Friday, October 1, 2021

If Looks Could Kill - Making Medusa

 

So, as you can tell from my medusa story, I LOVE this mythological character. I think she got such a raw deal.

No matter which version you look at, whether her monstrous condition was a curse, a punishment, or a ward, she was a victim who history made into a monster. She was given this power that must, on most days, feel like a curse. It's purely defensive; no matter the myth, she never hunts down people. People invade her home, attack her, then call her a monster!

I love her and have always wanted to cosplay her, but knew that it would be a helluva an undertaking.

And, yes, yes, it was.

So it all started back in July of 2018, when I bit the bullet and bought a metric crapton of snake toys.

I'd looked online to see what kind of medusa wigs were out there and what other people had done. And, while I found many that looked very cool, I knew that I wanted something a little different. While stiffer, stationary wigs could look very cool and structured, I wanted movement in mine. But I didn't like the uncontrollable wiggliness of rubber snake wigs. So I decided to do a mix of the two by mixing and matching various different snake toys, including - yes - rubber snakes, but also those cheap, segmented plastic snakes you get in children's party bags and dentist toy boxes.


Then I proceeded to destroy the ever-living crap out of them. Like I said, I wanted a mix. But not quite the mix my friends had thought. I wasn't going to have a wig with a bunch of different kinds of snakes on them. I was going to have a wig that was made up of snakes that were made up of a bunch of Frankenstein-ed snakes.

But to make them all look more uniform, I needed to spray pain all of them.

But, even though I had a wild amount of toy snakes, I didn't have enough to create the ancient greek, cornocopia-style hairstyle that I wanted. So I took a favorite MacGuyver cosplay tool of mine - pool noodles - and shaped the swirled beehive.

Then came time to Frankenstein my snakes, taking the pool noodle strips - which I'd wrapped in black cloth - the segmented snakes, and the rubber snake heads and jimmy-rigged them all together with glue, wire, and prayer.
Then I had to stitch together the cloth-covered pool noodle strips to form the main headpiece, using thicker, heavy-duty wire to shape it to my head and create that cone-like shape.
Then I had to attach the individual snakes and style them around the main headpiece in a style that I liked. I wanted them to have freedom of movement, like I'd said, but I also wanted to be sure that they wouldn't stray too far away from where I wanted them. It was a lot of putting it on my head and shaking my head around, to make sure that, even as I naturally moved around, my snakes looked as natural as possible. I like to think that I succeeded, since, whenever I wear this costume, people always take a double-take, when they see that the snakes actually move on their own.
Lastly, I finished it all off by sewing strips of sparkly blue lace on the snakes, so you could get a better sense of each individual snake along the swirl. And, of course, the Grecian headband to keep her in theme. Now, while the headpiece would be enough to make my Medusa recognizable, I wanted more. To be purely accurate, Medusa is a purely human woman with snakes for hair. But I loved the idea of making a snake dress and I couldn't resist. I love the idea of glamming her up, while still emphasizing her monstrous nature. I wanted to make her beautiful. To give her a moment to shine.That said, the making of this dress was a bit less glamourous.
Initially, I'd thought that I would create the tail by making a zip-tie cage that would wind around my body. So I went to my local hardware store, where the sales clerk informed me that I was buying a large number of the number-one, favored brand zip-ties of kidnappers. Good to know!
It also quickly became clear that, while I'd planned to essentially use a smiliar idea of my homemade hoop skirt to create the winding cage, I was waaaaaay over my head and severely short on time. So, instead, I just scraped that idea and decided to stuff the tail with pillow stuffing and sew it all in place. Which lead to its own comedy of errors that had my partner laughing at me on numerous occasions.
But, in the end, I think it all turned out wonderfully. I had so much
fun running around my local geeky convention in this costume. Even though I had to get fully naked to pee in it, I still had so much fun. Like I said, I think it had the desired effect of being both horrific and stunning. People either stopped me to get a closer look at everything and ask a million questions or they took one look at me and swiftly crossed the street. For a glammed-up monster girl, I couldn't ask for a better sign of success.
Now, this costume was waaaaaaay too much work to be a wear-once-and-done dress, so when my local geeky convention's next theme was announced as mythology themed, I knew that this and my centaur costume had to be revived.
However, then COVID happened and the convention had to cancel for that year. Which was sad, but meant that I had time to revamp this costume to be closer to the one I had in my head. So I ripped up the entire tail, cut it from the dress as a whole, and got to work. Including making the cage tail I'd planned to. As well as adding a zipper to the top of the tail and the bottom of the dress, as well as a hidden zipper in the side of the dress, so I could finally go to the bathroom in this dress more comfortably, by removing the tail in stead of stripping in the hotel's tiny toilet stalls.
However, like many people, quarantine played havoc with my body, which meant alterations. I had to quickly figure out how to add two inches to my dress's bust and wait and five inches to the hips. And, since I'd chosen the dress's initial fabric because it was drastically discounted for being discontinued and I'd mostly used it all up for the initial dress the first time, I had to find a fabric that at least looked like it went with it. Luckily, I had this other gold fabric that I'd intended to use for a different costume but never did.
Added to that, because of the pandemic, I needed a mask to go with
this costume, because of course I couldn't let her show up in just a regular disposable mask. So I decided to use the leftover teeth 
from my Glam Demogorgon costume and create a monstrous mask for my medusa.
 Again, I think it all came together well and had so much fun in this costume. This was my first big in-person event since quarantine started and it was so amazing and I love that this costume got to be a part of that. I even found a gold snake bracelet that matched it in the dealers' room!

