Someone somewhere on the internet suggested a telling of Cinderella where Cinderella is a blacksmith and I don't know who it was but the idea will not leave me alone because oh my god
A Cinderella who gets her name because she works in the soot of her forge. A Cinderella who forges her own iron slippers. A Cinderella who - and I cannot emphasize this enough - is yoked as hell
Also this can be the adaptation that makes the Fairy Godmother an antagonist because iron drives off the fair folk. Holy shit I want this so bad
This might not be entirely what you had in mind, this is more Cinderella being a cryptid enchanter blacksmith but let's go. (Also the Fairy is an antagonist but only for a little bit because to me Cinderella has always been a story about breaking the cycle of abuse so yeah)
Trigger warnings for Parent Death, Mention of Suicide and Murder, Child Abuse, Slavery, Major Injury/Mutilation and Blood.
Her mother was from the Northern lands and it is from her that Ella gets her golden hair and blue eyes. She is the one who made Ella love stories, but not the Southern stories that the other children in the town hear. No, these stories are about riddles and sacrifice, deep water and blood, murder and wit. Fae stories, not fairy stories.
Her father was a Southerner through and through, awarded land and a house for his prowess in the war where he met mother. It is from him that Ella gets her height, her large hands and wide shoulders that ensure that she will never be called dainty and elegant.
But she is a child and thoughts of beauty beyond the shine of a horse's coat and the wildflowers in the meadow are far away. Her hair is the colour of honeysuckle, her eyes that of the summer sky and the hands hold apples picked from trees as she sits on father's shoulders.
She is a child and only knows her father's scars as part of his skin, only knows his screams in the night as nightmares just like her own. Then one day she sees a rabbit barely escape from the jaws of a farmer's rat terrier and finds the stiff shaking legs and wide eyes familiar and she learns, unlike other children, that adults are terrified of things too.
Her father calms himself in the smithy he had built next to the house, soothes the trembling in his hands with the pump of bellows and pounding of a hammer. He is not a blacksmith, the town already has one and a farrier too. He is an artisan, teasing delicate things out of metal with tiny hammers and pincers. Mostly iron things and yes, it is affordable and easy to buy, but the lintels of doors and windowsills he always decorates with iron, never the prettier colours of copper or bronze.
Father shows Ella his forge, how it works, how to cast and hammer metal as she stands on a stool, enveloped in his spare overalls and mask because safety is important.
Mother is a healer, a maker of salves and poultices from plants she finds in the meadow and she sells them for half the price the Apothecary in town does. Their business rivalry grows, then dies as their business combines and the Apothecary becomes Uncle and a familiar sight for tea as he and mother learn medicines from each other.
Then mother grows sick, and all her herbs and tinctures fail and so do those of Uncle. She wastes away in her bed and both men are frantic for a cure even as they do their best to stay strong for little Ella. Father's eyes especially are hard and now he spends time reading, but not medicine books like Uncle. He reads Fae stories from black-covered books. He sends Ella to stay at Uncle's Apothecary and spends seven days and nights in the forge, finishing under a full moon.
Then. Mother gets better. Ella returns from Uncle's to find her mother hale and hearty, eating an enormous breakfast with no sign of her previous sickness.
Ella is a child and is happy that her mother is well and doesn't notice the look Uncle gives father. Ella is a child and is happy that her mother is well and doesn't notice that father doesn't bring her into the forge anymore.
All is well for a year and a day.
Then Ella watches her mother, glassy-eyed with something, throw herself into the river and does not resurface until the miller's apprentice pulls her body free from the water wheel that evening.
They all mourn, father especially.
Cinderella is ten.
Father remarries, to a thin, stern woman with two daughters of her own. Even though she speaks to Ella with harsh words, she does the same to her own daughters, so Ella reasons that maybe this is just how Stepmother shows she cares. Certainly she cares for father; she brings him tea every morning and listens to him talk about the land and the town as she she embroiders dresses for her daughters.
But father is sick. He weakens and grows frail, hunched, pale. It is not the same sickness as mother, so Ella hopes that Uncle can cure him, but Stepmother refuses to let him in the house and says that she will care for father herself. Ella screams at her in desperation, calls her a fool.
Stepmother backhands Ella cross the face and the heavy wedding ring tears her lip. Ella has never had a hand so much as raised to her before and the shock is even greater than the ringing in her ears. She stays silent the whole night as she is locked in her room.
Father breathes his last the next morning, just after Stepmother brings him tea.
