10:2
Dead silence followed Rapunzel’s statement and then there was an outburst of sound as everyone tried to talk at once. A wave of emotion burst around the table, threatening to knock Gwen’s hair back. Metaphorically. It really threatened to make her chest explode. She had to scramble to build a second wall around her Magick to hold back the flood.
Ben froze with his fingers a scant inch from the cards he’d moved back to trying to snatch and rocked back on his heels. Kim, eyes wide, stared at Rapunzel then grimaced at Ben and indicated with her eyes he should get his ass back in his seat.
“Are you saying you are God, Goldy?” This from Patti who shifted her jaw mulishly.
Prairie blinked then blinked again as she fell back against her chair. “What?”
Gwen placed her hand over her heart then moved them to her forehead, quietly calling on the Creator for calm. Her Magick settled behind the wall she’d erected. She pressed her forehead to her fingertips, giving a silent thanks, then lowered her hand to knot her fingers on the table.
“The fuck?”
Gwen started and looked at Ivan. That was so not the one she expected to drop the F bomb at this table.
“I’m… Uh…” Siobhan looked down at the table and then back up at Rapunzel. “I’m… What?”
Rapunzel stretched to offer her hand to Siobhan across the table. “Hi. I’m Rapunzel.” She slanted a glance at Patti, “I’m not God.” Then she turned to look at Ivan before shifting her attention to Dan. “I am one of the creators of this world.”
Ben reared his chin back, his gaze stark on Rapunzel from his chair beside Kim. “The fuck you are.”
Dan, for his part, kept his composure the best. Instead of starting or exclaiming or showing stark confusion on his face, he leaned back into the arm draped over the chair’s back. “And you are revealing this. To us. Because?”
Rapunzel took a deep breath and gave Dan a forced smile. “Because someone, actually several someones, are trying to tear it apart.”
“Who?”
Yeah, Gwen thought, Who? She leaned in waiting for the answer.
“Geppetto, The Blue Fairy, and The Pied Piper.”
Dead silence followed Rapunzel’s statement, so quiet Gwen could hear the crackle of the fires in the dual fireplaces. It wasn’t that Gwen had really had any clear idea of what answer the woman would give and really she was insisting she was the person who the story of Rapunzel was written about, so was it a huge stretch that she’d name other fairy tale characters as the villains of this story she was telling?
“The Pied Piper and Geppetto and The Blue Fairy like you are Rapunzel?”
Rapunzel turned to answer Kim’s question. “Yes.”
“Are they creators too?” Siobhan asked.
“No.” Rapunzel shook her head to emphasize her vehement response. “They are the reasons for the creation of this world. We made it to isolate them from our world. The propagation of the species, you, was just a lucky byproduct of that. Not entirely planned but we had theories it would happen.”
“Wow,” Ben said, “That’s–”
“A lot,” Siobhan picked up where he trailed off. “It’s a lot.”
“Are you saying,” Ivan rasped, emotion strong enough in his voice Gwen needed no Magick to read it, “that my world – our world – was some cosmic dumping ground you created for people that you didn’t want in your world?”
“Uh–” Rapunzel showed the grace to look down. She rolled her lips over her teeth and contemplated the grain of the table’s wood. Then she shifted her attention to the pile of cards in front of her. She picked them up and shuffled them, her gaze feverishly scanning the words on them.
Ivan stood up, leaning into the table, and spoke with such authority Gwen leaned back from the force of it. “Did you take people too evil or dank or toxic and dump them here?”
Rapunzel looked up, blue eyes stark in her pale face. “Yes.”
Abe had been silent up to this point. They leaned around Dan to look at Rapunzel with a stark look of disgust on their face. “You created a world, indifferent to the possibility – a possibility you acknowledge you factored in – of a populace growing in it that could be hurt by people who were too vile to remain in your world?”
Rapunzel visibly gulped, then squared her shoulders and took a soughing breath through her nostrils. “Yes.”