Friday, February 15, 2019

Velma on Mystery Island Photo Shoot!

On my recent vacation, we went to a place called Mystery Island, Vanuatu. Well, I can't go to a place like that and not cosplay as my favorite nerdy mystery solver, Velma from Scooby Doo. After all, I'd made a resolution to take more photos, didn't I?

Here's a little peek at the photo shoot:






To see the rest, click HERE

To see what happened to Velma after Mystery Island (NSFW), click HERE



Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Where the Wicked Rest - Part Three

Chapter Four: Where the Wicked Rest 
- Part Three
Read Part Two Here

Phillip winced as he remembered all the times he’d stopped to listen to Aurora sing. While he’d rarely paid attention to the lyrics, thinking more about how beautiful she was or how perfect their lives together would be, he did remember true love, happy endings, and oddly chickadees featuring an awful lot.

“They don’t even make good wives or mothers—much less queens,” Pix continued, building steam to her rant. “They don’t know how to take care of themselves—protect and save themselves—who would trust an entire kingdom to these girls? They’re just career brides! How could they be anything else when they’ve never been out in the world—never had to deal with it? They’ve never lived, not really. All they know is their small, little woodland prisons.”

“And whose fault is that?” Phillip countered as he sidled up against the boxes to face her. “It’s people like you who put them in there, locking them away for some,” he shook his head as he spat out, “nefarious reason.” He ignored her impertinent snort. “If the roles were reversed, you’d do the same.”

Pix stopped, bounding off her box so fast Phillip recoiled instinctively. Looking at her, he wished he could back up a bit more, could sink and hide in the storage room’s shadowed space. The tension coming off of the tiny pixie towering over his bound, pretty helpless form crackled around her, causing her hair to literally swirl like some menacing storm cloud in the lamplight. He swallowed hard as he stared into her sharp, glittering black eyes that glowed like lightning ready to strike.

When finally she spoke, her voice was disturbingly soft and calm, such a contrast from her form, like the deadly quiet before a tempest. “No one,” she all but whispered as she bent at the waist to lean over him, “could ever put me in a cage. I’d kill them first.”

He stared into her electric eyes and shivered at the truth he saw there, remembering the way her wand sank sickly into the huge, hard, scaly water beast. Phillip recalled the exhilarated, predatory look on her face when the Great River Bull had bled water onto the thirsty ground. Involuntarily, his gaze faltered at the memory as a chill swept over him.

