Since the story is planned not to be posted linnearly, you can check this post for where everything fits together. It will be updated as new sections are published.
Ramona Badwolf is born.
Raven Queen is born. She is sent to live with the previous Evil Queen.
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Apple White is born.
Cerise Hood is born.
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Briar Beauty is born.
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Cerise becomes a wolf.
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Cerise and Ramona's story plays out.
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Ramona Badwolf and Raven Queen begin their first years at Ever After University.
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Apple White begins her first year at Ever After University.
Cedar is carved.
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Cerise Hood begins her first year at Ever After University.
Raven talks to Briar at her birthday party.
Engaging with Ever After High canon: Oh my God, stop calling this fifteen-year-old girl evil because she believes in basic human rights and doesn't want to be forced to commit crimes against her will just to be punished for them!
Engaging with the Ever After High fandom: Oh my God, stop calling this fifteen-year-old girl evil because she doesn't want her society to collapse into dangerous anarchy and is afraid that her friends will literally die if they rebel, because the land's most trusted authority figure said they would as a statement of fact!
Idea for a future 'chapter' of eah should be Raven getting mad at Milton and just a HUGE wave of her power releases. It starts everyones stories, some at different points then others but everyone is doing the story they were destined for. Briar fell into her sleep, raven gets trapped in the mirror, Ashlynn is working under her step-sisters, and sincr this would happen after dragon game Apple would e already been poisoned. So she's one of the only people possible To free all of her friends she has to go into the storybook of legends and live through their stories. Letting her realize how shitty everyone else's story is. She goes into the stories, lives through the first half? (Maybe idk) And then she has to find the page (like in the show) and rip it up. She has to destroy the destinies. The biggest supporter of them, HAVE to do this or else her friends will either be stuck in a prison or sleep, or different. Idk, I'm just ranting. I wanna draw this😭
one of the biggest reasons i’m salty about Briar’s arc petering out in the show is that Sleeping Beauty is the fairytale about destiny.
she was fated to die from birth. even with that sentence lessened, she has no choice in the matter, no way out—when the princess turns sixteen she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall into a deep sleep, no matter what.
and the thing is they try. her parents try everything they can to keep it from happening—going so far as to destroy all the spinning wheels in the kingdom (which likely created a massive economic crisis in the process but it’s fairytale world so they probs have a few golden geese in the storehouses just for this occasion). but in the end it still happens, because the princess still meets the old woman with the spinning wheel, and she was raised well enough that she isn’t afraid to be curious and ask if she can try it. in the end, she will always prick her finger and die.
others have said it before me, but Briar is the pawn in her story, much like Raven. unlike Raven though, it isn’t society’s expectations that made her one—it’s in her story itself. she essentially inherited a tale about the futility of evading fate. no matter which way they took it, if they only just went a little further—it would have gone so hard.
as much as i adoreee Shannon Hale’s trilogy, i really wish there could have been a book with Briar’s POV. she would have hit it out of the park. (and in the end we never got a single Briar book at ALL.) Sleeping Beauty is my favorite of the “Big Five” and also my favorite of Disney’s adaptations, so i’m biased and will never shut up about it.
“The dragon has three heads, one to be a murderer, who will bring death. One to be a monarch, who's crown will weigh heavy. And one to be mad, who's ideas will change history.”
Cerise remembers a childhood with her almost-sister.
TW: Minor implied child abuse
Cerise's mother had always told her to stay away from Ramona, but something about her felt so familiar.
She would sneak away to the woods whenever she could to play with her. And Ramona would tell her no, you can't come with. But would always let her in the end.
Ramona looked out for her. She was pretty sure Mother was trying to look out for her too, but she had far more rules than Ramona did. Mother always made her wear that hood she hated.
Ramona would run as fast as she could with Cerise on her shoulders, letting her hood fall off her head and the wind ruffle her hair. Ramona didn't yell at her when she fell down. Ramona taught her how to climb trees and shoot a bow. Ramona didn't think it was Cerise's fault that her father died.
Ramona should have been her mother. They even looked alike, with bushy eyebrows and silver eyes. She had said that to Mother once. Mother had slapped her and told her not to say it again.
Ramona had never ever hit her.
She knew the story and how it was supposed to play out. But really, the idea of Ramona eating her was sillier than it was scary. Sure, she had claws and funny ears, but she was still just a girl!
Ramona must have had a mother too, but Cerise had never seen her. She'd asked about it once, after she learned in school that wolves were supposed to come in packs. Ramona had laughed and tucked straw behind Cerise's little human ears to mimic her own wolf ones.
"You're my pack, kid," she had said, and put an arm on Cerise's shoulders.
That was before.
Everything changed just before Ramona's twelfth birthday.
It had started so simple: Cerise was going to pick wildflowers from the forest for her best friend. It was the perfect present, to show that she could handle herself. She didn't need Ramona all the time. She could be strong too.
But there was just one problem. Ramona was always in the woods all day, so Cerise wouldn't be able to surprise her. She'd have to go at night.
The woods never scared her during the day, but nighttime was another story. The lantern she had brought only seemed to make the shadows look bigger and cast everything in a red glow. She pulled her cloak tighter around herself to keep out the autumn air and trudged ahead.
It always seemed to Cerise that the forest itself was alive. Usually, that thought comforted her, but in the dark, it only made it harder. She heard growls, and rustles, and something snapping. But when she turned around, there was nothing there. Mother always said she let her imagination run wild.
She found the patch of wildflowers she had been looking for and breathed a sigh of relief. All she had to do was pick some flowers, put them in her basket, and go back home. Carefully, Cerise set her lantern down next to the flowers and crouched down.
