Part Thirty-Three

The princesses dressed and headed to breakfast to find they were the first to arrive. One of the kitchen maidens told them breakfast would be ready soon and asked if they wanted a snack before then. Nodding happily, the maiden cut up some cheese and fruit and they sat at a small table in the corner nibbling on cheese and apples.

"Georgie?" said Blue but her sister did not hear her. "Georgie? Helloooo?" She barely blinked when her sister waved her hand in front of her face. Georgeanne had brought up a piece of cheese to her lips and bitten off a corner. She still held the cheese near her mouth, but she was blindly chewing the piece she had bitten off as if in a trance.

Blue clapped her hands together loudly.

Georgeanne blinked her eyes, her hands - cheese and all - falling into her lap. "What was that for?" she asked slightly annoyed.

"There you are," said Blue. "I'd been calling your name, but it was as if you were somewhere else." The look on her sister's face seemed embarrassed, and she went back to eating her piece of cheese. "Are you all right?" asked Blue. "You seemed a little weird earlier, too."

She arched an eyebrow in curiosity. "Weird how?"

"I don't know," said Blue. "With everything that's been going on, I'm not sure what's weird and what's not." Her face grew stern in concentration as she said, "Do you suppose there's an acceptable kind of weird?"

"If there is," pointed out Georgeanne, "then there's an unacceptable kind, and I wouldn't care to think of what that might be like." Her sister nodded in agreement. Picking up a piece of apple, she looked around the room. "I wonder where Aggie and Devon are."

Just then the Queen walked in. She didn't see the girls at first, and from where they sat, she looked positively menacing. The girls were familiar with a similar look, but that was usually when they were sneaking out of their rooms and doing things that they shouldn't be. The look on the Queen's face, however, was much more than that. She looked as if she were up to no good and then some, and it made them both a little queasy. The Queen finally spotted them and walked over. "What are you doing?" she asked. "What is this?"

"One of the ladies in the kitchen asked if we'd like a snack while we waited for breakfast," said Blue.

"Would you like some?" offered Georgeanne trying to be polite.

The Queen looked down at the platter and turned up her nose. "Couldn't wait for your father and I to arrive?"

"It's only a snack," said Blue. The Queen glowered at her, but Blue didn't budge. "There isn't even that much on the plate to begin with." The girls looked up at the Queen, and she seemed so irritated with them that she could spit... or worse. Georgeanne thought she saw her mother's hand tense as if she were about to strike Blue when their father came in.

"Hello my dears," he said greeting the three of them. "How are my sweethearts doing?'

"Fine, Father," said the girls.

"What do we have here?" he said looking at the platter. Georgeanne picked it up again and offered it to the King. He scooped up a piece of cheese and a slice of apple. "Thank you, m'dear." Crunching on the snack, he looked at his wife. "Are you all right, darling?" he asked her.

Georgeanne saw her mother's hand slowly relax and couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if their father hadn't walked in when he did.

Part Thirty-Two

The sun shone through the window alighting the two princesses asleep in bed. Georgeanne was the one to wake first. Blue lay curled in a crescent moon on the other half of the bed. Georgeanne slipped out of bed and stood before the window taking in the warmth of the sun's rays. Her eyes then drifted to the mirror, something about it she couldn't let go.

"Georgeanne," Blue called from the bed, and her sister turned from the mirror and window to look at her. "You okay?"

She let out a breath she had no idea she'd been holding, and her body relaxed some. "Yes," she said. "I'm fine."

*******

The Queen stood before her mirror admiring her reflection as she was wont to do. She had dismissed her ladies after they had finished dressing her so she could be alone. Recent events spun through her mind with no logical answer as to why they had happened. On the surface everything appeared to have a resolution, but the explanations did not sit well with the Queen.

There was another answer. She knew it. She felt it in her bones.

*******

From someplace unknown, Aggie sat watching her daughter as she slept. Her emotion from the night before, although genuinely felt, worried her. There was an underlying rage that she had never know her daughter to have before. The heat of anger emanating from her grew almost to the point of scalding. They managed to calm her down, and eventually she grew tired and they put her to bed. Aggie herself couldn't sleep after seeing her daughter in such a state. Eventually she just got up and watched over her all night.

Devon walked in, saw Aggie playing mother hen and asked if anything had happened. "Not yet," she said though she had a feeling something would happen and soon. She watched her daughter, thought of the two little girls somewhere in the castle, and prayed that nothing bad would happen. But her daughter had come back changed somehow, and this part of her own little girl worried her and also frightened her some. She tried not to fret on it too much. It twisted her insides making her stomach ache.

But still, she couldn't help but feel she needed to prepare for something.

*******

Her dreams took hold. Nothing solid - more feelings mixed with a smattering of images. She caught glimpses of her life from before...

... before it was taken away from her.

She thought of her girls which filled her with a light that warmed her soul. But then the girls brought memories of her - the woman that took them away from her - and that light grew dim until it extinguished into something black and bitter.

Her body twitched and tensed until an angry heat jerked her awake.