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It wasn't bad. Some awesome moments, some '...erm' moments, but I remarked to the Dormouse via email afterwards that I was still holding out hope for someone to crack and write the version of Sleeping Beauty where the puny humans invite both faerie factions to their eldest's Formal Presentation so as not to offend either, and suddenly the 'good' faeries are obliged to give real gifts, because the humans invited the 'bad' faction, too, and not only did the 'bad' side show up, it's somebody high up in the ranks who did.
She replied "..... Someone should be you. NOW. *STARES AT YOU*"
So I sketched for her. As you do.
And sketched another one a couple of days ago, because I realised I hadn't found her any fic where someone gets turned into a kitten in ages.
So, if you're interested. These are all slightly cleaned up and tweaked in comparison to their email versions.
-----
The Parent's Gift
The humans don't know what they've done. Not really, not in the sense that they expected anyone to show up at all, let alone to bring gifts. If anything, they sent the invitations (and how odd would it be for the poor page sent out to put the best printer's best work under a big rock at a crossroads, or to tie it to a twig at the very top of the tallest tree they could climb?) because it was the Thing to Do. You send invitations to your royal neighbours.
The presentation's late, for these things. The child's nearly two, but her parents have lost three babies before her, all of them younger than she is now, so this is the first time since the first they feel safe ordering the fabrics, the paper.
(They'd buried their firstborn in his christening gown.)
There's no reply to the invitations left in the landscape, of course. There are many others: the King of Rhodalia sends an ambassador with a collection of fine wines and a tiny silver sword. (The King of Rhodalia loves swords, so they hope he knows he's sending a gift to a daughter and just assumes everyone else loves swords the way he does.) The Queen Artemesia sends the seeds of orange trees and the cuttings of cider apples, the one captured neatly in a silver case and the others wrapped up in wet silk to protect the ends. (The cuttings are grafted immediately, in the hopes of at least one surviving the journey. The seeds can wait for the ceremony.)
The gentry and the nobility from miles around put on their finest, and their servants polish the carriages and tack to a golden glow. On the day, everyone lines up, acutely aware of their places in the procession, the status they hold and what they might aspire to, if they say the right words or give the right gifts. The King's distant cousin leads by right of blood relation (the King is still not sure why his faraway cousins sent a delegation as well as gifts, but they have) through the gates, the courtyard, the halls, to the thrones and the cradle between them. He should be the first to come up the steps to the dais, the first to greet the King and the Queen, who are hovering guard over their sleeping daughter instead of seated as they should be.
He isn't. They slide into being somewhere between the great hall's doors onto the courtyard and the slate tiles of the hall, coalescing like fog over water.
One of them looks like a willow tree, down to leaving wet leaves behind them like footprints. Another has feathers. The third has fur in patches. All of them peer down interestedly at the princess, and the one with feathers chatters like birds in spring for a while, overtop of whatever the one like a willow is saying, before it drops into the trade-tongue the Queen is best at to say "Beauty."
The Queen's not sure if this is meant to simply describe her daughter (who is so, so beautiful to her eyes, healthy-pink beneath her dark skin, made pinker by the red of her dress), or if it meant as a gift, but she extends her thanks anyway, is about to dip her white-crowned braided head when a great crashing noise comes from the open doors and the ground of the courtyard erupts, spilling forth a narrow dark shape from the stones that stalks towards the thrones as humans scatter out of its way.
The three that aren't human draw back from the cradle, pull together, and the one like a willow stands abruptly taller, extending long arms up like wings.
The narrow one stops on the steps, throws back its head and laughs like shattering stones, bares its teeth at the others in something that is definitely not a smile, and stalks closer, bends down to peer into the cradle, heavy hands enclosing the wood. The not-a-smile disappears, replaced with interest, and it looks up at the Queen, the King, who feel their hearts in their throats as its black-stone eyes meet theirs.
It says, seriously, like she knows, "No sickness will touch her. If the river runs red with war, if the black cough sails in with your ships, she will live: no sickness will touch her, and she will die old, beloved."
There's a collective gasp from the humans close enough to hear, but also from the three still standing on the dais, who exchange telling looks.
Then the one that hasn't spoken steps out of the shade of the one like a willow's arms, pads delicately close enough to peer past the narrow one's hands at still-sleeping child's face, and, looking at the narrow one, says "Where she walks, where she touches, there will sickness die."
