Chapter Text
Six months pass. Brietta comes to accept Rayla being at her side for almost every transformation. The only time she isn’t is when she disappears for days or weeks at a time, leaving her sprites in charge while she’s gone. Brietta later finds out that most of these disappearances involve her searching high and low for anything that might help with Brietta’s curse. On one occasion, she returns with a salve from the east that eases the muscle pain somewhat, but no spell or medicine stops the transformation.
They both know the only person that could reverse it is Wenlock. Rayla wants to confront him, but Brietta begs and begs her not to every time it comes up. Thankfully, the goddess respects her decision. Even she is not as powerful as Wenlock, and understands the risk it would pose to Brietta’s kingdom if he found out she was alive.
One day, Brietta is circling the tallest tower in the cloud palace, the sprites laughing joyfully as they take turns riding on her back. She never flies far from the palace, not without Rayla. Rayla knows this, and every now and then she will join her on one of her pegasi and lead her to the outer reaches of the cloud kingdom, where she can see the mountains and the sea, and in the distance, the palace she called home for the first eighteen years of her life.
Today, Rayla comes out of the stables with Evergreen--the most feisty of the pegasi--but instead of joining her, she waits patiently on the ground for Brietta to land next to her.
“Are you and the girls having fun?” she asks.
Brietta nods. She can see in the goddess’s expression, though, that this isn’t what she came here to ask. She can’t talk in this form, but she gives a little snort, urging Rayla to go on.
“I... discovered some news, recently. I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”
Brietta tilts her head questioningly. Could it be about her curse?
Rayla purses her lips. It’s odd to see a goddess (even if she says she’s only part-goddess) looking so unsure of herself. Brietta nudges her gently with her nose, as if to tell her it's okay.
“The king and queen... your parents...”
Brietta steels herself, icy panic seizing up her chest, expecting to hear that they’ve been assassinated by Wenlock, or that they’ve disappeared and the kingdom is in disarray.
Rayla takes a deep breath. “They had a baby.”
It takes a moment for Brietta to process her words. Then she laughs. Well, in this form, it comes out as a snort. Her heart warms in relief, and she can’t help but prance around, all four hooves lifting off the ground as her wings flap excitedly.
Rayla laughs; she always looks divine when she smiles and laughs. “You aren’t upset?”
Brietta shakes her head. Why would she be upset? Worried, maybe, or sad she can’t be with her new sibling. She has always loved springtime for the new life it brings, adoring the baby animals, the fresh blooms. New life, to her, is always an occasion for joy.
“Would you like to go see her?”
Brietta stills. For some reason, she had assumed--or perhaps hoped--that the baby was a boy. Wenlock, with his three wives and counting, would have little interest in a boy.
“We will be safe, as long as we go together, in this form. I will cast a spell of invisibility on us, so no one will see us.”
Brietta nods. Together they fly to the palace. Brietta lands in the courtyard, still for a long time while she takes it all in. She’s home. Everything she’s been longing for for the past year and a half is so close, yet out of reach. The palace guards don’t blink at their arrival, Rayla’s charms having done the trick.
“I’m not sure where the nursery would be,” Rayla whispers. “You lead?”
Brietta nods and takes them around the castle. She flies slowly, peeking through every window. She passes her old room, dark and untouched. A few rooms down, her father, sitting at a table with one of his advisors, talking in a voice too low to hear from outside. She watches him for a long time, noting the new lines on his face, the streaks of gray in his hair. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’d been gone ten years, rather than one and half.
She finds her mother, eventually, in a new nursery. They land on the balcony and peer through the window. It’s open a crack, allowing the baby’s whines and her mother’s voice through.
She’s singing a lullaby, one Brietta had forgotten until that moment, her voice gentle and sweet. She smiles as she leans over the bassinet, but there are tears in her eyes.
“Your sister loved that one,” she whispers when she’s done singing. “Shh, don’t tell papa I told you about her.”
The baby is still fussing, so her mother reaches in and picks her up. Underneath a swaddle of soft blue cloth, she’s chubby and pink, with a head of curly gold hair. She stops fussing in favor of tugging on her mother’s necklace. It snaps and beads go flying in every direction. The baby giggles.
“Oh, Annika, you are a handful,” says her mother.
Brietta feels her throat close up. Annika was the name of the protagonist in her favorite storybook as a child. She remembers telling her mother, at the tender age of six, that her first daughter would be named Annika.
