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dreaming-of-the-end · 10 months

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middles, endings, and other things that start at the beginning

A/N: Happy Kotlc Pride Month! thanks to @kotlcpridemonth now we have June 24: Fairytale. Hekster! I tried something new :] if this doesn’t make sense, good! you’re reading it correctly.

[ao3]

Summary: "Go away," Sophie whispers to her hopes and dreams. Perhaps they are of freedom, but no one in this godforsaken town has experienced the fulfillment of a wish in over a century. This is not something to reach for. "You're making this so much worse."

TW: there’s blood mentions, and mentions of violence and such but nothing serious

Taglist: @steppingonshatteredglass @sunset-telepath @melanie-schmelanie @stardustanddaffodils @song-tam @turquoise-skyyyy @skylilac @wu-marcy @saintashes @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @cadence-talle @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @gay-otlc @confuzzled-fox @almostfullnerd @athenswrites @synonymroll648 @squishmallow36 @xanadaus

(the storybooks predicted this. they begin, 'once upon a time,' an end that has already occurred. can you feel it? feel the change coming? feel the end becoming a beginning again? it begins with once upon a time. dream the story. feel it drifting around you and form it into names, lives, loves. what is her name?)

Her name is Sophie.

(what's next?)

Sophie Foster unsheathes her sword.

(and...?)

Sophie Foster unsheathes her sword and hacks into the vines spreading from their thicket into the grassy field. It is a defensive war, one she has been fighting since the beginning. Every year, a new crop of soldiers are handed swords and assigned to vine duty.

Stop them from spreading, read their instructions, and nothing else.

By now, she can probably be called a veteran, which means the days are all the same and she's begun to name the vines just for something to do. Steven, Nancy, and Reynaldo are her current least favorites.

(do you get it? the vines are the stories. the thorns are the words. she must stop the end before it begins. you see it, now?)

The sun attacks the back of her neck like it's bored of today, too. The soldiers don't need armor for this job, so at least it beats guard duty. That's the only positive, though, with this task that is simultaneously mind-numbing and incredibly dangerous.

All they do, day in and day out, is drive their blade into the hungry plants that creep forward, greedily snatching for ankles. Sophie thinks jealously of how Fitz is a teacher instead of a soldier, which means he gets to wrangle children instead of hyperactive flora.

Not that it seems like a more enjoyable option. It's not like he can stab them if they're too annoying.

Sophie stomps on another mischievous vine and beheads it.

(by framing the task in this way, she pretends she is important. she pretends she is beheading a dragon.)

"Aha!" shouts the triumphant hero. In this moment, she is transformed. The sun is no longer a bored foe but cresting her head to light up her golden-streaked hair. Her loose white shirt becomes a silken cape flowing in the breeze, the sheath on her waist holding a sword so polished and intricate it would be a pity to use in battle. A streak of blood slides down her cheek from a close call with the dragon's razor-sharp talons. Her arms do not ache to lift anymore, and standing is not a chore.

Heroes, after all, do not tire, or flag, or want more.

(if she wants to go blind, this is a good idea. she does it, however, not to go blind, but to tell the time. it's not exactly counting down the minutes, but it will do.)

And then she is Sophie again, letting the tip of her blade sink into the soft soil, even though she knows that will dull it. She swipes sweat from her forehead and feels the premature wrinkles formed there from squinting into the sun so many times every day.

She doesn't know, exactly, where the vines come from. Sophie was born into a world where the vines were there, and a previous generation of soldiers were the ones keeping them back. She learned and trained to fight as a soldier in whatever wars were necessary, and instead she's here. Because there aren't any other foes, aren't any other wars.

She is a wall in a battle where the enemies are made to find cracks and slip through them. That may, in fact, be their only purpose.

Being a nuisance, that is. That's their purpose. They're like if Keefe Sencen was condensed into a long, green, skinny plant and lost the ability to speak.

"Heel!" Sophie orders the vines. They shoot forward twice as fast, and she's forced to take evasive maneuvers to swipe them away before they wrap around her calves and engulf her completely.

