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“Thanks for walking me home Kris.” were the last words that Susie uttered before she tumbled down into Castle Town. As she fell, Susie thought about how Kris had been so accepting towards letting Noelle into the Fun Gang. At least, they seemed accepting in the moment. Now that she thought about it, Kris had seemed a little Jealous. Over the entire course of today’s adventure, Kris had flinched a little at every mention of Noelle. Maybe this whole thing might take a little more convincing…
“Eh, that’s for tomorrow morning.” Susie said as she landed in castle town
“What was that?” asked the nerdy, and fluffy voice behind Susie.
“Nothing, what’s up Raly, uh, Ralsei!”
Ralsei nearly tackled Susie with a hug before letting go after a full 10 seconds.
“Nice save” Ralsei mumbled into his hand as he laughed.
“Hey! It was like, the only thing I heard for the last 6 hours, so I’d like to think I have an excuse”
“You know I don’t really care, it was just the tone of his voice that made me so…”
Ralsei lost his train of thought before staring at the ground.
“So, uhh, I want to talk to you about Noelle.”
Ralsei jumped in surprise.
“Oh! Of course, anything happen today that you want to chat about?”
“No, no, nothing like that, that’s for later, I wanted to talk to you about giving Noelle a room here. I can’t just keep her out now that me and her are a, uhh, thing.”
“Well, If its what you and Kris want, then I suppose we could let her stay in Castle Town!”
“Yeah, about that, we haven’t really-”
“Haven’t what?”
Susie took a few seconds to think, looking anywhere but Ralsei’s eyes
“Susie?”
“Haven’t uhh, told her yet! Yeah, we going to need to tell her in the morning.”
“Really? Then we could set up a welcome party for Noelle!”
“Great idea! We could have it be Christmas themed, since that’s like, her thing.”
“Sure thing!”
The two walked off towards the rest of town to start planning and setting up decorations. After delegating the decorations for the rest of town to Queen and Lancer, Ralsei and Susie began to set up Noelle’s room.
They decided that the general layout of her room would be similar to the others, except hers would have snow, Christmas lights hanging around the perimeter of the room, shelves with Christmas memorabilia, an angel dress to hang on the wall, and of course, the Christmas tree.
“So, uhh, now what?” Susie asked
“What do you mean?”
“Where exactly do we get all of this stuff?”
“Well, I can use magic for the snow. We just need to check the supply closet and hope we have spare beds, closets, and christmas decorations.”
“Sounds good.”
The supply closet was conveniently inside, right next to the entrance of the castle. It would be perfectly out of view to anyone viewing the inside rooms castle from an angle facing north. The two had no idea why Kris had never taken a trip inside of it. Its not like they never saw it.
As the awake members of the fun gang entered the supply closet, the scale of the closet once again shocked Susie. If she hadn’t been it last night while helping Ralsei with his room, she would have nearly fainted – again – due to how long this was going to take. The supply closet had multiple floors, each nearly the size of the church. If you squint your eyes, you could barely see the ladder to the lower floors between the mountains of boxes.
Susie sighed, making a point to let everyone within Castle Town know the trouble they were about to go through “Almost forgot how massive this closet is.”
“Yes, I used to use this to study and practice magic in here, but ever since we started recruiting other darkners, we needed the space for building materials and all of the little things they brought along with them. Now, we just need to head down to Level C…”
“Heh, still can’t believe you went through the trouble of alphabetizing all of this. You really are a nerd!”
“Hey! I’ll have you know that a well-organized storage system can positively impact the sustainability of any civilization!”
“I never said it was a bad thing…”
Ralsei look down, embarrassed “Oh, I’m sorry, I got a little carried away. It’s just that storage systems are one of the most heavily over looked-”
“You know what is a bad thing? Rambling. Lets get this over with, I don’t wanna spend any more time looking for this crap than I have too”
Ralsei simply nodded, embarrassment once again settling into all of his features and thoughts.
When Ralsei and Susie arrived at Level C, the only thing greeting them (that they could see) was the mountain of clothes that they had brought back from their journeys.
“Nope, not doing this one.” Susie turned back towards the ladder and climbed back onto it.
Ralsei immediately interjected “What do you mean ‘Nope’?”
“I mean, this ones on you. I can’t do this one. I’m not allowed.”
“What?!”
Susie then clambered down the ladder. A minute later she showed up with a can of bright blue spray paint and a length of rope. She then sprayed out “Susiez aren’t allowed” on the wall
Ralsei sighed, and looked down at the floor, defeated. “I suppose that you can look for something else while I look for the tree, and lights.”
Susie pouted “Ok fine, but while I’m here…”
Susie takes the rope and ties herself to the yellow closet that was conveniently right by the ladder.
“I’m gonna take this up to Noelle’s room.”
“Are you sure you can handle that?” Ralsei jumped. He was already preparing heal prayer.
“Psshh, I got this!”
