A/N: A response to the following prompt from DissectingPomegranates:

"The evil and relentless Maleficent was granted peace to rest after a sixteen year search now finally over. What were her thoughts when she returned to her chambers and prepared to rest?"

Prompts are welcome, by the way! This is a one-shot, and rather canon-compliant, if I do say so. As its title suggests, this is a fairly dark piece of work. For those of you who are reading The Prisoner, thank you for your continued patience, as the next chapter is taking its sweet time.

The quotes are from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. And, you know, Sleeping Beauty.

Your readership is much appreciated, as would be your feedback!

A Far, Far Better Rest

"A most gratifying day," said Maleficent to her raven companion as she locked the door to her dungeon. "For the first time in sixteen years, I shall sleep well."

As she climbed the winding stairs to her private chamber, Maleficent felt the manic delight she had experienced upon capturing Prince Philip slowly receding, making way for a sort of heady giddiness which made her almost dizzy. It was done. She had finished the job, however muddled it had become.

She had no idea how late or early it must be—surely a few hours past midnight—her body could no longer discern such things. She imagined the sun would rise soon, but for whom? Everyone in the realm would still be asleep.

Maleficent began to make a checklist in her mind of the things she really must attend to now that the matter of the Missing Princess and her Gallant Fool had been solved.

First, she noted as she climbed what was essentially an open staircase to her bedchamber, she must see to some reparations on her castle. The Forbidden Fortress was beginning to look like the Forbidden Pile of Rubble, and she couldn't have that on the day she declared her victory.

Second, she must deal with the three causes of all of her troubles, Mistresses Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. She was, at the moment, entertaining several possible courses of action: she could spellbind them into doing some chores for her, for example fixing up her castle…but she supposed that wouldn't do. The last thing she needed was a stone wall made with weak good fairy magic. It would probably explode into a bed of tulips at the first sign of a rainstorm. She could have them clean, though—they must be rather good at that, and her throne room was a mess.

On that note, she really must dispose of her minions. A century or so ago when Maleficent had fashioned minions out of the available wildlife (i.e. hogs and a few especially large and feisty rabbits), she had come up with an army of brutish creatures who were at least sharp enough to, for example, find a missing person in the woods of her own kingdom. Rampant inbreeding, which had gone unchecked due mostly to Maleficent's indifference regarding the affairs of her underlings, had led to a truly depressing bunch of disfigured simpletons. She would have to wipe them all out and start anew. Normally she didn't much like to kill animals who had never done her any harm, but she imagined that without her care, these motley humanoid creatures would die out on their own.

Maleficent entered her room and noticed for the first time what a mess it was. The bed was made, for she scarcely used it, and even when she had tried to catch an hour or two of sleep, she lay down on top of the bedclothes to avoid getting too comfortable. Books were strewn everywhere, most of them open to some random page, and all of Maleficent's furniture was ever so slightly askew and ever so slightly charred from a few too many outbursts of temper on Maleficent's part. She imagined she could fix them, or else fashion new furniture, and added that to the checklist.

She supposed she ought to awaken the kingdom—her whole scheme wouldn't be much use unless she got to enjoy everyone's misery. Then again, the Kingdom of the East was rather pretty, and would be very peaceful without all the loathsome people milling about. Perhaps she ought to take a brief holiday there before she took any further action on that matter.

Maleficent pulled back the covers of her bed for the first time in over a decade and pulled them up around her neck. She smiled to herself. It was over and she had won. No one would question her power again. She could stay here and she could…

She could…

What?

Maleficent had invested all of her time and energy into finding the Princess Aurora and enacting her intended curse, and Maleficent had a great deal of time and energy at her disposal. Really, the only reason it had taken so long to find the girl was because she had expected the good fairies to do something halfway sensible. Send Aurora to another realm, find some good fairies who could actually offer her some protection, something like that. Not keep her in a little cottage in the woods with only their own non-magical and subsequently useless selves for bodyguards. That was ludicrous.

And as she understood it, they were proving some kind of point—that Maleficent would never look there because…what, exactly? Because it was absolutely stupid? If Maleficent had happened upon them, she could have blown all of them away without batting an eyelash and no one would have been the wiser until, sixteen years later, no princess showed up to meet her destiny. People never won wars with foolhardy moves like that. Battles, perhaps, but never wars.

