Belle Of The Gays

Epilogue

Belle hummed to herself, unable to remember the words to the song or anything past the catchy pre-chorus. Her hand flitted delicately over the grand staircase railing, the dust cloth in her hand already needing a replacement.

It had been almost a year since the last petal from the rose fell, turning everyone to statues, and it had been half a year since she had last come to the castle. Parts of it were still in ruins from the inhabitants' last hurrah, but she had managed to clean up a majority of the debris. The hole where Garderobe had crashed through the ceiling was just not something she had the expertise or the money to fix.

While she was unable to stay in the castle to maintain it during her college semesters, she was able to use her media degree knowledge to start up a somewhat successful Instagram page. The entire thing was meant solely for posting awareness to the hate society was dealing out, mainly focusing on LGBTQ+ but also touching up on other topics.

In short, she had a lot of haters. But it was the occasional person popping in her dms to ask sincere questions or tell her how much her page meant to them that made her remember how important it was.

She never forgot to make sure to tell the stories of those who had taught her everything she had known. Which was partly why she had come to the castle today. Other than keeping up with dusting and cleaning, she needed pictures.

As she slowly made her way through cleaning the castle, she found herself in the West Wing, staring at the stone statues. She smiled sadly as tears threatened to prick her eyes, and she bent down to fix the pride flags she had draped over them.

They were the only statues she hadn't moved, wanting to preserve that scene. Garderobe, Maestro and the chef had all been moved to the ballroom so the three could finally be brought back together, and Plumette had been brought up to be with the others. They had unfortunately been mid flight up the stairs when the petal fell, causing them to partially break apart when they hit the ground. Belle made sure they were pieced back together perfectly, though.

The sound of tires on the gravel driveway directed Belle's attention away from the task, and she carefully stepped over the statues to look over the balcony railing. She watched as a young girl got off her bike and brought out her phone, seemingly comparing whatever was on the screen to the castle.

Seeing as she appeared to be coming in, Belle left the balcony and met her down in the entry way, accidentally startling her.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you."

"It's fine. Are you Belle?" She nodded and the girl smiled, slipping her phone in her back pocket. "How can I help? You've done so much for me even though you probably didn't know I exist, but I really want to do something." 

Now it was Belle's turn to smile, and she motioned for the girl to follow her. She took her up to the library and they both sat down in the chairs. The pride flags had all been returned to their banisters, some of them having been patched, but the young girl's eyes lit up when she saw them.

"First, let me tell you a story."