Dancing on Strings

The Waking World

Double upload 

Don't Miss the one before it

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Mai sat bolt upright and almost knocked herself out again as she narrowly avoided head-butting her doctor on the nose.

He only recoiled in time because Joliette yanked him out of the way as Mai stared around wildly, looking for the golden man, then staring in confusion when she saw her bedroom in the tower, in The Waking World.

She was still for a moment as everyone gaped at her.

Then blinked.

She was out.

He got her out.

"Ah, it worked."

Mai heard Kazimir's voice right before Joliette and Henrietta swamped her, crying and squeezing her as her doctor shrieked for them to give her room to breathe so he could look at her.

"You're awake! You really woke up!" Joliette sobbed into her hair, hugging her so tight Mai was sure she felt her neck crick.

"But... but how?" Mai wheezed out. Her voice was dry and faint, an instrument unused in fifty years. "Who was that man?"

"What man?" Henrietta asked so she seemed more interested in holding Mai as tightly as she could, Mai feeling the thunder of her heartbeat against her ear.

"Move! Move! Goodness sake!" the doctor snapped, batting the ladies-in-waiting, "Go tell The King instead of choking her!"

Joliette and Henrietta raced out and the doctor set about examining her, musing and muttering in confusion about her apparent good health. Good; except the coma, confounded by how she could have been eating and drinking all by herself as usual from the way she hadn't deteriorated in the slightest besides a slightly croaky throat.

He prescribed she rest and stay in bed – which was the last thing Mai wanted to do for the next month – as well as daily walks that did not strain her.

But since there was still no apparent ailment other than sleep, he was at a loss to explain much more than the princess had been asleep a little longer than her sisters.

He finally packed up his things and, after one last baffled look – swept out to let her rest.

Mai sat in bed, in the quiet, then looked to her right and nearly shot through the ceiling in fright.

Kazimir leant forwards in his seat near the bed, out of the shadows and Mai glared at him.

"You scared me," she snapped.

"As did you when you didn't wake up," he said.

"What happened? I don't understand. I met a man who somehow opened the door from the other side. But he said a friend helped me. What happened?"

"There was really no way for you to get out on your own?" Kazimir asked.

Mai shook her head and the movement made her feel slightly light headed. "The door was locked, there was nothing below the palace, there was nothing more to the other layers and the orchard with the apples was destroyed when Reve died. I couldn't get out on my own, as Reve had said. he said no one would ever be able to find me. So how did that man—"

Kazimir tossed something towards her and she looked down as it landed with a thump on the bed beside her.

She stared down at it for a long, long moment.