In any event, the battle was over now and so, too, would be the war once Maleficent finally got a good night of sleep. And Maleficent was not quite certain how to proceed. She made her little list of things to do—fix this, fix that, clean your room—but she had no larger goal in mind anymore. She supposed she could cast another long-lived curse upon someone, but that seemed like an awful lot of trouble after the one she had just completed. Perhaps it would do her some good to take a little time off from harbingering evil. She could plan her next move once her mind was not so woefully overworked.

Perhaps, for example, she would pay the sleeping Princess Aurora a visit. Aurora had turned out to be quite a beautiful young maiden. Maleficent wondered if perhaps, once the one hundred and twenty-something-year-old Philip had kissed her awake, whether Aurora might rather stay on with her dear friend Maleficent for a time. That could be quite an entertaining diversion, indeed, and she ought to start sowing the seeds of charm if she wanted it to be an agreeable arrangement for her. She had no interest in keeping some sort of slave—that seemed rather twisted, even for her—but Maleficent could be quite entrancing in her own right when she chose to be.

With this most pleasant of thoughts, Maleficent finally dared to drift off into a deep, dreamless slumber.

When she awakened, she was blissfully groggy. For the first time in…perhaps her entire life…Maleficent's mind was dull and slow to come to attention. She noted vaguely that Diablo was screeching and that the sound was coming from all directions, as though he were circling her tower, and she hoped he would cease this foolishness without her having to leave her bed. He ought to know how much she needed this rest.

After a few more moments, she became awake enough to feel irritated by the sound. What was the sense in this? In addition to Diablo, she now heard the raucous shouts of her minions, and it sounded as though they were…throwing rocks about? What fresh hell was this?

Maleficent threw the covers from her person, heaved her long legs over the side of the bed, and drew herself to an uneasy standing position. She walked very slowly to the door and threw it open. "SILENCE!" she cried, and there was silence.

"Diablo, tell those fools that if they disturb me once more—"

She choked on this word and had nothing else to say for a moment. She blinked a few times to make certain that it wasn't merely her vision. She did not feel very awake. Perhaps this was only a bad dream.

Then again, Maleficent had never been prone to nightmares.

Perched upon a pedestal, as though it had been designed that way, was a stone statue of a raven, wings open as if caught mid-flight, beak open in a cry for help. Slowly receding from the statue were three little spots of colourful light.

"Of course it would be you," Maleficent murmured to herself as she finally located Philip, who was attempting to escape her castle on horseback. My, she really didn't like the nasty business of killing people—thinking of it made her a bit sick to her stomach. She tried instead to make Philip die of some other cause—falling off of a cliff could hardly be considered her fault, for example.

But Maleficent was fresh out of creative ideas. All she wanted was to go back to sleep. She could not think straight. She could hardly see straight. She needed Diablo. She had to find Diablo. He would rally her forces. They would turn this around.

Maleficent fired another shot and a wall of rubble came tumbling down too late. She leaned against the stone railing around her tower and once more the raven statue caught her eye.

Diablo was dead. It was their fault.

Maleficent had always been remarkably good at multi-tasking, and her mind rarely got stuck on singular bits of information such as this. She did not have tunnel-vision, so to speak, and she preferred, when possible, to leave herself ample time to consider the consequences of all of her possible courses of action. The curse against the princess was a prime example of this. Maleficent did not want to think of some better political move to make involving the princess, or some new way in which to torture the actual targets of her outrage, only to have already killed the girl off in a moment of ill temper. Sixteen years seemed like plenty of time for such a decision to make itself apparent, if there were one to be had. Anyway, she doubted the good fairies would actually let the little girl die. They would think of some way to try to weaken her curse, and the more time they spent trying to outmaneuver Maleficent (who was not trying very hard at all to outmaneuver them), the less time Maleficent spent having to look at their self-righteous little faces as they floated blithely through life believing themselves to have been born somehow innately superior to her despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

Maleficent supposed that an argument could be made for the continued multi-tasking ability of her brain, provided one could count desperately wanting to go back to sleep as a coherent idea of any sort. In any event, this and the sudden understanding of Diablo's fate were foremost in Maleficent's thoughts, and it seemed that there was no room for anything else.

