Blinding Light: A Sleeping Beauty and Snow Queen Remix

Ending Author's Note

A/N: I did Aurora myself. Somebody else did Elsa and thank goodness because it looks gorgeous and mine took way too long.

First to the thank yous:

Voyageavecmoi  for your support and amazing stories

SuVida777  for contest recommendations

FreeTheLGBT  and @MermaidAriel13 for Pride Month reading lists

Skye_Z13  for keeping me sane

Erica and erife2020  for tolerating my rants about character development, word count, and how I cannot speak Spanish

To all my silent readers as well, thanks for sticking with me.

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Keeping with tradition, here's the summary behind the original Sleeping Beauty and The Snow Queen.

The first telling of Sleeping Beauty, named Perceforest (from 1528), is so horrific I'm not even going to talk about it. I'm also pointedly ignoring Basile's version according to Wikipedia. Look them up and horrify yourself if you are that curious. The basic plot of the other ones is that there is an evil fairy who tells the princess's parents that the princess will die when she pricks her finger on a spindle or plant. (Side note: In every version, the parents try to eliminate the terrible items and foil the prophecy, but it never works.) Anyway, the princess never dies after pricking her finger. She always falls asleep and is later woken by a prince in some manner to supposedly live happily ever after. Some have a "part two" involving the prince's family who try to kill Sleeping Beauty and her kids but it's not really part of the original. Some versions have more than one fairy, some have no fairies, and only Disney has a dragon.

The funny thing is, people tend to hate Sleeping Beauty because the princess does literally nothing. I kind of poked fun at this in the prologue, but I can understand why. From a feminist standpoint... it doesn't look too good. Personally, I want to believe I solved this problem by throwing out the prince, and attempting to give Isabelle depth, but I honestly have no idea.

But I digress. Let me tell you, the Snow Queen is a lot more fun.

The Snow Queen is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. In it, the devil makes a magic mirror to distort the reflection of anything good into something ugly. Demons attempt to carry the mirror to heaven to torture angels with it, but before they get there, they drop it. The mirror falls to earth and shatters into a million pieces. Some people get the mirror in their eyes or hearts or both. This makes them just like the mirror. They are only able to see the bad and ugly parts of the world.

Kai and Gerda are sibling-like best friends. They play together and spend almost all their time in each other's company. During the winter, they learn about a woman named The Snow Queen who rules over snowflakes that look like bees. Kai sees the Snow Queen from the window and hides away in fear. Later, during summer, pieces of the mirror get into Kai's heart and eyes. He acts out, and hurts Gerda, because the only things he loves now are the snowflakes. Kai is kidnapped that winter by the Snow Queen. The Snow Queen makes him forget about Gerda, and numbs him to the cold. She takes Kai to her palace.

Gerda tries to find Kai. She goes to the river, and it tells her Kai did not drown. She visits a sorceress in a garden of eternal summer. The sorceress tries to distract her and keep her forever, but fails. The roses in the sorceress's garden tell Gerda that Kai is not dead under the earth. Gerda leaves and meets a crow in autumn, who tells her Kai is at the princess's palace. Gerda meets the prince and princess, only to find that the prince looks like Kai, but isn't him. When Gerda leaves this time, she is captured by robbers and freed by a little girl with pet doves. The little girl finds a reindeer named Bae (yes, that is his name I'm not making this up) to take her to the Snow Queen.