Catching himself, he steeled his gaze, forcing it to bravely meet hers again.

But it was too late.

She’d seen. She’d grinningly caught that flicker of fear and Phillip knew she wasn’t the type of girl who ever gave things back. She would keep it—clutch and claw into that small bit of him—feeding off of it. Making herself strong on his brief moment of weakness.

She stood tall again, her wings waving in smug victory. “That’s the real difference between those twittering girls and me,” she told him, her tone dark and low. “I don’t need anyone to be my savior.”

Forcing his voice not to waver—unwilling to give up any more of himself to her—he asked, “So you’re punishing them for being weak?”

“No,” she said with a dismissive shake of her head as she hopped back up on her box, her back turned to him even as her voice echoed through the quiet space, “I’m just not going to reward them for not being strong either.”


READ CHAPTER FIVE HERE SOON

Where the Wicked Rest - Part Two

Chapter Four: Where the Wicked Rest 
- Part Two
Read Part One Here

She sat up to glare at him. “Game? You think this is a game?” She scoffed. “This is our lives,” she said as she glared at his self-righteously smug face. “When Cinderella rode off into the sunset with her happily ever after magically secured—through no real action on her part, mind you—you think she gave one thought to her family? You think she provided for them after she left?” 

Pix shook her head. “Luci had to move into town and open shop just so she and her mother and sister could survive. That goop—that game—puts food on her family’s table and keeps a roof over their heads—not to mention, currently, our own. If some gullible royal’s desire to reclaim her glory days or catch the eye of some stuck-up, silver-spooned noble can keep Luci’s family from starving, isn’t that worth the price of the lie?”

“I thought it wasn’t lying,” the little royal jeered, rolling his eyes. “It must be so easy, making up your own morals as you go.”

“Easy?” she barked back. “You think my life is easy? I’ve had to fight for everything I have.” Through the corner of her eye, she saw the flames in the lanterns flicker and flare with her anger. “Everything I have, I have because I took it from someone else who wanted it just as badly as I did but didn’t have the sense, smarts, or strength to keep it.”

“You steal,” he corrected. “And you think that because you do it in the name of survival that makes it right.” He snorted with an inflated sense of dignity. “Cheating is cheating, it doesn’t matter what you do it for.”

She shook her head, jutting out her jaw. “You think you and your precious little princess are any different?” She laughed. “You forget that I was there for her birth too, throne-boy. You think I’m playing unfair by giving Luci a little magical coverup? What about when the oh-so good fairy Ava wished her goddaughter a happy birthday with the enchanted gift of beauty? How fair was that?”

“That’s different,” the prince insisted, even as he frowned and his bound body squirmed a bit. “It’s not like she asked for it. It was a gift.”

Pix rolled her eyes. “Please,” she said as her wings twitched. “You royals think that just because you all struck life’s lottery at birth that the deck isn’t stacked.” She shook her head and pinned him with a condescending glare. “We all cheat; you just can’t tell because you were born already holding a winning hand.”

The princeling pouted, his face scrunched into a royal snit. “What do you know?” he grumbled.

“More than you,” she assured as she lay down, settling back on the crate. “You think just because your parents or some flittering, little fairy promised, or even gave, you something that you deserve it. You think, just because you were born with a silver spoon jammed down your privileged, entitled throat, that life owes you a happy ending, like that’s the only inevitable conclusion.” 

She laughed bitterly. “Truth is, happy is just a fleeting moment—gone then here and gone again, all before you know it—and you’d better be ready and willing to fight—to lie, cheat, steal, whatever—for every moment. At least when I take something, I earned it. At least then, I’ve proven that I deserve what’s mine.” 

She growled as she turned her back on him. “All your little princess ever did right was being born into the right family.” She sneered. “And as you said, that wasn’t her fault. It was a gift.”