Maleficent was incredibly exhausted. Diablo was dead. It was their fault.

And every attempt she made to indirectly end this madness seemed to be failing miserably…and, as it happened, had only worsened the condition of her home. Her only remaining brilliant idea was to separate Philip from the castle in some rather deadly way.

I shall encase you in a forest of thorns, she thought, tracing out the spell, which was one of her favourites, on the top of her staff. You shall bleed to death trying to worm yourself out and I shall be able to watch before I am off to bed!

Maleficent chuckled gaily (and perhaps a bit manically) as she awaited the show that would follow, but something was amiss. Philip continued to make progress toward the castle despite the brambles in his path. What was more, there wasn't a scratch on him. The thorns did little more than catch on his foolish little cape once or twice, and then the prince was on his merry way.

Maleficent snarled. This must be some trickery of the good fairies' doing. Nasty little things—she'd see to it that their deaths were slow and painful. But first, the prince. Whatever it was protecting Philip would be no match for her. She had lost her patience entirely with this whole matter. None of her spells were going to work—the good fairies had bewitched Philip's armour or horse or something—and Maleficent was in no mood to play cat and mouse. She would finish this now. She would avenge her beloved avian companion and then she would go to bed, and in the morning, she would put all of this behind her.

Maleficent threw herself over the thorny thicket and directly into Philip's path, and she wasted no time in assuming a form in which she could inflict far more than magical damage. Maleficent was not limited by her magic, as were the Mistresses of Sleep Deprivation with whom she deigned to share this realm. In fact, if it came to it, Maleficent would be perfectly capable of besting the prince in sword or hand-to-hand combat. She could, if she were of a mind, most likely convince Philip to drop the whole matter and come over to her castle for tea, but that sounded ghastly on so many levels. Maleficent had learned a very long time ago that it would not do to rely on one skill—albeit a masterfully developed one, if she did say so—which was more a matter of chance than anything else. Maleficent knew countless ways to win in any given situation without using even a drop of magic, and it was for this very reason that her magic was so powerful. She used her magic to turn into a fearsome dragon, larger than any real dragon could ever hope to be. She planned to use her dragon form to inflict physical, not magical, damage, against which whatever spell the Righteous Three had cooked up would be useless.

It was rather too bad, she mused as she breathed fire upon her opponent. Without Philip at her disposal, it would be quite a pain to awaken the princess without killing her in the process, and Maleficent had really been looking forward to messing with the head of the product of the good fairies' parenting. She supposed this could be her next project, but she wouldn't really have anything to practice upon. Perhaps she could put some of her minions under a similar curse, but she wondered whether it was possible to make a True Love's Kiss stipulation for someone who had no true love.

That idea struck Maleficent as quite sad. What if, for example, she were placed under such a spell? Maleficent had in her lifetime rarely felt anything more than begrudging tolerance for any wicked fairies outside of her immediate family. The thought of being with a human was simply too repulsive to think of, as was the thought of being with any man, and Maleficent wasn't really certain whether one could have a True Love of the same gender as far as fairy magic was concerned. If Maleficent were to fall downwind of such a curse, she would have absolutely no hope of escaping it. Where was the sense in that? What would be the difference between that and simply killing her? Did the princess know that she was under a curse? Did she feel the passing of time? How dreadful that would be.

Perhaps Maleficent would be in luck—many curses could be broken in several different ways. The caster could almost invariably end the curse whenever she pleased. Without Merryweather's interference, Maleficent could have elected not to kill the princess at any time up until she drew blood from her finger and, if she were being completely honest, would probably have called it off for one reason or another. Maleficent really didn't care to have the blood of innocents on her hands.

