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“You don’t write enough,” Eugene says in lieu of a greeting.
“Well, hello to you, too, Fitzherbert.” Eugene flaps his hands impatiently, as if to say, yes, yes, you’re hilarious, now can we get back to the topic at hand? Cassandra rolls her eyes. She stops sharpening her sword and looks up at him, squinting against the sun. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the way our princess perks up like a puppy every time someone knocks on her door, and the way she deflates when it’s me and not the messenger with one of your letters. I’m going to get a complex.” When Cassandra’s eyebrow ticks up he says, hastily, “A very cute puppy.”
“She hasn’t said anything to me.” Cassandra slashes the air with her sword, testing the weight in her hand.
Eugene gives her a look. “Oh, because the two of you are the model of clear communication,” he snarks, which gives her pause.
The first time she and Rapunzel kissed had been on Cassandra’s second return to Corona. Cassandra had barely gotten her foot out of the stirrup before Rapunzel was launching herself into Cassandra’s arms and kissing her hard in the middle of the courtyard. It was only the years of catching Rapunzel in hugs that moved her arms, that coached her to brace herself on a step backward, to place palms to small of back and shoulder blade. It was the same years spent wondering, longing, hoping, that moved her mouth, almost dream-like, in response.
When Rapunzel finally eased away, alighting on the ground in a kind of stupor, it was to Cassandra’s shock, and her face, flush with happiness, had slid suddenly into sheet-white horror.
“Oh. Oh gosh. I’m―I just, I saw you and I just―I really should have―,” she said, words stringing together in a jumble. “Can I―I mean, I guess I already―would it be okay if I―I already―” and Cassandra had cut her off, giving Rapunzel a much more intriguing reason to be unable to form sentences.
(Still, when Cassandra pulled away, it was to stare wide-eyed at Rapunzel, and then at the rest of her welcoming party behind her, forgotten in all of the excitement. Eugene had been at the forefront, dabbing theatrically at his eyes with a handkerchief and sniffling loudly for her benefit, which earned him a sharp punch to the arm, and earned Cassandra a loud “ow!” in return.)
Even prior to the kiss, it had always been Rapunzel extending the first hand, impatient but uncomplaining, waiting for Cassandra to meet her halfway. That Cassandra had put their first real ‘I love you’ into the world was special, unprecedented – it had shape, took up space in the universe, and Rapunzel’s answer had shifted, tender and careful, to wrap around it.
The truth is, even now, when Cassandra thinks back to the letters Rapunzel sent―tucked carefully away in one of Fidella’s saddlebags, so that if Cassandra ever got in a tussle, they would not be in danger of being soiled―the ‘I miss you’s are few and far between, as though Rapunzel wouldn’t allow herself even that small catharsis, afraid it might push Cassandra further away.
They never really had the time to talk, that first time Cassandra had spirited away on her adventure. And now, Rapunzel seemed always to be tiptoeing around making any requests of Cassandra, probably worried they’d sound more like commands, or become impositions.
(It had bothered, for a time, when they’d wordlessly agreed to try redefining boundaries. When Rapunzel turned absentmindedly to her left to comment on something and found that Cassandra was not where she expected her lady-in-waiting to be. When Cassandra stared expectantly at Rapunzel and waited to be heard.
Now, Cassandra is at Rapunzel’s side because she, resolutely, wants to be. Now, Cassandra is heard because Rapunzel listens. They try.)
She feels stupid. “I don’t write enough,” Cassandra repeats, slowly, her mind flipping through their every interaction, looking for other instances where Rapunzel had been too afraid to speak her mind. “And I’m taking relationship advice from you of all people,” she says in horror. Eugene drops into the seat beside hers.
“You wouldn’t need to, if you two would just talk.” Eugene crosses his arms, shaking his head and laughing. “You’re already freaking out and Sunshine hasn’t even shown you the ring yet.”
There’s a full ten seconds where neither of them make a sound, before they start yelling at the same time.
“What―”
“―Oh my god―”
“―is wrong with you―”
“―please don’t tell her I told you, why does this keep happening to me―”
The pulse between her ears drowns out the rest of his pleas, and Cassandra blinks down at her sword, unseeing. In her peripheral, Eugene opens his mouth to say something else, but she turns her gaze on him wordlessly, and he shuts it. Distantly, she registers the expression akin to fear that has overtaken the desperation on his face.
