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she’d like to say she’s doing better, but she knows she’s getting worse.
everything sort of spirals before her eyes, most of the time. it could be the sleeping curse. it could be the weed. it could be one of a dozen pills slipped under her tongue just to see what they do, what they could make her feel.
she’d give just about anything to keep feeling. to escape her life. to escape her destiny, which bears down on her every day. it feels like she’s atlas, being crushed by the weight of the sky. (cupid would appreciate her metaphor.)
because that’s all destiny has become to her, now. a force looming above her, pressure increasing the more she tries to run. a storm drawing ever closer to the ground. a rosebush twining tight around her limbs, squeezing her to death. the thorns slice her skin everywhere they can reach and she falls asleep a hundred, a thousand times.
she always wakes up. she never wakes up. she wakes up in between the life she wants and the life she dreads, stuck in limbo forever. she’s not sure what’s worse- having the life she chooses, counting down the seconds until it’s snatched away, or to never have had it at all.
briar was cursed at birth. she was cursed before birth. she was cursed back when she was only an idea, a far-off dream inside her parents’ heads. she was cursed the moment she inherited the last name beauty. she was cursed decades, centuries ago, when the first sleeping beauty walked the earth and pricked her finger.
she hates sleeping beauty. she never wants to become her. she sees her as someone separate from herself, some soul-snatching entity that will wrestle its way into briar’s body upon graduation and force her into compliance. she’s two-dimensional, thin and dry as tissue, and briar could huff and puff and blow her right over. she can’t even imagine pushing and shoving all that she is into that paper doll persona. what would leave her, to help her fit into that miniscule space? she pictures her thirst for adventure leeching away. her exuberance. her boldness. her family, her friends, whirling away like stray drops of water down a drain. they were only blinks of an eye in her one-hundred-year story. they were never hers to keep.
sleeping beauty fucking sucks.
they say that it’s a gift to be part of a fairytale. they say that it’s the highest importance you can have. briar is a princess, a legend, a storybook. but who she will become is the worst version of herself. a damsel. a girl who lets life pass her by. a girl who things just happen to, instead of going out and making them happen. a girl who doesn’t make one single choice for herself, everything predetermined by her signature on a yellowed page.
briar thinks she’s the most important she will ever be right now. seventeen years old and overflowing with bright ideas, her enthusiasm for the world around her too much to contain within herself. she doesn’t say the right things and she doesn’t stay in her place and she’s always sort of high, but maybe those are the things she likes best about herself- the things that aren’t princesslike.
she’d like to say she’s doing better, but that’s a fucking lie.
she jumps out a tower window. if anyone asks, she’d say she fell, but she knew the risks and took it anyway. part of her wants to see if her fairytale will let her die (the story will die with her). the rest of her just loves the rush. she never hits the ground, instead tumbling into a prince’s arms.
she jumps off the roof of the stables. this one is lower-stakes. she wouldn’t die if she falls, just break a couple bones, maybe, if the angle is right. her unicorn busts through the side of the building before she gets close and darts below her body for a perfect catch.
she jumps off the top of a tree in the enchanted forest. apple sees her and all but passes out from the fright, managing to whistle for a flock of birds to grasp briar’s clothing and slow her fall to more of a gentle float.
she jumps off a beanstalk. she wears a harness, she’s not insane, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t loosen it a bit before she jumped. the rush is otherworldly, free-falling through endless blue, and she would stay forever if she could. when she hits the ground, she bounces.
briar calls it a newfound love for hextreme sports. she’s not lying, exactly, because everything she’s tried has been hextreme, and she has loved it. but she’s caught a taste for brushing the door of death with her fingertips, seeing how close she can get to the handle before her fairytale whisks her out of reach. she’s obsessed with seeing what’s on the other side. would it be better than her endless sleep, or would it be the fucking same? she has to find out before it’s too late.
when she’s not jumping, she’s tripping. anything she can get her hands on, she’ll try at least once. when she needs to take the edge off, she goes to sparrow. when her limbs feel too heavy and her heart starts to ache, she goes to kitty. kitty’s pills taste like wonderland, like colors cascading over her tongue and shapes glittering before her eyes that she doesn’t have the words to describe. everything tumbles headfirst into a rabbit hole and ceases to matter. it’s her favorite place to be.
briar on her highs is the life of the fucking party and then some. her eyes are too bright, but they’ll excuse it as dance fever. her smile stretches almost as tight over her face as kitty’s, but they’ll say she’s just excited. she dances until everything pressed upon her shoulders loses its grip and falls away. just for the night, but the reprieve is worth it.
no one throws parties like she does. no one dives headfirst into life like she does. no one kisses like she does, with reckless abandon, anyone who smiles at her just right in the peak of the evening. she loses herself in the taste of anything but blood, the scent of anything but roses.
and you wouldn’t believe how put together she remains in the real world. she goes to all her classes and if she sleeps in them, it’s her destiny, so it’s okay. (it’s the hangover. she swears it. it’s not the achingly sweet fairytale sleep that coats her like a fog and pulls her deeper each time.) she’s in a dozen different extracurriculars. she keeps up with three circles of friends and eight little brothers. she does it all, because one day she will not have the option anymore.
eventually, this existence she has carved for herself screeches to a halt. the storybook that she hasn’t yet signed is a fake, and the real one is out there somewhere, and she is overcome with an overwhelming need to find it first. she doesn’t know what she’ll do if she does. rip out her page, like raven queen? write herself a new story over the top of the old one? burn the book to ashes so everyone is set free?
she refuses to believe they will die if she does so. she may not have cedar’s lie-detector glasses, but she sees the way milton grimm’s eye twitches every time he brings it up to raven. she sees the set of his jaw, the effort he pushes into making every word that passes through his lips sound just this side of true. she knows because she does the same. (no, of course i didn’t jump, i fell. i only took one pill- i swear. i’m going to be sleeping beauty one day. why would i ever want anything else?)
speaking of cedar’s lie-detector glasses…
the puzzle pieces snap into place.
a half hour later, briar has the real storybook of legends in her shaking hands. she holds her future. she holds her prison. she holds something people would pay millions for. something people would kill for.
briar considers opening to her page. it makes her sick. seeing it would make it real, and she doesn’t want it to be. she doesn’t want to see the two-dimensional paper doll that the world wants her to become.
so she throws it down the fucking wishing well, because if she never signs, then she’ll never be sleeping beauty. she’ll never lose the people she loves, and the world will be loud and bright and endless, and every choice laid out before her is no longer predetermined. she can make the wrong ones. or the right ones, if she likes, but those are never quite as fun.
she’d like to say she’s doing better, and maybe now she’s telling the truth.