Some curses were also broken when one of the parties involved died. With the uniquely terrible combination of Maleficent's magic and Merryweather's, though, who knew what could happen in such an instance? Maleficent was rather glad she had thought of this. If Merryweather died, it was quite possible that the princess would die, as was originally intended by Maleficent's spell. If Maleficent died, she had no idea what would happen. The curse was originally Maleficent's, and if Merryweather had her way, the princess wouldn't be asleep at all. (Maleficent was momentarily distracted by how nice it must be to be having a nice, long sleep right now. Even a cursed one.) Much of magic hinged upon the caster's intent, and so it was possible that the curse would be lifted; however, Maleficent's magic was far more powerful than Merryweather's, and it was also quite possible that her spells could transcend her death.

If Philip, the princess's true love as indicated in Merryweather's spell, died…would the princess simply be doomed to eternal sleep unless Maleficent found some way around it? Maleficent was momentarily distracted by this most ludicrous idea and got herself a slash across the nose with a sword for her negligence.

But it was such a bizarre and dreadful notion: how ghastly would it be to have one's salvation left up to Maleficent, of all people?

The sword wound burned something awful. It irritated her skin in some way. How was that even possible? Her skin was an impenetrable mass of scales. Maleficent really must end this silly little battle and get back to where she belonged: her warm, cozy, comfortable…

"Sword of Truth…" Flora's irritating little voice could cut diamonds, and yet suddenly Maleficent's mind was very much alert.

The sword.

"…fly swift and sure."

The sword was enchanted. Not by those three, but by someone who knew what she was doing.

"Let evil die,"

Well, this changed matters. Maleficent had never truly considered that she might die on this day. And what was the point of it, really? She wasn't going to die to protect anything of any importance, really. Only a silly spell she planned to abort for the greater good, anyway. Exactly what was she fighting for? A good night's sleep? Peace of mind? Her honour? Well. Pride cometh before a fall, as the saying went.

"…and good endure!"

Maleficent wondered what would become of them when she died. Would they emerge from the rubble vindicated and victorious? Would they feel that this matter, which had consumed Maleficent's life for sixteen years, was over and put it behind them with no trouble at all? Would the valiant prince kiss his beautiful princess, and would they live happily ever after?

And when these things did not come to pass, when the miserable reality of life seeped into their bones and they found that they were no better off than before, and were perhaps a bit more haunted for their trouble, whom would they have left to blame?

The sword pierced Maleficent straight through the heart, and she knew the most excruciating pain. It was as though her entire body were being slowly and painstakingly ripped into two equal halves. And yet, after a few seconds, the pain subsided. She supposed the body could only take so much pain before it shut itself down with the intent of self-preservation. But Maleficent wasn't going to survive. And actually, after that initial searing agony had passed and she felt blissfully numb, Maleficent decided that she did hope against all odds that everyone…perhaps even Flora and Fauna and Merryweather…would live happily ever after.

She hoped that there was some happiness, some peace to be had in this situation and in this world, for there had been little in her own life. Perhaps then she could make peace with her senseless departure from it.

At first it struck her as rather odd that, amid the faces of her mother and sisters and a handful of friends and lovers, the memory of the first dragon whose soul she had seen and whose essence she had borrowed as her own, and the most magnificent places she had visited, both the beautiful and the terrifying, Maleficent should see the sleeping Princess Aurora. But she supposed it wasn't so unbelievable. She had spent sixteen years of her life devoted, in a manner of speaking, to the lovely maiden, which was longer than she had spent doing anything else in her relatively short lifetime. It only went to show how terribly destructive her devotion could be—to others and, as it turned out, to herself.

It was a pity, she thought, that this business with the princess would be her legacy. But perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps everyone could indeed live happily ever after if only they removed one thing from the equation.

Maleficent wasn't certain she really knew how to be happy, anyway.

Maleficent's last vision was of the sky, stormy and swirling, as she liked it best, slowly receding from her as she fell. She did not fully comprehend this, but when her body hit the ground, she melted back into herself, more or less the way she had been born. With a shaking hand, she reached out and touched her blood upon the sword which was to be her demise. The sword did not burn her. No longer enchanted. It had done its duty.

For the second time today, Maleficent felt her mind begin to dull. She was very sleepy—she really ought to go back to bed, but she was too tired to get up. Anyway, who knew how far away her bed was from here? She couldn't quite remember how she had gotten herself here, and it did not seem terribly important at the moment. She supposed it could not hurt to simply sleep here—she couldn't really feel anything, and for some reason, she doubted that she was in any danger of attack.

