Mallory Riesling ✴ Maleficent (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} evilsmistress) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} thereincarnates,@ 2016-11-03 10:18:00 |
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What: Even villains can have happy endings too. Sort of.
Where: Stull city, outside of Camelot
When: Evening, one day before the ball
Warnings: TBD
Everyone knew the story of Daniel Morgan and his peasant born consort. The story of the sleeping prince who couldn’t be woken up except with true love’s kiss, and against all odds, that kiss had come from a commoner. People couldn’t get enough of that story, they ate that shit up, but it wasn’t even the whole story. No one really knew the story of Mallory Riesling, the daughter of the woman who had put Daniel Morgan under that sleeping curse in the first place. Nobody knew how that same villainous woman who had wreaked havoc on the kingdom of Camelot so many years ago, she’d had a daughter who she then abandoned at a still fairly young age, before she’d put the sleeping curse on the future king of Camelot.
Mallory had been left with a fairly well off family, the wife of a baker opening the door one morning to find a small child tucked into a basket on their doorstep. Mallory would later be told time and time again how grateful she should be because they had chosen to take her in instead of handing her off to an orphanage. That they hadn’t had to take her in and raise her as their own, with two other daughters already, that Mal was just lucky she had a roof over her head. If you could call it that, anyway, considering she usually slept by the dying embers in the fireplace to keep warm at night despite the gaping hole in the kitchen ceiling over her head. It was still somehow less drafty than her bedroom in the attic, especially during the winter.
The truth about her parentage wasn't discovered until much later, after Mal had been living with the baker and his family for years and was already approaching womanhood. It was discovered long after the rumored sleeping prince had been awakened, and the sorceress who had put him under the spell slain. Many said that when she'd been defeated, she had managed to turn herself into a dragon before being stabbed in the heart by a sword of truth and falling over a steep cliff. Not everyone believed it, but it was such an uncommon thing that when Mal started showing signs, her guardians got suspicious. An imperviousness to fire, sprouting scale-like skin along parts of her body when she was angry, and the occasional, unexplained mishap in the house that could only have been of sheer magical will, whether unintentional or not.
Eventually, Mal discovered the truth about her real mother, the truth that the baker and his wife had tried to hide from her, once they had connected the dots. Once Mal knew, that truth only made things worse for her, at home, trapped in a situation where the people who kept her very clearly didn’t want her, and they also didn’t want anyone to know about her. So, unwanted and unloved, Mal was forced to stay in a house that wouldn’t see her stay or go, and sleep on the floor by the fire to keep warm at night, a growing hatred and resentment in her heart. All she wanted was to be free of them, to go out on her own and not have to live by someone else’s grace. She wanted to learn more about her mother, about the gifts Mal herself had clearly been born with, and maybe one day even get revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death.
But right now? Mostly, she just wanted to get revenge on the people who had taken her in, and their bratty little daughters who had made Mal’s life a living hell every day of her life for the last sixteen years, as of today. It was Mal’s birthday, you see. She didn’t actually know what day she was really born, and neither did the people who had raised her, so Mal had made one up, even if it never got celebrated. Today was her birthday, tomorrow was some stupid royal ball in Camelot that her “step-sisters” couldn’t stop talking about, and all Mal wanted for her birthday was to burn everything down to a cinder. Instead, after all her chores were done she had made an escape to the outside for some fresh air that evening, and to get away from the noise, taking a seat in the grass and attempted, for maybe the five thousandth time, to make a ball of fire in her hands. She’d only accidentally managed it the once, and it had flickered out as quickly as it had appeared, but Mal was determined. She was going to be something other than someone else’s servant. All she could really make happen were a few sparks, though, and Mal grunted in frustration. “Damnitt, come on.”