“That’s not true,” the love-struck prince argued. “She’s perfect, princess or not. She’s everything anyone could ever want in a wife.”

“And what exactly is that? Why do you even want her?” Pix asked him, genuinely if a little exasperatedly curious. “You’d be bored stiff with her in a week.”

The shadowed room was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he said after a pause. “You’ve never seen her singing in the woods. She has this beautiful voice.”

Pix snickered bitterly and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure it was her singing that caught your attention.”

“Meaning what?” he asked, but Pix just waved off his question as she curled tighter, trying to feign sleep even as her wings fluttered in reflexive irritation. “Pix?” She could hear him shuffling over the storage room’s well-swept floor before he struck her crate with a thump. She stiffened as her box shook slightly, but still wouldn’t look at him. “Meaning what?” he insisted as he shook her makeshift bed again.

She turned to him and pinned him with a piercing glance. “Meaning, if her beautiful voice wasn’t coming out of such a beautiful mouth, you’d never have stopped long enough for a second verse.”

“I would too,” he argued. She rolled her eyes and turned away again. “I would have.”

Sure, sure. She scoffed and closed her eyes tiredly, wondering if she had enough power to knock him out again.

“What do you know?” he asked as he huffed and sat back against the stacks again. “You don’t even know her.”

“I’ve met enough princesses,” Pix growled into the shadowed wall. “Prissy, chipper little things that go around singing and dancing through life as if the world were all weddings and sunshine; and they wonder why dragons and wolves and ogres constantly want to eat them. They do it just to shut them up.”

She turned again, pushing herself up, when she heard Phillip laugh. But, by the time she rolled over, he was trying to cover it up with a cough. “They’re completely useless,” she continued on, “every last one of them.” She sat up, her legs dangling off the edge of her wooden bed. “You say I’ve done some pretty awful things in my life—and, yeah, okay, I have—but at least I’ve done something.” She shook her head. “Those girls, all they do is wait around in their towers or cottages, twiddling their thumbs and singing until some bone-headed princeling shows up to marry them.”



READ PART THREE HERE

Where the Wicked Rest - Part One

Chapter Four: Where the Wicked Rest
- Part One
Read Defeat the Beast - Part Three Here

Phillip grunted and wriggled against the invisible bonds holding him as he glared around the room that pixie witch left him in. He couldn’t even tell where in Starling Forest they were exactly as that ridiculous ribbon she’d gagged him with had trailed and dangled in front of his eyes as they’d walked, blinding him behind the satiny pink.

Then she’d dragged him into some kind of shop—flowers or perfume or some such girlish things, by the smell of it—before unceremoniously dumping him in some corner in the basement of the store.

He looked around at the stacks of boxes revealed in the small circle of light from the lamp hanging from the ceiling above him. Storage. He was in storage. Left on the floor like so much unpacked stock. The place reeked of a million different flowers and herbs, the scent annoyingly—overwhelmingly and nauseatingly—sweet. It was making his already throbbing, blood-rushed head ache even more.

When she got back here—and when he got loose—that little fairy was going to figging get it!

Phillip growled as he thrashed.

“Do you mind keeping it down?” the snake yawned as it curled into a tighter coil on top of one of the boxes above his head. “Some of us didn’t bob like a boat all the way here and would like to get some well-deserved sleep.”

Phillip just grumbled as he thumped the boxes next to him with his shoulder, throwing his weight into it so the crates shook.

The snake stuck its long, forked tongue out at him and hissed as it scrambled back. “You’re a royal creep, you know that?” it snipped as it turned its head away.

“Stop it, the both of you,” the crow chirped as it flew down the stairs and back into the room. “Acting like a pair of hatchlings. You just wait until Pix gets back down here; she’ll gag you both.”

“He started it,” the snake sniffed before settling back down again.