The Queen lifts her hand to hide her mouth involuntarily as the narrow one not-smiles again at the one with fur, waits until it backs away before she lifts her heavy hands from the edges of the cradle. Begins to turn away, to stalk back down the steps and the Queen meets eyes with the King, who calls "Thank you" after their departing guest.
She stops, turns back, lifts her head to make eye contact with him. Dips her head, regal as his Queen.
-----
The Godfather's Gift
It was Day Three of the Ceremony that Might Eventually End, and they were getting bored.
(Let's say fairness, they were bored by the afternoon of Day One, after they'd presented the usual gifts for an unremarkable human child in an unremarkable kingdom that had the brains to invite the Seelie Court to a christening. A needle that would never need sharpening, a spool of fine silk thread that would never end and changed colours as its owner desired, and Charm, just like a boy would get a sword he would never lose or need to sharpen, that would fit his hand every time he lifted it, and the trick of reading a situation like an instruction book. Humans hardly ever made much use of the gifts; the girls didn't notice that Charm extended to stitched spells or diplomacy, and the boys didn't think to apply their gifted tricks to their grain supplies, or how to winkle an extra seam out of a tapped-out mine.)
Norwen resisted the desire to roll her eyes as yet another noble lord presented yet another jewelry box to the infant's mother. Humans were so predictable.
Inevitably that was when the immense wooden doors closing off the court from the courtyard roared open so hard the hinges shrieked. Wincing, trying not to rub at her ears, she craned her neck, then flapped her wings a few times to see over the sea of surprised heads.
She dropped down as soon as she got a look at the newcomer, hoping she hadn't been seen, and hissed at Briz. Gave up and hauled Briz in by the ribbons attached to her shoulders when Briz just blinked at her, hissed "Nicht Falconsbane just walked in" in Briz' scallop-edged ear, then clapped a hand atop Briz' head when Briz made to rise herself.
"Uncle Nicht!" a human voice sang out, and Norwen watched in disbelief as the human queen kilted up her heavy skirts to her knees and fled down the steps leading up to the dais where her child rested.
"How did we miss this?" Norwen hissed up towards Kelty, who was trying to pretend to be short. "Who did the research?"
"What research," Kelty hissed back, "it was just a human christening! The invitation was copy-pressed!"
Norwen would have kept arguing, but Lord Falconsbane, Master-at-Arms of the Unseelie Court and terror of the last war was close enough that his bass voice fluttered the edges of her wings when he stopped in the aisle and announced "I do apologise for my lateness, duckling. I was delayed on the road." as the queen reached him, swooped in for an embrace, visibly certain of her welcome and not wrong as dark arms closed around her. After a moment, Falconsbane pushed her away, held her shoulders to glance over her, then looked past her head, towards the bower, and leaned down to add, almost conspiratorially, "Now, tell me--what gifts have been given already?"
The queen chortled a laugh, pulling him by the hand up the steps and over to the bower. "Many," she replied, tickling her child's chest until it made a sleepy grab for her fingers.
Its hand closed around Falconsbane's index finger instead, and instead of screaming, it gurgled, shook its prize a few times. Laughed when he wiggled his finger companionably.
"Charm already, I see," he rumbled, lifting his head and looking directly their way, and Norwen fought the urge to cringe small. Squared up her wings and willed her face to say 'So?'.
He grinned at her, blued canines poking out, then looked back at the infant as it yanked on his finger again.
Swooped in, lifted the infant out of its bower and cradled it expertly against his feathered chest, beginning to sway back and forth as the infant tugged at his finger some more, tried to drag his hand to its mouth. "Let me see," he said to the infant, pretending to ignore his audience, "what shall I give you, hmm? You'll have your mother's favours--" what favours, Norwen wondered in the rising murmured confusion of the humans around them "--so I can hardly give you the right to call me whenever you wish, now can I?"
What.
"You've no need for a hound, or a keep. Hm," he hummed, and the walls vibrated, dust sifting down from the vaulted ceiling. "Ah! I know." He spread his captured hand across the infant's chest, blue light beginning to radiate from the pale embroidery on the infant's gown. "The quickness to learn whatever you set your mind to, and the heart to follow it through. If your mind be bounty, your farmers will prosper under your hand. If your mind be building, you'll know your stone for what it can be, and you'll raise your towers true. If your mind be war--" he grinned "--so be it. You'll stand at your sand-table and see your field for what it is, and send your troops where they must be, to win. After all," his grin widened even more, inhuman even from the aisles, "You already have charm, my girl."
