Dreaming Out Loud

Trouble Melts Like Lemon Drops

Chapter 102: Trouble Melts Like Lemon Drops

Snow looked at herself in the mirror, as she had allowed her mother to magically dress her, while Eli anxiously waited outside the room. As an infant, her mother and grandmother had made the decision to strip her of her immortality and most of the magic she might have acquired because of her blood. It was a difficult decision, but it was determined that letting her human side be dominant would actually keep her safer.

Eli's Kingdom had already been up in arms at her existence and the scandal that their crown Prince had fathered a child, not only out of royal wedlock, but one with a Goddess. The years where that would have made Snow revered had long since passed and the Gods were no longer respected by mortals as they once were.

A lot of that was due to all the wars and bloodshed they had been involved in centuries before Snow was even born. Humans and the Gods had a bloody history and it had only created a deep seeded animosity. A lot of mortal hatred was due directly to Zeus and many of his own actions and involvement with humans. He had done nothing to endear himself to humans, used them, killed them outright, and was often hypocritical by breaking his own laws that he expected humans to follow. Zeus was unforgiving and saw mortals as lesser beings, rather than beings created in the image of the Gods, as many of the other Gods did. He had falsely represented his siblings too. He had made mortals fear all of them, especially Hades.

Many cultures equated Hades with a devil-like figure in many mortal, religious practices. But Hades was not the demon he had been portrayed to be, though that image was something that had plagued him and contributed to the times when he was ruling tyrannically.

Naturally with these types of attitudes, Demeter had reluctantly advised that they let Snow's human side be dominant. Persephone had worried about that simply because it meant Snow would live a mortal lifespan, but Athena had ascertained that this would be addressed when the time was right, though she was vague on the hows and whys of that, as Athena often was. The wise Goddess never gave much away, but Persephone trusted her.

That being said, Snow retained a tiny bit of magic, enough to ensure she was unique among mortals. Her ability to speak to birds and affinity for wildlife was a gift left to her by her Godly origins and Snow had always considered it a wonderful gift, even if some people thought her to be odd because of it.

When she was born, her grandmother had declared that she would be the fairest in the lands and that had stuck with her. Even though many in her father's court had a great amount of disdain for her, it was never missed by them at how beautiful she was. The men had suggested to her father that at least he would be able to marry her off to some Prince and thus somehow by their thinking turn her into a suitable royal. Her father had quickly quashed those opinions though. He may have often been at the mercy of his court, but he was always clear that he would not marry his precious little girl off to some undeserving, pompous Prince that he knew would mistreat her. He had always insisted that Snow would be allowed to marry for love, something he had not been allowed, and had been steadfast in that. He didn't miss being King. In fact, being free, despite being a wanted man had been the best times in his life. He wished there wasn't King Arawn hunting him and his daughter, but he had been able to spend more time with her on the run than in his time as King when sometimes she had been under the same roof.

He had noticed the modification made to Snow's wanted posters. They now wanted his daughter alive, whereas before, they had stated that dead would be preferable. And he knew what that meant. Arawn had control of his Throne, which meant he could technically barter his daughter in an arranged marriage if he wanted to. That had been a disturbing fact to him, as well as Persephone and Hades, for they had noticed the shift as well. He could only surmise that Arawn saw the value of keeping Snow alive. Having the daughter of a Goddess to use as some kind of pawn was an attractive thing to the evil King and he was almost certain the idea had probably come from Claude Frollo. He had not missed the way Frollo had looked at his daughter when she had come to save him from execution. The religious zealot even had the nerve to blame his little girl's beauty as the reason for the perversion inside him. It made him want to rip Frollo's head off with his bare hands and knew that if the man touched his daughter again, there would be another murder and he'd be the culprit. At one time, he had scoffed that he would ever join or team up with Hades to do anything, but he knew the God of the Underworld would be right there, helping him to hold the man down while they ended him.