· when life gives you lemurs ; ruby & neal
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Ruby laughed as she looked across at Neal. “The confused bit.”
The brunette tilted her head back and thought of when to start. “Well I met Snow White when she was on the run from the Evil Queen. She was hiding out in our chicken coop during winter and Granny and I let her stay a couple of nights in our cottage —- it was Wolfstime so Snow and I decided we would hunt out the wolf and kill it. That way we thought that I would get to be with Peter.”
Still, it was hard for her to talk about Peter when it came to this story. She didn’t enjoy the reminder that she had eaten the poor boy. “We thought that the wolf was Peter. Only, we were wrong. I was the wolf —- and after chaining Peter up so that he wouldn’t hurt anyone I had turned and killed him. There was a hunting party out to find the wolf that night and Granny pushed Snow into taking me into the woods.”
“We became the best of friends. I helped her hide from the Queen’s guards and she helped me believe in myself —- that I wasn’t a monster. After I met my mother’s werewolf pack I killed my mother when she wanted to kill Snow. Later on we went our separate ways. I was helping out a village that were going under hard times —- and discovered the Queen’s Huntsman had taken all the silver from the village. The Queen was using the silver to get control over the werewolves.”
She sighed, “I attacked the Queen when I was in wolf form. The Huntsman saved my life —- and I ran off with a box I thought held significance to the Queen. Perhaps to stop her evil plan —- but the Huntsman followed me and told me inside the box was his heart.”
“He gave up his heart to protect Snow White – the Queen could use it to control him and make him do what she wanted —- and I gave it back.” She laughed as she moved her hand to her hair and batted it away from her face. “The Huntsman in my story was the same Huntsman from Snow’s story —- only I fell in love with him.” She pursed her lips and looked at Neal wondering if he had put two and two together yet. “Graham.”
Upon the mention of Peter, Neal raised a single eyebrow; as if the story hadn’t been confusing enough, yet another party was added, and he was trying hard to keep up with everything she was telling him. It didn’t take him very long to drop his confused expression and having it make place for compassion, however, as she spilled word about how she had killed Peter after chaining him up because she had thought he was the wolf. His eyebrows pushed towards each other. His initial reaction would have been to tell her he was sorry, but in stead he suppressed the urge in favor of keeping his lips tight-shut and letting her finish her story.
The story that unfolded was even more complicated than he could have imagined, and he couldn’t help but link it to several fairytales he’d heard over the years. There were similarities, traces of the truth to be found in children’s stories, but the truth was much more intense than those stories, and everything seemed to be tied together in the most complicated of ways.
When Ruby brought the subject back to the Huntsman, Neal had already figured out the point of the story; Graham was her Huntsman—he just didn’t know the details of how they had met. The actual story brought a slight grin to his lips.
“Well, if that ain’t love—”
What was he to say, really? It wasn’t the most pleasant story, but at least these two seemed to have a happy ending.
(Source: magicaedestruit)