They all wear the plain woolen black mourning clothes but after the funeral, Ella goes to her room to put on a clean summer dress for dinner and finds her wardrobe full of dark, drab workclothes. Her Stepsisters come to dinner wearing her dresses.
Ella is made to do the all the chores but her hands wrinkle and blister from all the polish and disinfectants. She asks why she must do all this work and is denied dinner for her question.
After weeks of this, Ella tries to run away to town, to stay with Uncle in his Apothecary, but the Stepsisters see her and tattle and Ella is dragged back screaming and kicking. Stepmother saws off Ella's golden hair with a knife and scatters the strands over the hallway floor. Then beats Ella with a switch until her back is striped and bloody and locks her in the old, cold forge.
The next morning, Stepmother calls Uncle to the house and plays the hysterical mother, showing him the clothes Ella took from her wardrobe and food taken from the pantry and the locks of hair on the floor. Stepmother cries out that Ella has run away disguised as a boy and asks if Uncle has seen anything.
Uncle is dismayed and promises to search the hills and towns until he finds Ella. Then he leaves to do so and Ella is left alone in the dark. The soot has stuck to her wounds and skin healed over it, so the very skin of her back is ribbed with stripes of bitter black.
Stepmother and the Stepsisters laugh at the sight.
Every day Ella does the chores and every night she sleeps in the ashes of her dead father's forge. She is a slave at their beck and call and they call her Cinder-Ella, Cinder-ella, Cinderella!
Winter comes and Cinderella knows that she will freeze in the cold forge. She has only ragged clothes because Stepmother will not buy her more lest the purchase alert the seamstresses of the town to her deception of Cinderella's absence. So Cinderella recalls her time at her father's side and cuts firewood for the forge as well as for the fireplaces in the house proper. Her hands bleed raw and heal callused soot-black as well. But the lit forge fire is warm and Cinderella survives the winter cold.
Years pass and Cinderella turns thirteen.
She is a prisoner, a slave, yet at the same time the forge is a haven and a reminder of better times. She begins to explore it again, finding the arrays of tools and anvils and etchers, the stockpiles of ingots. She takes firm hold of the bellows that had once seemed so large and immovable to her younger self, her large work-roughened black-stained hands pushing the handles easily.
She starts to practice forging, on the days when Stepmother and Stepsisters go away to parties or to town. While her Stepsisters don silks and jewels that do nothing to hide the ugliness of their hearts and words, Cinderella clothes herself in leather overalls and a mask and her bruised ragged body creates beautiful things. Helped by the notes and books written in her father's hand, locked in a chest hidden under a sheet. She starts with farrier nails and moves to pots, then jewellery, then kitchen knives to swords.
She is sixteen. She has many muscles, visible like corded rope from little fat from little food. She matches her father's height, the height of a grown man. Her blackened hands lift iron ingots like mere apples. Her striped back and shoulders lift sacks of potatoes and flour with the ease of an oxen. Her feet are large and calloused from years gone barefoot save for wrappings of rags and straw. Her golden hair is still short and choppy, though now concealed under a tightly tied scarf that doubles as a sweatband for her brow.
She is running out of metal.
She is scared to leave the forge, the house. The outside world is a strange place now and the little girl she used to be remembers the pain that resulted in trying to run. So she tells herself that she isn't leaving. Cautiously, she waits for her Stepmother and Stepsisters to be gone for several days. She wears her overalls and mask and gathers all her wares in a sack, and creeps into town.
The townsfolk are scared of her at first, the stranger who doesn't show their face, with hands like coal and the strength of two men put together and only a few words that rattle like dragon breath through the daunting mask. But soon mercantile instincts win out and they begin buying.
Cinderella returns to the house with much metal purchased from her new profit and tentative promises to return with certain things.
As she stores her ingots, she notices a black book at the bottom of the chest of books. It looks just like the one her father studied before her mother's abrupt recovery. In it is a figurative goldmine. Enchantments. And how to work them into metal.
When Cinderella returns to the town, she has a new selection. Kitchen knives that will never rust. Horseshoes that will make the horse as fleet as a deer. Combs that prevent lice and fleas. Pots that preserve the temperature of the contents. Goblets that detect poison. The blacksmith and farrier in town, previously jealous about competition, are fascinated. In return for new tools and lessons on how to shoe a horse herself she helps them with their own workload. But she never stays long, always conscious of the chores waiting for her at the empty house and fearful of being found out should she be found missing.
