Tough Love 🐉( A Short Story)

Chapter 5

Ten years ago......... 

So it was with great excitement and no small fanfare that the island gathered for a one-of-a-kind event: a six-year-old princess's wickedly wonderful birthday party. Wicked being something of a relative term under a dome that houses a bunch of powerless former villains.

In any event, it was a party.

It was the most magnificent celebration the isolated island and its banished citizens had ever seen, and tales of its gothic grandeur and obnoxious opulence would be told for years to come. The party to end all parties, this lavish occasion transformed the ramshackle bazaar and its rotting storefronts in the middle of the island into a spookily spectacular playground, full of ghostly lanterns and flickering candles.

A celebration my daughter was not invited to.

Weeks before, a flock of vultures had circled the land, dropping invitations on every shabby doorstep and hovel so that every grubby little urchin from every corner of the island would be able to partake in this enchanting and extraordinary event.

Every little urchin on the island, that is, except for one malicious little fairy. (pun not intended)

Whether her invitation was lost to the winds and torn to tatters or devoured by the hungry buzzards themselves—or—gasp!—never even addressed in that looping royal scrawl, as was suspected, we will never know.

Not only did they fail to invite my little fae in training they humiliated me by doing exactly what Stefan and Leah did to me.

But the result was the same.

high on her castle balcony, six-year-old Mal pulled on the locks of her thick, purple hair and pursed her lips as she observed the dark and delicious festivities below. Well, what she could have made out at least.

There she saw the tiny princess sitting on her throne, her hair blue like the ocean and combed neatly in a v-braid. She laughed in delight as she watched all the older villains who were invited tried to make her laugh.

The princess, it would seem, could make even the worst villains smile.

I wasn't smiling.

But Mal wasn't smiling. She could practically smell the two-story cake made of sour apples, sinfully red and lusciously wormy; and try as she might, she couldn't help but overhear the screeches of the parrot, Iago, as he repeated, over and over again, the story of talking caves that held riches beyond measure.

Mal sighed with green-eyed jealousy as the children gleefully tore into their baddie bags. As the party escalated in feverish merriment, Mal's heart grew as black as her mood, She would show them all that she was just like her—

"Mother!" she yelped, as the shadow of two looming and ominous horns made their way toward the balcony, and her mother appeared, her purple cape fluttering softly in the wind.

Ha! Scared the heck out of my daughter.

Her mother's voice was rich, melodious, and tinged with menace. "What is going on here?" she demanded as the children below tittered at the sight.

"It's a birthday party," sniffed Mal. "And I wasn't invited."

"Is that right?" her mother asked. She peered at the celebration over Mal's shoulder, and they both took in the sight of the blue-haired princess giggling on a moth-eaten velvet pillow as Gaston's hairy and handsome young twin sons, Gaston Jr. and Gaston the Third, performed feats of strength—to impress her From the sound of things, it was working.

"Celebrations are for the rabble," her mother scoffed. Mal knew her mother despised parties of any kind. She despised them almost as much as she did kings and queens who doted on their precious babies.

"Nevertheless, Evil Queen and her horrid progeny will learn soon enough from their spiteful little mistake!" her mother declared and if mal was mistaken she could have sworn her mother winked at her.

No one gets to mess with my child!.

"Our child, you see when two peo-"

"Get back to your book hades"

For her mother was the great Maleficent, Mistress of Darkness, the most powerful and wicked fairy in the world and the most fearsome villain in all the land.

And there was nothing Mal desired more in her heart than to grow up to be just like her.

How cute she was my number 1 fan.

Maleficent stepped to the balcony's edge, where she could see out to the whole island to the sparkling lights of Auradon. She raised herself to her full height as thunder and lightning cracked and boomed and rain began to pour from the heavens. Since there was no magic on the island, this was just a wickedly good coincidence.

The party came to a halt, and the gathered citizens were paralyzed at the sight of their leader glaring down at them with the full force of her wrath.

"This celebration is over!" Mal's mother declared. "Now, shoo, flee, and scatter, like the little fleas you are! And you! Evil Queen and your daughter! From now on, you are dead to the entire island! You do not exist! You are nothing! Never show your faces anywhere ever again! Or else!"

Harsh but necessary.

Just as quickly as it had gathered, the group dispersed, under the wary eye of Maleficent's frightening henchmen, Mal caught a last glimpse of the blue-haired princess looking fearfully up at the balcony before being whisked away by her equally terrified mother.

Her eyes glittered with triumph, her dark heart glad that her misery had caused such wondrous maleficence.

I need to fix my docs maybe you'll get the next chapter later today it's 50% completed.