When Rapunzel was only ten years old Gothel had taken her, ambushing her parents as they strayed north along human ports. They intended to bring Rapunzel to Ulthuan from their distant homes in the Towers of Dawn, travelling slow on a tour of the realms, they had thought, sightseeing as they brought their child to meet her kin upon the paradise isle's glory.
Little did they suspect the evil of Gothel, whose magic had called a sleeping fog upon the port of Bordeleaux, masking sound and sight as the hag's fel shadows slipped into the estate a human noble had leant the elven couple for their stay, regarding it as an honour for their fair countenances to grace his tables.
In the silence of the fog Rapunzel never woke, never stirred as the hag's beasts and shadowed men ripped apart the human's guards and her parents both, only shifting in her sleep as the rank smell of death crawled over her crib...
In the now, in 2390, Rapunzel looks out upon the shifting greenery of the Empire with fresh eyes unburdened by curses and bindings of shadow magic, her hand enclosing the callused digits of her hero whilst he sleeps companionably on the seat to her left, his two finest friends -Pomel and Gunther- playing quiet hands of cards in the expansive carriage.
On Flynn's hand however the cut from Gothel's cursed dagger still weeps slow yet deathly into its bandage, resistant to all but the most careful of hysh purification. Already Ryder's parents have petitioned the colleges, and Rapunzel wraps his form in her mass of sumptuous hair in the finest comfort she could summon.
...When Rapunzel was fifteen Gothel began her first draining, brushing out her captive elf's hair into an unending golden curtain before singing in hypnotic cant, weaving dhar, ulgu and shyish as the ritual circle lit with Ghyran, the elfgirl on her bed squirming in discomfort as Gothel's working drained the vitality from her blaze-bright soul, dribbles and scraps at a time. For Rapunzel represented a perfect union of Asur and Asrai, her mixed parentage able to draw a skien of life from both the forests and from ulthuan's vortex. She was the golden lily, the morning-flower, and she was Gothel's alone...
In the now Rapunzel cuddles her hero as she thinks back to Gothel, always protective, always possesive, loving until she felt even the barest spark of rebellion from her captive. Would Flynn's mother be the same?
All that she knew told Rapunzel that Gothel was no true mother, not even a step-mother, yet when the elf-woman thinks back upon the centuries of her isolated life, there is no elfin face... Only a hint of a memory of scent, raw and copper, the suggestion of a voice. The flare of magic, actinic and warm. Gothel had stolen many things from Rapunzel, and the faces of her family were among them.
...A century passed in the tower, books and isolation Rapunzel's only companions, the birds of the dawn and chirping squirrels chased away from her wanting gaze by Gothel's wards, the same misty ugly magic that chased Rapunzel's dreams and snagged at her memories, ill-formed and young as they had been, of her true parentage.
Her father had been Pri... Lord? Prince.... No... Lord Silvergate? Or had it been Pearl?
She could not remember, no matter how much she tried and wept, stroking her hair as a comforter while gazing at the ceiling of stone. Mayhaps Mother Gothel would get her some paints..?
In the now Rapunzel greets Flynn's family and feels the warmth of their affection as if they were her own, Glenn Ryder standing tall and hard like an oak while his Mo... Mother -Rapunzel trips over the word in her head, disguising her flinch as a stumble when Jean-Opal comes in for a hug and very bretonnian cheek-kiss of affection- is more a cherry tree, wide at the top and sweetly scented. She is taken to feasts like a family member, though her hand and arm rarely stray from Flynn's comforting embrace. In days to come she will find herself, braiding her metres of hair before going out to visit the gorgeous and strange sights of the human world. She will become herself, but for now she is Flynn's.
Three centuries have passed when the world beyond shows its first change for Rapunzel, as a young human boy stumbles through the mists with a sling and furtive curiosity, stealing into Gothel's gardens and plucking a pear to eat. Gothel has been gone for months now, and Rapunzel knows that this is the only reason the boy yet lives. She must warn him, for surely the wards have already gone off.
"Boy!" She calls in bretonnian, for Gothel had long since spilled the secret that her tower lurked in Mousillion.