One day the Blacksmith's daughter burns herself and the Blacksmith tells Cinderella to take her to the Apothecary. Heart suddenly beating athunder, Cinderella carries the weeping child effortlessly in her arms across the town to a familiar shop. She has avoided Uncle on her previous visits, feigning muteness and ignorance whenever he approached her mat of wares. But for the sake of the child, she enters.
Burn salve and a bandage are applied and the weeping gives way to happily sucking on a boiled sweet.
The shop is so familiar and the rush of grief hurts Cinderella's throat with the scent of lavender and ground berries. There is no recognition in Uncle's eyes, not for a hulking blacksmith covered in boiled leather, and his eyes are dimmed with regret. They find some common conversation though, in enchantments for health and healing and knives for chopping herbs and- She forgets the time.
Cinderella hurries home but...she is too late.
Her only saving grace is that the forge was cold and clean and she had sold all her work without buying supplies in all the rush today, so Stepmother still remains ignorant of her metal work. It is sneaking out into town she is punished for.
Cinderella might be a head taller than Stepmother and twice as broad, but icy fear still grips her heart and ties her tongue in knots at that stern face and a switch tapping.
But the switch doesn't hurt. Cinderella's hands, feet and back are tough from work and scars. But as soon as Stepmother sees the lack of effect, the lack of pain, the beating is causing, she takes the whip from the carriage house and uses that.
The whip does hurt. That it is used to lash her face hurts even more.
Cinderella is left with no food and a torn, bloody face on the cold floor. But a secret still safe.
Chores are done clumsily, with a sore, raw face.
Metalwork is abandoned briefly, for safety, as well as to focus on crafting a rough poultice for the wounds, so as not to risk infection and lose an eye.
Despite true fever being kept at bay, her nightmares are still feverish and in them she hears whispers of "you deserve this" and a grinning sharptoothed face.
Then, while changing her bandages, a drop of blood falls onto the anvil. With a whirl of steam, a figure appears, all knife-edge elbows and shattered ice in a cloak of otter fur. Sharp teeth and sharper eyes. A Fae.
"Pretty blood," the Fae croons, and licks Cinderella's raw cheeks with a tongue like riverweed.
"Why are you here, neighbour?" Cinderella asks politely, because the stories she had learned at her mother's knee said that it was always best to be polite. The Fae shrieks and spits. "Because your cursed sire bound me here, may his soul be torn by the wild hunt! He pulled me from my river with iron chains and kept me at his beck and call with his blood upon the anvil!"
"He wouldn't!" Cinderella protested. "Father was a good man, he would never enslave anyone!"
"Not even to save the woman he loved?"
Cinderella hesitates at that and the Fae cackles bitterly while pulling their cloak aside. A nude body slight and fine like a child's, grey fishskin with a pale belly. But the stomach is ringed with a blackened scar of dead flesh like a belt and an iron circlet and an iron collar cut weeping bloody blisters into forehead and neck. "Three chains for three Works your father bound me. One spent immediately to save his wife from sickness." The smile grows wider like a pike's. "I cured the sickness and sent her to drown instead."
Cinderella's blood runs ice-cold. "You killed my mother?"
"In my river from where he took me," the Fae confirms.
Cinderella screams and picks up a knife and charges.
Normally fighting a Fae with only strength and a knife would be the epitome of foolishness. And indeed, the Fae dodged and spun. But never hit back. And had to dodge more than just the knife, because the entire forge was adorned with iron and as a water Fae, the fire probably wasn't comfortable either. And finally, finally, Cinderella has the Fae on their back, legs pinned and a knife poised above their heaving belly.
And their eyes are wild and hands stiff, shaking claws and Cinderella remembers the rabbit running from the farmer's dog, remembers her father's nightmares. The Fae is afraid. The Fae is afraid of Cinderella and not like how the townsfolk were afraid when Cinderella started selling her work.
Like how Cinderella is afraid when Stepmother brandishes the switch or the whip.
The Fae is afraid because it expects Cinderella to hurt it and laugh and that. That pins Cinderella right through the heart, because despite what the Stepmother has turned her into, she has never wanted to be the sort of person someone would expect pain from.
Cinderella does not bring the knife down. Instead she gets up and backs away. The Fae gapes for a moment, then their gaze hardens and they disappear in a flash of steam.