Though she can hardly bear to watch, she can’t bring herself to turn away either. The sun sinks lower in the sky and Brietta stays by the window, watching as her mother finally gets the baby to sleep and then collapses in the armchair to weep quietly until she too falls asleep. She keeps watching as the baby wakes and a maid comes in to tend it while another gently urges her mother to leave and get some rest. Based on the piles of books on the dresser, the knitting on the footstool, and the empty teacups on the end table, it’s easy to guess that the queen has hardly left this room since Annika’s birth.
Brietta would be content to stay forever, watching her new baby sister, but Rayla’s gentle touch reminds her that she can’t. They have to return to the cloud kingdom before her transformation. The last thing she would want is her family to hear her screams.
***
Brietta watches her sister grow up from a distance. Annika is an incredible girl, bold and daring, braver than Brietta ever was. Her family doesn’t know it, but she celebrates all of her little sister’s achievements silently alongside them. First steps, first words, learning to read, ice skating for the first time while holding her father’s hand. Her parents rarely speak of Brietta, even when they’re alone.
She thinks about this one twilight while she floats in her cloud pool. At some point, they had discovered that her transformations were slightly less painful if she was in the water while they occurred, so Rayla had built her a new room adjacent to her bedroom with a giant tub, a pool really, a basin of clouds filled with cool, clear water. The cloud lining prevents her from injuring herself while she thrashes around.
“Rayla?” she calls. “Are you still there?”
Rayla insists that she or one of the sprites still be present during Brietta’s transformations, even after all these years. She worries Brietta will hit her head and pass out in the water.
Brietta hears quick footsteps behind her. “Brietta? Is everything okay?”
Brietta looks over her shoulder at the goddess, smiling slightly at her worried tone. She opens her mouth to respond that everything is fine, but the words are caught in her throat at the sight of Rayla wearing nothing but a silken dressing robe. She must have been in the middle of changing into dry clothes when Brietta called. Drops of water run from her hair onto the exposed skin of her chest.
“Brietta?” Rayla kneels down beside her. “What is it?”
“I... umm...” Brietta is suddenly very aware that she’s naked, which is odd, because she’s long since gotten used to the fact that transforming between bodies of vastly different sizes doesn’t mix well with clothes.
Rayla runs a hand through her hair and over her shoulder. “Are you in pain?” she asks softly.
“No. Well, yes, but I’m ok. I was just thinking...” Brietta turns away, focusing her eyes on the water, as she tries to remember what she was going to say. Something about her sister? “Annika. She turns ten soon. I wish I could get her something.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t really know. I guess...” Brietta feels a pang in her chest as she realizes what the perfect gift would be. Her old ice skates, from when she was Annika’s age. The girl loves skating, so much so that her parents put a small pond in the courtyard for her to use in the winter, rather than letting her leave the palace grounds.
In another life, Annika would know Brietta. She could use all of her old things, instead of leaving them hidden somewhere deep in the palace. Brietta could mentor her. They could skate together, perform together even. But only in a world where it’s safe for them to be seen in public. As it is, no one outside of the royal family and their closest advisors within the palace know about Annika. To everyone else, she is but the child of an old friend, a ward they took in after she was orphaned.
“Brietta?”
“Sorry. I was just reminiscing.”
“No need to apologize, love.”
She’s been calling her that lately. She reminds herself every time that Rayla is a goddess, and she loves all of her subjects, but she can’t help but wonder if she would use that pet name with anyone else.
“Think about it,” says Rayla softly. “I’ll do what I can.”
Rayla leaves Brietta to her thoughts. She stays there in her pool for a long time before dragging herself out, putting on dry clothes, and retiring to her bedroom.
It’s hard to say exactly when she started calling this place home, but in the years at the cloud palace, the room has certainly become her own. Books are piled on her nightstand. Over her window is a chain of wildflowers she made one evening with the sprites, enchanted by the goddess to never wilt. There’s a pile of clothes in the corner, and a row of dresses in her closet.
Rayla always brings her something back from her journeys outside the cloud kingdom. Sometimes a new dress, in a foreign style with designs she’s never seen. Sometimes a crystal or a jewel. And of course, scattered across her dresser, a multitude of herbs, medicines, and salves which ease her pain to varying degrees.