List for tomorrow: start fixing up castle, deal with fairies, dispose of minions, visit princess. Maleficent smiled to herself. That sounded like a most pleasant day. She closed her eyes and drifted off into a deep slumber.

It is a far, far better thing I do
Than I have ever done before.
It is a far, far better rest I go to
Than I have ever known.

The magic surrounding true love is a curious thing. As with most magic, it is imprecise and subjective—that is to say, its implications in any given matter depend largely upon a given sorceress's personal relationship with it.

Mistress Maleficent, an uncommonly powerful wicked fairy who was capable of a great many things, magic and otherwise, would have found herself frustratingly incapable of casting a spell centered upon true love, as she had no concept of, nor interest in it. She had only once laid eyes on the person who could have been her true love, and it had not gone well for reasons unrelated to their most compatible personalities.

Mistress Merryweather, a feisty and temperamental fairy of relatively little magical prowess, had a very idealistic notion of true love, having never been in any sort of love relationship, herself. A man who could be her true love had not come along yet, and she was still (rather patiently, if she did say so) waiting.

It should come as no surprise that Merryweather's magic was incredibly different from Maleficent's, and that the two did not mix very well. Maleficent's spells were careful and calculated, as precise as any magic could ever be. She always left herself ample time to fix any unforeseen problems in her spells, and she always fashioned them to be rather horrifically poetic. Her curse upon the Princess Aurora, more commonly known as the Sleeping Beauty, is a prime example of this.

Merryweather's modification of this infamous curse exemplified her own magical style. Passionate, well meant, and ill thought out. Merryweather's magic was as volatile as good fairy magic could be. To top it off, Merryweather had not only stipulated that the princess's cursed slumber be broken with the kiss of true love, but with the first kiss of true love. That is to say, when Prince Phillip and Princess Aurora met shortly before Aurora's cursed sixteenth birthday, had they shared a kiss—which, given Philip's propensity for sharing kisses with pretty maidens he had just met, was not unlikely—Princess Aurora would have soon found herself trapped in ageless sleep for all eternity, no matter who kissed her. A rather pointless sense of moral self-righteousness that would have given you, Mistress Merryweather!

This presumed in addition that Merryweather would be able to locate Princess Aurora's true love without her input. Such a task would be nearly impossible, for one person's true love is another person's insufferable menace to society, and who can really be certain where that distinction lies in any person's heart?

As it happened, however, Prince Philip (with a great deal of assistance from an enchanted Sword and Shield given to him by Mistress Merryweather and her sisters) defeated the wicked fairy Maleficent in battle. This ended, for the most part, Maleficent's hold upon the sleeping princess, and she gradually returned from her deep, cursed slumber into a normal, light one, from which Philip's kiss, which did not meet the stipulations given in Merryweather's spell, was quite enough to awaken her. Maleficent's magic was quite powerful—so powerful that it transcended her death—and Aurora required an abnormal amount of sleep for several years thereafter, but this was the only side effect of the leftover magic that she experienced.

Philip's true love, it is interesting to note, was a headstrong young lady of low noble rank and below average intelligence the next realm over. They did not meet until Philip was almost forty years old and she almost forty-five, and they had a long-lasting and passionate affair of which Queen Aurora knew very well and of which she never spoke to anyone. It was not the first of Philip's extramarital affairs, and it would not be the last.

Aurora, after she had awakened from her infamous nap, led a rather sad, secluded, and lonely existence. Philip was charming enough, and she was very grateful when she learned that he had saved her, but she soon discovered that they were not at all well-suited for one another. Aurora was highly intelligent and inquisitive, something with which Philip was wholly ill-equipped to contend. She made him feel stupid, in fact, and he often subconsciously attempted to beat her down with condescension and an inflated sense of self-importance which she found to be incredibly upsetting.

She was very emotional—some might say over-sensitive—and perhaps a bit high-strung. Though she was fond of people, she had spent most of her life completely secluded from them, and she found it very overwhelming to have no time to herself anymore. This often resulted in fits of exhaustion-driven weeping which Philip could not begin to comprehend.

