And by the time she wakes (we'll have driven through the state)

I had a dream last night and couldn't stop thinking about it. Added a few things, kept most the same. I wrote this sitting alone in the dark (which is kinda the norm lmao) so that speaks volumes on the vibes.

Ninety percent of the dream was actually really fun, it was very much like a cartoon. I ninja-ed my way out of my house because some annoying dude got invited over. Idk why it got all ansgty.

Enjoy!

tw// mild mentioned self injury?

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"You would think-" her voice cracked. Her tongue poked out to wet dry, chapped lips. A cut was healing on the bottom one, ripped through by blunt teeth and no doubt to be ripped through again.

She swallowed and started over. "You'd think," she said, "that it'd be a lot bigger than it actually is."

The girl next to her responded with pure nothingness, or maybe she made a face, but Elizabeth didn't think she did. Fleur was rather good at not being judgemental.

Queen Fleur or France, just as she was Queen Elizabeth II of England. That is to say, not at all.

A soft breath puffed through her lips, sounding for once the age she pretended. She sat down on the hill, careful of the flowers.

They really were beautiful white and brown flowers. Nothing was fake about that. Idealized, maybe, but not fake. Her hand did not reach to touch them, rather tracing them with her eyes.

Vanilla bean blossoms, she imagined they were. What they actually were was a mystery.

Golden hour painted vibrant rays of sunlight across her face. Her free-of-wrinkles face, because she was not an elderly yet spry queen. She was twelve.

Or she was fifteen. Or twenty with a three at the end, like Queen Fleur. Or twenty with an eight tacked on the back, which was a scary age to be.

"Can we move further back?" she asked, eyes trained on the home looming ahead. Cheery and warm. Homey. She had driven all the way to California and even then, she hadn't truly been able to escape. "I don't feel safe near the house."

Maybe she was just doomed to die in the same house she was born.

So, they got up. Walked a few steps back until they were hidden from its prying eyes. From the woman and children living there.

They had never hurt her. She wasn't afraid for her safety. Just...

"Because I hyped it up a lot," Elizabeth said, once they had sat down. "Always talking about how amazing this place is, how much I wanted to go here. But it actually isn't all that much, is it?"

When she stared out toward the house, she could hear responsibility beckon. Pounding, like the dull throbbing pain of the sore on her lip.

First she imagined the moment to be more magical. Then imperfectly wonderful. This was somewhere between imperfect and wonderful, caught in the centre letters.

She had kids not her own to mind. Objects to sort. Maybe an email to pass along to the youngest from grandma.

"It's a bunch of spiky white and brown flowers, hardly entertaining. The house is right there," she hummed, lifting an arm to point.

Ann, I love you, the house would say. I love you, too, she always said back, because nobody would if she didn't. For all the children who lived there, some even years older than herself, none of them were very good with taking responsibility.

Love was a chore worth doing, and a chore worth doing well. Loving those people was a good thing to die by.

But ultimately it was still a chore, and ultimately it was still a death.

"You know... I think I'm ready to go home," Fleur spoke at last. "Be Mary again. I think I could live with that, now. I'll stick around for a while if that's what you want, though. What do you think, straight ahead onto L.A. or right back home?"

She turned to the other girl. Queen Elizabeth II of England, toward Queen Fleur of France. Ann Wrotchis from a little countryside house toward Mary Brown from a rundown urban apartment.

And she studied her. Her shoulder length brunette strands. Her plain black t-shirt and beat up sneakers. Her dark green eyes on a child's face.

This wasn't Queen Fleur of France. Queen Fleur was a young woman with long, pale blonde locks. She wore a nice purple blouse with black flats and had glimmering blue eyes.

Golden hour made Mary's eyes squint rather than shine. If Elizabeth allowed it to be such, the same would become true of herself.

Queen Elizabeth II, in all her magnificence, would be gone. So, she looked back to the house and gave her reply.

...Whichever way she answered, she made the wrong choice.