They sit in silence for what feels like several lifetimes to Cassandra. The sun is hanging lower in the sky by the time either of them move, when, eventually, her muscles unlock one by one. She takes up her whetstone and begins to slide it mechanically up and down the length of her sword again.
“You all right over there?” Eugene’s voice is cautious, and she hears it as though from underwater.
A block of ice has made its home inside Cassandra’s chest, pumping cold, icy terror through her veins. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Eugene says, “okay. Well, first of all, do you want to put your sword down? ‘Cause Cass-with-a-sword is already scary, and I don’t want to find out what Cass-with-a-sword-after-hearing-really-big-scary-news might do.” With difficulty, Cassandra unclamps her hand, and Eugene snatches the sword away before it can even touch the ground. “I’ll just take that.” He shoves it into the arms of one of the guards doing drills in the courtyard and shoos him away hurriedly. “What are we thinking right now?”
Cassandra is quiet for a while. “It’s not―being with her isn’t what scares me,” she explains. “That’s―” she exhales noisily, “―that’s the only part of this whole thing that’s always made sense to me. It’s just ...” Her voice tapers off, and she swallows, before whispering, “I don’t know if I’m ready to give it all up yet, to―to tie myself back down to this castle again.” But Eugene’s already shaking his head before she’s even finished talking.
“You know she’d never ask that of you. Not the way I asked her.”
Cassandra looks away. “Eugene ...”
He smiles sadly. “It’s okay. Better than okay, it’s what’s right. Point is, she’d never force you to make a decision like that. She’d sooner ...” He throws his hands up into the air, casting about for some appropriate offence. “I don’t know, kick a puppy, before letting herself do that to you.”
Cassandra chokes out a watery laugh, and it’s a mark of how sincere he’s being that he doesn’t rib her for crying. “What’s your obsession with puppies?”
“I don’t know,” he says again, “probably has something to do with the way she looks at you,” and Eugene does tease Cassandra for the blush that rushes immediately to her face.
Sure enough, when Cassandra knocks on Rapunzel’s door later―after she’s had a mild panic attack and the chance to calm down―it’s like a fire has been lit under her; if Rapunzel had a tail, Cassandra thinks it would be wagging. She tries not to feel too pleased at that.
They spend their spring afternoons at the Lost Lagoon. At this time of year, the water is just warm enough to swim in, and they go as often as Rapunzel’s duties as the princess of Corona will allow. The thought of the proposal takes a back seat to more pressing matters, like making the most of her time together with Rapunzel.
On the last night before Cassandra is due to leave, a lunar eclipse graces the Seven Kingdoms. It’s Cassandra who slips through the sleeping castle’s hallways, avoiding the creaky stairs and loose floorboards she and Rapunzel had identified long ago, Cassandra, who knocks on her door. And it’s Rapunzel who answers it surprisingly fast, as though she’d already been up, lying awake in bed.
Cassandra says, loftily, “Think I need to get out, clear my head.”
Rapunzel answers her playful smile with one of her own. “Say no more.”
The moon glints faintly red in the sky, and the trek across the kingdom, usually filled up with Rapunzel’s chatter, is almost completely silent. As they approach it, the glow of the lagoon precedes even the sound of its rushing waterfall, and when they look down on it from its sloping coast, it winks blue back at them, like one great, big opal.
They wade in together, disturbing the creatures of the lagoon, the water blazing brightly in their wake. And as the night winds down, and the eclipse comes to an end, Rapunzel crowds in close to Cassandra and kisses her like she had that first time.
Theirs is a good system: when Cassandra has the time, she writes a letter, detailing which town she’ll be in in several weeks’ time, so that Rapunzel will know where to address her answering letter.
Rapunzel doesn’t ask her outright to write more, just as Eugene had implied she wouldn’t, but they try.
Cassandra isn’t much of a writer, is barely capable of listing the places she’s been, the things she’s done. Each letter she sends seems, to her, little more than a barefaced entreaty, a poor substitute for what she really wants to say: you would love this, I think you’d really feel at home here, you would suit this so well.
I wish you were here, I wish you were here, I wish you were here.
But she tries.
I miss you becomes I can’t wait to see you again. The difference is not huge, Cassandra thinks, but it settles in her chest all the same each time she catches it, warm and glowing and there during cold nights camped under the stars.