There were more noises behind her, but she ignored them to finish her task. The flowers looked different by the light of her lantern, with an orange flame turning them an eerie red. She almost had the perfect bouquet, she just needed one more to place in the center…
As Cerise went deeper into the forest, the noises didn't calm down. She put her hands over her ears, bringing the lantern close enough to warm her face. It was too hot. And too dark. And too loud. Tears started to form in her eyes.
"Hello?" she called.
But yelling was a mistake. The growls turned into the sound of snapping jaws. Glowing yellow eyes appeared along the tree line. Fur flashed in front of her, and she just made out the face of a wolf.
Cerise couldn't recall everything that had happened next. What she remembered is that it hurt. And everything looked fuzzy. She could barely move, as she layed there in the patch of flowers. Her head turned to the side just long enough to notice that the flowers still looked red, even though the lantern had gone out.
"Ramo…na?" she asked, as she saw a blurred wolf standing over her. And suddenly, growls turned into whimpers. The wolf reeled back, roughly landing on the ground near her. There was a sickening sound like bones cracking, and then a familiar girl hunched over where the wolf had been.
It took Ramona a second to adjust to the transformation, but she didn't waste any time in running to Cerise. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, panic filling her voice.
"I was pick…" she tried to breathe and a gurgling sound came out. "Picking flowers."
Ramona's mouth fell open. "In the middle of the night?" Cerise wanted to answer, but everything was spinning. Her eyes closed.
"Hey. Hey!" she felt hands shaking her and opened her eyes again. "It's gonna be alright, you hear me?" Ramona looked down at her own hand and let her claws out of her very human fingers. "It'll be alright," she whispered.
When Cerise woke up the next morning, she had felt strange. But she wasn't hurt anymore, almost as if it had all been a dream. As she sat up, she noticed she wasn't in her own bed. Actually, she had no idea where she was at all.
She was in a bed, but it wasn't soft like her own. The bedframe didn't look like anyone had carved it. It was just branches put together, without any sanding or varnish. But it was at least warm, with three different fur blankets placed over her.
She started to climb out of the bed when a voice called out to her.
"Hey! Careful, okay?"
Cerise blinked. "Ramona?"
She relaxed as her friend came into view and leaned on the doorframe. "Yeah, it's me. How are you feeling?"
Her mind was too fuzzy to even answer the question. "I had a really weird dream."
Ramona sighed, and then moved to sit with Cerise on the bed. "No. You didn't." Cerise opened her mouth to speak, but Ramona cut her off. "You were hurt, kid. You almost died."
"But I feel just fine," she protested.
"I know. Because I saved you." Saving her should have been a good thing, but Ramona seemed so sad when she said it.
"Thank you. You're the best, Ramona."
She winced. "Don't say that. I- I don't know how to tell you this."
"Tell me what?" Ramona always knew what to say. Something had to be really wrong if she was stuck like this.
"Cerise," Ramona never used her name. "The only way to save you, was to make you a wolf. Like me."
She cocked her head to the side, and she felt the fur rub against her shoulder. Cerise reached up her little hand, and found her ears had grown larger. And pointier. And furrier.
She felt both of her new ears with her tiny fingers. "I'm just like you now!" Why did Ramona seem so sad? This was wonderful news! "We're a pack now, right?"
"No. We can't be." Ramona wouldn't even look at her. She stood up, leaving Cerise alone on the bed.
"Why not?"
"Because I broke everything! How can you play out your story like this?" She sat back down on a stool across the room, and put her face in her hands.
"I don't care about some dumb story!" Cerise shouted.
That made Ramona snap back up. "Don't say that, either. You know how important our story is."
"But if the story is true, then you're the bad guy. You're not a bad guy. I know it." Tears were falling down her cheeks by then. If there was one thing Cerise was sick of, it was people telling her that things she knew were true, really aren't true at all.
"Just look what I did to you!" And Ramona started crying too. Cerise had never, ever seen Ramona cry. "I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have-"
"Saved me?" Cerise finished. "You think you should have just let me die?" The word felt heavy in her mouth.
Ramona took in a breath and closed her eyes. "Cerise, you have to leave."
"What?"
"Go home. Now."
Cerise wiped her eyes wildly. "I'm not leaving! I won't just-"
Ramona's eyes flashed yellow as her fangs and claws grew. A loud growl sent Cerise skidding back, but Ramona didn't change back.
Cerise ran. That's what she was supposed to do wasn't it? Run from the wolf? Mother had warned her, that was always going to be how the story ended.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
100 years into the future, Cedar and Briar are hanging out.
Cedar the puppet, looking up at the starry sky: It’s so beautiful.
Briar: you know, I used to dream of moments like these.
Cedar: What do you mean.
Briar: over these past years, I always had the same dream. Just me and everyone else. Apple, Ash, everyone would be there. And when I would be having a good time with everyone, the colors would fade and I would be left alone. It reminded me of what was going to happen. That it wasn’t a dream I was having, but a nightmare I would wake up to.
Cedar: and how does it feel now? After waking up.
Briar: I don’t know… like I’m still asleep but I’m conscience. It’s like I’m living a waking dream. But sitting here next to you, it feels like not everything has become a nightmare.
Cedar: of course. As long as I am here, you’ll never have to face that nightmare. I promise you that I am not going anywhere.
Briar: honest?
Cedar: of course, I’ll never leave. Even when the dream turns into a nightmare.
Sometime later, cedar sits alone, reminiscenting : I hope you’re enjoying your dream, Briar.
Cedar, the puppet, sits alone under the starry sky.
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