Work Text:
Lessons in Love
@)-- A Friend’s Love --(@
Riding lessons were her favorite part of the week, even though they left her sore and aching the next day. The time outside, far from the stares and whispers of the court, was a much-needed respite. Fresh air, the familiar sounds and sights of the woods and hills, and the simple companionship of the horses were their own sweet reliefs as well.
Aurora Rose loved her own mount, a gentle palfrey named Comfort, and took genuine pleasure in the slow, gentle rides across the countryside that her chaperones escorted her on. Sometimes one or both of her parents went with them on short rambles to the river for a picnic supper or into the hills to find a good view of the castle.
Of course, her parent’s presence always tripled the number of people out riding that day—not only her own guard and chaperone, but the guards and servants and ladies and gentlemen who surrounded the King and Queen almost constantly. And then there was Phillip.
They weren’t married yet and Phillip often had his own duties to attend to while Aurora Rose had lesson after lesson (etiquette, history, languages, fancy embroidery, all the details in running the Royal household and on and on). Yet somehow he was always there for riding lessons. From the very beginning when she was just learning to sit on the most placid jenny in the stables, he was there to gentle tease and smile and encourage her.
Once she found her seat and became accustomed to riding Comfort, he kept encouraging her—taking her farther and father afield in spite of the protests and admonishments of her chaperone or his father. The gentle warmth of the sun above her, the sweet songs of birds dancing through the air, and the open freedom of the countryside warmed her spirit. It was something to look forward to when she was overwhelmed by all the new demands on her time and attention, something to fondly look back from the continuing strangeness of settling into life in a castle.
Phillip just said he liked to see her smile.
And then one day he swept her up on front of him onto Samson and they raced across the grassy hills, leaving her chaperone, the Lady Adele, and her staid horse far behind them. Samson’s powerful muscles flexed underneath her, launching them forward at an incredible pace. Phillips arms encircled her, a protective barrier as he held he reins in front of her. Aurora Rose laughed into the wind, her hair flowing out behind them like a hawk’s tail spread in flight, gleaming golden in the sunlight.
Lady Adele’s furious scolding made it quite clear that energetic stallions were not appropriate riding horses for ladies and that Phillip’s audacity in separating the princess from her chaperone was quite possibly grounds for war. Phillip smiled charmingly, praising the Lady’s diligence and loyalty, until she blushingly subsided. Notably, he did not promise not to do it again—and as he was leaving, he winked at Aurora Rose with a mischievous grin.
It certainly was not the last time Aurora Rose found herself riding Samson. While he might be a challenging horse in some ways, he was also very, very smart. And Aurora Rose was very, very good at communicating and making friends with animals. It didn’t take long for them to trust each other, and Phillip started giving her more and more control over their rides together.
Nothing could compare to the first time she rode Samson on her own. To the feeling of that much power and grace in willing partnership with her, following her lead and her commands, and the freedom to go wherever she could ever want simply because she wanted to—it was truly marvelous.
@)-- A Father’s Love --(@
Aurora Rose’s second favorite lessons were swordplay. Only, those lessons were by necessity fairly secretive. So, officially her second favorite lessons were dancing. The two activities had quite a bit in common: Phillip was her main partner, the lessons were hands-on and full of movement, and the actions and positions were easy and familiar to her—as if she was refreshing old knowledge instead of learning new. It made her think of dancing in the woods to imaginary music and play-fighting monsters with her friends as a child, half-remembered dreams of adventure guiding her steps.
Her other most common partner was King Stefan—her father. That was an important part of the lessons too. She had meals everyday with her parents, attended court functions with them, went on rides or out walking in the gardens. They talked, awkwardly and stumbling over words, trying to find a relationship—a father who had only ever dreamed of his daughter and a young woman who had barely even imagined having a father.
The first time that Stefan cut into her dance lessons—stepping in to twirl Aurora Rose in one direction while Queen Leah smoothly redirected Phillip in the opposite direction—they found a new way to spend time together.
He guided her across the dance floor, smiling proudly as she mastered complicated steps and gently steadying her when she stumbled.
Dancing made her feel safe—cherished and protected, free to try new things and let herself loose into the joy of the movement because there was always someone there to catch her.
That was something else that dancing lessons had in common with her (secret) swordplay lessons.
The first time that Stefan had discovered Phillip and Aurora Rose fencing in an out of the way and rarely used storeroom was also the first time that Aurora Rose saw him lose his temper. She had seen him argue and spar with King Hubert, seen the ice in his expression when anyone mentioned Maleficent in any way, but she had never seen him so heatedly furious as he pushed Phillip away from her.