Susie began to climb the ladder at a snail’s pace, taking 15 second long breaks in-between every rung to take deep breaths.
“Are you sure you can do this Susie?!” Ralsei was visibly shaking from the anticipation of a fall
“Yep! I… got… this.”
When she finally reaches the top, a wall colored panel falls down, revealing an elevator that would have been useful 10 minutes ago.
“Ok” Ralsei exhaled.
Ralsei turned around, let out a deep sigh, and began to dig through the mountain of clothes for anything Christmas-related.
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After tossing aside nearly all of Addison’s products, a whole stash of costumes from TV World, and some priest outfits, Ralsei had finally stumbled upon something, interesting, at the very least. He found an angel outfit, one like the dress that Noelle was wearing back in Cyber City.
He found the dress beautiful. Its silky-smooth fabric was glowing, and the dark, textured accent fabric was perfectly woven into the main dress. It’s glow almost made it seem like an actual angel was coming down to comfort him. Ralsei jolted back to the present. it wasn’t the time to admire the beauty of the dress. He had found one of the first decorations he needed for Noelle’s room! but now, he kind-of wanted to try it on. It was conveniently his size, and its not like anyone was watching his every move.
The dress is on, and we all know that once a dress is on, you can’t take it off. At least, that’s what Ralsei said to himself. You can’t take a dress off unless there’s a very specific circumstance where someone shows up to verify that he was in-fact in a dress. As suspected, it brought him no mental gain. That’s also what he said to himself, but in reality he was smiling from ear to ear the whole time. He didn’t notice, but she did…
“Hey so I kinda felt bad so- wait why are you in an angel costume?!” Susie blurted
Ralsei panicked “I… um… I just-”
“I leave you alone for five seconds and you’re already dressing up?! Lemme join! I call that set of dragon wings over there!”
“Um… yea! I was just keeping myself preoccupied while there was no one to talk to! Now that you’re here, we should get back to work!”
“Aww man… It looked like you were having fun too!”
“I, um, what?”
Susie sighed, “I guess we should get to work.”
“Absolutely”
“First, I gotta fix something…”
Susie turned around and crossed out the “n’t” in “Susiez aren’t allowed.”
“Eh, good enough” Susie remarked.
Over the course of the next hour, the two managed to scavenge 20 feet of Christmas lights, a Christmas tree, and after taking a trip to Level S, some stockings and a Santa Lamp.
“No, seriously, where the hell was this elevator when I was dragging the closet back up the ladder!” Susie yelled
Ralsei didn’t reply, he just laughed into his hand. He was off in his head thinking about Noelle.
Back in Cyber City, he didn’t get to talk much to Noelle, outside of scaring her with the Roaring. All he remembered was how she looked and sounded. He remember thinking she looked gorgeous, not unlike how he thought the Angel dresses from the storage closet were beautiful.
“Who’re you thinkin’ about?” Susie smugly asked with a toothy grin.
“Huh? Um… No one!”
“Come on, spit it out!”
Ralsei sighed “It’s… nothing. I’m just confused, that’s all.”
“Uh, whatcha confused about?”
“Noelle”
“Dude”
“Not like that! I could never hurt one of you two like that. I just…” Ralsei took a shaky breath to get all of his thoughts in order “I just think she looked nice, but I’m not attracted to her, I can see that. It’s something else...”
“Well, what is it?”
“She just looked gorgeous in that angel outfit. I wish I could pull that off. I want to look like that. I wish I could be that.” Ralsei looked lost. Wherever he was, it certainly wasn’t with Susie, in the elevator.
Susie pushed off of the wall where she was leaning to kneel down to Ralsei’s level. She outstretched a hand to his shoulder
Ralsei flinched away from her hand. An unsure smile came over his face as he realized where he left Susie
“I’m fine with how I am right now!” Ralsei hurriedly added
As a single tear glided down Ralsei’s face as the ring of the elevator brought both back to the present. The elevator ring left a gap of silence between the two in it’s wake. Susie gazed into Ralsei’s eyes. He was smiling, but his eyes looked like a piece of him was missing. She hadn’t noticed it before – because she had barely been this close to him before – but this is how they’ve always looked: empty.
“Hey, you can alwa-”
“Well, I suppose we should get back to work!”
Ralsei wiped his face with his sleeve before bolting for the door
“Are you sure becaus-”
Ralsei looked back at Susie in silence, looking at her with a smile.
“Of course.”
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Everything was set up in Noelle’s room. The bed, closet, lights, angels, and even the tree, adorned with ornaments and bulbs. Ralsei’s spell book (somehow) had a spell to make it snow inside of Noelle’s room. After they installed the door, they just had to admire their work.
“Heh, I can’t believe we pulled this off in one night.”
“I suppose we had experience from my room last night…”
“Hey! Just let us enjoy this win!”