-----
The Well-meaning Gift
The faeire-folk were urgently asked back to the castle--the one made of stone and wood, not air and light--days after the presentation of the princeling to the people and the delegations from other countries and realms, as was appropriate.
Three representatives arrived, one each from the two who'd sent gifts instead of people. The third had attended in person, and had seemed amused at the time.
They were more amused now, dragging a lace they'd taken from their boot to distract the kitten the princeling could now become.
"And you say he just does this?" the lace-dragger inquired, tipping sly eyes towards their companions, one of whom seemed slightly embarrassed. The other was stone-faced, watching.
"Yes, and it started just after the--well," the king broke off, looking apologetically at the floor. "After the gifts," he eventually decided to present as politically as possible.
"Let me guess," the lace-dragger said, flicking the lace to the side so the kitten had to abruptly change direction, back claws scrabbling madly at the floor, "he's worked out that he's better at moving around like this, and so it's hard to get him to change back?"
The problem was essentially that, yes, the king admitted. His son was much more mobile as a cat, shaggy and golden and as big as he was as a boy. He outsmarted his nurses and batted at his father's heels for fun.
He obviously loved his father, would track him down across the castle, whether his father was in the stables, the granaries, the council-chambers. His father was all-over scratches from the wrestling.
He adored his mother, liked to lie belly up in her lap with his paws curled into his chest, eyes slitted completely closed up at her, but she spent her days in solariums and salons, places a boy-cat could reasonably expect to be petted and exclaimed over, not accidentally kicked, trampled, or closed behind doors. He still went looking for his father, so perhaps 'adoration' was the right word, even if he expressed it entirely differently to his two parents.
He also rather adored the lace being dragged for him, smashing at the floor with his front paws and falling over every so often, in the way of kittens anywhere.
Whenever he caught the end of the lace, the lace-dragger would distract him with wriggling fingers, tempting him to try pouncing for their hand so the lace would come free of youth-clumsy paws.
"You do realise that's a baby lion," the third faction hissed, not-quite sotto voice, the fourth time it happened.
The lace-dragger grinned delightedly, obviously blunt teeth flashing. "Well, yes. They did name him Lionheart, after all."
The embarrassed faction slowly blushed violet, covering their mouth with a lavender hand. "It was meant to be metaphor," they hissed back, and the lace dragger laughed.
"Children don't grasp metaphor."
She replied "..... Someone should be you. NOW. *STARES AT YOU*"
So I sketched for her. As you do.
And sketched another one a couple of days ago, because I realised I hadn't found her any fic where someone gets turned into a kitten in ages.
So, if you're interested. These are all slightly cleaned up and tweaked in comparison to their email versions.
-----
The Parent's Gift
The humans don't know what they've done. Not really, not in the sense that they expected anyone to show up at all, let alone to bring gifts. If anything, they sent the invitations (and how odd would it be for the poor page sent out to put the best printer's best work under a big rock at a crossroads, or to tie it to a twig at the very top of the tallest tree they could climb?) because it was the Thing to Do. You send invitations to your royal neighbours.
The presentation's late, for these things. The child's nearly two, but her parents have lost three babies before her, all of them younger than she is now, so this is the first time since the first they feel safe ordering the fabrics, the paper.
(They'd buried their firstborn in his christening gown.)
There's no reply to the invitations left in the landscape, of course. There are many others: the King of Rhodalia sends an ambassador with a collection of fine wines and a tiny silver sword. (The King of Rhodalia loves swords, so they hope he knows he's sending a gift to a daughter and just assumes everyone else loves swords the way he does.) The Queen Artemesia sends the seeds of orange trees and the cuttings of cider apples, the one captured neatly in a silver case and the others wrapped up in wet silk to protect the ends. (The cuttings are grafted immediately, in the hopes of at least one surviving the journey. The seeds can wait for the ceremony.)
The gentry and the nobility from miles around put on their finest, and their servants polish the carriages and tack to a golden glow. On the day, everyone lines up, acutely aware of their places in the procession, the status they hold and what they might aspire to, if they say the right words or give the right gifts. The King's distant cousin leads by right of blood relation (the King is still not sure why his faraway cousins sent a delegation as well as gifts, but they have) through the gates, the courtyard, the halls, to the thrones and the cradle between them. He should be the first to come up the steps to the dais, the first to greet the King and the Queen, who are hovering guard over their sleeping daughter instead of seated as they should be.
