Beneath the Wishing Well: Yandere! Azul x Reader x Yandere! Riddle

--𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞--

"How many times must I reiterate to you: point your toes at a twenty-six degree angle."

The bowed beak of a sunny-feathered flamingo dug into the boy's quivering toes. Tsking at the bird's linear neck, she pressed further into his curled arches–demanding his feet to shuffle further outwards.

His kinked knee behind him buckling further, he gawked with a horrified twist of his lips at his sliding soles. Precariously, he struggled to correct his form once more in the chill of his stalking mother's shadow.

Edging the boy's front foot further towards her heel-pinched toes with the beak's tip, she barred an exhausted sigh by pinching her lips outwards. This pucker did not cease her comments, as she grumbled to her trembling son, "You have the feet of a dopey-eyed flamingo–and the brain of one, apparently."

Riddle glimpsed at the idle bird, pleading to it with bleary, gray eyes to acknowledge the comment and recoil its neck in offense. Mother would never slew out such slander if it was as keen as its croquet counterparts; therefore, it remained enwrapped around his sensitive heel. If his mother had referred to their beloved birds used in their evening games of croquet–as gorgeous as showpieces and charming to its beholder–he would not have taken the offense he felt the thoughtless creature measuring the angle of his feet should have.

"But Mother," he countered, defying the woman's former command by straightening his knees to regain an iota of stability. "I am a boy: curtsies are for dress-frolicking girls." That is what he understood, at least: the ladies of the household would bend in theatrical curtsies, and the men would match with bows that would graze their scalps against the floorboards.

His Mother cinched the flamingo's neck downward, returning its nape to a natural lull with a squawk of pain from the yellow dolt.

She seethed, "And to think I have spent years dedicated to the perfect curriculum for a child, only for him to reveal he cannot follow such a basic rule of the Queen's etiquette!"

Gulping, Riddle denied his Mother's glare by keeping his gaze downcast. The waver sharpening her words eluded to the inevitable flower of red that would suffocate the pleasantly-rosy undertones of the woman's powdered face of white.

"Well, do not just loiter there like a faceless card soldier!" she snapped, bending to jerk the jutted chin of her son's up. "What does the Queen of Hearts' Rule number Ninety-Eight say?"

Against the squeeze of his mother's fingers against his taut jawline, he sputtered, "When one–one...uhm, when–"   

She released his jaw, her son's jaw remaining strained against a retreated force. "Must I do everything for you, my moronic child?" Jabbing a pointed nail into the flesh of his chin, she demanded, "Tilt up your chin, and speak with the grace and reverence the rules of our past sovereign's design deserve."

He began again, dropping his stance into an improved curtsy. "Rule Ninety-Eight: When one is to address or acknowledge the Queen, they must curtsy with toes pointed at the degree of twenty-six, lift up their head, and always say, 'Yes, Your Majesty,'" the boy recited, the words cracking.

The velvet hem of his mother's dress brushed the exposed back of his heel whilst she evaluated his form from an untried viewpoint. Each snap of her heels against the slick floor recoiled him further into his genuflection: a reaction his mother took delight in, if the seep of cartoonish color from her cheeks and reinstated twist of lips into a curbed simper was a suggestion to her candid emotions.

"You must uphold the rules–whether you are wearing a skirt or not," she stated, a smirk writhing her lips for a moment longer as she suggested, "Of course, if it would make my precious son feel more at ease during such a grand occasion, I shall commission a skirt designed after the Queen's own for you to wear to your first Honoring." Her words flattened as did her lips: her features unaccustomed to these expressions of amusement.