Her most favorite gift from the goddess is a crystal globe that she keeps beside her bed. It’s magically linked with one of Rayla’s clouds, enchanted to project the image of the world below the cloud, wherever the wind may take it. Sometimes it displays nothing but the sea for days on end. Other times it will drift over towns and cities, and Brietta can watch people--just tiny dots, no bigger than a drop of ink--walk around below. She sometimes wonders how long it took the goddess to craft such a thing. Even the sprites are fascinated by it.
Brietta lays on her side and stares at the globe for hours, thinking idly about her life and the strange path it’s taken. It’s a cursed life, but somehow, a blessed one too.
***
A small part of Brietta hopes, for her sister’s safety, that she’d calm down as she grew older, start behaving more like a proper princess, but no such luck. Annika only grows bolder with age. It isn’t long before she’s sneaking out of the palace at regular intervals, sometimes to attend festivals in the city, where she dances among the common people. More frequently, she takes to the great lake just outside the city, where she can skate to her heart’s content, no longer confined by the tiny courtyard pond under the watchful eyes of parents and castle guards.
She skates at night to avoid detection, favoring nights when the moon is full enough to see by, and so Brietta is in human form when she watches, invisible, often with Rayla by her side. A small part of her hopes Annika will sense her, but it was for the best that she does not. She’s alone in her own world, twirling and jumping on the ice with utmost skill. She could perform for cheering crowds if their parents would allow it.
Despite her increasingly risky behavior, Brietta is proud of her little sister and the woman she’s becoming--even more so when she stands up to Wenlock one horrible day.
She just barely makes it to the cloud kingdom with her sister in tow before her transformation begins. Her sister frets over the distressed pegasus, not knowing who she really is. She gallops to her room in agony as Rayla greets Annika and leads her away, assuring her that the pegasus who rescued her will be okay.
It’s a terrible occasion, really, with their parents and whole kingdom frozen in time under a looming threat of death. But it’s also a joy to finally meet her sister for real.
Of course, they don’t really have time for pleasantries. Rayla mentions the legendary Wand of Light for the first time. Her eyes meet Brietta’s as she says that the wand is powerful enough to combat Wenlock, and maybe even powerful enough to cure Brietta--but the wand can only be made and wielded by a human. Despite her best efforts over the years, Rayla has been unable to guide any of her subjects into making the powerful but dangerous item.
“If anyone can do it, it’s Annika,” Brietta says, smiling with confidence.
“How can you be so sure?” Annika asks, looking with watery eyes at the sister she never knew existed.
“The first step is a measure of courage, and you’ve got more than enough of that.”
Before they go, Rayla hugs Brietta tighter than she ever has. She would like more than anything to accompany them, but her job is instead to keep Wenlock occupied so he doesn’t discover what they’re up to before they can assemble the wand. “Please be careful,” she whispers into Brietta’s ear. “Ring your bell if you need to.”
Brietta can’t respond now that she’s back in her horse form--they agreed to leave at first light--but she wishes she could tell Rayla to be careful, too. She’s not sure exactly how vulnerable the goddess is, but she’s learned by now that Rayla needs to eat and drink and sleep like a person, so it stands to reason she could become injured like a person too.
Most of that day is spent flying. They stop just before sundown. While Annika sets up camp, Brietta distances herself, trying to find a remote place to transform. It’s no use; her sister comes running anyway. She stroke’s Brietta’s mane and whispers soothing words like she’s done this a thousand times before, wraps her in a blanket, and doesn’t leave her side until she’s fully human again, shaking and shivering.
“Rayla warned you, didn’t she?” Brietta asks hoarsely.
Annika nods. “She made me promise to take care of you.” Her gaze is full of wonder and unasked questions as their eyes meet. “I still can’t believe I have an older sister, or that the cloud goddess is real, or that my sister is... friends with her.”
“I’m sorry,” says Brietta softly. “It must be a lot to take in.”
“Oh, no, don’t be sorry!” Annika exclaims. “You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s just, all these years... I wish I’d known you sooner, so I could help you.”
Brietta shakes her head. “I couldn’t put you or the kingdom in danger.”
Their adventure is a most stressful and exhausting three days. On the bright side, they meet Aiden, the son of a blacksmith who aids them on their quest, and who Annika quickly falls for. It makes Brietta smile to watch it happen, especially when Annika tries to resist or deny her feelings.
When the wand is completed late on the third day, Annika pointes it at Brietta, but Brietta shakes her head adamantly and dodges out of the way.
“You want to use it on Wenlock first,” Annika guesses. “In case... in case there’s not enough power to do both.”