The bird flew down and fluttered in front of Phillip. “Pix is still making arrangements upstairs. She said that she’ll let me take off the gag, if you promise—her words, not mine—‘to be a good, little princeling.’ ” The bird gave a feathery shrug. “Not for nothing, but I’d take the deal. Pix isn’t exactly known for random acts of kindness so, when she makes them, they’re worth taking advantage of.”

He huffed and stared at the bird before giving a curt nod.

The bird pulled at one of the bow’s obnoxiously brilliant tails with its sharp but careful beak, unraveling the whole thing. Phillip shook his head and swiveled his jaw, spitting the cloth from his mouth. “Thank you,” he said as he nodded to the crow. “What about the rest?” he asked, tugging at the invisible bonds still holding his limbs tight.

The bird shrugged helplessly. “I can’t help you there,” she said. “The deal was for the gag and I already had to give up crickets for a month.” Its head turned almost poutingly. “And there's this one proselytizing busybody who hangs out with some wooden-looking boy that I’ve had my eye on for a while too.” It sighed and shook its head. “Take it and be grateful, kid.”

He nodded as he used one of the box’s edges to scratch the back of his head. Fair enough. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Fairy in a Bottle Beauty Boutique,” the snake answered with a shake of its head. “Where, for a bag full of gold, you too can become the belle of the ball.”

“Lucinda,” the crow said as she settled down on one of the crates, “one of Cinderella’s...unconventionally attractive sisters, owns the place. Pix and she are old friends and do a bunch of business together.”

“She’s letting us crash here for the night,” Pix said as she came down the stairs, “in exchange for some magic.” He watched her duck and weave her way through the stacks as she carried a small lantern to light her way.

“Fairy in a Bottle,” Phillip repeated as she came close, setting her lamp on the box with her serpent so it could curl closer to the lantern’s warmth. “You give her a bunch of enchanted goop that she can sell to the poor, hopeless women who come here just trying to catch their dreams, never knowing where their salvation came from.” Or at what cost.

Pix scoffed as she sat down on a crate and stretched. “Don’t be such a gob,” she yawned. “I wouldn’t waste my magic on trollish, vain royals trying to buy a new face.” She laid down and rolled over on her side. “Besides, Luci doesn’t need me to. She can sell the same supply as all the other shops and charge twice as much. All she needs to hock her so-called goop is one magical beauty transformation. Her own.” She shut her eyes and shrugged. “Then spread the tale of how she changed her life. Presto!” She waved her arm dismissively. “Instant sales. You royals just eat it up.”

“That’s,” Phillip started with a cringe. Sick. Cruel. Kind of ingenious. “Cheating,” he settled on. “Preying on people’s insecurities like that. Promising them wonders and handing over fakes.”

“Hey,” Pix scoffed, “all Luce said is that magic changed her life—which is true—and gave her shop a compelling name, like any other businesswoman would. What other people infer from there isn’t her fault.” She smiled while she curled her arms around herself. “It’s not lying, if you just don’t tell them what they don’t want to hear.”

Phillip scoffed as he tried to roll over as well, trying to find some kind of comfort among the hard, wooden walls. “That’s the difference with your type,” he said disdainfully. “You’re all the same. Liars. Tricksters. Cheats.” He shook his head, the only part of his body he could really move. “You think that you can win the game by breaking all the rules. It’s not winning; you’re just messing it all up for the rest of us.”



READ PART TWO HERE

Defeat the Beast - Part Three

Chapter Three: Defeat the Beast 
- Part Three
Read Part Two Here

Phillip woke up again with his head pounding and a queasy feeling in his stomach. He opened his eyes, disoriented, at the world turned upside down.

Where was he?

He tried to pull at the bonds that held him, but they held tight. He peeked up at his ankles, feeling the ties holding him up. But he saw nothing. No rope. No chains. Just air. He hung a few feet above the ground, far from any tree, with nothing to hold him up that he could see.

Phillip instinctively seized. Flinching still, he stopped struggling, afraid that the slightest movement could cause him to crash. He had no idea how he was remaining aloft, much less what would cause him to fall.

