The start of something.

The start of something I wrote for fun. "Darkened Tales", I call it. I just wanted a sassy heroine. Not that I've actually developped her beyond her sassiness, but there you go!
(I changed my layout. And I like it, baby. I like my other blogs layout too. Orange and black is pretty...)

Prologue

You know what they say about happily ever after? That, well, every fairy tale ends that way. Prince saves damsel, saves the day, and they lived happily ever after. Sometimes they add “and they had many children” but that’s optional.
Yeah.
Load of bull. Take it from someone who knows.
Those fairy tales you’re used to? Those happy endings you clapped for when you were a kid? Close this book right now if that’s what you’re waiting for.
I’m not here to put stars in your eyes. I’m not here for a happy dream in beddy-bye land. I’m not here for a slow/idiotic/half-mean witch, step-mother or dastardly green-skinned gnome bad guy to defeat. Rumpelstilskin is so yesterday, anyway.
You thought fairy tales were simple, right? You thought, that on the contrary to your world and your people, we were black and white, good and evil, and that the line was clearly drawn? That the stories were a simple good guy/bad guy show down.
Guess again.
Maybe the stories conditioned your thoughts. Maybe they were a mistake. I don’t know. I’m not here to know, anyway.
There’s no turncoat in Sleeping Beauty, I suppose. There’s no traitor in Snow White. There’s a little slyness in there, the stepmother (what, her again? She’s everywhere! They really should get around to catching her descendants) offering up a poisoned apple, or the idiotic witch showing the princess to a spindle (what on earth does that woman have with needles?) and it’s the size of an elephant, mostly to caution your kids about trusting strangers… but generally the heroines and their princes have a pretty easy time of it. Well, that’s what the stories say, anyway.

What choice did we have? Yeah, we could have recounted the truth. We could have taken dreams away from you and your children.
We don’t dabble in your world, but you affect ours. And it’s not like the fairy tales don’t help, they do… you forget them, along the way, but they help at one point.
They help… but not enough, not anymore.
So I’m saying it. I’m writing it. This is what’s behind those lovely stories. A world so much darker than you could make out. We don’t live happily ever after. The tales you hear are half told.
Sleeping beauty did wake up. Beauty did turn her beast back into a Prince. The goose girl did marry her heir to the throne… But Aurora woke up to find her kingdom destroyed. Belle’s family was cursed. The goose girl’s prince might’ve been heir to a throne, but that throne had been taken over centuries ago.
What use would our stories have been if we’d told them true? What joy would they have brought to your world, and what magic would it have brought to ours?
(Before you get your hopes up, let me tell you: Rapunzel went bald when she turned thirty-two. All the shampoo in the land couldn’t help it. It’s sad, but there it is. She wore a wig for the rest of her days. Luckily her prince had already climbed her tower because otherwise she’d still be rotting up there, poor gal.)

And you’re thinking, “what kind of warped fairy tale is this?” Well, this is the real deal.
Imajin is a dark place, traveler. We fight, we have fought for centuries. There wasn’t anything else we could do.