On a hunch, Cinderella retrieves the book of metal enchanting and turns to the last page, that she has yet to read. It explains how to bind a Fae in iron and enslave them for three wishes. It advises to kill the Fae with an iron blade once the wishes are finished so that the Fae doesn't wreak vengeance for the enslavement.
Cinderella feels sick. Her father had been just the same as Stepmother. Had enslaved a living being in a sunless prison and mutilated their body and kept them in fear and pain. Does this make Cinderella no better than her Stepsisters?
Maybe it does. But she's going to change that.
In the following days, Cinderella wracks her brain for stories about the Fae and collects several things. Then she pricks the pad of her finger and blood drops on the anvil and turns to steam.
"I didn't mean to scare you last time," Cinderella explains, careful not to actually apologise lest she put herself in debt(more than she was). "I brought you some things to make you more comfortable." A little bowl of milk and honey. A cup of pig blood. A jar of herbal poultice. A wooden pail of water from the river, with weed and pebbles mixed in.
"Are you trying to pay me off?" The Fae snarls, despite the longing look they shoot at the items.
"No!" Cinderella insists. "You're in pain. I know you'll want to kill me as soon as you're free and I don't blame you for wanting too, but I also don't want to die. But in the meantime I just don't want you to be in pain. It doesn't help either of us if you're in pain."
The Fae looks unsure, but falls upon the offerings with a haste that reeks of starvation and fear that comfort might be taken away. Then they vanish, leaving the containers empty.
Cinderella repeats the offerings whenever she can, though sometimes she can't acquire all of them. Thankfully, the Fae does start looking a little better each time. The grey scales start to shine silver and the pale belly flushes red and orange like a stickleback. Jagged teeth straighten and whiten. Limbs plump and sleek. But the scars and raw wounds remain despite the poultice.
Each time the Fae asks, why? Each time, Cinderella answers that nobody deserves to be in pain and if she can help, she will.
One time, Cinderella asks how her father could do such a thing? The Fae answers that he killed many humans on the orders of a king he'd never met, what was one non-human for the life of the woman he loved?
One time, the Fae asks why Cinderella stays when she is stronger than her Stepmother and is not bound to this place and could just walk away? Cinderella says that she honestly doesn't know. The Fae says it's because she is weak. Then looks uncomfortable and vanishes when Cinderella starts crying.
One time, the Fae asks that if the Stepmother were to die, would Cinderella kill her Stepsisters and escape? Cinderella says that it wasn't their fault, not really, having been brought up like that, so she would rather just run away.
The Fae asks where she would run to. Cinderella says she would like to find Uncle, first. But ultimately she would like to travel the countryside and just enjoy the freedom to do as she wishes and meet all the people, and once she was done she would come back here and see if the Blacksmith would give her a full-time job. The Fae says that she would like to go back to her river and make sure everything was back in order, but. That maybe she would explore other rivers as well. That maybe their paths might cross.
Cinderella turns eighteen.
She is fetching a pail of water from the river for her next offering to her (tentative)friend the Fae. It is dark, perfect for sneaking out. She is dressed in her leathers and a new mask that she made. It has a knight's visor and many bulbous eyeholes. Etched in ripples that sweep back into a mass of curled thorny tendrils like riverweed. The Fae had done something to the bucket of river water they had suggested Cinderella douse it in and the metal has a greenish hue as if coated in algae and the many eyes glow softly to hide her own.
Her leather overalls and helm have become an armour for the outside world as a whole, even for fetching water at night.
The storm lantern hung on her belt lights her way along the narrow footpath as she approaches the ford. As she bends down to pluck weed and pebbles to add to her pail, the sound of hooves makes her freeze.
Then there's the splash of a walking horse and someone in boots wading into the water on the ford's other bank, and a hail. "Hello there! Uh, you with the lantern, can you stay where you are until we get across?" Crossing a ford without a lantern to guide you is foolishness and best and death at worst. This idiotic man... But she can't ignore such a simple cry for aid, so she takes the lantern from her belt and waves it in what she hopes looks like a positive manner.
"Thank you!" The voice cries in relief and the splashing continues. Soon enough they come into view. A man in a soldier's uniform, one decked in gold braid but spattered with mud. He leads an equally muddy cavalry stallion by the reins, petting it and soothing it across the river. He turns to her, to thank her for her help, then catches sight of her wild glowing mask and hulking shape and he yelps and nearly falls back into the river if not for her grabbing his arm and pulling him forward onto dry land.
"Thank you!" He squawks, eyes still wide. "For catching me and, the lantern...kind spirit?"
