A/N: I had an absolute blast writing this. I hope everyone likes it!
During her one hundred year slumber, her mind wove intricate deceptions the most common of which depicted a spinning wheel. Aurora felt a deep sense of familiarity each time her eyes settled upon the wooden structure although she struggled to remember why. She never could think up an explanation in time before she felt the inevitable tug of the wheel pulling her in.
Her mind worked as if in a fog as her feet glided beneath her, moving her towards the shining metal tip of the spindle. It called her name in barely audible whispers, luring her in until she stood directly before it.
As if by clockwork, she would gradually stretch her arm out, fingers curiously wondering what the spindle would feel like. Somehow she knew it was a foreign object that she had seen only once in her sixteen years. It was forbidden. It was intriguing.
Her hand would hover above the spindle for a moment as if it was directly disobeying her strong desire to run her fingers across its surface but ultimately the fight would die away. Then, that's when the regret would begin to set in.
The tip of her pointer finger would finally meet the spindle of the spinning wheel, a sharp stinging sensation spreading throughout her hand. Her eyes would grow wide as she realized her error and then, all too suddenly, the room, empty except for the wheel, would turn black.
Of course, by this point, Aurora was used to this particular dream. But this time it was different; this time it didn't end after she pricked her finger.
After everything faded to black, she felt the room begin to rumble around her. The air was filled with an eerie silence during which Aurora was unsure how to react. She wasn't sure how long she had been in this strange world but she was certain this had never happened before.
Suddenly the floor gave way beneath her. A scream ripped out from deep within her as she fell down, down, down into the dark void.
After what felt like hours of simply falling, light finally began to flood back, filling the darkness until it was brightly illuminated. Aurora hit the roof of a thatched cottage, falling through until she finally hit the rough wooden floor with a definitive 'thud'.
Slowly, Aurora opened her eyes, peering at her surroundings. She was in a cottage; the same cottage that she grew up in, to be precise. She crawled to her feet. Was this real?
"Rose!" three voices called in unison from just outside the small house. "Sweet Briar Rose!" Aurora rushed to the window, relieved to hear some familiar voices. Had she only dreamt of pricking her finger? What a peculiar dream...
She threw the shuttered windows open to reveal her three aunts. She smiled her bright smile, "Oh! I am so relieved to see you! I had the most unsettling dream!" She held up a finger, "Wait just a moment!" She ran over to the door and gripped the wooden knob in her fingers, before pulling it open.
Only, it didn't open.
Aurora pulled harder but it didn't budge. She moved back towards the window, "The door seems to be ja-" she stopped in her tracks as her eyes settled upon the scene outside.
A dark tendril of smoke was twisting out from the forest, moving towards her aunts. It twisted in the wind, dancing to a sour tune deaf to her own ears. As Aurora watched, the tendril wrapped around one of her aunt's legs and jerked her off her feet. The woman screamed as she was dragged rapidly backwards into the now pitch black woods, "Rose!"
The other two stood still, eyes glazed over as they stared blankly at Aurora whose own heart was pounding madly in her chest. Another tendril curled around her second aunt's neck. It caressed her paralyzed skin, twisting around again and again until her eyes came back into focus, fear evident in them. Her lips parted in a silent cry, arm extending forward before the smokey strand released it's hold and she fell to the ground in a lifeless heap.
"No!" Aurora shouted, throwing her arm towards the open window but instead hitting an invisible wall. She jerked her arm back in shock, cradling it to her bodice. She needed to get out. She needed to save them!
She fumbled over her own two feet as she tried to get back to the door. She pulled with every ounce of strength in her body, but to no avail. She banged her palms against the door, panic setting in.
"Rose! Help us!" she heard her last aunt's cry break through the seemingly impenetrable barrier surrounding the house.
"I'm trying!" she screamed back, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She pounded at the door, skin breaking, hands bleeding as a splintering scream split the air. "I'm trying!"
The world went quiet. The screaming stopped. Aurora leaned against the door, openly sobbing against the thick wood. "I'm trying," she whispered.
The door eased open with an effortless grace as Aurora stumbled forward into the wide open yard, eyes stinging and breath coming in suffocating gasps. She peered around.
Her aunts were gone, not a single trace of what Aurora had just seen still there aside from the quickly thickening black smoke creeping along the tree line. She peered into the darkness, hoping to catch a glimpse of something...something to tell her she had just imagined this whole twisted scenario.
Instead she caught sight of two lurid green eyes peering at her from between the ink entwined trees. "Hello?" Aurora croaked with a tear-wrecked voice.
"Your aunties are gone, my dear Aurora," a sickly soothing voice whispered to her. "Now it is just us." The green eyes moved closer, the connected body concealed in the murky woods. "Just the princess...," the voice purred, gliding ever closer, "and the dragon."
A scale covered tail whipped out of the smoke quicker than a flash of lightening following closely by an amused laugh as Aurora stumbled back. "My, oh my, is the little princess scared of the dark?" A single, gnarled horn peeked out accompanied by the shining glint of teeth. "Don't worry. I'll bring back the light."
A stream of piping hot, orange flames erupted just over Aurora's head as she threw herself to the ground. It caught the surrounding trees in its grasp, creeping up the trunks until they illuminated the clearing with deadly light.
The ground rumbled as a giant reptilian leg stomped out of the cover of the trees towards a gaping Aurora. There was nowhere to escape to. She was going to die.
"Get away from her!" Aurora's head flew towards the source of pounding hooves and clanking metal.
"Get out of here, Rose!" her prince called to her as approached the dragon, sword poised in one hand and shield raised in the other. He dismounted from his saddle and shooed his horse away.
Aurora tripped back again into a bush as flames flew past her, "Philip! Don't!" Her cries were suddenly magnified as she recognized the sensation of thorns cutting into her skin. She glanced behind herself to find rose stems curling around her wrists in tight constraints. They pulled her back and held her strongly enough to keep her there. They kept her there to watch.
The prince got in but a few stabs at the dragon's rough skin as its tail came whipping towards him. He just barely dodged it before its head came down fast, fiery breath incasing him and turning his skin to ash where he stood.
Another scream tore its way from deep within Aurora, "No!"
The stems tightened further around her wrists, now beginning to twine around her torso. It pushed the breath from her lungs, adding to the tax the thick smoke had already caused on her. She gasped, her vision beginning to blur from both panic and a lack of air.
Blackness crept around the edges of her eyes and then closed in until, once again, the scene ended and Aurora felt nothing but a numbness in a lifeless room. It was over. Or so she hoped.
Of course, it was never really over.
Within the century that she slept, the dream repeated itself again and again and again, growing more gruesome and frightening each time until Aurora wasn't sure how to differentiate between her nightmares and reality. She didn't know whether her prince's kiss was real. She didn't know if she was a princess. She didn't know if she was truly awake. And gradually it drove her into madness.
Once upon a dream, a sleeping beauty was engulfed by darkness.
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