How had he gotten here?

He blinked several times, trying to piece the flashes of memory swimming in his blood-rushed mind. He remembered the river bull. The fight in the stream. And on the shore of the cove. He remembered Pix, that fairy he’d only met once before—years before—but never forgot. Never let himself forget.

Suddenly, a large, black bird flew up next to him, its beady eyes peering at him as it flapped its feathered wings in front of his face.

“Shoo,” he scolded before puffing air at it and trying to swing his head—to whip his hair—at it. “Shoo.”

“Shoo?” the crow said, its voice shrill and disbelieving. “How rude?”

Phillip’s jaw dropped. A talking bird? How—

“Lethe, he’s royalty;” insisted another voice, “they’re never rude.” Phillip followed the voice to the brilliant green snake crawling toward him on the forest ground. “They’re,” the snake hissed with snide humor, “discerning.”

Phillip shook his head. What was going on?

That fairy!

Whatever this was—however he’d gotten here—he knew that she was behind it. Gnomes’ toes, if he ever got his hands on her again, she was going to regret it.

He turned his head, first one way and then the other. He saw her, a little ways off, kneeling by the river to drink. She raised her cupped hand to her lips and took a sip. Without looking at him, she said, “You’re awake.” She sipped again before splashing the rest over her face. “Sorry about the headache;” she sighed, “don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

“What did you do to me?” he asked as he thrashed, trying to fight—to wrest, to will—himself free.

“Less than I’d like to,” she said, standing up to walk toward him. “So be grateful. And silent, if you please,” she added with a shrug.

“Let me go,” Prince Phillip demanded with as much dignity as he could muster considering.

Pix tilted her head and faced him—well, as best she could with someone hanging upside down. “Listen up, princeling,” she said, gesturing around herself. “This is what is generally referred to as a kidnapping. That would be why you’re tied up and hanging by your toes, in case you were wondering.” She shrugged as she tapped his cheek and tweaked his nose. “Now—not always, but in most situations—that would mean your demands don’t mean a whole lot, so you should stop making them because they’re really annoying.” She shrugged and sighed as she brushed her hair back off her sharp featured face. “And the more you annoy me, the more likely it is that I’m going to gag you. So be a good little royal and shut it.”

“You wouldn’t—”

But that was as far as he got before a bright pink ribbon wrapped itself around his face, tying itself into a big, floppy bow shoved between his lips, effectively silencing him.

Phillip growled from behind the satin, making her laugh, the sound tinkling as it shot silvered and sharp through him.

She touched the looping bow fondly.“Now, I’m not the biggest fan of pink,” she remarked with a mocking frown, “but I gotta say, it suits you very nicely.” And, with that, she turned and began to walk, leaving him to bob upside down behind her, her magic or whatever holding him up and holding him to her like a tethered boat buoyant on the waves.

“She’s always had a filthy temper,” the raven told him with an apologetic tsk as it flew next to him almost as if it wanted to comfort him.

He muttered something unflattering against his bonds.

“I wouldn’t say that too loudly,” the snake who slithered below him hissed, obviously amused as it quirked its head up at him. “If you think she’s ill-tempered now, you should see her really mad.”



READ CHAPTER FOUR HERE

Defeat the Beast - Part Two

Chapter Three: Defeat the Beast 
- Part Two
Read Part One Here

Halting, he balked. “What?” How did that make sense?

“You killed it,” she said again, “from the minute you left your precious castle and came to its river. Came to its home.” She walked right up to him, glaring up at him as she jutted her chin out and poked him in the chest with her wand. Phillip sucked in an uneasy breath as the wand’s lethal tip rested just over his heart. “To kill it.”

Wait. No.

What?

Bristling, he started, “I never meant to—”

“ 'I wanted to defeat it,' ” she said, repeating his earlier words. “That’s what you said,” she accused, her wings fluttering with fury now, lifting her off the ground, “isn’t it?” She paced in the air, flitting this way and that. “How exactly did you expect to defeat it?”