Breitta nods.
“But... then your curse may never be lifted.”
Brietta nods again. She knows.
They’re all set to go when he appears. Brietta swears her heart stops. All these years, and he looks just the same, with the terrifying glint of mad power in his eyes. At first she’s frozen in panic. Annika acts, raising the new wand against him. He fires back at her with his staff, the blast missing her by inches as Aiden pulls her away.
Brietta jumps into action then, leaping off the cliff toward Wenlock, trusting her wings to catch her. But as she approaches, Wenlock fires at something above her. She panics, thinking it must be Rayla--the goddess somehow knew they were in danger. She realizes, too late, as Annika shouts for her to move, what his real plan was.
She’s swept from her feet, buried under an avalanche of snow. Then, everything is still, and silent. She has no idea what’s happening above, except that the sun must be setting, because she can feel the transformation in her bones.
She rings her bell, though she fears it’s too late. For the second time in her life, she’s beyond sure that she’s dying. How long can she survive in this icy cave, devoid of fresh air, already half frozen as her bones begin to shift?
The last thing she remembers is seeing her own hand, realizing the transformation must be done, and pulling the bell necklace off so she can clutch it to her chest as she takes her last shuddering breaths.
***
“Brietta... please wake up...”
The goddess’s voice is distant, like a dream. Brietta has the vague impression that she’s been here for some time, saying similar things while Brietta slept. Her body is heavy, immoble. She gradually becomes aware that she’s lying on a bed, that she’s warm now, dressed in a nightgown and wrapped in soft blankets. Someone is holding her hand. She squeezes it.
“Brietta?”
Her eyelids flutter open. “Rayla?” she manages, barely a whisper.
Rayla's arms wrap around her, hugging her close. This seems to restore movement to Brietta’s limbs as she reciprocates, wrapping her arms around the goddess.
The goddess is blinking away tears when she pulls away, her hands on either side of Brietta’s head. “I thought I lost you.”
Brietta smiles weakly as her brain slowly starts to catch up with her awakening body. “What happened? Where’s Annika? Is she okay?”
“Yes, yes, everyone is okay,” Rayla says soothingly. “It’s over. Wenlock is dead. Your parents and kingdom are awake as well.”
Brietta lets out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“I’ll go get Annika! She’ll want to know you’re awake.”
Brietta tries to protest--she’s glad to know her sister is okay, but at the moment she just wants to lie there with Rayla--but her voice is too strained for Rayla to hear as she scurries out of the room.
***
It’s near sunrise by the time everyone finishes their stories, sitting around the fire in the great hall. Brietta, being unconscious through most of it, doesn’t have much to say, so she just listens, wrapped in a blanket as she leans against the goddess, too weak still to hold herself up.
Rayla suggests they all get a few hours of sleep, and when they awaken she will get some pegasi from the stable and escort everyone back to the human palace to explain everything to the king and queen. Annika gives Brietta a hug before retiring along with Aiden, a pair of sprites leading them to their rooms.
“Come, let’s get you to your pool,” Rayla says softly.
Brietta groans as she forces herself to sit up. “Can we just watch the sunrise for a bit?”
Rayla frowns. “Are you sure?”
Brietta can feel the familiar tingle under her skin as the time for her transformation draws near, but she nods. “I just want to see the sky for a minute, after being buried under all that snow.”
Outside, Rayla keeps an arm around her waist as if she might fall over any second. The sky is dark in one direction, moving into a deep blue along the east horizon as the sun approaches. “Thank you for coming for me,” says Brietta.
“Of course. I’ll always be there when you need me, I promise.”
Brietta smiles. “You saved me again.”
The goddess smiles back. “It’s becoming a bad habit, isn’t it?” There’s something unsure in her expression as she pauses before continuing. “I thought I was going to lose you for a minute there. It would’ve killed me.”
“You’ve been alive for centuries,” Brietta points out. “Surely you’ve seen many humans come and go.”
“You and I both know my feelings for you are different. Of course I love all of my subjects, in a way, but my love for you is...”
Brietta feels her cheeks grow pink as she looks up at the goddess. “Is what?” she whispers.
In answer, Rayla cups her cheek in one hand and pulls her close, placing a slow, delicate kiss upon her lips. Her eyes shine with tears again after they pull away.
The foreboding tingle in her bones dies away, and suddenly, Brietta understands.