He isn't. They slide into being somewhere between the great hall's doors onto the courtyard and the slate tiles of the hall, coalescing like fog over water.
One of them looks like a willow tree, down to leaving wet leaves behind them like footprints. Another has feathers. The third has fur in patches. All of them peer down interestedly at the princess, and the one with feathers chatters like birds in spring for a while, overtop of whatever the one like a willow is saying, before it drops into the trade-tongue the Queen is best at to say "Beauty."
The Queen's not sure if this is meant to simply describe her daughter (who is so, so beautiful to her eyes, healthy-pink beneath her dark skin, made pinker by the red of her dress), or if it meant as a gift, but she extends her thanks anyway, is about to dip her white-crowned braided head when a great crashing noise comes from the open doors and the ground of the courtyard erupts, spilling forth a narrow dark shape from the stones that stalks towards the thrones as humans scatter out of its way.
The three that aren't human draw back from the cradle, pull together, and the one like a willow stands abruptly taller, extending long arms up like wings.
The narrow one stops on the steps, throws back its head and laughs like shattering stones, bares its teeth at the others in something that is definitely not a smile, and stalks closer, bends down to peer into the cradle, heavy hands enclosing the wood. The not-a-smile disappears, replaced with interest, and it looks up at the Queen, the King, who feel their hearts in their throats as its black-stone eyes meet theirs.
It says, seriously, like she knows, "No sickness will touch her. If the river runs red with war, if the black cough sails in with your ships, she will live: no sickness will touch her, and she will die old, beloved."
There's a collective gasp from the humans close enough to hear, but also from the three still standing on the dais, who exchange telling looks.
Then the one that hasn't spoken steps out of the shade of the one like a willow's arms, pads delicately close enough to peer past the narrow one's hands at still-sleeping child's face, and, looking at the narrow one, says "Where she walks, where she touches, there will sickness die."
The Queen lifts her hand to hide her mouth involuntarily as the narrow one not-smiles again at the one with fur, waits until it backs away before she lifts her heavy hands from the edges of the cradle. Begins to turn away, to stalk back down the steps and the Queen meets eyes with the King, who calls "Thank you" after their departing guest.
She stops, turns back, lifts her head to make eye contact with him. Dips her head, regal as his Queen.
-----
The Godfather's Gift
It was Day Three of the Ceremony that Might Eventually End, and they were getting bored.
(Let's say fairness, they were bored by the afternoon of Day One, after they'd presented the usual gifts for an unremarkable human child in an unremarkable kingdom that had the brains to invite the Seelie Court to a christening. A needle that would never need sharpening, a spool of fine silk thread that would never end and changed colours as its owner desired, and Charm, just like a boy would get a sword he would never lose or need to sharpen, that would fit his hand every time he lifted it, and the trick of reading a situation like an instruction book. Humans hardly ever made much use of the gifts; the girls didn't notice that Charm extended to stitched spells or diplomacy, and the boys didn't think to apply their gifted tricks to their grain supplies, or how to winkle an extra seam out of a tapped-out mine.)
Norwen resisted the desire to roll her eyes as yet another noble lord presented yet another jewelry box to the infant's mother. Humans were so predictable.
Inevitably that was when the immense wooden doors closing off the court from the courtyard roared open so hard the hinges shrieked. Wincing, trying not to rub at her ears, she craned her neck, then flapped her wings a few times to see over the sea of surprised heads.
She dropped down as soon as she got a look at the newcomer, hoping she hadn't been seen, and hissed at Briz. Gave up and hauled Briz in by the ribbons attached to her shoulders when Briz just blinked at her, hissed "Nicht Falconsbane just walked in" in Briz' scallop-edged ear, then clapped a hand atop Briz' head when Briz made to rise herself.
"Uncle Nicht!" a human voice sang out, and Norwen watched in disbelief as the human queen kilted up her heavy skirts to her knees and fled down the steps leading up to the dais where her child rested.
"How did we miss this?" Norwen hissed up towards Kelty, who was trying to pretend to be short. "Who did the research?"
"What research," Kelty hissed back, "it was just a human christening! The invitation was copy-pressed!"