(in this story, the plants are the predators. the plants are the story. get it? she is the prey of the story. she has to fight back, to end the end before it finds itself back at the beginning. don't ask for clarity. she certainly doesn't understand the metaphor, and she's the protagonist.)

"You should be trained, somehow," she says helplessly, and the vines seem to laugh at her. "It's not funny."

She's gotten into this habit, talking to herself. Weaving stories out of nothing to pass the time. It's not counting minutes, but it'll have to do. The plants don't care, and they definitely can't hear her, but they certainly feel sentient. Sometimes they seem more animal than anything else.

Sophie cuts a few more vines away before they can spread further, then wonders for the millionth time why a more permanent solution hasn't been found yet. Like fire. "You guys are flammable, aren't you?" Perhaps they (as in, the leaders of the village) figure they need something to foster a steady fear and paranoia in the villagers, since the outside world sure can't be accessed around the thicket that surrounds them.

The thicket means no access to the outside world. If it were gone, there would be new enemies to fight. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

She's heard that sometimes, soldiers become too impatient, too angry, and cut too far in. But as soon as they take a step too far, they fall asleep. And then the vines devour them. The witnesses spreading those stories didn't dare try to rescue them.

Taking that risk sounds more and more appealing with each hour spent under the baking sun. Sophie's uniform is a billowing white (although it's more gray now) blouse tucked into black pants. Long sleeves, even though it's light material. It's sweltering. Heat stroke inducing. Sometimes the thirst is so bad she has to physically pry her tongue from the roof of her mouth with soiled fingers.

(as we approach a turning point in the story, pay close attention. when is the moment she makes her decision? why does she make it? she does not know, but perhaps you can.)

Sophie feels that tug in her stomach again. The tug of wanting, she's begun calling it.

"Go away," she whispers to her hopes and dreams. Perhaps they are of freedom, but no one in this godforsaken town has experienced the fulfillment of a wish in over a century. This is not something to reach for. "You're making this so much worse."

She squints up at the sun. (does it burn her? this is for you to decide, not her. it is never her decision.) It's hidden behind gray clouds, but the heat prickling up her skin doesn't fade. If she gets a sunburn again, she's quitting her job (as if that's an option).

Maybe she should have become a teacher like Fitz, or a healer like Keefe, or a dancer like Linh—even though that last one would have been impossible with Sophie's two left feet. Even Dex seems to have it figured out, brewing his potions and inventing new miracle devices that never make a dent in the thicket. He has a goal, at least, even if it is entirely unattainable.

The thing is, this wanting has only gotten stronger over the past few years. The closer she gets to the vines, the tighter it pulls. Wherever she goes, she can find her way back to the edge of town with her eyes closed.

At twenty years old, Sophie is running out of time to make a decision.

The decision is this: to have her dreams or to follow them. To find freedom in death or lose herself in boredom.

She's certain she'd like to continue living, but the urge to go into the vines and find what thorns are there to prick her strengthens until, honestly, she doesn't see the point of killing more of them. They will return. She will be engulfed.

(here it is. the turning point. but also the beginning, a return.)

So Sophie Foster hacks into the vines spreading from the thicket into the grassy plain and takes too many steps for safety.

Sleep drags at her eyes, but it's not nearly as bad as night shifts are (and the dark circles under her eyes have been spreading steadily lower in the last few months anyway) so she keeps walking. Hacking away at the vines. They whisper around her. She answers them.

(entering and killing the story at the same time. letting herself be stung by the thorns. letting herself be scraped and battered by the beginning itself. she would not understand this metaphor because she is living in it.)

Soon, her arms ache too much to continue slicing at the vines. She drops her sword on the ground and lets the thicket swallow it. But she keeps walking, and discovers that as soon as she stops fighting them, the vines part to let her pass.

Even so, thorns scrape lines across her face, stinging her palms and ripping through her sleeves and pants.

Crunches sound beneath her feet, and without looking, she knows they're bones. Maybe animals unfortunate enough to brave the thorns, only to be trapped. Maybe they're people like her, who felt the thread of wanting and didn't trust themselves to stay awake.

