Cinderella Dressed in Ashes

it.

 She turned around, back to Cerene.

“Peek-a-boo,” Loki’s voice called her from behind, sarcastic and full of himself again. She turned around and saw his head from above the thorns. The Fleece reddened it. Loki had been saved by the power of the Queen again. “I see you,” he said, pointing two fingers at her and back to his eyes.

She wasn’t sure if he had pulled the sword out or not. It was hard to see his chest from behind the thorns, and there was no way she was going to enter the Wall of Thorns again.

“It’s been a rough day,” he said, wiping Cerene’s blood from his mouth. “And you owe me a heart and liver, princess,” he was walking toward her, about to cross the Wall of Thorns.

Shew stood swordless, without ideas, and almost void of any strength left. Ironically, it was at this very moment when she’d decided that killing him was the right thing. The Loki she had loved and always known was gone, just like any other relationship gone to hell, one of the two lovers had simply died. Foolishly, it had taken her the whole dream to figure it out. Nevertheless, the heart had reason the mind didn’t know of.

At this moment, Shew’s heart was on Cerene’s side and she had to kill that beast standing in front of her.

While Loki was approaching, Shew stood with nothing but Cerene’s glass urn in her hands. What was she going to do with it, throw it at him? If she only knew what Cerene wanted her to do with it?

“Isn’t it ironic that the so called Chosen One herself can’t pass through the Wall of Thorns without being cut everywhere,” Loki said, approaching slowly. Of course, he was having the time of his life. He must have known there was no way out of the Field of Dreams, and she had decided she wasn’t in the mood to take more slashes from the Wall of Thorns.

“Stupid Wall of Thorns,” Shew said. A couple of insulted vines tried to reach out for her. “It doesn’t understand that you’re the enemy here, Loki Van Helsing.”

“Stupidity,” Loki considered, now extremely close. “What a beautiful thing. If the Wall of Thorns wasn’t stupid, we wouldn’t be in this situation now, where I’m going to rip your heart out with my own hands.”

A couple of another insulted vines crawled around Loki, unhappy with how he talked about them. She watched them with eager eyes and wished they’d avenge Cerene and kill him.

“Get off, stupid thorns,” Loki hushed them away. “They can’t hurt me, even when I am not good to them. You know why? Because like everything else in the world, they are stupid,” he sneered back at Shew. “Look at you, princess. All soaked in blood,” he mocked her. “I hope you still have your heart and liver intact.”

It was the first time the word ‘blood’ sounded sweet to Shew. She remembered when Dame Gothel spattered the cake with the girl’s blood in the weighing-of-the-soul chamber, and finally understood what the glass urn was for. She understood why Cerene insisted on her taking it.

Slowly, Shew squeezed the blood soaking her dress and partially filled the glass urn with it while Loki kept approaching and talking.

“Even if I keep insulting the thorns all day, they can’t hurt me, because guess what,” Loki waved his celebrating arms next to him, only five strides away from Shew, “to the thorns, I am a friend.”

“Not anymore,” Shew said, as she raised the glass urn and spattered Loki with her enemy blood.

It was if the thorns had waited for this moment  eagerly, sprawling their vines around Loki’s outstretched arms as the music began to play. The reaction on Loki’s face was priceless. All he had to do was give in to Mozart’s seductive tune, and then he’d kill himself in his own dance of death.

Thankfully, Loki loved music; it was a good way for him to die.

“Stupidity,” Shew mocked Loki, and watching the thorn which were about to kill him. “What a beautiful thing.”

She didn’t know if she’d just become heartless, or if it was because this was a dream, but she didn’t cry over Loki. It didn’t make sense. Maybe he really managed to make her hate him in this dream, or maybe it was all because he’d killed Cerene. Shew was confused. All she felt was the power of the Chosen One inside her. It was a grey kind of power. It wasn’t simply black and white or good and evil. It was dark power that could be molded to its owner’s liking, the power of making an instant decision. The Loki in this dream, who was controlled by Carmilla deserved to die. He might have not deserve  death on another day when he was himself, but today either Shew or the Huntsman could live. Shew chose herself.

As Shew began to walk away, Loki’s face changed. His snake eyes turned back to blue, and his blonde hair began fading into his natural black color again, the color Charmwill had given Loki when he unshadowed him. It was the color that was associated with Loki when he was to being the boy she loved.

Shew didn’t understand at first. She thought it was one of Loki’s tricks, but the innocent look in his eyes was real.

“Shew?” he wondered as if he’d woken up from a long nightmare. He looked at the vines wrapping around his arms. He looked like he’d never seen this place before. “What’s going on?”

“Loki?” Shew grimaced, confused. “Is that really you?”

“Where am I?” Loki’s voice suddenly sounded feminine. It was Fable’s voice.

“Fable?” Shew squinted “What the hell is going on? Are you Loki or Fable or who?”

“I’m Fable,” Loki said, confusing Shew even more. “I used a spell to possess Loki’s body. He isn’t bound to Carmilla now. Tell me what I can do to save this dream. I can’t stay long, but I want to help.”

“It’s too late for that. Get out of Loki’s body, Fable,” Shew yelled at her. “Right now!”

“Why?” Fable asked.

“Because he is going to die!”

Shew’s shouting made Loki’s voice return to normal, “help me, Shew,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

Shew stepped back, her eyes full of tears. Her heart ached as the real Loki talked to her. There was nothing she could do. The music had gotten into him, and he began moving his feet uncontrollably.

Fable had managed to enter his body a breath too late.

The Wall of Thorns was having fun with him, and Shew preferred not to watch. Death was all around her.

Shew turned around, telling herself she walked out on the Huntsman, not Loki. She didn’t know how she’d be able to live with herself if she thought otherwise. But then Loki’s words came like a dagger behind her back, “you didn’t read the necklace?” he pleaded.

Shew fell to her knees, Cerene dead in front of her in the distance, and Loki eaten by the thorns behind her. She only felt a little better when his dark voice returned and he started cursing her while the thorns tortured him.

Shew’s torture was never-ending, even when she knew in her heart that this long and heartbreaking dream had finally come to an end.

She walked to Cerene who was dead and pale already. She brushed her hair, asking her for forgiveness, “Bianca was right after all,” she whimpered. “I couldn’t take care of you.”

She cried her heart out as she started dizzying. She was about to wake up to a lonely world without Cerene or Loki. She supposed her suffering was her destiny.

A single image broke her sobs in one last trick of fate. She saw Cerene eyes creating sand, and then she saw her cry Tears of Beauty, which glided down her cheek and into the glass urn. And she saw her growing hands again while asleep. The Field of Dreams was real. It worked.

Shew’s eyed widened, and she felt slightly better, brushing Cerene’s hair again, “I understand now why Charmwill wiped my memory of you,” Shew whispered to her. “In order for Carmilla not to get access to the darkness of the world, the Clue had to be put to sleep,” she kissed Cerene’s forehead. “I’ll see you in a hundred years,” she said as the sky began raining tiny shards of glass.

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