Star Child

Chapter XV: The Witch, the Queen, and the Stardust (Part 2)

It was pretty wild being drop kicked into a table, Matilda thought, especially by a queen in a long black ball gown. Didn't she know that it wasn't her party? It's a pretty fancy dress to be wearing to something that isn't even for her. I guess that's where the tax-payers money was going to. Her thoughts of the familiar queen were becoming toxic and harmful.

Perhaps it was related to the harm that the queen had done to Matilda in the past. Not only did she kidnap her son, but the queen had broken her heart. This queen of hearts had played hers, and the first time that Matilda had spoken to the queen since their disintegrated relationship had run its course.

Adjusting her glasses and blowing flower petals at the queen, Matilda dodged the slashing of Marie's sharp black nails and pointed, bloody teeth. The red ribbons and golden crown on the queen's head whipped around wildly as she attacked Matilda. As Matilda used her scarf to counter, the back of her mind replayed the memories of her and Marie.

Perhaps it was those memories that further advanced her attacks.

***

            They had first 30 years ago, when they were both in their early twenties. It was a month before the new queen would be coronated in the Chateau Du Ciel; this very ballroom. Matilda, the daughter of the previous owner of Toil and Trouble, a spell shop in the town of Graywood, had gone on an expedition with her father.

Headed toward Du Ciel chateau, they were to meet with the Du Ciel family at a banquet commemorating the ascension of the king's daughter to the throne. They were to stay for a month before and after the coronation and banquet, and return back to Graywood via portal.

The moment they laid eyes on each other, the glistening of the golden rooms and elegant décor seemed to dim in comparison to each other; Matilda was infatuated by the soon-to-be-queen's raven hair, her mature and elegant poise, and her glittering crimson eyes, that shone like rubies. Only those who shared blood with demons had the color red for eyes; and vampires were an offspring of demons.

Perhaps Matilda should have taken this as a warning to the eventual heartbreak that she would suffer, but for now her young heart was to fall in love, and Matilda was to cover her blushing face and large round glasses with the long, black, and heavy scarves she wore as her magical trinket.

In return, through the scarves, she noticed that the queen was hiding her own face behind an elegantly flowered fan that seemed to fit the mythical Catrina more than this young, black and red dressed queen-to-be. She wasn't quick enough to avoid the over observant gaze of the young witch, however. Matilda saw the vampire princess' face become as red as her eyes, or close enough.

As the king and Matilda's father caught up together, the soon-to-be queen invited the young witch into the chateau's gardens; elegant expanses of beautifully colored flowers that stood in a magnificent juxtaposition against the dark leaves that was the primary foliage in the Ashland. Her dark face hidden behind the mounds of scarves, Matilda and Marie strolled through the gardens with that awkward silence that happens whenever two with obvious affection for each other are left alone.

The night sky above them shone in a sparkling daze; the stardust seemed to drip out of the sky and into the gardens and the small, glowing, Parisian-esque village that surrounded the manor.

"Do you want to visit the village?" Asked Marie in a sudden bout of energy, revealing a spontaneous personality that Matilda had not known of before, and had made her blush and nod quickly. She almost lost her glasses. So they snuck over the gates to the manor and out of the gardens, and quickly found themselves inside of scene similar to that of a Van Gogh painting;