Ralsei and Susie inspected their hard work. Even if the angels are a little crooked, the Santa lamp has a few cracks in it, and the floor is slightly damp from the snow already, at least the room is exciting! The lights everywhere just make it feel alive, and the ornaments that you can see your own reflection in…
Ralsei looked deep into his own reflection in the ornaments. He found it, difficult to look at his reflection. He felt it just, didn’t fit him. He couldn’t pin point it down exactly. He hated it. He hated not being able to know how to fix it. He hated not being able to look himself in the eyes. Seeing himself in the reflections of the glass panes in the church was nearly impossible to keep inside.
“Hey, you doing okay?” Susie asked
Ralsei looked back at Susie, wiping away tears.
“Oh! Yeah I’m just… Yeah I’m just thinking. I’ll be… I’ll be in my room if you need me!” Ralsei yelled before sprinting back to his own room.
Ralsei threw the door open and slammed it shut behind him, tripping and stumbling over in the process. He couldn’t take it anymore, that talk with Susie earlier only made him realize how much he hated his body. As he got up, he looked at the princess dress that he had worn earlier for Kris. It was laying on his bed, waiting for his arrival, taunting him. He snatched it and curled up on the floor, crying into the dress.
He could never look how he wanted. He constantly felt like he was out of place. Most of the time people ignored him, so he was able to ignore himself. But recently, all he could think about was himself and how he looked. It was agony. He wished he could just rip himself in two and start with a new body. Anything would be better than this. Why had the prophecy felt like it needed to torture him? Was he not kind enough? Was he not thankful for his own importance? Maybe he wasn’t thankful enough for the chance to exist and see the places he has seen. Or, it just wanted taunt him. It wanted to see him suffer with that one simple word.
Prince.
That’s what the prophecy called for, anyway. It’s not like they could change it so far. Why should they be able to change it now? If only the prophecy had called for something else. Anything. Just not what he was, whatever that is. He could barely identify his own features. Outside of the ones that had the power to keep him wallowing in silence. What was he even supposed to be? He barely cared anymore. At this point, he’d rather not take part in the prophecy at all than have to stay in this hideous excuse of a-
“Hey, Rals, do you need to talk to someone? Or something? I just want you to know that I’m always here!” Said the familiar voice of his friend.
“Come in” Ralsei sobbed.
The door gently opened to reveal Susie, standing anxiously with a worried expression.
“Hey, buddy, uh… what’re you crying about?”
“Nothing important, just go enjoy the rest of preparations with everyone else.”
Susie noticed the pink dress, damp from tears, in Ralsei’s hands.
“Seriously, you know I can’t do that without you. For real this time, what’s wrong?”
Ralsei took a long, shaky breath before replying
“I hate this. I don’t know how to feel anymore, and I…”
Ralsei sunk deeper into the dress. Susie gently walked over to sit down beside
“I don’t like how I look, or how I feel. I just think that if…”
“If what?” Susie gently replied
“If the prophecy called for, a princess, instead of a prince. Maybe I might be happier. I think I would be able to look at myself in the mirror and not feel my heart drop.”
“Why can’t you just, uh, do it anyway? I mean, who cares what the prophecy said. Why would you let some stupid fairy tale dictate your happiness?”
“I thought that…”
Ralsei lost themself in thought
“Why don’t you show me how you look in that dress?”
Ralsei’s eyes were full for the first time since they met. “I… guess I could try it.”
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A little over 5 minutes later Ralsei was done changing into the dressing
“Alright… you can come in now.”
Susie opened the door and-
“Holy shit Ralsei, you look awesome!”
Ralsei was dressed up in one of the cutest dresses Susie had ever seen. The main dress was a bubblegum pink, with white accents for the design on the chest and pastel blue accents on the cuffs. The skirt’s bubble-like structure made the dress perfect for a figure of royalty like Ralsei.
“Do I? I don’t think so, I mean, look at it.” Ralsei, despite trying to hide their happiness, was grinning like he had just tried cake for the first time.
“Rals, this is the best you’ve looked since I met you.”
“Really?”
“Of course! Why don’t you wear this all the time!”
“Well, I just thought that… do you think I should?
“Why not?”
“Oh, well, if you insist.” Ralsei blushed the same hue as their dress.
“Do you like this more, being called a princess and stuff?”
Ralsei’s face lit up in realization. “I think… I do.”
“Oh no, I guess the prophecy is going to have to take a princess of the dark instead! Damn… that’s crazy...”
“I… guess so!”
“So, uhh, would you wanna just chill, for now? We can worry about getting everything sorted out, with you and Noelle’s party, tomorrow morning.”
“I think that sounds wonderful.”
“Nice.” Susie grinned – knowing that she had helped a friend become someone they could recognize – before walking back to her own room to grab some of her own clothes.
“And Susie?”
Ralsei quickly snatched Susie’s hand before looking deep into her soul, nothing but happiness on his face.
“Thank you.”