“Well, fuck you.” Abe sat back in their chair and crossed their arms over their chest.
That pretty much… Yeah. That was a good response.
Patti pressed her hand to her forehead with her palm digging into her eyes. “My brain hurts.”
“My stomach hurts and I’m fighting to not poop myself,” Gwen said.
“Oversharing,” Ben shot at her.
“Like there’s rules of conduct when the creator of your world sits down with you. And tells you they don’t actually give a poop about you!”
“I didn’t say that,” Rapunzel mumbled.
“Sounded like it.” Dempsey pulled his legs in and pressed back into his seat. He played his fingers over something below the table. Probably his satchel of holding. Gwen had noticed when he was uncertain of something he’d do that. It was the only tell she’d ever witnessed from him.
Ben glowered at Rapunzel. He curved his mouth around unsaid words then he stood up, stomped around the table, and reached around Rapunzel to snatch her pile of cards.
She clamped her hand down on his as his fingers curled around the cards. “No! You cannot have those. Or read them.”
“The fuck I can’t, Lady.”
“You. Can. Not.” She bit off every word as she crunched Ben’s fingers in her hand. He tightened his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and doubled his efforts to grab the cards.
Dan stared at Rapunzel, reading her expression in profile. Then he reached over and put his hand over hers, trapping Ben’s against the table. Ben stared at him like he’d performed an ultimate betrayal.
Without lowering his gaze from Rapunzel, Dan said, “She says we can’t read it. Is that correct?”
Rapunzel turned her head to stare into Dan’s eyes. For several long mikros they held their stare-off, then Rapunzel nodded and said, “That is correct.”
“You are going to explain why.”
“I am?” Rapunzel closed her eyes and shook her head. Then she opened them and the expression on her face as she met Dan’s gaze once more was equal parts resolve and regret. “I am.”
She turned and looked at Ben. “You can’t read them. Please let them go.”
Ben drew a harsh breath through his nostrils as his teeth were gritted and his jaw was hard. He stared hard into Rapunzel’s eyes then slowly withdrew his fingers from beneath her and Dan’s grasp. He balled his hand into a fist and stiffly returned to his seat.
Rapunzel followed his retreat with her eyes before turning to sweep her gaze over the entire table. “I don’t think I can tell you more without risking a psychotic break. And we can’t afford to reset your memories and wait until you get back to this point again.”
Prairie drew in a harsh breath. Patti gave a “Huh?”. And Gwen bore a small hole in the double walls protecting her Magick and sent a probe out to Rapunzel. She was instantly slammed by a wave of nausea that was not her own. Well, crap.
She touched her heart, touched her forehead, called on the Creator’s grace before frowning at Rapunzel. The Creator. The being that she believed in with the blind faith of someone who understood that somethings were mysteries and it did not good to probe at them. The being that… was sitting in front of her?
Why was this just occurring to her now? She followed the faith. She did. But was it more just something she did because she was raised to? A rote response with no actual faith behind it?
She flashed back to just a few meros before when she’d called on the Creator without actually thinking about it or she would have thought, “Gee, Whiz, who am I reaching out to for guidance? This CHICK SITTING AT THE TABLE WITH ME? How does that EVEN WORK? DOES IT WORK?”
The hole in her emotional barriers slammed shut so hard she recoiled. For once it was needed to wall in her emotions rather than wall her away from the emotions of others. Her head got dizzy, whether from the panting breaths she was taking through parted lips or the realizations tearing apart all her beliefs. She blinked back hot tears and gulped air.
Kim shoved up from her seat and ran around the table. She paused for a mikro her hand hovering in the air before Gwen’s shoulder. Then she seemed to push through whatever was holding her back and threw her arms around Gwen.
Gwen buried her head in Kim’s shoulder and let her tears fall. Unable to handle the overwhelming wrongness inside her she just rocked and cried silent tears.
Enter The Woods 