Maybe that is the difference between them and her. The willingness to never sleep. To traverse time like an ocean.

(a crucial part of the hero's journey is the struggles it takes to reach a destination. what is her destination? the ending, or the beginning? has she found the struggle, the toil, the challenge yet?)

Sophie's breaths come in pants. It feels like she's been walking for days, but when she squints up at the sky, only a few hours have passed.

"Stop laughing at me," she mumbles. "Fucking... wants. Vines. I hate both of you."

(she does not yet know that these two things are the same. The roadblock and the motivation. The cause and the effect. The instigator and the anchor.)

"You want to see me fail. I bet I'm gonna emerge from this oversized bush and be back where I started. Some kind of sick joke is what this is. I can't believe the world hates me. The world hates me so much that it forced me to go into the fucking death plants that also hate me, and now they're just prolonging my misery. Thanks, guys. I guess I still haven't learned my lesson, since I'm still walking. It might be spite driving me. (perhaps.) Doesn't matter. You're still just as annoying..."

Her voice trails off as she quite suddenly plunges out of the thicket and into a clearing, almost stumbling with the sudden change from vines trailing across her shoes and tripping her up to empty air.

"Oh." The small sound is swallowed in the expanse of the image in front of her.

(another turning point. did you see this one coming? the point of a beginning is to not know the end— unless, of course, that's where it starts.)

Sophie wipes at a trickle of blood on her forearm, suddenly aware of similar wounds all over her body. The truce of the plants wasn't true, then. She turns to scowl at them, and finds that there is a clear-cut line of where they begin and end.

It's a border, a wall, formed perfectly. The one back home was in disarray, uneven, messy, half-chopped and half-expanding. She hopes someone has been sent to take her place as a soldier. Maybe one day they'll follow her path. Maybe they will become bones crunching under the feet of the next person to reach this place.

This... castle.

It's a deep blue, spangled with stars. It glimmers in the bright sun, a brilliant gray up on the turrets. Purples glisten near the bottom, wreathed with clouds that are down instead of up. Sophie looks at the sun and doesn't squint. Birds circle one tower in an endless circle—hundreds of them. She can barely make out a window through flashes of lavender stone.

It's a night sky during the day. It's impossibility. It shouldn't exist. It is, perhaps, magic.

(it is a story, and she has escaped it. now this is real. why has it become real as soon as the magic becomes clear? again, there is no answer. if there was, you could not find it.)

Sophie moves forward, and the drawbridge lowers to allow her to cross a moat that rings the castle. When she peers down, the water is crystal clear and run through with bright blue. Brightly colored fish dart from one patch of sunlight to the next, scales flashing in a practiced pattern.

Sophie frowns, feels the wrinkles come from constant stress and constant sun deepen. But she keeps walking.

The gigantic double doors open before her.

(it's about the journey, dear. what's the destination?)

Still, she keeps walking.

She doesn't bother calling out to anyone inside. She knows where she will find them: asleep, slumped over whatever they were doing when whatever magic this is came to be.

She knows where she will find the wanting, too.

(for once, Sophie understands what will happen. she knows the ending but not how she will get there. you know the beginning. she knows the end. all that's left is the rest of the journey: first motivation, inciting incident, then turning point, then struggle, and another turning point. what is left?)

And there she is: a woman wasting the days, the decades, away. She's dancing on the table when Sophie finds her, twisting back and forth with an invisible partner, not caring whether her feet land on polished wood or air.

Around the table are chairs occupied with the sleeping members of the castle. Some snore gently, but most sleep in silence, like the dead.

Sophie watches her miss the table and step directly into open air. But she doesn't fall, instead stepping further into the air and resuming her dance in a hover. She wears a pink dress, and it floats around her legs just as surely as its owner.

The woman doesn't notice her. Sophie clears her throat.

There's a beat, a pause, and the woman's magic stumbles. She tumbles to the floor with an oof, hands cast out wildly to break her fall. "Holy shit," the woman breathes.