Over the years, Cassandra has made the occasional trip to one of the neighbouring towns on business for the crown, and crossed borders with retinues of Coronan diplomats to discuss foreign relations and trade with the other six kingdoms. Rapunzel has even accompanied her on some of these trips, introducing herself and Cassandra as the princess of Corona and her advisor during the day, and slipping into Cassandra’s room at the inns they stay in at night.
Once, with Rapunzel cradled in her arms after a particularly long day on one such trip, she’d asked, “Advisor?”
And Rapunzel, streaked in moonlight, had answered, honestly, “You are. My most trusted one.” Then, in a voice smaller than before: “Is that okay?”
It was. And, by the time Cassandra had set off on her next journey, leaving Rapunzel behind at the castle gates with a quick kiss and an “I’ll be back”, it was ink-and-paper official.
Nothing really changed, as Rapunzel had assured her it wouldn’t, except that now there were a lot more people in the castle expecting her to weigh in on matters of policy whenever she was in town, which she still finds a little strange.
More inconveniently, there were a lot more people who were suddenly very interested in her movements outside of Corona.
They’d been incredibly, amazingly lucky on their journey following the black rocks across the Seven Kingdoms. They’d sustained only little scratches here and bruises there and, once, a serious sprain that Eugene had moaned about for weeks and weeks on end.
Rapunzel didn’t get sick, and in the past she’d always had her hair to heal away any pains. Cassandra thinks that’s why she’d worried herself sick over Eugene’s ankle, over every tiny cut and injury Lance and Max, or any of the rest of them sustained as they crossed dangerous forest and wild jungle. Why, even now, Rapunzel holds her right hand in a grip as gentle as flowing silk, fingers trailing like hesitant raindrops over her knuckles and the life line still cutting a strong crease across Cassandra’s blackened palm, pooling at the place where life and fate meet.
It’s why, when Cassandra arrives in the castle courtyard, in tattered clothes cut to ribbons and with blood matting her hair, slumped over Fidella and barely holding on to consciousness, Rapunzel lets out a scream so horrible, even Cassandra hears it through the fuzz in her head as the ground comes up to meet her.
When Cassandra wakes, it’s sluggishly. She crawls into consciousness, wading through dense cotton and plunging with terrible suddenness into reality and a body wracked with pain. Even the luscious blankets, piled a familiar purple around her, feel like sandpaper against her skin, and it’s all she can do not to cry out.
She drags her eyes open, shutting them almost immediately when even the sunlight streaming past the curtains proves too much, but not before catching sight of Rapunzel standing across the room, whispering quietly to someone at the door. Automatically, Cassandra’s muscles loosen.
The door creaks as it swings shut, and then Rapunzel is settling by her bedside with a small huff. The room is still for but a moment, and then Rapunzel says, “Cass?”
“How―” Cassandra coughs, and Rapunzel is swooping in with a shallow bowl in the next moment―the water trips, rather than slides, roughly down her throat, but it’s sweet and cool and slow, and Rapunzel doesn’t let a single drop spill―and her voice comes just a bit easier out of her throat “―how’d you know I was awake?” Cassandra eases her eyes open again, slower this time, until at last Rapunzel’s face comes into view.
She holds the water up, waits for Cassandra to give a minute shake of her head, before she sets it down on the bedside table, saying, distractedly, “I don’t know, your breathing, something changed,” and missing the way Cassandra melts into the bed. Rapunzel sits back, but leans as close as her chair and the bed frame will allow, her hands pressing into the bedclothes. Even before Cassandra has made to move, and only just after the thought has entered her brain, Rapunzel says, “Don’t try to sit up, you’re not supposed to move. It’s a miracle you’re awake at all.”
Cassandra spies the little desk at her side, laden with paperwork and several candles burned down to the quick. “How long have I been asleep?”
“You’ve been in and out for the last couple of days.”
Cassandra breathes in sharply in surprise, then whimpers loudly when her ribs protest. Rapunzel jerks into motion, her hands moving frantically in the air above Cassandra, careful not to touch as she shushes her, voice low and comforting. With effort, Cassandra stills, taking slow, shallow breaths, eyes scrunched tightly shut, and Rapunzel guides her through a breathing exercise with exaggerated inhalations and exhalations of her own. The pain leaping across Cassandra’s skin shrinks to embers once more. She relaxes and opens her eyes again, lets her mouth curl into a wry grin. “What’s the prognosis, doctor?”
