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Helena is a princess. There may be some people who disagree, but it’s the truth. Therefore, it is only natural that she gets to go on the swings for as long as she wants to, no matter how much the other children complain. Besides, there’s another swing; they can go on that one if they want to.
Oh, somebody’s told a teacher. She jumps off the swing before she can get told off. It’s fine; she wanted to go do something else, anyway. (Although she is going to take that treason very seriously.)
She is just wandering about, wondering what next pastime is worthy of her time, when she happens to see a little girl that catches her attention. She’s sitting by the wall, alone, her eyes turned skyward, and she looks lonely. Oh, that won’t do, Helena decides as she walks determinedly toward the girl.
‘Hi! I’m Helena, your new best friend. What’s your name?’ she exclaims as soon as she’s standing near her own new best friend.
The girl almost falls over from shock, eliciting a giggle from Helena. She looks like she hadn’t even seen Helena approach. She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, like a fish, before she manages to get any sound out. ‘Er, um, I… Aleid,’ she mumbles, staring at the ground with an intense focus.
‘Aleid,’ Helena whispers, trying out the name. ‘That’s a really pretty name! It’s perfect for a princess. Which you are. Cause I’m a princess, you know. And you’re my best friend, which makes you a princess, too.’ She squeals in excitement before taking a deep bow. ‘Your highness.’ Once she’s stood up straight again, she grins and extends a hand toward Aleid, who hesitantly takes hold of it. With a giggle, Helena pulls Aleid up from the ground. Aleid stumbles and almost falls from the sudden change in positions and ends up clinging to Helena for balance. She looks mildly confused, staring at Aleid with wide eyes like a lost puppy. ‘You don’t talk much,’ Helena points out, pouting, but then she grins again and starts walking, pulling Aleid along with her; she can talk enough for both of them.
What is she going to do with her new best friend? Going to the swings might not be the best idea, since she did just almost get banned from there, so she guides Aleid toward the sandbox. Helena is the best at building things out of sand. (Actually, she’s the best at everything. That comes with being a princess.)
They play there until they have to go inside again. To Helena’s delight, Aleid is very good at building things as well, perhaps even better than Helena. She’s very happy with her new friend. Even though Aleid had seemed a bit hesitant and shy, she laughed when Helena did an impression of a terrifying monster and smashed her own sandcastle. She’s made a very good decision, she thinks, smiling to herself as she doodles on the paper filled with numbers that’s in front of her. She’s supposed to be doing sums or something, but she feels it’s much better to document her new friendship with her artistic talent. Besides, she’s a princess and has made sums illegal – because she’s not too good at them, but that’s something she’d only admit to herself and her daddy, not to the teacher – so of course she isn’t actually going to do them. She has to follow her own rules, or else nobody else is going to follow them. That’s something very important that every princess must learn. She wonders whether Aleid knows, and tells herself to ask her later.
Actually, Aleid had seemed fairly ignorant on the whole being-a-princess thing, so Helena probably has to teach her a lot. She doesn’t mind, though; as a princess, it’s her duty to help other princesses. She’s already looking forward to it, and even the teacher scolding her for being “lazy” doesn’t ruin her good mood.
❧
When school is finally over, she immediately grabs Aleid’s hand and pulls her along with her. Aleid only looks slightly surprised this time; she’s a quick learner when it comes to Helena’s behaviour. It’s another thing Helena likes about her. She knows that Aleid will also be very good at being a princess, since Aleid is very good at things. That’s why Helena wants to start her princess training immediately.
She tells Aleid so, and she cocks her head. ‘Princess training?’ They’re still walking, and Helena knows her papa is already waiting to pick her up, so she walks a bit quicker.
‘Yeah. There’s lots of things to learn, but don’t worry! You’re gonna be an amazing princess.’ She smiles at Aleid, who smiles back hesitantly.
❧
Aleid isn’t quite sure what happened today. This morning, everything was normal, and now she’s sitting in a room that’s full of bright colours and dozens of plushies with her… new best friend, apparently. She’d been dragged along by Helena after school to be introduced to her father – who was very tall and scared Aleid a bit – and then she’d been on her way here, and Aleid still isn’t sure how all of this happened.
Helena had told her some basic rules on being a princess, which consisted mostly of doing whatever you want, and is now holding some sort of trial with the plushies to show Aleid what being a princess entails except for being sparkly and cute. Aleid is, for lack of another word, scared. Helena’s interrogating a teddy bear who, apparently, murdered two bunny plushies and a doll. Looking around the room, Aleid can see several toys that have been hanged, mostly with glittery scarves.
However, even though this is all pretty weird, Aleid is happy. She’s never had a real friend before. Everyone around her had seemed to just… become friends with one another, and she’d been left out. So, now she does have a friend, and she doesn’t even care that said friend is weird. Aleid doesn’t mind weird.
After the trial’s finished – Helena wanted to sentence the bear to death, but Aleid managed to convince her to just sentence him to life in prison – they get to actually building a prison.
‘It’s just easier to kill them, you know? Prisons are such a hassle,’ Helena explains. They’re using some pillows and blankets because they couldn’t find more suitable material, and Helena has plenty of these lying around; she likes to build forts with them and just cuddle up in a big blanket and pillow pile and fall asleep.
‘And why’re they still hanging?’ Aleid asks, gesturing at the “dead”.