The wanting is so strong Sophie thinks her heart will be pulled out of her chest and torn open right in front of her.

(here it is: the culmination. the destination. the purpose. the pull.)

She looks up, and Sophie is there with a hand outstretched, mouth pressed tight together to keep from blurting out something stupid like a marriage proposal.

The woman takes her hand. Her fingers wrap firmly around Sophie's wrist and let her pull her onto her feet. Her eyes are a blue so deep it almost crosses to purple, and freckles trace her cheeks and the top of her pink mouth. Her hair explodes from her scalp in a shower of brown curls, softening the sharp edges of her face.

"Who are you?" the princess (this is what she must be) asks.

"My name is Sophie. Sophie Foster," she adds, as if it matters. Dumbly, "What's yours?"

The princess pulls her hand away (loss) and ignores her question. "Did you wake up?" Desperate hope threads through her eyes, trembles in the veins of her hands. Her fists clench, flex. She casts a glance toward the comatose assembly around the table. Two of the adults seated near the head wear crowns. They are, Sophie assumes, her parents. The king and queen.

"I was never asleep," Sophie answers. Although this, of course, isn't true. She didn't know it before (possibly she had never truly known anything until this moment) but she was sleepwalking through life. Only with this castle of night does she feel alert, like she's in less of a dream and more of a life.

(what has she discovered? does this mean this is the end? is this a story or a dream? if she wakes up, is the story over?)

The princess deflates. The light goes from her eyes. She steals another glance at the table, and then back to Sophie. "I'm Stina, then. Don't bother with any titles. I haven't had to use those in one hundred years."

Sophie blinks. Perhaps this is a dream. She pinches the inside of her arm, but nothing changes. "One hundred years?"

Stina's lips twist to the side. "I look good for my age, don't I." She sighs and slumps to the floor, her dress expanding around her. Sophie is conscious of her torn and bloody uniform as she sits next to her. "That's when the curse was placed. A century ago, almost exactly."

"Curse?" Sophie decides she hates magic. But also loves it. She's never quite been certain of her feelings on anything, and this is no different.

(take note of this indecision. what choices are easier for her to make? which are impossible?)

"Indefinite sleep if I prick my finger on a spinning wheel," Stina explains glumly. "Except she missed. And it got everyone except me, but now I'm stuck at twenty years old forever."

"Can't curses be broken?" Sophie considers age gaps a very inconsequential thing. Perhaps she was traveling through those vines for a century. It certainly seemed that way. That would make them the same age, and therefore if she looks too long at the other woman's lips, it can hardly be a problem if they are both centuries trapped in decades' bodies.

"Sure. Only, the fairy who did it didn't mention how to fix mine." Stina snorts. "Typical. Fairies are always difficult like that."

Sophie nods in agreement, even if her only encounters with magic thus far have been the vines, and now the woman in front of her. Fairies. What assholes.

(Sophie is finding new perspectives on life. namely, homosexuality. is this a new story? or is she still on a journey?)

"But you're awake," Stina remarks, quirking an eyebrow. She picks at the lace on her skirt. "How are you doing that?"

Sophie shrugs. "I don't sleep well. Insomnia."

Stina, to her surprise, laughs. It's a harsh sound, sudden, and it breaks apart the silence. One of the endlessly circling birds caws, and Sophie wonders if it's been trying to escape the tower for a full century, or if it only recently got caught. "Neither do I," the immortal princess says.

(is this something they should be finding in common? did the fairy miss, or was Stina simply too stubborn to fall asleep? she is stubborn, although it may not be clear from this interaction. this is a moment stretching time, holding dreams in its palm.)

"Or..." Sophie considers, tilting her head to the side. "I could be immune to magic." Her hair has fallen out of its tight braid by now. Wisps and locks of wheat-blonde hair fall around her face in a short bob, and she brushes them impatiently from her eyes.

"That's not possible," Stina tells her. "Magic isn't a disease. It's not something you can be immune to. It just... is."

(what is it? what else "just is" and how do we know it can't spread? perhaps more things are diseases than we think. perhaps magic is a sickness. perhaps it is the cure.)