The smile does not soothe Rapunzel. She fidgets with the blankets. “You have three broken ribs, a broken hand and a sprained knee, a pretty serious concussion, and cuts and stab wounds all―all over,” she says. She recites the list like she has it memorized, clinical, as though it would rend her apart if she let it, but the emotion slips into her voice near the end. For the first time, Cassandra notices the deep purple smudges under Rapunzel’s eyes. She says, again, “All over. What happened out there, Cass? In your last letter, you said you were almost home.”
“It was just a little misunderstanding. You should see the other guys,” Cassandra jokes, electing not to tell her about their political motivations for now. Rapunzel sends her a stern, almost-glare. In a couple days, she’ll probably blow up at Cassandra, but at present she’s probably too worried, and Cassandra probably looks a little too pathetic to scold. The lagoon, she thinks, will likely have to wait this time around.
“You―” Rapunzel stops, looking away. There’s solid frost lining the windows, and they provide little distraction from the abruptly heavy atmosphere in the room, so her eyes gravitate to the bedside table instead. Cassandra’s gaze follows, landing on the water dish before settling on her handmaiden’s bonnet, folded up neatly beside it. It’s been carefully cleaned and, Cassandra is relieved to note, looks no more savaged than she’d once left it, in her old bedchamber in the servants’ quarters so long ago.
Rapunzel glances furtively back at Cassandra, at the bandages plastering her face and neck, the places where the blankets protrude unnaturally, hiding the splints holding Cassandra’s body together. From this angle, Rapunzel is all sunlight, and the fire has not left her eyes, scorching trails over Cassandra’s limbs and burning firmly and finally on her face. “You really worried me.”
It’s an admission she doesn’t allow herself too often, Cassandra knows, afraid that it will push Cassandra away rather than ingratiate herself with her. Cassandra shifts to inch her arm across the bedspread, reaching out to trace a finger over white knuckles, over and over, until at last Rapunzel’s hands unclench from where they’ve wound themselves tightly into the blankets, and she holds Cassandra’s one good hand between hers―grasp now gentle―like she’s something precious. Her shoulders fall with a sigh.
“They had to clean your wounds and reset your bones, and you’d wake up in the middle of it and―” She shakes her head. “It was terrible.”
“I’m okay,” Cassandra reassures her. “I’m here. Everything’s fine. It’s going to seem bad for a while, but I’m going to heal.” She gathers the strength to squeeze the hands holding hers. “I’m going to be fine.” Rapunzel nods along to what she’s saying, staring intently at her, her lips pursed. She slumps a little in her seat when Cassandra takes her hand back, but brightens again when Cassandra pats the space beside her on the bed.
“Oh, Cass, I don’t―” Rapunzel begins, but Cassandra hears the eagerness in her voice and smiles, interrupts to say, “Come on!”
Rapunzel is careful when she climbs into the bed, and she tries hard not to jostle it, but every movement is a lance in Cassandra’s side. She grits her teeth against the cries threatening to escape her mouth, and Rapunzel stays completely still beside her while she breathes through the pain. Eventually, it calms, and she reaches out to tug at Rapunzel’s collar, urging her closer. Cassandra turns her head to place a kiss at the corner of her mouth when she’s near enough to reach, and Rapunzel gives her three in return.
She blows out a breath, smiling when Rapunzel’s hair falls into her face. Cassandra says, conversational, “I don’t remember any of that.”
“You were a bit loopy,” Rapunzel agrees, laughing as she tucks her hair back behind her ear, warm breath tickling Cassandra’s collarbone, her fingers following the curve where it dips. “Between the pain and the stuff they gave you to help, you weren’t making very much sense.”
“I didn’t say anything, did I?”
It’s slow, the process by which Rapunzel’s face turns pink, setting her freckles off prettily. She presses her lips together again. Cassandra groans.
“I am never getting hurt again,” she says. Rapunzel gives a startled laugh, the bed shaking with the force of it, but Cassandra hardly feels it – all of the blood in her body is sitting hot in her face. A delirious thought occurs to her―later, she’ll blame it on that, or the medicines still clouding her senses―and Cassandra wonders whether the ring is hidden in this room somewhere. Whether she should hurry up and find one to match. Silver, probably.
“That sounds good to me.”
There’s a summer she can’t make it back to Corona, and Cassandra writes Rapunzel to wish her a happy birthday, releasing her own lantern into the sky from a little village off the coast of Koto, watching the sun set on another year, the moon rising to take its place.
In the next town, she receives an envelope containing a single pressed red hibiscus flower, of the kind that grows near water.