It took Queen Leah interceding to calm him down enough to listen to their protests and it took him calming down and her mother’s pointed hints for Aurora Rose to realize he was so furious because he could see a bruise shading her wrist from a block that Phillip had handled poorly.
Learning to fight was important to Aurora Rose. It was fun in the same way dancing was and it felt exciting to have a secret to share with Phillip as they snuck away for lessons. Some of the stances had the same familiar feeling to her as some of the dance positions too. More than all of that though—sword lessons made her feel safer.
When she woke sometimes at night, flashed of green fire in the corners of her eye and the memory of her feet moving forward against her will, of her hand reaching towards the sharp spindle without any voluntary desire of her own…she found courage in looking at the chest where her sword was hidden. If some day another dragon came to their kingdom, she would have the skills to protect herself.
Stefan swept Aurora Rose into a teary embrace, his thin frame wiry and strong around her.
From that day on, he joined in the lessons. Not every lesson—he agreed that it was best to keep them secret, reasoning that the element of surprise would only help if she ever did need to defend herself, and the King couldn’t mysteriously vanish for an hour or two all that often. Phillip continued to teach her most of the time and pushed her even harder. But Stefan was a more exacting teacher—requiring a precision in her stances and correcting her grips in ways that left her practicing on her own in her bedroom each night until the positions were second nature to her.
As demanding as Stefan could be, he was also quick to praise Aurora’s improvement and hard work. His proud smiles and approving pats on her shoulder were another commonality cementing her love of both sword fighting and dancing lessons.
@)-- A Mother’s Love --(@
Aurora Rose’s third favorite lessons were even more unofficial than the swordplay ones. They were watching Queen Leah subtly manage the feelings and decisions of the people around her. The best opportunities did often come during actual lessons—as Leah showed her daughter how to run a large household or plan a Royal feast.
But there was a difference between her mother’s explicit instructions in how to create a seating chart (that would keep feuds from breaking out) or plan a menu and the experience of listening to the Queen soothe an angry cook whose souffle had fallen when a rowdy apprentice ran through the kitchen (which Leah somehow managed to turn into the cook promising special lessons to the boy to help manage his excess energy).
Queen Leah was pretty much the only person Aurora Rose ever saw stand firm against Phillip’s most charming whirlwind of nonsense which even his father constantly bent to. It was not, she thought to herself, an immoveable object meeting an unstoppable force.
It was rather like a very strong swimmer finding themselves in the middle of a rushing river. Aurora Rose had learned how to swim early in her childhood with her aunts. You shouldn’t try and fight against a swift, strong current, she knew—the river would keep rushing forward no matter how much you fought against it, and you would exhaust yourself trying. Instead, a good swimmer knew to swim with the current, but angled towards shore. The trick was getting the river’s current to help take you where you wanted to go even if you ended up a little farther along than you had planned to go.
That’s how Aurora Rose’s mother handled Phillip—never trying to change his mind or argue against his points but listening carefully to understand what he was saying and questioning just enough to get him to listen to her. Instead of forcing her to his own point of view, she somehow managed to gently steer the conversation so they both ended up happy in the end.
It worked on the fathers too—when King Hubert insisted that they marry right away and get to work on providing a grandson for the kingdom, Stefan nearly started a fistfight with him in the dining hall. He was insistent that they should wait several years—after all, she was still learning how to be a princess, let alone a wife and queen.
(Aurora was aware that princesses could marry quite young and she knew that she loved Phillip truly…but most of the girls she had grown up around had married in their twenties and so Stefan’s stance didn’t surprise her at all).
Queen Leah let the two friends fight it out before interjecting at just the right moment to convince them to let Aurora Rose and Phillip decide for themselves when the best time for marriage was.
That’s also how Aurora Rose ended being called Aurora Rose—Leah steering things just right to convince everyone to respect both the name she had been born with and the name she had grown up with by letting her choose.
@)-- A Fairytale Love --(@
Aurora Rose wouldn’t call any of her official princess lessons her favorite anything. They were often exhausting and frequently confusing and there were days when she would have preferred to do anything else other than repeat a list of noble lineages and all of their current and past alliances and feuds. But something she had learned as a child growing up with three strange (magic) aunts in the middle of the woods is that no knowledge is wasted and everything has a purpose.
And the purpose of a princess—a queen, eventually—was to secure the safety and wellbeing of her kingdom and her people. Perhaps not every princess would see it that way. But Aurora Rose had been a peasant girl. She had watched the consequences of policies and decisions play out in the lives of ordinary people, had sat with the old wise woman in the woods as she listened to the desperate problems of the poor and sick, and had waved goodbye to the young men setting out to find their fortunes—or their deaths—because there wasn’t anything left at home for them.