“I know you’re probably going back to your old life now,” Rayla says quietly. “And I’m so happy you’ll be with your parents and sister again. But I’m going to miss you. After almost losing you I... I couldn’t let you go without you knowing what you mean to me.”
“Rayla,” Brietta murmurs, brushing her thumbs gently under the goddess’s eyes. “I don’t want to go back to my old life. I want to visit my parents, of course, but my life is here now. With you. If... if that’s okay.”
A radiant smile breaks across the goddess’s face. “Of course that’s okay.”
“I know I’m supposed to love all the gods and goddesses. But my love for you is also... different.”
Their hands find each other, and their fingers intertwine.
“We should really get you inside now, my love,” says Rayla gently.
Brietta shakes her head. “I want to watch the sunrise. I haven’t seen one in so long.”
Rayla obliges. Together they watch the sun break free, casting rays of light through the clouds as the sky blossoms into a purple-pink work of art.
“You’re still human,” Rayla says.
Brietta beams at her. “It’s been said that true love’s kiss can lift almost any curse.”
***
Brietta doesn’t go back to her old life, nor does her life stay the same. Her home is still in the cloud kingdom, but with Wenlock gone, she is free to roam wherever she pleases. She takes the pegasi to visit her family. She accompanies Rayla to all corners of the earth, exploring lands she’s never heard of, seeing monuments of nature and humankind, meeting people who look different and speak in different tongues. Rayla treasures the look of wonder on her face as she takes in every new sight.
It’s not long before they’re attending Annika and Aiden’s wedding. Their parents couldn’t care less that he’s the mere son of a blacksmith; the fact that both of their daughters are alive and well is enough of a miracle. Within a year Brietta has a niece, followed quickly by two nephews.
It’s at the tenth birthday of Annika’s daughter that Brietta is cornered by her sister, some time after the celebration, when Breitta has retired to a guest room. Her parents had offered Brietta her old bedroom, but she had refused, insisting instead that her niece have it. It’s one of the nicest rooms in the palace, with the best view of the lake. It would be wasted on Brietta, who only stays there maybe once a month.
“Where’s the goddess?” Annika asks. Her youngest son is asleep in her arms. “It’s strange to see you two apart.”
“She apologizes for leaving early,” Brietta responds. “One of the sprites came with news of an injured griffin in the northern mountains. They’re very endangered, so she went to help it.”
“I see,” says Annika, taking a seat on the cushy desk chair across from her. “You know what’s funny? One of those visiting dignitaries thought you and I were twins.”
“How silly. We’re nearly twenty years apart.”
“You wouldn’t know it by looking,” says Annika. “You haven’t aged a day since...”
Since Rayla first kissed me , Brietta thinks. “No, I haven’t.”
Annika nods; clearly, this is not surprising to her, but something she’s been thinking of bringing up for some time. “I always thought your curse was lifted because Wenlock died. But it’s something else, isn’t it?”
“It is,” says Brietta cryptically. “I have a special present for your daughter. I didn’t want to show it in front of everyone.” She reaches behind the bed and pulls out a glass crystal ball. The very same, in fact, that she used to keep at her bedside to watch the world through.
Annika gasps. “But that’s one of your favorite things.”
Brietta smiles. “I don’t need it any more. I have the real things. I want her to have it, to stir her imagination and wonder for the world.”
“I... thank you. She’s going to love it.”
Brietta lets out a yawn. “Well, it’s getting late. We can give it to her tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Annika agrees, standing. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“Good night, Annika.”
“Goodnight, Brietta.” She pauses in the doorway. “Or should I call you... goddess?”
Brietta chuckles. “Don’t be silly. I’m still your sister. And besides, I’m only part goddess.”
After bidding her sister good night, Brietta crawls sleepily under the covers. Her eyelids are just beginning to droop when she hears a rustling on the balcony. Rayla slips inside as quietly as she can.
“How’s the griffin?” Brietta asks through a yawn.
“He’ll be fine. He’s resting now. Did I wake you?”
“Only a little. You didn’t have to fly all the way back here tonight.”
“I know,” says the goddess as she sides into the bed next to Brietta. “But I missed you.”
“Mmm, goodnights, love,” says Breitta, settling comfortably into Rayla’s now-familiar embrace. She spares one last glance out the window before closing her eyes. Above the castle, the clouds clear in the darkening sky, and the first star of the night begins to twinkle, shining with the hopes of tomorrow.