The Shadow

If you're going to love someone, do it honestly. Do it because you love that someone, not because that someone is a pleasant reminder. Because otherwise, it's the worst thing you can ever do.

Once upon a time there lived a girl a named Jeanne. She went to sleep on the eve of her birthday the way she did every night.

She never woke up.

It was well on her third day of slumber that the people realized there was something terribly wrong. News of the maiden who sleeps flew to the capital and until the nether regions of the kingdom, and the king made an edict that whoever can rouse Jeanne from her slumber will be rewarded the half of his kingdom.

Jeanne was neither princess nor lady - no drop of royalty ran through her veins. She was as extraordinary as the grasses growing in her garden, as memorable as the rotten leaves falling from the trees, as special as the mud prints scattering in her threshhold. She lived and breathed like everyone did, worked as hard as everyone did, laughed and talked like everybody did.

Unlike everybody, she insisted on living alone. It worried the people she knew, but she would always smile and say Solitude and Silence are good friends too. This reassured the people, though the growing frequency that she rarely ventured out had began to make them wonder.

Everybody knew the day she was born. Jeanne never told anyone, never knew herself, but everybody all knew. They promised to throw her a party befitting her, and she had given them a grateful smile.

They failed to notice the weariness in her eyes.

And so, on the eve of Jeanne's birthday, she went to sleep like she always did. Except she didn't wake up.

The first person to drop by with a present for her birthday thought Jeanne was just, understandably, worn out from the harvesting. He left his gift on the table, along with a note saying he'll be back later in the afternoon. Said person did come back, now to a table overflowing with gifts and notes. It was near dusk when he left, murmuring to himself that Jeanne must be truly worn out, and a girl as hardworking as Jeanne deserved a break. Especially on her birthday.

He came back along with some friends. And the day after that, along with the others. Making up their minds, they went upstairs to a room of white. On the bed she lay, as quietly and as peacefully as a maiden who sleeps.

Short of physically hurting Jeanne, nothing could wake her up.



The little village was thrown into a ruckus over what happened to their homely child, and such a ruckus it had been that it reached the king himself. Hence the edict.

News flew far and wide, and many a royal princes and knaves ventured out to kiss the maiden who sleeps. It didn't work, of course, as Jeanne wasn't a princess, and true love's kiss worked only between a princess and his one true prince. A year passed with men of various features and forms striding in and out of the room, and they finally realized that a kiss won't do.

Physicians far and wide went to see the maiden who sleeps. Was she poisoned? A lodged apple, perhaps? Apples had a nasty tendency to choke its eater, but Jeanne ate no apples the night she fell asleep. A laced comb? Jeanne's one beauty was her black tresses, but she rarely, if ever, combed her hair. She had more important things to do with her time, after all.

Another year passed and Jeanne went on her sleep, strangely never aging or even losing weight at all. Might she be cursed? The year saw a furious witch hunt, and just to be sure, a dragon hunt - however, witches and dragons were rare by then, and most had moved to the neighboring kingdoms were the people were more accepting and weren't as rabid.

So Jeanne slept - another year passed, then two, until ten years had already passed and she remained still on her bed, quiet and peaceful and careless of the world's comings and goings. Most of her friends had either died or left already, with a few loyally keeping watch, waiting for the time when she awoke.



One day, five strange people went in to take a look at the sleeping form of Jeanne.

"I suppose we should wake the lazy a*s up?"

The speaker was swatted gently by the older woman beside her, as gently as a fist pummeling a decidedly annoying prattling brat.

"We need to find out the reason she slept."   

The youngest rolled her eyes at the exchange, with the first speaker rubbing her numbed arm and the gentler older woman frowning. "Honestly. You two are so immature sometimes."

Still rubbing life into her arm, the auburn-haired woman stuck her tongue out at the blonde girl-child, who returned the favor and responded in kind. The brunette raised her arm as another warning, and both promptly quieted from the bickering that was supposed to follow.

A swish of silk and all three looked up. One look at his features and the blonde blushed, while the auburn-haired woman reddened in annoyance. Satisfied at their reaction, the oldest of the ladies spoke up, "Well Audrey, here she lies as everyone had told us."

He nodded at the implication, and the three stepped out of the way to give him his first unhindered look.

"You think she has a chance, Audrey?"

"As this prude Halle said, we had to know why first. Wench."

"Was that the wind who just talked? Because it sounded like Paige when she's whining like the female dog she looks like."

"Don't bloody start if you won't be alive to finish it, both of you." Anita and Paige looked up at the calm coldness in Halle's voice. The two effectively quieted, noting the absence of her lazy, deliberate enunciations. Paige glared at Anita, who glared back with as much hatred as a young girl could.

"I reckon Jeanne will never wake up."

Before the three could respond to the casually-stated observation, they heard a grunt from the far side of the room. They needed look no more to see their fifth companion leaning against the wall, as if melded to the spot many years past. Anita couldn't repress the shiver she had felt upon hearing his sound of agreement - he never talked, never made a sound. Except today.