And that was in Stefan’s kingdom—a good place with a caring Royal family.
In her mother’s receiving room where women of the kingdom presented their problems, on rides through little villages, and a carefully cultivated friendship with the servants in the castle, Aurora Rose started to hear about an old problem getting worse.
Maleficent’s Goons.
For as long as Aurora Rose could remember, the Goons had been slinking around the kingdom, hiding in shadows and haunting stormy nights. Everyone knew that they would show up when a new nursery was set up, peering into the cradle and frightening the baby. No one had been happy about it, but they hadn’t done much more harm than that.
Periodically, people would try and drive off the goons. A group of villagers would gather with pitchforks and scythes, or someone would petition King Stefan (or King Hubert) and he’d send a unit of soldiers or a strong knight to harry the creatures across the countryside.
But the Goons, for all their apparent foolishness, were very good at scurrying away. It was rare that anyone managed to hurt one—the best they could do was chase them back into the Forbidden Mountains. The storms that raged around the mountains, the sharp rocks that appeared suddenly underfoot, rains of arrows and spears, an overwhelming and oppressive feeling of dread—no one ever got far into the Mountains.
So, for years the Goons had continued to creep around, peering into cradles and leaving obnoxious messes behind in every nursery in the land. Now, without Maleficent’s iron hand to guide them, the Goons didn’t seem to know quite what to do with themselves.
People were starting to see them more and more often, roaming about instead of hiding in the shadows. Some of them kept to old habits—sneaking into nurseries and searching through cradles—but they left behind fewer small messes and more wanton destruction. Ripped up bedding, smashed furniture, sobbing infants, spoiled milk, and more. Others were branching out—terrorizing livestock, raiding people’s kitchens and stealing or ruining any food they could find, menacing travelers out
They were seen roaming about the countryside more and more often. Some of them kept their old habits—sneaking into nurseries and searching the cradles; but without a specific target, they seemed more interested in ripping up the bedding and smashing the furniture. Other goons were starting to terrorize livestock, raid people’s kitchens, and menace travelers out at night.
Unfortunately, chasing them out remained a problem—a knight or swift-moving group of soldiers might manage to drive the creatures away from a village, but they still couldn’t get past the border of the Forbidden Mountains. Some kind of evil magic remained there, protecting the increasingly malevolent creatures.
Somebody needed to enter the Forbidden Mountains and find a way to stop it all at the source.
Aurora Rose listened closely as different plans were put forth to try and solve the problem. They ranged from reasonable options that had been tried before to completely unreasonable ventures that seemed mostly likely to create a host of new problems. She thought for a long time about what to do.
For nearly sixteen years, the Goons had frightened and bothered the people of the kingdom. For the first time, Aurora Rose knew why—they had been searching for her. And she knew that many, many people had already known that. The story of Maleficent’s curse and the missing kingdom had spread far across the kingdom—but after the first few months, people had stopped talking about it openly.
As the Goons searched more and more cradles—years after Rose had moved into a little trundle bed and then a roomy feather mattress in the attic bedroom—people went to King Stefan and Queen Leah and asked for help in driving the Goons off. But they never asked the King and Queen to reveal where their daughter was hiding. No one went to Maleficent and told her that her Goons should stop looking for an infant and start looking for a girl of 6 or 11 or 15.
It wasn’t Aurora Rose’s fault that she was cursed by an evil fairy. It wasn’t her responsibility that removing Maleficent had left the Goons at loose ends. But there was something she could do—a way she could help, the same as everyone in the Kingdom had helped protect her. And wasn’t that enough to mean that she should?
Aurora Rose went to consult with her aunts.
The three good fairies were no longer living in the cottage in the glen. But they had left a little bit of magic there, just enough to send a message if Aurora Rose should need them. When would she ever need them more than now?
She was very careful about sneaking down to the stable—choosing a time when no one would be around, saddling a horse that she liked but didn’t usually ride, wearing a plain dark cloak—but Phillip and Samson showed up the moment they stepped out of the castle yard.
He didn’t say anything or try to block her path. Instead, he nodded solemnly at her and angled Samson to follow just behind her lead. It was a quiet ride and a quieter wait for Aunt Flora, Aunt Fauna and Aunt Meriweather to show up.
It didn’t stay quiet because there really wasn’t much in the world that could keep Aunt Flora and Aunt Meriweather quiet. But they were as solemn as Aurora Rose had ever seen them when she explained why she was there.