Aurora had also grown up in a home composed of two very strong-willed women and one very weak-willed one, and on this dichotomous scale, she fell closest to the latter category. For the most part, Aurora did as she was told. She had been taught to be polite and to follow the rules, and she had learned implicitly that she would rather not start an argument if it could be avoided. This was not to say that she did not feel any resentment upon being told what to do by certain persons in a certain tone, and it was not to say that she did not try on a few occasions to start an argument, as she felt it was necessary to stand up for her rights as a human being, but all of this really only ended up hurting her and driving Philip, her only frequent source of human company, away.

Aurora was, as it turned out, not very well-equipped to produce an heir to the throne. She was a rather fragile little thing, and she had a great deal of trouble at every turn in the process of bearing a child. After almost a year with Philip, Aurora became pregnant with twins. After only a few months, she was confined to her bed for the remainder of the pregnancy, during which time she lost one of the children, a loss which she felt acutely long before a doctor arrived to confirm it, and fell into a deep depression. All of her attendants and family members found it absolutely unbearable to be around her for any longer than necessary.

About eight months into her pregnancy, Aurora went into labour. As no one could bear to be in her presence, she had to scream for help for several minutes before her attendants came to her bedside and subsequently sent for a midwife. Aurora gave birth, after a rather long labour, to a tiny baby girl. The midwife and her assistants bathed mother and child in milk and lay the babe next to Aurora without much to-do, for they did not expect either Aurora or her newborn daughter to survive past sunset.

When Aurora did awake, she named the baby Constance. She somehow managed to get herself up off of the bed after several months of complete non-movement and she staggered with Constance in her arms to the room where Mistress Fauna, who was Merryweather's older sister, slept to ask for assistance in the child's care.

Constance was a rather sickly child. She shared her mother's violet-blue eyes and blonde hair, though Constance's was more of a strawberry colour, as well as her sharp intellect and endless curiosity. Constance proved to be quite enough to pull Aurora out of her depression, and Aurora, having found that the rest of her life was an endless source of misery, devoted herself entirely to her child, who was an endless source of joy and light. One could argue that Aurora finally found her true love, which had been so tragically denied her thus far, in her child.

Around the time Constance was two years old, Aurora took up reading as a hobby rather than a necessity. Constance loved to hear stories, and Aurora didn't have very many of her own to tell. Constance loved stories so much that Aurora had to request more books almost once every fortnight, and she often found that she had to skip over some parts of the stories she came across as a result, as they were not fit for the ears of a sensitive and nightmare-prone toddler.

"The man, whose name was Elias, was good and kind to everyone. Everyone in his village found him to be the best sort of person. Everyone, that is, except for the evil fairy…Maleficent…who did not think much of anyone." Constance giggled. Aurora felt conflicted. Maleficent was a scary sort of villain, and she had to skip over a great deal of the story, but later that night, she read it several times over for a reason she could not explain.

When she was five years old, Constance caught a very nasty illness, as did a handful of other people in the castle. Her lovely skin swelled and blackened into little knots and she complained of high fever and intense pain all over her body. For about seven days, Aurora stayed at her bedside and read her story after story in an attempt to distract her. When Aurora fell asleep and Constance could not, Constance took up the books and struggled to read them herself. She, too, was captivated by the character of Maleficent.

When, on the fourth day of her illness, her father returned early from his travels to see her, Constance asked him if he had ever encountered the evil fairy Maleficent. Philip told her that he had personally seen to it that Maleficent was no longer a threat to anyone.

"You mean you killed her?" she asked.

Phillip scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Well, yes. There was a battle. The creature turned into a dragon that would have killed me, otherwise."

"I suppose that's true," Constance had said after a moment.

When Philip had left and Aurora had returned—for Constance never saw both of her parents at the same time—Aurora immediately sensed that something was amiss.

"Is something on your mind, my dear?" she asked.

Constance had many thoughts, most of which were clear and precise; however, in the presence of most people, she kept these thoughts to herself. She waited to speak until she was alone with her mother, who she felt could understand most easily where Constance's thoughts had come from. "Father killed the evil fairy from the story book. It makes me sad to think of and I'm not sure why."