“I,” Phillip stuttered. “I,” he paused a moment, “I just would.”

“Like you defeated that dragon last month that was in the caves on the edge of Shadow Mountain’s territory?” Pix asked. “She died, you know? You landed a blow to her stomach while she was protecting her eggs and you and your noble army of knights left her there to bleed out. Left her eggs undefended so, by the time I found them, they were nothing but broken shells, lifeless before the ever took breath.” She shook her head at him, her twitchy nose wrinkled in disgust. “Just because you don’t have the stomach to stick around long enough to see them actually die, doesn’t mean you didn’t kill them.”

“You killed the river bull!” he insisted. She was no better than he was. She was worse. She, like the dragon and the beast—and even those eggs—was evil. Deserved...

What was coming to them.

“At least I gave it a decent death,” she snapped back, coming close to hover in the air above him. She shoved her face close to his, glaring down into his eyes. “It was going to kill you.” She flit back and heaved a heavy breath. “You were going to kill it.” She shook her head, her short, black strands flying about her head. “You both would have likely died—painfully and slowly. This way, at least, one of you lives and the other died with dignity. Neither of you suffered.” She scoffed. “Which is more than you deserve.”

Phillip blinked at her blankly. “It was a monster.”

“You invaded its home,” she growled, diamond tears glittering in her hard eyes. “You snuck up and attacked it while it slept.” She shook her head in disbelief and scoffed. “And it’s the monster? You're the hero? Who taught you that?”

She was crying. Panic filled him as his gaze narrowed on the tears that filled her eyes but didn’t dare fall. Frog it all, give him a dragon, a troll, or an army of goblins. But not a crying woman.

He didn’t know what to do with that.

“I,” he sputtered, his face paling, not sure at all what to say. “I’m sorry.”

Her eyes darkened as she shook her head. “No, you’re not,” she said, with such surety. With doubtless conviction. Cold dread shivered up his spine as a sharp smile spread across her face. “But you will be.”

With a flick of her wrist, she raised her wand. Then there was a shot of sparkling, glittering light.

And then nothing, just an empty, endless dark.


* * *

She figging hated royals!

Pix’s fists clenched as she glared at the unconscious prince at her feet.

“What do we do with him now?” Slyth asked as he slithered over the rocks.

She ought to just kill him too. Let him bleed out on the shore where the river bull had died. Where he had snuck in here, invaded its home, and tried to destroy everything.

In her mind, she could still smell the smoke she’d felt choking her since her first breath. She thought of every moment she should have had with her mother, but hadn’t. Because some hero thought the world would be better without them in it.

She should kill him. Defeat him.

It would serve him right. It would be justice. Her wand lengthened as she gripped it tight, the tip of it sharpening to a deadly point. It would be so easy.

“You’re not going to kill him,” Lethe said as she flew over her shoulder, “are you? I mean.” She twittered hesitatingly. “He did kind of save you.”

Pix turned to glare at her. He did not save her. She could’ve handled it. She didn’t need him to save her.

“And you did save him,” Lethe quickly pointed out. “It seems counterintuitive to kill him now, after having gone through the trouble of saving him and all. And you know how you hate to do pointless things.”

Pix rolled her eyes.

Fine.

She flicked her wand, raising his prone body up. With a smug smirk, she twirled her wrist, causing his body to tip and turn until he floated in front of her upside down, nose to nose with her.

Perfect.

“Pix,” Lethe scolded.

“He’s alive,” she snapped. And, like she’d said, its better than his kind deserved. “And we have a three-days’ travel and, unless you have a better way to carry him...” she trailed off as she stared down the small bird—large for a crow, but still too frail for the task. 

The crow fluttered indignantly, but said nothing.

Pix sniffed. That’s what she thought.

She started to walk, smiling as she thought of the unconscious princeling bobbing up and down by his ankles behind her.



READ PART THREE HERE