Phillip had told her about his escape from Maleficent’s castle and the three magic beings that had helped him so much. If their magic managed so much once, surely it could do so again? They could go with the soldiers into the Mountains, protecting them from the evils left behind and helping them to either destroy or bind the Goons to stop them from leaving the mountains and continuing to cause havoc.
All three fairies were shaking their heads sadly before she finished making her plea. Magic had its own set of rules, although they were rather inscrutable to most humans. Good fairies, in particular, had a lot of constraints in what they could do and how they could help mortals.
Helping Phillip had been different—Maleficent had made the first move there. Both in cursing the baby Aurora in spite of the fact that they were invited guests in the middle of giving gifts and by kidnapping Phillip for her spiteful amusement and to try and circumvent Meriweather’s counter-curse.
That had opened an opportunity for them to name Phillip as their Champion to rescue Aurora Rose—a role he had accepted when he took up the Sword of Truth and Shield of Virtue that they had handed him. The current circumstances were not ones that would allow them to call up or support another Champion.
Aurora Rose and Phillip caught each other’s eyes at that, a shared look of understanding and resolve.
The fairies couldn’t name a new Champion. But could they help the old one? What if he was protecting Aurora Rose on a quest to end the last remnants of Maleficent’s curse?
Maybe.
Aurora convinced a dear old owl friend to carry a note to their parents and they two of rode as fast as they could to the border of the Forbidden Mountains.
It had taken Phillip most of a single night to fight his way out of the castle and down the mountain and all through all the barriers Maleficent set around Aurora Rose. It took the two of them nearly a week to fight their way up the mountains and into the castle.
Her borrowed sword stained with ichor and blood, Aurora Rose guided her weary horse across the drawbridge, Phillip guarding her back. They fought their way through the remaining castle guard, Goons scattering before them as they searched upstairs and downstairs until they found Maleficent’s chambers.
When they finally located the rock that Maleficent had used to anchor the spell turning all the wild animals of the Mountains into her personal army of Goods, Aurora Rose and Phillip both gratefully collapsed into uncomfortable spiky chairs. They dosed off while Meriweather and Flora fought over how to dispel the magic until Fauna finally stepped up and broke the rock with a single absent-minded word.
Then Aurora Rose and Phillip found that they had to make their way back down the Mountains, surrounding by a mass of confused and frightened wolves, bears, wild cats, birds and oddly large lizards.
At the foot of the Mountains, they ran into the entire army of both King Stefan and King Hubert who escorted the young heroes to their frantic parents. As they walked into the castle together, Phillip reached down to Aurora Rose’s hand and squeezed it tightly.
@)-- A Daughter’s Love --(@
Aurora Rose’s least favorite lessons involved the household accounts—a necessity that her fairy aunts had never considered in the slightest. After the first (but not loudest) argument she and her parents had had about her adventure in the Mountains, she found quite a bit more of her time taken up with the accounts and other important minutia of running a household.
She hadn’t wanted to worry her parents—or terrify them, as it turned out. It was only that she had known a sense of duty and purpose for the first time in her life.
She couldn’t promise them she wouldn’t do anything like it again.
In the meantime, though, Aurora Rose dutifully bent her mind and hands to the work at hand—accounts and all.
As time went on and the kingdom settled into a new peace, the tensions running within the two families slowly lessened.
Aurora Rose learned to bake her father’s favorite pie. She asked him to dance with her whenever she heard music anywhere. She showed him how she had improved in swordplay—and told him how his insistence on perfection in her practice had protected her in the Mountains. She showed him how much it meant to her to know that he was proud of her.
In the spring, Aurora Rose took her mother to the cottage she had grown up in. She introduced her to the wise woman in the woods, to the villagers who lived nearby and let them tell her mother all the embarrassing stories they had about her growing up. She shared with Leah how much the Queen inspired her and how much she appreciated her support and understanding.
She listened to them, and they listened to her and even if they didn’t always understand or agree with each other, they found ways to be a family together.
On feast days and during celebrations, Aurora Rose always wore pink and blue—with a bit of green hidden in her hair or making subtle patterns on her dress. She grew her own flowers in a small window garden in her rooms, sang to the birds and creatures that gathered in her private courtyard every day, and dyed all the Royal linens a bright, happy blue.
She left out fairy cakes and bowls of milk and wrote a letter to her aunts once a week, sending her good owl friend and his descendants to deliver them when she couldn’t.
There are many different ways to love and show your love out in the wide world. Aurora Rose found several of them at sixteen and she kept learning new ones for the rest of her life.