Aurora had found to her surprise that her eyes filled with tears and her voice caught in her throat. She wanted to defend Philip, for she knew that he had no choice in the matter and that he had done it for her own good, no less. Still, something about the affair did not sit right with her, and she could not lie to her daughter about that. After a few moments of silence, Aurora responded, "I know. It makes me sad to think of, too."

"Why do you suppose that is?" asked Constance and Aurora noted that she was clutching the very story book she had mentioned close to her chest.

Aurora petted her daughter's hair, which was soaked in sweat. "I don't know, my love. There are many sad things in this world which are necessary for one reason or another. Sometimes someone has to die so that someone else can live."

Constance considered this. "For whom an I dying?"

Aurora's heart skipped a beat and then began to pound erratically in her stomach and ears. She tried very hard to remain calm as she noted that some of Constance's hair had fallen out, that her fingers and toes were very swollen, and that her skin was various shades of yellow, pink, and an alarming blue. "For no one, Constance. You aren't going to die."

Shortly thereafter, Constance fell into a restless slumber from which she could not awaken. Three days later, she died, and Aurora began to go quite mad. After several attempts upon her own life, she had to be locked away, which only served to worsen her isolation.

The myths surrounding true love are many, varied, and often contradict one another. The good fairies, for example, and by extension, Aurora, believed that everyone had the opportunity to meet his true love at least once in his lifetime. They also believed, however, that one could live a perfectly happy existence without ever knowing true love of the magical variety. King Stefan and Queen Leah, Aurora's parents, did not share magical true love, and yet they learned to love one another very well.

Some years later, when the mad princess who was now officially a queen was once more permitted to leave her room, she had accompanied Philip on a venture to the neighbouring realm. On this fateful occasion, Philip first laid eyes on his true love and, not being a man terribly used to exhibiting self-control, had not done a very good job of keeping it a secret from his wife.

When they had returned home, Aurora had asked Fauna whether it was possible to be happy if one never met one's true love.

"Well, dear," Fauna had responded after a moment's surprise, for she had believed up until then that Philip was Aurora's true love, "being in love is a wonderful thing, but there are many wonderful things in the world. And you know, you might meet your true love, but you would still be unable to take that opportunity because you have other responsibilities." She did not know that this innocent statement stung perhaps even worse than Philip's latest betrayal.

Most people found Queen Aurora to be far too dreadfully melancholy to speak with for large amounts of time. As a result, she spent more and more time talking to Fauna, who was far too kind hearted not to speak with her. One day, after having been driven to read one of the stories which featured Maleficent once more, she mentioned the wicked fairy to Fauna.

Fauna had, to Aurora's surprise, sighed sadly. "It's too bad the way that turned out."

"The way what turned out?" Aurora had asked, her curiosity piqued for the first time in years.

"Oh, nothing. I'm a silly old woman, don't mind what I say…"

"Nonsense. What were you going to say?"

"Oh, it's just…" Fauna began to fidget with her dress. "I don't think she was really as vile and wicked as everyone made her out to be, that's all."

"How do you suppose that?"

"Well…" Fauna glanced around, as though someone might be listening, but no one ever would be. "I always sort of thought she seemed quite lonely. She had a nasty temper, of course, and she really liked to stir up trouble, but, you know, maybe if she'd had a friend who could put up with that sort of thing…or even someone who was her equal in any way at all… The only truly evil thing she ever did was to put that curse on you, and I just…I always wondered whether perhaps that could have been avoided."

After a moment of silence, Aurora remarked quietly, "She was very beautiful. In the pictures, at least…and in a sort of frightening way. But beautiful, nonetheless."

Fauna considered this with considerable surprise. Maleficent, beautiful? Fauna's only memories of Maleficent were a tall, looming figure with a thin, scowling face which only smiled when something rather nasty was about to happen to her sister Flora's begonias.

Fauna looked up at her little Rose for a long time, and for the first time in many, many years, she truly saw her. And when she concentrated very hard, for Fauna was not too keen on such things, she could just barely sense an aura of ancient magic about the queen. She saw her gift there, and Flora's, for the other spells Rose had fallen prey to in her lifetime had faded away, but there was something else there, too, which neither Fauna nor apparently either of her sisters had ever noticed, or they would have been understandably quite panicked.

