relief that Nicolas was still alive. In reality, they both were under the illusion that he was already, and this physical manifesto of this existence had proved them both right. Though, it wasn't necessarily an illusion, since he was alive, it was more that since they both knew (or thought they knew) that he was dead, they tried to create an illusion in their mind that he wasn't.
Theo attempted to reason with Nicolas, though Nicolas ignored him. Selena physically attempted to drag him back, causing Nicolas to shove her down mechanically. This wasn't like him at all; what was happening?
Slowly, the others began to notice his ascension; the star child seemed to be floating now, with violet, smoking haze drifting violently out of his eyes and mouth. The smoke glittered with silver dots exploding weakly, and Nicolas slowly walked through the tables and past the guests who stood to the sides.
Celine yelled at him, meaning to explain how he would be killed in the midst of the battle if he were to get involved in the center of the destruction. His ears seemed deafened to the existence of anyone other than the two who battled right in front of him. Clicking his sneakers on the golden marble, Nicolas wandered his ghost-like body into the center of the battle, leaving a thin trail of smoke and stars behind him. Glaring with the bright white star pupils, the smoke enshrouded him.
The glistening and burning ballroom became mute in respect of the two who were fighting over their memories, as well as the foggy purple mist that was being emitted from Nicolas facial openings besides his ears. They disregarded Nicolas until they noticed his presence in the center of the ballroom, underneath the glistening chandelier.
As the room began to numbly glisten, everyone grew silent and stared at the center figure. The fighting eventually stopped, and once it did, everyone gasped slightly as Nicolas raised both his arms, pointed them directly at each of the women who were fighting, and released waves of stardust energy, hitting the witch and the queen with the force of waves in a storm.
They both slammed into the walls of the ballroom with a deafening force, destroying the elegant paintings and gold that glittered and littered the wall with intricately decaying desecration. Nicolas opened his mouth and released a plume of blue-ish violet haze.
"I'͜M҉̵ ́TH̢̨E͜͝ ̨̀S͘T͜͡À̴̕R̴͠ ̸O̵F̧͏ ͝T͝H͞É ̶͢S͠HÒ̷̡W̷͝!"" [I'M THE STAR OF THE SHOW] announced the spectral, starlight Nicolas in his ghostly aura and smoking eyes and mouth. Everyone showed slight fear, confusion, and an inability to take their eyes off of him; except for the jester, keeping his golden-red demon eyes on Nicolas with a greedy glint. The tentacle-like tattoos that covered the jester moved silently, dripping gold from its veins, but did nothing but stare.