For the Cinderella asks, I want to hear more about Paper Wings!
This was a Cinderella story set in my Lost Library universe, where humanity exists on the shattered remains of continents that float in the sky and have only recently developed flight technology to travel between different lands. It's a mix of Edwardian aesthetic and technology (we have early electricity and planes) with Age of Exploration swashbuckling.
Except that this story ignored most of that in favor of a small domestic tale that came from combining Cinderella with Mansfield Park and Persuasion. The premise was that Cinderella's father was an airship captain undertaking dangerous exploration to faraway lands. He left her in the care of an aunt and provided money for her upkeep, but he doesn't come back when promised, the money runs out, and the relative resents having to house Cinderella on her own dime, so she makes Cinderella do menial labor to earn her keep. It's now been years and everyone assumes he's dead, but Cinderella feels she can't leave for another place, because if her father does come back, how would he find her?
Meanwhile, an irresponsible flirt of a prince comes into the neighborhood. (Cinderella's aunt cares for a library connected to a university, and he came there to study). Cinderella's cousins try to charm him, but he becomes intrigued by Cinderella, who heavily disapproves of him. True to Mansfield Park form, it becomes a matter of honor for him to charm her into falling in love with him, until he unexpectedly falls in love with her instead.
The "paper" part of the title comes from Cinderella having a genius for crafting things out of paper, and (in some versions of the idea) befriending people who run a stationary shop that also sells things like paper decorations and adornments and toys that are very popular in this land. The ball is a festival that features lots of these paper ornaments and Cinderella wants to attend, until her aunt forbids it, and then a godmother character (and/or the friends at the paper shop) arrange for her to attend with a dress decked out in lots of paper flowers.
But to get back to the point--at the ball, to Cinderella's consternation, she catches the attention of the prince, who insists on dancing with her, and who publicly proposes to her at midnight. Cinderella, horrified, flees just as a rainstorm comes up that wrecks most of the adornments on her dress. The prince comes to her the next morning to return her lost slipper and to push his suit again, and despite strong urging both from him and her aunt, Cinderella absolutely refuses to marry him. Things get much worse for Cinderella after that, because her aunt think her even more of a burden now that she turned down a marriage proposal from the most eligible possible man. I wavered on whether she'd stay with this family and continue to endure poor treatment from them, or if this turn of events helps her to find her strength to head out on her own and get a job elsewhere.
Well, anyway, this story was supposed to explore whether the prince ever could reform in a believable way. So years later, he comes back into Cinderella's life. After his disappointment in marriage, he took the other path his father demanded in his quest to make him to take up responsibility, and he got a job. As a mail pilot. Which is prestigious and glamorous enough for someone of his rank, thanks to the danger involved. Getting into a lifestyle where your hard work and skill is all that gains you respect--and where you're in constant danger of death--has a way of rearranging your priorities, and he comes back as a much more honorable and noble person. Cinderella doesn't believe it, but his work with the mail intersects with her work at the library (or the mail job she took after leaving the library), and so they have to interact. And since he doesn't renew his attempts to win her, she gets to have lots of little Pemberley moments showing that he has truly reformed.
Eventually there's another much more informal dance at the airfield, where Cinderella finds herself actually falling in love with him--only for some disaster to interrupt the festivities and her prince having to run off into danger to save the day, and Cinderella helping him somehow. And then Cinderella does fully fall in love with him and she accepts his proposal and they live happily ever after.
There's a lot in this story, and it felt like at least two separate Cinderella retellings. I couldn't choose between the possible paths, or figure out where to start the story or what elements to cut, so it fell into the background. It's more a loose collection of possibilities than a story. But I'm fond of some of those possibilities, and so it lingers in my brain despite the small chance that it'll ever come together.