"Have you ever tried to leave the castle?" Sophie asks. Her eyes sting in phantom pain of the sun. There must be a new soldier at her post by now. Maybe they will find her sword in the thicket someday.

Stina hesitates. "Yes. Of course."

"So you've seen the vines. Have they let you through?"

She scuffs her fingernail along the ground. "No."

"They let me through," she says. "And I'm awake. And I'm not in a vortex."

"Vortex?"

"The birds."

"Oh, them." Stina sighs. "It seems we're all caught in cycles these days, doesn't it?"

(just a bit of humor. come back to the beginning, why don't you?)

Her name is Sophie.

(what's next?)

Sophie Foster unsheathes her sword.

(no, that was another joke. she doesn't have her sword. continuity is important in stories that don't have beginnings and ends, because even if no one is supposed to understand them—especially not those living them—there still must be something to fall back on. like empty hands. and magic. tropes and cliches are especially helpful.)

"It does," Sophie says, and remembers how it once felt to sleep. It now occurs to her that she hasn't slept in one hundred years, and she also was born twenty years ago.

Perhaps she isn't immune to magic. This place might be driving her batty.

"Yes. Maybe. Well, I couldn't tell you. But it's worth a try, isn't it?"

"So you're immune," Stina says, and she might be sarcastic (it's never been very easy for Sophie to tell) but there's a hint of something different. Something interested. Something sincere. Something desperate. "To magic."

"What is?"

Sophie's eyes widen. "I thought I already said it. Maybe I can break your curse, is what I'm saying."

(what is she saying? that she has a resolution to the conflict? maybe she still has to decide whether the conflict is the curse, her wanting, or something else entirely. maybe she's one of the ravens in the vortex. maybe this is a daydream, and she's still standing in front of those vines playing make believe. but that's just not realistic— in the village, Sophie was still fighting stories, not making her own.)

Stina's face drops, and she twists to look at the figures around the table. "Don't make jokes. It's been a century. Do you know how many books I've had to read just to be absolutely sure there's no way to break it? I've boiled rat blood and painted it on the highest point of the castle. I've plucked hairs from bats' wings. I collected the bone-dust from the lowermost dungeon and buried it in the garden. There's nothing, not even you."

"I'm incredibly funny," Sophie says, "but I don't think jokes are meant to give you false hope."

"Are you a joke?"

"I'm feeling a lot of hope right now, and I really don't want to." Stina takes her hand anyway. The pressure of her fingers is soothing, but also terrifying. Suddenly, it feels like expectation, and Sophie regrets suggesting anything at all. Softer, resigned: "I'm touching you, and my parents are still sleeping."

"Are you laughing?" Sophie searches Stina's eyes for something that she can't name. "I think the wanting knew I could help you. I think it led. Mr here for a reason."

Stina looks at her like she doesn't have to ask what the wanting is because she feels it too.

"I think, maybe, I'm just guessing, that we have to... I don't know, I've read a few books. Not many lately, haven't had time, but I know that these things work because of... you know, this whole place is magic, so maybe it goes by fairy tale logic anyway, and I never believed in fairy tales before I met you anyway but we're here now and we might as well try, so—"

"What," Stina asks in exasperation, "are you talking about?"

"I think we have to kiss?" Sophie says timidly, lifting her palms in an exaggerated shrug.

Stina stills. Her gaze flicks down to her lips, then back up. Like she hadn't considered it before, but now she can't do anything but consider it. Sophie would know, because now all she can think about is kissing her.

(resolution, perhaps, can only occur when the conflict is clear. here, we have another issue of motivation. why does Sophie suggest this? to save her? to break the curse? or just because, well, she traveled all this way and she'd like a little kiss for her efforts?)

(maybe Stina is just really fucking hot.)

"Okay," Stina says.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

They sit there. Sophie shifts to sit on her knees and discovers that upright, she's still the same height as Stina on her butt. Height, she has learned throughout her life, intimidates her. So she's left rocking back and forth in front of her, hesitating. She's always hesitating.

