𝙹𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝙸𝚖𝚊𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚎 ✍︎ 𝙰𝚗𝚗𝚊 𝙱𝚊𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚢

𝚆𝙸𝚂𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚂𝙿𝙴𝙻𝙻 ✍︎ 2

"I'm so excited about this lesson," Alex said as she, Conner and Anna walked along the road. Anna would've probably walked with Bree, but their houses were in opposite directions from the school, which made things quite hard.

So she was stuck with her brother and sister. Now, she had heard Alex declare this many times during a walk home, and this was normally when she would tune out.

However, today, for some reason, she kept listening as her sister spoke. "Mrs Peters made a very good point, you know. Think of all those children who miss out because they're deprived of fairy tales! Oh, how terrible for them? Don't you just feel awful for them- Conner, Anna, are you even listening?"

"Yep," Anna and Conner answered. Anna honestly, Conner flat out lying. He was kicking an abandoned snail shell along the pavement.

"Can you imagine a childhood without fairy tales?" Alex asked fearfully. "We're so lucky that Dad and Grandma read basically all of them to us when we were little."

"Very lucky..."

Now, each day after school, the Bailey triplets would walk home together. They lived in a nice neighborhood of suburbia, where each house was similar but they all had something different about them at the same time.

As they walked, Alex would normally pour out the details of her life to the other two, which was either received gratefully or irritably. Anna listened to her sister, something Conner simply failed to do, but they both knew one thing. That they were the only two people in the world that Alex could talk to.

Anna tuned back in as Alex asked her, "Which one are you going to write your paper on?"

"Oh," Anna said. "I guess I'll choose something like 'Rapunzel' or 'Beauty and The Beast'."

"Brilliant!" Alex chuckled. "And you, Conner?"

"Ummmm... 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'."

Anna chuckled as Conner looked at his sisters unsurely. To Anna, it was obvious that he hadn't been listening, but Alex didn't bring it up.

"You can't choose that one!" She said matter of factly. "That's the most obvious one! Mrs Peters even explained it! You should pick one that has a hidden message, not one on the surface."

"Fine, I'll pick 'Sleeping Beauty'," he decided.

"Nice," Anna said.

Alex turned to her and said, "You know, I think what Bree said today was a fair point. Fairy tales always depict women as frail and needing to be saved. We can't just give that impression to our children like our ancestors have given us!"

Anna nodded and said, "Yeah, we were talking about that. Women need more happy endings than just getting married to men."

"What do you think, Conner?" Alex asked, trying to get Conner, who was happy staying out, to join in. "About what Bree said."

"B- Bree Campbell?" Conner stuttered, his cheeks turning the palest red. Anna noticed, but no... he couldn't...

Going on the basis that Conner did not have a crush on her best and only friend, she quickly stepped up. "It doesn't matter, but Conner, come on, d'you actually know the moral of 'Sleeping Beauty'?"

"Yeah!" Conner argued. He tried not to argue with Alex, as she already had a tough time at school, but arguments with Anna were fair game. "Don't piss off your neighbors, I guess."

"That is not it!" Alex protested before Anna could answer.

"Sure it is," Conner said, half joking, half serious. "If the King and Queen had just invited the crazy enchantress to their daughter's party in the first place, none of the stuff would've happened."