Norwen would have kept arguing, but Lord Falconsbane, Master-at-Arms of the Unseelie Court and terror of the last war was close enough that his bass voice fluttered the edges of her wings when he stopped in the aisle and announced "I do apologise for my lateness, duckling. I was delayed on the road." as the queen reached him, swooped in for an embrace, visibly certain of her welcome and not wrong as dark arms closed around her. After a moment, Falconsbane pushed her away, held her shoulders to glance over her, then looked past her head, towards the bower, and leaned down to add, almost conspiratorially, "Now, tell me--what gifts have been given already?"
The queen chortled a laugh, pulling him by the hand up the steps and over to the bower. "Many," she replied, tickling her child's chest until it made a sleepy grab for her fingers.
Its hand closed around Falconsbane's index finger instead, and instead of screaming, it gurgled, shook its prize a few times. Laughed when he wiggled his finger companionably.
"Charm already, I see," he rumbled, lifting his head and looking directly their way, and Norwen fought the urge to cringe small. Squared up her wings and willed her face to say 'So?'.
He grinned at her, blued canines poking out, then looked back at the infant as it yanked on his finger again.
Swooped in, lifted the infant out of its bower and cradled it expertly against his feathered chest, beginning to sway back and forth as the infant tugged at his finger some more, tried to drag his hand to its mouth. "Let me see," he said to the infant, pretending to ignore his audience, "what shall I give you, hmm? You'll have your mother's favours--" what favours, Norwen wondered in the rising murmured confusion of the humans around them "--so I can hardly give you the right to call me whenever you wish, now can I?"
What.
"You've no need for a hound, or a keep. Hm," he hummed, and the walls vibrated, dust sifting down from the vaulted ceiling. "Ah! I know." He spread his captured hand across the infant's chest, blue light beginning to radiate from the pale embroidery on the infant's gown. "The quickness to learn whatever you set your mind to, and the heart to follow it through. If your mind be bounty, your farmers will prosper under your hand. If your mind be building, you'll know your stone for what it can be, and you'll raise your towers true. If your mind be war--" he grinned "--so be it. You'll stand at your sand-table and see your field for what it is, and send your troops where they must be, to win. After all," his grin widened even more, inhuman even from the aisles, "You already have charm, my girl."
-----
The Well-meaning Gift
The faeire-folk were urgently asked back to the castle--the one made of stone and wood, not air and light--days after the presentation of the princeling to the people and the delegations from other countries and realms, as was appropriate.
Three representatives arrived, one each from the two who'd sent gifts instead of people. The third had attended in person, and had seemed amused at the time.
They were more amused now, dragging a lace they'd taken from their boot to distract the kitten the princeling could now become.
"And you say he just does this?" the lace-dragger inquired, tipping sly eyes towards their companions, one of whom seemed slightly embarrassed. The other was stone-faced, watching.
"Yes, and it started just after the--well," the king broke off, looking apologetically at the floor. "After the gifts," he eventually decided to present as politically as possible.
"Let me guess," the lace-dragger said, flicking the lace to the side so the kitten had to abruptly change direction, back claws scrabbling madly at the floor, "he's worked out that he's better at moving around like this, and so it's hard to get him to change back?"
The problem was essentially that, yes, the king admitted. His son was much more mobile as a cat, shaggy and golden and as big as he was as a boy. He outsmarted his nurses and batted at his father's heels for fun.
He obviously loved his father, would track him down across the castle, whether his father was in the stables, the granaries, the council-chambers. His father was all-over scratches from the wrestling.
He adored his mother, liked to lie belly up in her lap with his paws curled into his chest, eyes slitted completely closed up at her, but she spent her days in solariums and salons, places a boy-cat could reasonably expect to be petted and exclaimed over, not accidentally kicked, trampled, or closed behind doors. He still went looking for his father, so perhaps 'adoration' was the right word, even if he expressed it entirely differently to his two parents.
He also rather adored the lace being dragged for him, smashing at the floor with his front paws and falling over every so often, in the way of kittens anywhere.
Whenever he caught the end of the lace, the lace-dragger would distract him with wriggling fingers, tempting him to try pouncing for their hand so the lace would come free of youth-clumsy paws.
"You do realise that's a baby lion," the third faction hissed, not-quite sotto voice, the fourth time it happened.
The lace-dragger grinned delightedly, obviously blunt teeth flashing. "Well, yes. They did name him Lionheart, after all."
The embarrassed faction slowly blushed violet, covering their mouth with a lavender hand. "It was meant to be metaphor," they hissed back, and the lace dragger laughed.
"Children don't grasp metaphor."