But as it was only Fauna, who understood true love quite a bit better than either of her sisters, and as the danger had long passed, Fauna merely felt sad for Aurora. She did not know what she could possibly say.

She had for over two centuries been trying to decide whether it was better to have lost true love than never to have known it at all, and now a new question presented itself…was it better that Aurora never knew the fate of her own true love? Must Aurora be one of the sad few who wondered at the end of her life what wrong turn she had taken, what simple task she had postponed, or what friendly face she had passed without a second thought which had resulted in her loneliness? Was the only alternative to know that most people had found Aurora's true love to be an insufferable menace to society and had, often with little provocation, treated her as such until her dying day?

She did not feel any closer to the answer than she had two hundred years ago, and so she tried to imagine the two of them in a room together—sweet, mild-mannered Aurora and manipulative, quick-witted Maleficent. She wondered if perhaps she had been mistaken in what she saw, but now that she had seen it, it was written all over Aurora, clear as day. She decided that there must be a great many things she did not know about the both of them and so she replied, "I suppose she was, dear, in her way."

Aurora lived a very long life, and as a result, outlived most of the people who had any influence upon her: the evil fairy Maleficent, her unborn child and her daughter, Constance, her parents, and even Mistress Fauna, who died of a mysterious illness not long after the above conversation and who never got the chance to decide to tell Aurora the secret of her true love.

Many years after that, Aurora outlived Philip. Most historians believe that the stress which suddenly faced the fragile queen as sole ruler of the United Kingdoms of North and East nearly killed her, for she appeared by all accounts to have aged fifty years overnight. She soon delegated most of her duties to members of Philip's counsel and lived out the rest of her days in relative seclusion. She rarely spoke to anyone, took her meals alone, and was frequently seen reading and old story book which was known to be the late Princess Constance's favourite.

The queen, who had not even hummed a single tune since she was sixteen, began to sing again during this time, and her voice was just as pure and beautiful as it had been in her youth. Yet, whenever anyone heard that voice ringing out from the topmost tower of the castle, he did not gallop across hill and valley to listen closer. He fell to his knees and wept in sorrow, for the beauty of her voice no longer held all of the light and joy of the world, but all of the sadness and loneliness.

Perhaps it was possible to live out one's life never having known true love and to be perfectly happy. Aurora would never know. Her life had been unhappy for a multitude of reasons, many of which, when she thought back on them now, were rather tragically related to the identity of her true love. For one day, she had looked at the picture in that old story book and she had suddenly understood. And it wasn't so much the sadness she had felt at that, particularly, as it was the sadness she had felt all her life which welled up in her heart and overflowed into song.

Aurora's eightieth birthday party was a glorious celebration, and everyone from the two kingdoms was invited. She said hello to every single person there and allowed them all to kiss her hand, and for a short time felt that her life had some meaning. Everyone told her what a blessing it was that she had lived to such a ripe age when so many people had not. She found it to be quite the opposite, but of course she did not tell any of her subjects that.

Aurora lay down to sleep that night for the very last time. As a woman who had longed for death for half a century, the strange knowledge which possessed her—that this was to be her last evening on this earth—was of immense comfort, and her final thoughts were hopeful ones. She hoped that, before the night was over, she would be reunited with the people she had lost…and perhaps even one person she had never truly known. She hoped that her life, and by extension her death, might not be in vain. She hoped that the kingdom would prosper under new and youthful leadership, that idealism and enthusiasm might take the place she had left with only weary regret. She hoped there was some happiness, some peace to be had in this world, for there had been little in her own life.

Unsurprisingly, very little of that came to pass. However, the anarchy, the battles, the bloodshed which followed Queen Aurora's death comprise another story entirely. Life and death can be rather senseless that way.

Sorry her lot that loves too well,
Heavy the heart that hopes but vainly.

And yet, in her final moments, the sad Queen Aurora knew peace. For the first time in sixty-four years, Aurora knew she would sleep well. Really, by all accounts, it had been a most gratifying day.