She chuffs a quiet laugh that comes out through her helmet as a bark. "Human," she corrects him shyly. "You're welcome." Her timid voice sounds like a booming rumble.
He blinks. "Oh. What are doing at a ford at night?"
She gestures at her pail of water and weed. "Water."
He gapes like a fish and...he's sort of cute.
"Okay, collecting water and duckweed at night. Not my problem." He affirms. "Sorry to trouble you again, but am I on the right road to the town? I'm planning to find an inn and my horse threw his shoe a mile back."
"Yes. Follow the road, then you'll see the lights. I can shoe your horse now, if you want." There are some horse shoes and nails in her pockets, from the day's work.
"You're the farrier?"
"No, but I work with him."
"Alright then. I'll pay you back as soon as I can."
"It's free."
"No, I swear! I've already distracted you from...whatever you were doing and it's the least I can do to pay your due for your work!"
Cinderella shrugs. She won't be able to sneak into town for another few days, long enough for the soldier to need to leave for wherever. "Fine." She pulls a horseshoe from her pocket. "Hold your horse."
"Wait, you meant here and now?" But he leads his horse up from the bank and holds it's reins and bridle.
She sets down her lantern, pulls up the horse's hoof and sets to work. The only trouble is, is that the only horseshoes she has in the right size are a set of enchanted ones. She can't give the horse just one or it'll be thrown off balance and might break a leg. "I'll do all four shoes."
"You don't need to."
"Yes. These are enchanted, part of a set. One alone will do more harm than hurt." Glancing up and seeing the pensive expression on his face, she clarifies. "Enchanted to make a horse swift. And you are in a hurry, aren't you?"
"Oh. Yes, yes I am, and...thank you. I will pay you back, I'll make sure of it sir Enchanter, I swear it on my family's name."
"Fine," she shrugs noncommittally. She finishes up and pockets the old shoes to melt down the metal later; they are exchange enough, for her. "I'm done. You should get going."
He walks the horse around the bank for a few circles and, satisfied, mounts. "You know, Enchanter by the River, if you ever feel like it, the castle would always be glad of your talents. Bed and board, a huge smithy, all the metal you could desire. Just ask for General Scipio at the castle gate."
With that, he and his horse walk beyond the lantern light into the night.
Cinderella stands there, feeling like...she suddenly has a way out.
Back at the forge, she summons the Fae and tells them everything. Admits that she doesn't want to leave the Fae here bound to the anvil without hope or comfort.
The Fae says that Cinderella can simply use up the last two wishes.
Cinderella says that she doesn't want to wish for anything for herself, that she'd rather wish that the Fae was not hurt by the touch of iron-
There's a sizzling sound as raw flesh heals and silver scales gleam.
It was that simple all along. Cinderella bursts into tears at the realisation and the Fae hugs her. Cinderella begs for forgiveness for letting the pain go on for so long and the Fae...forgives her.
The iron circlet is gone and the iron collar still remains, but merely rests on the skin, not burning or scourging. Cinderella asks if the Fae cannot simply break free, with this new immunity to iron. The Fae replies that it is not that simple, the true binding is in the magic enchanted into the iron. That Cinderella still has one wish left. That Cinderella should spend it wisely before she leaves, because this wish would be given without a dark twist. That the Fae would not take revenge for the years of imprisonment. That they are friends and.
Cinderella smiles. Despite the tugging of old scars, she smiles.
But there is work to do. If she is going to escape, to show up at the capital, her work for presentation needs to be special.
With that, she starts work on an entire suit of armour, to match her helmet.
A month passes and she is absorbed in her work. She ignores the townsfolk gossiping about the upcoming ball, about the prince choosing a potential bride. Cinderella is only interested in the increased amount of carriages that pass through and the subsequent increase in horses that need shoeing and the increased material and pay she earns.
The armour is nearly finished, each piece so far perfectly formed and fitted and etched with enchantments. There's just the right gauntlet left to go.
She's nearly finished.
She's nearly free.
She wants to be free.
The gauntlet is just heating in the forge, ready for the final etching and dousing and she will be free.
She forgets the time.
Stepmother appears in the doorway with whip in hand and the red light of the forge, usually so comforting, twists her cruel features into something truly terrible.
Cinderella trembles but her hand touches the anvil where her friend is bound and depends on her, where she is creating freedom for both of them, and she refuses to cower.
The whip makes her bleed and she
Does
Not
Cower.
