Chapter Text
Princess Harriet was one of the lesser know princesses on Fairy tale island, being the middle child in-between two far more popular siblings. Not that it had bothered her to much, it had made fleeing from the clutches of royalty much easier. If she was known for anything, it would be her adverseness towards being in the spotlight, or her book-smart tendencies, so it had surprised no one when she had decided to move out to the country and basically become a hermit. It had taken a few long discussions with her parents, but after a while they relented, simply instructed her to keep in contact via mail, and then she went.
There had of course been others that fought back besides her parents, like her older sister, but it had been a long time since Harriet had taken her thoughts on anything too seriously. The only thing her sister wanted was to baby her, and Harriet for one was sick of being babied.
On the other side of the spectrum was her little brother who frankly couldn’t care less about what she did and was basically not involved at all in the moving away discussion. Harriet wasn’t to fond of her brother either, so the feeling was mutual.
Regardless, even after almost two years had passed she still got letters from both her parents, and one from her sister, that was almost always about the same thing. Worry, a bunch of worry.
Worry that was not needed. Yes, she was doing fine. Yes, she didn’t need to get an allowance anymore. No, she was not dead or dying.
She had spent almost two years in the hut in the middle of the forrest at this point, and she was just, fine. She knew at this point how to make money by herself, after learning to make small potions, charms, and spells and the like. She was of course by no means a witch or spell-caster, but she had studied magic long before becoming a hermit so she was hardly incompetent. There was plenty of magic one could master even without naturally being born with it, at least if you knew where to look.
Every week the nearby town would have vendors set up their stalls for potential customers and there she would also be, not as a princess, but as miss Edda, the young magician.
It was fine, or well, it had been. A few weeks ago, to her sight dismay, it seemed like people had after all this time started to notice the missing royalty, and so the kingdom was informed of the princess departing.
“Secret princess hiding in your town?” The tabloids that Edda would see on her way to set up her stall had started to read soon enough after that. She would grimace a bit at the paper, she had been hoping, well expecting, for no one to care about that one princess taking her leave, but now the news were all over the place.
Funny enough it seemed like they really had to dig to find any even remotely recent paintings of her to use, because the pictures they eventually ended up using was painted over ten years ago. She wasn’t very fond of being painted, and people were normally not so fond of painting her either.
This day when she had been at the town no one would shut up about the missing princess, where were she? What was she doing? Why was no one with her? How had her looks significantly changed since her last portrait had been painted?
The questions went on and on, and sitting at her table during the had been like having the letters from the royal family recited at her on loop all around her. Which grated her nerves like nothing else. It was hard to say which question bugged her the most, the fact that they all still generally had the assumption that she was some halfwit who shouldn’t be allowed to roam around without a handler certainly was something that made her wanna scream. In contrast to that the questions about her appearance was almost comical. Outside of the fact that she was outside of the castle, there was no regard of her magical accomplishments or even what sort of magic she was doing, almost like everyone immediately forgot about that smidge of info, but oh boy was her appearance of great importance, apparently. Though she supposed it made a twisted sort of sense.
Harriet had always been made aware that she didn’t look like a princess was ‘supposed’ to look, it was one of the many reasons she had tried to escape the stupid title in the first place. Princesses was supposed to be dainty and thin, they weren’t supposed to look like they hadn’t slept in a week or have a double chin or the general chubbiness that accompanied it. And if they was chubby they was supposed to ‘carry it well’, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean, no one had ever made that clear to her, just that she apparently didn’t do that.
There was no one who cared what a weird magic woman looked like, what was important was that her stuff worked and she was competent enough, not if she could stand up in high heels.
She slammed the door to her hut in the woods in frustration and started to pack up her tings, until she noticed the flyer that she had accidentally packed down with her stuff when she was taking down her stall.
“Join the quest to find the missing princess! Calling all the princes and high class young men!” It read with bold letters. And under them, instead of a photo, this time a drawing of the princess Harriet looked back at her, her dark brown hair drawn back into a tight ponytail, her hands clasped tightly in front of her as she looked a the viewer with grey eyes full of fear and her face pale.
She crumpled the flyer and threw it in her trashcan. Couldn’t they just let her be!
There was a small knock on her door.
“We're closed!” She was too tired to talk to anyone else today.
There was a short silence before the knocking came again, this time a bit more hurried than before.
“Go home! It’s close-“ she cut herself off as she started to feel familiar shaking in the ground.
The knocking came again even more frantic.
She shot a look at her clock, before she sprinted to open the door. She was barley thinking as she dragged in what seemed to be a small child inside the safety of her hut, away from the hands reaching up from the ground outside for it.
The forrest was very dangerous to be inside at night especially without any defensive charms to keep one safe, which was something she had expected everyone to know about around here, but evidently no one had told the child that had been slamming on the door.
She turned around to ask just what on Earth the child was thinking, but was shut up from the realisation that the person she had dragged in wasn’t a child, but a dwarf. A very young looking and completely dazed dwarf.
Shaking herself out of her surprise, she grasped the dwarf by his shoulders, and hunched down.
“What where you doing out there at this time, my good sir? You could have died! Have no one told you about the need for defence charms around here!?”
This seemed to shake the dwarf out of his stupor to reply.
“Hey, calm down miss! I was perfectly fine and I don’t need any charms.” He said, as if he hadn’t just been two seconds away from certain death.
