there is magic burning under your skin, so use it.
i. it is alive in you :
she is nine years old the first time her mother ( ursula : the sea witch, the deal maker, the villain of this story ) brushes her bright blue hair behind her ears and says with a voice drowning in something that might be regret for an ocean she'll never again see, you are magic. you are magic, and they took that from you before you were even born. you are magic, and you will make them pay. and she swears to any gods she knows that she will ; she will make them pay, make them wish they'd never been born. she is eighteen and she is magic -- the magic of the old gods, the first gods, runs through her veins, and the granddaughter of poseidon ( her grandfather : the ship sinker, the storm bringer, the hero of his story in every way but one ) swears on the braids in her hair and the salt water in her wounds that she will make them pay.
ii. burning it’s way through your skin,
his voice cracks the first time he utters the words of a long forgotten spell and watches the way his cuffs on his wrist unclasp themselves and fall to the ground, his magic thrumming under the thin ( frail, fragile, so utterly human ) skin that coats his bones, and the boy ( god, god, god ) breathes in a lungful of air that tastes like the wishes of the long forgotten children that the people around him used to be -- before they knew everything that they knew now, before they realised that their lives would always include everything they wanted and more and just thinking about it makes his head spin : that someone could want and want and want and want, even though they were lucky to even be alive. you are the only thing left ; you are the most valuable thing in this shop, jayan. his father told him, when he was eleven years old and his fingers were the quickest on the whole isle, when he was eleven years old and his mother died in front of him, when he was eleven years old and he remembered her final wish : get away.
jay looks from his friends' faces, one by one, and knows that he did.
iii. making you unable to realize
when he's fourteen years old and drunk off the way the light of the stars shines on the murky water down by the docks, his two best friends trailing after him as he tells a story his older sister told him as a child and he will never -- can never -- forget ( neverland, harriet whispered in the dead of the night with a voice dripping in rum and salt water, sounds like a wonderful place to live, don'tcha think, har? ), harry hook trips into the water and never makes a splash. he floats, suspended in the air by some force he can't even began to name and when he laughs at the absurdity of it, he remembers the best part of the story : the children flew.
he drops his hook in the bay and makes them swear not to tell a soul.
iv. that it it slowly killing you
she learns her maths by counting the numbers of things that she puts in her mouth, the number of things her mother sets before her. her mother tells her that as long as she listens and is a little evil girl that she will get any prince she wants, get to be queen of anywhere, as long as she remembers to poison the apples before she hands them out. her hair is blue and she doesn't get why until she is twelve and watches the way fire dances behind her eyes in the cracked mirror of her vanity table, and her mother sneers at the sharp tilt of her head and the way she looks so much older than she is. she is thirteen when she meets her father for the first time, and watches the same fierce, blue fire flare inside his grey eyes when he watches her from across the street ; neither of them say a word. evie is sixteen and when she lights the curtains of her canopy bed on fire in her dorm room, she tilts her head back and laughs at the way the blue flames leap from her hands.
v. from the inside out.
his mother did not want a son, a child that had to be cared for and loved and nurtured in a way that she had never experienced and a way that she never would be able to produce. no, his mother did not want a son ; what his mother wanted, instead, was a dog. and he's four years old and he can't sleep and maybe it's because of the fur coats looming above him like corpses in a morgue or because of the bear traps lining the only exit of his small closet bedroom, but he's four years old and he can't sleep so he doesn't. then he's fifteen years old and he feels like he can't breath, like he's still trapped under the weight of those fur coats in that bear trapped closet, and maybe he is, but jane's voice in his ear is soft and jay's hand in his grip is solid and carlos thinks that maybe he isn't.
vi. it doesn’t know that you’re already dead.
when she is born with unpointed ears and eyes of a dull, non - magical green, the mistress of all evil almost drops her daughter then and there, but then there are horns sprouting from the infant's head and a grin full of wicked, sharp teeth fills her face. you will earn your name, maleficent. when she grows older, her ears don't change -- they stay dull, rounded, human -- but her eyes do, becoming the bright, fluorescent green of her mother's. she is ten years old when she finds her mother's spell book for the first time, and she learns to read. then she is sixteen years old and she whispers a love spell to get what she wants, no matter what, and the force of the magic that goes into the batch of cookies on the pan almost makes her pass out. or you will die trying.