Then the Stepmother seizes one of the heavy forge hammers, the rough handle tearing the skin of her soft white hands with the effort and.
Swings
It
Down.
The heavy head crashes down on the anvil and.
Smashes
Cinderella's
Hand.
Blood and bone and flesh spatters and the anvil flares to life and Cinderella screams the one thing she's never asked all these years.
help me!
There's the crack of an iron collar shattering.
There's a scream like a horse, like the roar of a river and the room swims with shock and blood loss, but Cinderella sees the gnashing teeth bite into Stepmother.
Suddenly glowing toad-eyes in a horse's face stare into hers and there is fire and burning flesh and molten metal and sweet blessed darkness...
When Cinderella comes around there is no pain and she wonders for a moment if she imagined the whole thing. But the forge is soaking wet, the fire guttered and a bloodied whip lies abandoned on the blood-streaked flagstones.
And.
Where her hand is. Is.
A jointed gauntlet of iron rippled with silver like the sun on the surface of a river and clawed like a dragon. Red veins run under the metal especially where it. Fuses with her arm.
It flexes and bends like a real hand and she can feel the stone and wet beneath it's fingertips.
Her real hand is red pulp and white shards on the flat of the anvil.
She vomits what little there is in her stomach and nearly blacks out again. Then there is the soft nose of a horse nuzzling her cheek and she looks up.
The horse is white, no grey, no green...it shifts hues like water and water lilies tangle in it's perpetually dripping mane and tail. Their golden toad eyes meet hers and for a brief moment she glimpses sharp teeth and a stickleback-red belly. There are faint scarred rings around the horse's barrel, neck and forehead.
The horse, the Fae, whickers sorrowfully and noses Cinderella's new hand as if to apologise.
"I'm okay," she whispers through tears, hugging the horse's head to her. "Thank you."
She dons the rest of the suit of armour, the silvered hand blending in perfectly and is prepared to set out on foot when she is nudged again.
The River Fae offers their back. "Let us go together as friends, my friend," comes a familiar voice from an unfamiliar mouth.
"To the castle," Cinderella nods as she mounts, the Fae taking her weight easily.
They travel far faster than is at all possible, like a bolt from a crossbow. Green countryside passes in a blur and river and fence are bounded with ease.
Soon they arrive at the capital and the streets are unusually full of colour and chatter, but nixie and rider notice not at all as they make their way to the castle. Nor do they notice the storm of gossip rising in their wake as the crowd's attention is caught by the mysterious knight.
The castle is festooned with banners and ribbons in festivity but the two survivors see nothing special about this.
Guards stand by the gate, armed with live steel and steely eyes despite the ceremonial wear and they halt her and ask her purpose.
"General Scipio invited me," Cinderella growls in tiredness and after a pause, they let her through. She doesn't dismount, fearing that her trembling legs might see her fall, but they don't ask her to. Instead of leading her to a barracks or stable though, they take her into the castle itself and through grand hallways through which distant music and laughter is echoing.
Grand doors open before her and...this is a ball? Why has she been brought here? Ah, there is the soldier boy over there.
The struck-silent party ignored, she trots over to the little General whose uniform is no longer covered in mud and he is wearing...a circlet on his brow? And that is...the King and Queen just a few paces away?
The pieces slowly begin to connect, but before they can, words fall from her tongue. "General Scipio. I am the one you called Enchanter by the River. I have come to accept your offer."
The lad looks like a deer in front of hunting dogs. She supposes she must look a sight, but her real face is even more of a fright.
Oh, those are royal guards and they're pointing weapons at her? But they were the ones who let her in! Really, they should make up their minds...
oh that's the prince
The shock begins to catch up and she begins to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.
Still, she came here for a reason and that was to present some of her work, so, mind still shaking, she takes off her normal left gauntlet. Exposing her unnatural black-skin dappled hands and the crowd gasps and already some have realised what the horse she rides really is and have gone ever so pale.
She drops the gauntlet on the floor, still laughing and curls her hands desperately into a dripping mane and the Fae laughs too then turns on a hoof and runs runs runs through closing doors and finally leaps into the cool night air. Leaving a hysterical party and a single enchanted gauntlet behind.
Then Cinderella finally loses consciousness and the Fae sticks to her so as not to let her fall off. Then she gallops out of the city, but not too far, they will need to return in the morning. Just for tonight, they need a quiet meadow with wildflowers and apple trees in which to sleep.