‘To set an example. You know, most of these were ‘cause they kept stealing cookies from the kitchen,’ Helena says, before continuing in a whisper. ‘It was actually me who stole them, but don’t tell the others. Ssssh.’ She places a finger on her own mouth and Aleid copies her, nodding. She won’t tell anyone Helena’s secret, even though she doesn’t really agree with the fact that she’s killing innocent toys.
After that, Aleid needs to go home, but she promises Helena that she’ll come over again, tomorrow.
❧
Years pass, and they remain close friends. Helena’s there when Aleid’s parents die and she feels like her world is falling apart. It’s Aleid who’s there when Helena visits her mother’s grave for the first time in years. Helena stands up for Aleid when everyone thinks it’s okay to pick on her. When Helena’s falling behind in school no matter how hard she tries and the teachers are about ready to give up on her, Aleid supports her.
Aleid’s the one to convince Helena that having to wear glasses doesn’t make her less of a princess, and both of them laugh when, not a week later, Helena manages to break her glasses when she gets into a fight with some prick who thinks he can mess with Aleid. (Helena decides that contacts suit her better.)
Helena helps Aleid through her first heartbreak – a girl named Sarah who she thought might be interested in her but turned out to only like the things Aleid would do for her – by holding a movie marathon and making sure nobody runs out of ice cream. If her heart aches every time Aleid talks about how much she likes Helena, nobody needs to know. Her best friend’s in pain, so she shouldn’t pull the attention to herself, for once.
❧
It’s afternoon and Helena is nervously drumming on her desk with her fingers. She twirls a lock of her hair around her index finger, inspecting its new colour. She’s just dyed her hair for the first time, a bright blue that she just loves. Aleid doesn’t know yet, and she’s coming over in an hour and Helena wonders what she’ll think of it. She doesn’t really care about what anyone else thinks – she’s still a princess, after all, and a princess is always beautiful – but Aleid is different. Aleid’s opinion is so important to her, and she doesn’t know what she’d do if Aleid didn’t like her hair. She’d probably try to dye it back, but that would mean letting Aleid know that her not liking it hurts, and that’s something she doesn’t want, because…
Yeah, Helena’s a tiny bit very much in love with Aleid.
Which is fine. She can control her feelings. Really, she can. She huffs and gets up from the desk chair and plops down on her bed, hugging a big teddy bear to her chest. It’s the one Aleid got her for Helena’s first birthday after they’d become friends, and it’s the only one that never leaves her bed.
‘Why is love so confusing?’ she asks it in a hushed voice before falling to her side, the teddy bear still pressed close to her.
She’s still in that position when Aleid opens the door. Helena shoots upright; she hadn’t heard her approach. It took a long time for Helena to convince Aleid that she can just walk in anytime she wants, so part of her is happy that Aleid feels comfortable enough to come in without knocking, but the other part wishes she could have had a bit of time to prepare.
Helena can pinpoint the exact moment Aleid notices, because one moment Aleid’s smiling and looks like she’s about to greet Helena, and the next she looks lost and confused and a bit shy, which is a look that’s very common on her.
‘Do you like it?’ Helena asks, cutting straight to the chase. If she doesn’t give herself time to be self-conscious, it’ll be all right.
The moments where Aleid’s biting her lip, pondering how to answer, make Helena feel like her heart is going to burst straight out of her chest. She’s used to Aleid taking longer to reply to things, sometimes, because she knows Aleid likes to make sure she phrases everything correctly. It’s one of the things Helena loves about her. However, right now she just wants Aleid to answer her question before her nerves kill her.
‘I do,’ Aleid finally says, and the words are soft, but Helena hears them. She always does, because she treasures every word that Aleid speaks. (She’s almost painfully in love with her.) ‘I mean, it looked great before, of course, but…’ Helena pats the bed next to her, motioning for her to sit down, and Aleid immediately goes silent. Helena feels her cheeks starting to hurt from how much she’s grinning right now, and she squeals and puts her head on Aleid’s shoulder when the other girl sits down next to her.
‘You know, I was thinking purple, at first. Or maybe green. Or pink. It was a very hard decision to make.’ She doesn’t mention that the reason she chose this colour is because she knows it’s one of Aleid’s favourite colours. In fact, Aleid’s wearing a shirt in this colour right now, and that makes Helena smile even more because they match.
She feels more than hears Aleid laugh. ‘You’d look good in any colour,’ she whispers, and Helena wants to cry from happiness. Aleid’s nervously fumbling with the sleeves of her shirt, so Helena raises her head again and places a hand over one of Aleid’s.
‘Thanks.’ Aleid meets her eyes, and she’s smiling as well, and Helena feels like Aleid’s never looked more beautiful. (Aleid always looks beautiful, though, so beautiful.) The next words leave her mouth before she can even think about them. ‘May I kiss you?’
Aleid looks shocked, oh, and that hurts, but she can’t take those words back anymore, but Helena knows that she couldn’t have waited any longer, that she couldn’t have kept these feelings hidden anymore. She loves Aleid and will continue loving her, no matter what. That is something she knows.
When Aleid hesitantly nods, Helena is sure she’s dreaming. She’s also sure her cheeks will never stop hurting because she’s smiling so much, now. She strokes Aleid’s cheek, making sure not to rush this because she doesn’t want to scare Aleid, and then presses her lips to Aleid’s.
It’s perfect and it’s everything Helena’s ever wanted, and when Aleid kisses her back, she feels the happiest she’s ever felt.