It sounded like people crying to the heavens as they were burned alive. As they were buried alive. As they were tortured. As they were mutilated. His voice sounded like the people begging to die because death would be much, much merciful.

"D-did you hear th... th-... that?" Anita whispered covertly to Paige. The latter nodded, with a lesser degree of impatience as she previously had.

"What made you two believe that?" Halle went on, as if hearing that a girl will sleep forever was as ordinary as finding a bedraggled kitten knocking on her door to bring her daily ration of chocolate drink. Which, in fact, was true.

Audrey beckoned Halle nearer, and the brunette obliged. She watched as Audrey looked at Jeanne with a gentleness she had never seen grace his features before.

"She's happy."

Halle studied the sleeping maiden with mute fascination, and the other two peered from the view afforded by her frail shoulders. Not contented, Anita ducked from under Audrey and Halle, placing her hands on the bed for support.

"Why are you always right, Audrey?" she said after a long silence. The man reached down and ruffled her blonde hair - no one dare touch the hair of the Ducchess, but Audrey was always an exception - and Anita flashed a rare, sincere smile of admiration.

"Idiot." Paige muttered under her breath, and the gamine bristled. Audrey's hand settled on her hair, and she knew it was a suggestion not to retaliate.

"Why -" Halle started, "- I wonder, would she be happier in her sleep?"

"I can ask."

Anita hid her face in Audrey as she shook, Paige wincing at the sound of his voice. Now he's forming coherent sentences. What had they done to deserve such cruelty?

Halle looked at the hooded figure, aghast. Before she could vehemently deny what was an apparent threat to her ears, Audrey took a step forward. "That will not be necessary, my friend. We can manage."

There was no sound, which Audrey took as acquiescence. He turned to Paige, whose teeth still gritted as if she had heard metal scratched on marble.

"Can you focus enough to draw her out?"

She took a deep breath and exhaled. A second soon and her smirk was back in place like it never left her face at all. "Yeah whatever."

Paige approached the sleeping maiden and closed her eyes. A sudden gust of air and her wings enfolded behind her - it was a second in her time, and to the world it was a year that blurred by.

"Fire away, sweetheart."

Audrey bowed deeply to express his gratitude, and Paige waved off her hand dismissively.

"What happened while you were awake to make you choose to sleep forever?"

The voice that responded was soft, barely audible to human ears. But the five were no humans, and could therefore understand her clearly.

"I was living a lie. I do not wish to lie anymore."

Paige snorted, "All humans lie, moron. What do you think made you special?"

Audrey turned to her with a neutral, almost contemplative look in his dark eyes, and while Paige rolled her eyes, she controlled herself enough to stop the verbal attack she was ready to sling without even trying.

"Nobody loved me."

"You're crazy, do you know that?" It was Anita's turn. "There were a lot of people here coming and going wanting to wake you up! You have a lot of friends, and I..." her eyes that rival the sky landed on her sworn enemy. "... I only have this insufferable crone with me."

Paige whacked Anita soundly on her crown of golden curls, and Audrey had to use both arms to restrain the wrath of the vengeful imp. Halle, her voice back in its lazy drawl reminiscent of softly falling snow, simply uttered a word.

"Please."

"Pray tell," Audrey spoke up after it had sufficiently quieted, "What made you think that?"

"Those people do not love me."

There was such a sadness in her throat that Halle felt a heat on her empath throat. "Why?"

"Do you love a shadow?"

There was an eerie silence before the voice went on. "No one loves a shadow. And that was I. A shadow."

A sigh.

"And I lived as a shadow does. Mimicking the actions of the one who came ahead of me."

A drop of tear.

"As the shadow cannot exist without light, so can't I. But even the sun cannot drive out the sorrow that a shadow must feel."

"I was - " A choking sound. "I was only <i>loved</i>... for who I reminded them of." A whisper. "I was never appreciated for who I am. Who I was." Another drop. "Had only someone shown me kindness because I'm Jeanne... I would have been happy. But - "

"I was just a shadow."

Halle's voice was oddly thick, "You sought the night instead."

"There is no shadow in the night. I can be more than a shadow. I can even be the moon."

"You lived in dreams instead."

"Yes. And I am happy."

A smile.

"Very much so."

Another second and the silence was gone, replaced by the silence of the mortal world. Audrey looked down at the form of the sleeping maiden, noting how her peace made her beautiful.

Too beautiful for human sight.

"I reckon it is time to sleep."

Halle nodded slowly. Anita and Paige gave no hint of dissension.

Even when he moved from the wall he was melding himself into.

Even when he came to them and removed his hood.

Even when they heard his voice.



He left the four asleep where they stood, guardians to the maiden who sleeps.

This time, as he exited the cottage where Jeanne lived once upon a time, he moved the land into his dominion, assuring an eternal slumber free from prying, mortal eyes.

And they all slept happily ever after.