Rapunzel doesn’t know this, but there’d been days when Cassandra had been only a stone’s throw away from Corona proper. The Moonstone would shiver and spark where it sat on her chest, reacting to the proximity, and Cassandra would look up at the castle and think, as she had so many times before: this place is not mine.
On those solitary nights, Cassandra had gone back to the lagoon, following the jagged black rocks that littered the kingdom, glowing by the light of the moon and her presence. She would trail them through flush forests and down secret, serpentine paths, until she reached the place where they shot up straight into the air, as though some great, invisible barrier would not let the rocks come any closer, would not allow them any more than to circle the water along the sloping beach. As though they could not bear to touch.
And, try as she might, Cassandra couldn’t bring herself to desecrate the place, either. She wonders now if it would have mattered. She wonders if it would have worked at all.
She thinks, Ours.
The lagoon in fall is too cold to swim in, so they take a little wooden boat out onto the water, leaving the horses behind near the tree line.
It’s been months, now, since Cassandra has left Corona for anything more than short, ambassadorial visits to towns a day’s ride away. Rapunzel is getting antsy – Cassandra sees the anxious look in her eyes each time she sets off on Fidella, the way she stays in bed every morning to watch Cassandra wake up, as though each one might be the last.
“There’s a trip coming up in Galcrest in spring,” Rapunzel is saying, unpacking their bags for a late lunch. “To learn more about their customs and what they do to prepare for the cold, now that winters are getting a lot chillier in Corona since the Sundrop left us. Also,” Rapunzel adds, “a member of the royal family hasn’t visited since my dad was my age, so he said I could go!”
Cassandra smiles at her. “That’s great, Raps. I haven’t been to Galcrest yet, either.”
“Maybe we could go together? They’re going to prepare for our arrival, so we could meet up at the beginning of spring.” Rapunzel clears her throat, casual. “Or, if you stick around Corona for a little longer, we could set out together.”
“We can leave Corona together.” Rapunzel’s hands slow for a moment, and Cassandra expects she’s doing the same mental math Cassandra’s already done: if she stays, it means she’ll be in Corona for almost another half-year.
“Okay, good!” Some of the excitement Rapunzel was trying to suppress earlier leaks into her voice. “The journey itself will take a couple weeks, and then we’ll probably stay there for a few more weeks after that. I have to get back to Corona after, but you could stay a little longer. There’s a lot to do, and we probably won’t get a chance to see much of the kingdom while we’re there.”
Cassandra hums. “Maybe. Maybe we can visit again another time, during winter. I’ll join you on the trip back to Corona.”
“Oh.” Rapunzel doesn’t lift her head, but, this time, her hands stop in their motions rooting through their bags. Cassandra has long set aside the oars and, for a moment, the rhythmic lap of the lagoon against the boat is the only sound that disturbs the silence. “Oh, so do you have any plans afterward?”
A grin finds Cassandra’s face. “Trying to get rid of me, Raps?”
“Never,” Rapunzel answers seriously, and despite herself, Cassandra’s stomach does a flip. The smile on her face softens just in time for Rapunzel to see it when she finally looks up, her expression careful. “I’m just trying to understand when that’s going to happen anyway.”
It’s honest, not meant to be hurtful, but Cassandra feels instantly bad for how on edge Rapunzel has probably felt, waiting for Cassandra to announce she’d be leaving again. “I’m so sorry, Raps.”
Rapunzel sits up immediately, the boat pitching in response. “Please don’t be! That’s not what I―” Her mouth clamps shut. She says instead, “I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. I love what we have, what we’re doing, and you―” She looks around wildly, her eyes catching on the food, “―you set all of this up so nicely. We should just have a nice picnic, and forget I said anything.”
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Cassandra says, setting the things on Rapunzel’s lap down and taking her hands in hers. Rapunzel freezes, looking up at her with a resigned sort of dread on her face. “I’m sorry you feel like you can’t talk about this sort of stuff with me.”
“I just don’t want you to feel trapped here,” Rapunzel whispers, “and I don’t want to be the reason.”
“Not possible.” Rapunzel gives her a doubtful look, and Cassandra laughs. “I know, I know, but you do everything you can to make sure of it. You’re the only reason I don’t feel that way.”
Soothed, Rapunzel looks down at their hands with a tiny smile. And it’s unconscious, it must be – but the way Rapunzel flips Cassandra’s left hand in hers, the way she swipes her thumb fondly across the base of the finger where a ring might sit, sets Cassandra’s heart to racing.