“Those knocks didn’t sound like they came from someone who was ‘perfectly fine’, sir.” She said as she stood up and crossed her arms.
“Ah, well. You know.” He seemed to stumble over his words before he snapped his fingers. “I was just making sure you where safe from the monsters in these woods! It’s not very safe for a young lady to live in the woods by herself, you know.”
Edda rolled her eyes at his oblivious lie. “How kind of you sir. Is it because of that same kindness that you entered the woods in the first place?”
“Of course! I was told there was an young woman living here all by herself and I just had to investigate!” He had puffed out his chest in an attempt to look bigger, and them crossed his arms over it. “Like I said, this forrest is not a safe place for you to live.”
“Yeah I know, that’s why this entire house is covered in protection charms, and also why I find it so absurd that you would go into the woods it so late in the evening.” She said exasperated.
His face took on a sour look. “Well, I guess I’m not wanted here.”
Edda’s eyes widened as she stopped him from opening the door again. “Sir are you insane!? Those things are still out there waiting to tear you limb from limb!” She motioned at the window, outside of which the arms could be seen standing completely still (the only movement coming from wind making them occasionally wave a bit), waiting for their prey to leave the safety of the hut. “They will only disappear in the later morning, both you and I have to stay in here until then.”
He looked over at the window and then her. “Well if you’re so gracious to let me stay here, Miss, then I will.”
“Good, I am not in the mood to have a persons death on my conscious,” she turned away from him and wandered over to the small kitchen in the hut. “Please make yourself comfortable while I figure out what to make for food, sir...?” She turned to him again expectantly, she had yet to learn his name.
“Arthur, and what about you, Miss...?” He said.
“You may call me miss Edda, sir.” she responded as she started digging trough the cabinets for a wayward pasta container.
“Arthur, Miss Edda, don’t tell me you already forgot it?” He said, apparently having walked up to her during her digging.
“No i didn’t... Arthur, sir is just my default way to refer to men,” she said looking down at him (she could have sworn the voice was coming from higher up before...) “Now please let me make some food. I don’t know about you but I haven’t eaten since midday and I need to eat something now.”
They sat in silence a bit as she made the food. It was way more uncomfortable than she had expected and she could hear him seemingly fidgeting on the chair he had sat down on.
“So, Arthur, may I ask what your actual plan was when you decided to barge into a forrest and look for a young lady’s house at this time.” She was curious of what sort of thought process could lead to something like this.
“Had none, it was more of an instinct.”
“Not very good instincts if they send you stumbling into certain death.” She snickered a bit, starting to get over the shock of having to save a person from death.
“Then you’ve never felt the adventuring instinct! If it doesn’t send you into danger than you’re doing it wrong.” He sounded extremely confident over his words.
She just smiled to herself. “So you’re the expert on this huh?”
“Yeah! Basically. I may not look like it but I am a hero!”
Edda just exhaled a bit out of her nose at this, but didn’t say anything. Her guest seemed to take this as sign of disbelief and started to rattle of tales of his big exploits. She only half listened, occasionally humming and oh-ing at his probably over exaggerated tall tales, but it was nice to have some background noise. Nice enough for her to forget her current worries over everything in her life at the moment.
But then as they where eating the dinner however the topic of the missing princess came up.
“Weird that it was kept under wraps for so long, right?” Arthur said. “Makes you wonder why it was only brought right up now?”
Edda hummed more noncommittally than before, this was obviously the last thing she wanted to talk about, but of course it had to be brought up, the thing was everywhere.
Arthur didn’t seem to notice though, as he kept thinking out loud over the whole thing.
“Why would you let a princess out into the world without any protection at all in the first place? Anything could happen to her, how can they even be sure that she’s still alive?” And so on, at some point Edda just completely zoned out.
After dinner Edda went on trying to cobble together somewhere Arthur could sleep, piling whatever spare blankets, pillows and cloths. Arthur expressed a want to help, but Edda was not comfortable yet with having him dig around her stuff so she just had him help carrying the things she found, which seemed to work just fine with him.
Soon enough she found herself wishing the dwarf a good night as she went to bed herself. Closing the door to her bedroom behind her, she pulled her hair out of it’s bun and switched from her work robes to her night gown. And once in bed, finally alone with her thoughts, her paranoia started to spark up over the whole thing. The idea of having a self proclaimed “hero” at her home at a time when young noblemen and princes were drafted to search for princess Harriet felt a bit iffy, but she pushed the thoughts back. The dwarf clearly had a bit of an ego, so he would have probably told her that he was a prince or nobleman if that was the case. What if he tries to tattle her out for the fame? Her mind asked, she pushed this away also. For that to be the case he would have to find out about it, and it was not like she would let him do that in the first place. Also, it wasn’t like she hadn’t had people sleep over before. It was going to be fine. It was going to be fine.
It was going to be just fine.
All things considered she slept pretty well after that, or at least she did until she found herself awake in the middle of the night.
Thirsty, drink, her brain ordered, and her body sluggishly followed. Unlocking the door to her room and following the wall to get to the kitchen in the pitch darkness. Man, she really needed to just put some water in her room in the case of emergencies like this, she couldn’t see a damn thing.
Feeling the cabinet that was opposite the kitchen sink she carefully turned herself around with her arms stretched out in-front of her. And then she touched something.
Something warm, alive and tall. A human.