The little human looked up, squinting at Rapunzel before his face fell into a stupor, yelling back up "an elf?!"
Rapunzel had blinked at the question, for what else could she be? Her books had never noted any being that Rapunzel could otherwise be. She called down "Yes! You must go, human! Flee! Mother shall strike you down!"
The boy paused at her warning, looking left and right into the fogs -as if that would tell him anything- before calling up "What is an elf doing in a tower? Why doesn't your tower have a door?"
Rapunzel flinched as the human continued to speak and not run, her face flustering as she yelled down "It's... It's My Tower! It's where I live! It has no door, for I would never want to leave!"
That seemed to satisfy the boy, even as Rapunzel's heart began to question her own wishes to never leave. It felt unnatural, to wish only for her same single space, as if someone else had masked her heart. The boy left.
Gothel returned that week in a rage, in a panic. She demanded to know who had been on the ground, who had seen the tower.
Rapunzel lied without thinking, without hesitance, telling Mother that it was she who had been to the ground, lowering herself upon a rope of enchanted hair to sample the fruit from the trees in Mother's orchard.
Rapunzel returned to her bed that night beaten blue and black by Gothel's cane, weeping like an infant again as the hag whispers sweet curses and hissing comforts that will keep the bruises fresh and painful for a week more...
In the present Flynn recovers well as Rapunzel fusses over him in alliance with his mother and maids, though the elf is pushed to see other things and not to obsess over her hero, The Ryders have her taken to see shooting and duelling, dancing and riding, though at the end of it all she returns only more wanting for Flynn and for her books. Though duelling was interesting, and the exorbitant gardens of the Hauf-Ropsman humans had favoured her attention for a few hours.
...It was only a few years -perhaps five- before the boy returned with more questions, though his body had begun to fill out and his gait was no longer awkward and gangly. This time they even exchanged names as Rapunzel shouted at him to flee before Mother returned, only for 'Flynn' to hold up two stolen pears and promise Rapunzel one if she would let down 'her ladder' so he could climb up and see her closely. Rapunzel had no ladder, no rope save for her own hair, and so that is what she let down for the boy after a long moment of thought, her braided golden locks looped around her bed's posts as a pulley to ensure the boy could climb without yanking off Rapunzel's scalp.
The stolen treat and the company made some hollow in Rapunzel's heart fill in, and she found herself begging the boy to return with more words, with more stories, bedamned the consequences that Mother would inflict. Flynn, his face guilless, promised to return with all the stories that he could hold...
In the now, Rapunzel fondles the cover of a book. A leather volume, slim and broken at the corners, yet treasured above all over tomes.
...It was a month after Flynn left when he returned, and Rapunzel knew immediately that she should have hidden Mother's punishment better, her arm still bandaged and bloody. The boy had become a man in a moment, his face hardening with an expression Rapunzel would one day come to recognize as righteous fury as she described why Mother needed to do as she did, how Rapunzel had earned the red-hot knife and the hooked whips for her disobedience.
Flynn left the tower in a still rage, and Rapunzel wept as she waited for Mother again and imagined the pain to come.
Why did she do this to herself? She thought then that the answer was simply to be more obedient to Mother, even as a growing flame in her heart rebelled.
Flynn returned only a week later, and Rapunzel watched then with eyes wide as the Boy turned Man became a Hero, begging Rapunzel to let down her golden hair.
Instead of speaking however he moved, he acted to push Rapunzel into her own closet, eyes turning hard at her fresh injuries, before whirling to face Gothel's arrival.
His silver blade flashed, and Rapunzel knew twisted terror and hope in her heart as the human exposed Gothel for the twisted wretch of her true form, her death cutting away curses centuries old and decades new. It was a fog lifted from Rapunzel's mind, and her eyes then saw Flynn in the dawn, bleeding yet resolute as he took her down the hidden stairs and out of her tower for the very last time...
In the now Rapunzel sits by a bedside in the Ryder's estate, her hair looped and wrapped around Flynn's form as he watches him rest, recuperating from her rescue as she lays her head upon his chest and sleeps.
It is the first time since the tower that she slept without the torment of nightmares, and she will later wake her hero with a kiss in thanks.