Oblivious to the effect she’s having on Cassandra, Rapunzel says, “Good. That’s all I want, for you.” She looks up, letting her smile broaden with a sigh. “So, what’s next after Galcrest?”
“Well,” Cassandra says, “is there anywhere you need me to go?”
Rapunzel frowns, says, “No, not for a while.”
“What about you?” Rapunzel tilts her head in confusion, and Cassandra feels awful all over again for letting Rapunzel believe she doesn’t matter in their relationship. “What’s in the future for you?”
“My ... parents want me to get more involved around here.” She eyes Cassandra strangely. “I think they’re actually going on another vacation after we get back, so I’m going to be acting queen again.”
“Then I guess as your advisor, I’ll stick around to ‘advise’ you,” Cassandra says. “You’ll probably need some help, and I’m not sure I trust Lance and Fitzherbert with that.”
Rapunzel looks lost again. “Cass, I ...”
“Would that be okay?”
“Of course, if that’s what you want, but ...” Rapunzel shakes her head. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything. I haven’t been doing anything. What do you want, Rapunzel?” At her bemused look, Cassandra moves as close as the boat will allow, sliding out of her seat to kneel in front of Rapunzel, their hands held up to her chest. “What do you want?”
“I ...” Rapunzel shakes her head again, eyes shut tight, her brow furrowed and face flush. Her fingers fidget with Cassandra’s, agitated, and she says, “I want what you want.”
Cassandra smiles, heart pounding. She thinks back on the years they’ve spent together, the freedom Rapunzel has offered, the patience and forgiveness readily doled out.
She thinks about the love that climbed walls and swam lagoons, that burned bridges and bled black and blue.
She says, “I want you in my life. I want to be in yours.”
Rapunzel stares. She’s still but for her hands, trembling sweetly in Cassandra’s, eyes bright and wondering. She hesitates, says again, kindly and all in a rush, “I love what we have, I really do, and I don’t want to ruin that. I don’t want to―I don’t want to make you stay when―”
It’s a familiar song, the feeling sat full and warm in the cage of Cassandra’s ribs; it thrums inside her chest, underscoring the beat of her heart. Like water, it washes over her spine and up her arms, moving Cassandra to lean in, and she kisses her, swallowing the rest of Rapunzel’s sentence.
It’s gentle, the simple touch of mouth to mouth – it’s as much as Cassandra can bear. Rapunzel’s lips shiver beneath hers, her breath shuddering past them in puffs of white smoke that curl around the two of them before disappearing. With a shaking hand, Cassandra cradles her face closer, Rapunzel’s cheek autumn-cool beneath her fingers.
Sunlight pours into the basin of the lagoon, gathering in the water and rendering their corner of the world in shades of orange and green-blue. Rapunzel shudders under her touch, a delicate thing, all quivering muscles and twitching fingers, gilded in sunset. She holds herself tightly, shoulders hiked halfway up to her ears, as though to allow any more than this, than the pliant press of lips and hands, gentle―still so very gentle, even now―against Cassandra’s, would be to invite disaster into this moment.
Cassandra pulls away, waiting for Rapunzel’s eyes to flutter open, warm green against the steel and burnished gold of late-afternoon autumn. Rapunzel is still, not moving even to breathe. There’s something not-quite disbelieving in her expression, curious and full of hope, and Cassandra’s heart sings.
Knelt in front of Rapunzel, she says, “If you asked me to, Raps, I would.” And it’s simple, so simple, and easy, and right, when she takes Rapunzel’s hand in hers, and brushes a tender kiss over fourth knuckle and finger.
An audible breath fills Rapunzel’s chest, and a smile breaks like the sun across her face. The laughter starts soft and slow, tickling Cassandra’s cheek where Rapunzel has moved in close, her forehead pressed sweetly to Cassandra’s temple. It grows and grows in the space between them, expanding outward so that, by the time Rapunzel throws herself into Cassandra’s arms and they tumble backward―Rapunzel landing on top of Cassandra where her back hits the bottom boards―her laughter is ringing across the water in great peals, the sound floating through the air like church bells against the stained-glass backdrop of the rippling lagoon.
The boat rocks precariously beneath them, stirring up little waves that splash up the sides and onto their faces and clothes; it threatens to tip over entirely, but then Rapunzel sweeps Cassandra into a kiss, and they pay the water little mind.
In winter, the lagoon is silver.