"Just fucking kiss me, man," Stina says, and grabs Sophie's cheeks to bring her closer. Her thumb traces the underside of her chin and trails down her neck. Sophie gulps.

(think back to that first turning point. why did Sophie consider staying in the village? why did she want to stop walking and let the vines engulf her? maybe because she's scared. maybe because she doesn't want the change goodness would bring. she doesn't want the story to end, and therefore to begin again.)

"Maybe this isn't a good idea," Sophie says, and Stina moves her head back an inch. Is that disappointment? No more reaching for dreams, for wantings, even if this desire sits heavy in her stomach like a stone on fire. Think things through. Don't just go into the vines. "What if you lose all your magic? The... hovering. The immortality. Maybe you'll start aging, or it'll all speed up and you'll be one hundred years old in body, too."

Stina laughs, and her breath is warm on Sophie's lips. "Shit, Foster. I find that after one hundred years, I don't care. I want to see my mom and dad awake. That's what this is for. The magic... it can be a nuisance anyway."

Like the vines. Like Keefe, Sophie thinks wildly.

(see how the story is circling back in on itself? the words twist together into a tangle. into a thicket. we are back in the vines. the vines are the castle. the castle is the story. sophie is the story, but she doesn't know she's telling it, and she doesn't know she's being told. don't think too hard, and you should be fine. that's what Keefe does, and he turned out great!)

"Okay," Sophie says.

"Oh, we're not doing that shit again," Stina says. She kisses her.

(this is where Sophie finds the wanting.)

(she finds the story, in other words.)

Stina's lips find her greedy, coming too close, hands bracing themselves on her jawline, noses bumping, fingers tracing cheeks and necks and shoulders. She hasn't interacted with another conscious person in a century, hasn't been kissed in that time, hasn't wanted to.

Sophie takes the greed, the hunger, and absorbs it. She feels awake for the first time in years. Stina kisses her like Sophie is the curse and she's trying to break it. She probably wouldn't mind being broken by someone like her.

A bell clangs from somewhere deep in the castle. Grunts and delayed snores sound from the table, and a single plate clatters to the floor as the attendees of the dinner jerk to consciousness. There are murmurs, then shouts of confusion.

Stina doesn't pull away.

So this is how her parents see their daughter after a century-long nap: making out with a random girl in torn and bloodied peasant clothes on the floor of their great hall, center of thousands of political battles, marriage ceremonies (decidedly between men and women), and even the occasional war or pissing contest. Perhaps this would be offensive or disrespectful if the king and queen had not had their first kiss in the same room, possibly even more scandalously.

"Stina?" the king asks, his crown askew on his head.

They break apart. Stina's cheeks are flushed, her lips slightly swollen and reddened, hair even messier than before the kiss. Sophie is sure she must be in a similar state. Hastily, she stands and bends into an awkward curtsy, almost tripping as she backs away.

Stina, however, doesn't look embarrassed. Instead, tears spill down her cheeks as she launches herself at her father, landing in an embrace that is sure to last another century.

(This is the end, the culmination. The beginning: a name, a woman, a sword. The ending: a kiss, an awakening, a reunion. And another beginning: more kisses, a rose, maybe a crown. The wanting, the begging, the dreaming, the freedom. Sophie holds it in her hand and swings it like a sword, hacks into the vines spreading from their thicket into the grassy field. It has been a battle since the beginning, no matter where you start the story.)

(Call this a story or call it a dream. It finds the same ending, the same awakening no matter the name, no matter who tells it. Sophie finds herself in a fairytale that she has been a part of since the beginning of the battle, of the war. What was the enemy? Maybe it was herself, or the vines, or the magic. Maybe it was the goddamned birds and the cycles we find impossible to break.)

(Maybe Stina is just really fucking hot, and Sophie needed to kiss her.)

(That's probably truer than any of those other things.)

Once Upon A Time,

the end.

#kotlc pride 2023 #kotlc pride month #summer's writing #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #sophie foster #hekster #stina heks #fairytale au #alternate universe #kotlc au #3/4 times keefe is mentioned it's to make fun of him :]

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