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Pink.
A child wails into life at the touch of a midwife’s hand.
Blue.
Stillness, cold, a mother weeping.
Pink.
After a pause that is almost too long, an infant draws breath.
Blue.
Desperation turns to despair.
Fauna watched as her sisters fought, throughout all of the years. They were different then, not tying themselves in human forms so often. Flora flashed pink and gold, a silhouette with hints of fire deep inside it; Merryweather was blue and silver, like icy water or distant skies. In her safe world of animals and plants, she remained. When humans grew ill, she sat close to them, holding their hands and stroking their brows, waiting for nature to take its course and for them to live or die. No matter how strong were her kind, she knew that nature was stronger, and that trying to overrule it would only bring them costs in the end.
Flora did not listen; Merryweather laughed. They continued their fights and their toying with humans, Flora doting on the imaginative creatures of flesh and blood, Merryweather finding them too fleeting and base to be of much interest. Fauna loved them like she loved any other animal, and both especially loved and especially feared the ones who seemed at times to almost be able to look clearly upon her through the hazes of their fevers.
“Pink!” cries Flora, and Fauna watches people walk ever further across the face of the earth.
“Blue!” replies Merryweather, and Fauna sees coffins slide into the ground.
Dead or alive, they are part of the world through which Fauna moves, but always her sisters fight. They do not understand that there is a balance to be maintained, and sometimes she screams in the privacy of her own head but dares not open her mouth, because they both thing that they are stronger than her and both think that they are right.
“Green!” It comes out a scream, as Flora and Merryweather are hovering over a birth with mischief in their eyes. “Green! Let it be green!”
They look at her in astonishment, in almost-anger. She has never spoken out at such a time before, never spoken out against them. But she can feel the rush of power that floods her as she speaks the words, letting her understand how it is that her sister can be so addicted to it. The world bends to her will, twisting and arching beneath her as her magic reshapes it like the sun bending a shoot towards it.
Flora is life and heat and fire; Merryweather is the cold and still of death. But in Fauna’s world and in Fauna’s mind, there are both, and she feels her terrible power unravelling just long enough to ensnare the child which they watch over.
She feels afraid. Of herself and of the child which she has blessed and cursed. Her sisters recoil from her, and it is the beginning of the end.
Time passes. Time so long that humans do not even have words for it. Humans build towns, and cities, and invent things, and learn to turn rock into shining metal, and Merryweather comes to understand that they must live, and Flora comes to understand that they must die. Fauna wraps her power back into herself again, and does not use it on creatures so dangerous as humans, instead breathing life into plants and all the things that grow silent and patient upon the earth.
For many ages, she cannot bear to look at her child. For the child is hers, where her magic has done as much or more to make them than blood ever would. Finally, when it feels like the world is growing old, but she knows there is so much more left to do, Fauna dares to look; when she looks, she weeps.
The child has become a girl has become a woman, and is as undying as Fauna’s realm. Her skin is green, and her eyes are dark, and she is more powerful than any child has the right to be. Maleficent, she calls herself, and toys with humans as much as the fae ever have.
“I have made her one of us,” Fauna says to her sisters, and still they do not fully understand her tears.
Maleficent never knows, or at least shows no sign that she does. She hates Flora, Fauna and Merryweather as much as she hates any other creature that might be as powerful as she, or perhaps a little more since they dare to walk in realms close to hers, to call themselves ‘fairies’ in order to seem safe, and offer gifts to humans in penitence for what they have done. They interrupt her games, and she hates them for it.
Neither Flora nor Merryweather see problems with fighting against Maleficent. They will not do so openly, of course, but when she meddles in the lives of humans they see themselves as justified in meddling as well, using humans like shields and swords, saying it is only right but doing no differently than she does.
They are too proud to admit that neither of them could defeat Maleficent. That fire or ice alone will never be enough. They do not admit that only Fauna could stand against the being that she created, because they know that she cannot. She cannot destroy her own child.
Finally it comes to pass that Maleficent oversteps her bounds. They cannot allow her to kill the Princess Aurora for so small a perceived slight from her parents, and intervene. For many years, they have made their gifts small and almost useless, decreasing the power which they give with each generation. Now they give only beauty and song, and soon will be gone altogether – if not for Maleficent’s actions.
Maleficent thinks that their powers are waning; she is wrong. Merryweather reaches deep into the magic that has been woven, and rearranges it into new patterns instead. Fear burns through Fauna’s veins as she watches, cuts deeper when Flora says that they must intervene further and raise the child themselves.
The sixteen years pass in less than a heartbeat of the world, and suddenly Aurora – Briar Rose, she will always be Briar Rose in Fauna’s eyes – is grown, and must face her fate.
Flora thinks that she has won already; King Stephen thinks that destroying spinning wheels and waiting will be enough. No, Fauna knows, the story must play out. Aurora must die, or sleep, and rise again at True Love’s Kiss, or the strong magic bound to the tale will burn up the world as it tries to be completed.
They break Philip’s bonds, and give him a sword and shield, and let his faith and raw humanity do the rest. For it is the humanity, rather than the magic, which must see this out.
They see Aurora awakened, and returned to her parents. Flora and Merryweather fight again, but now it is only over the colour of a gown, and will not unmake the world.
Fauna slips away, and comes back to the cliff, the fallen rocks, the black scales shed like snakeskin, glimmering on the ground. There is a figure in the midst of the devastation, curled in on itself like a child again, faint and green and almost part of the earth.
Whispered words fall from Fauna’s lips, and she reaches out to it.
She returns to the home she and her sisters have shared for sixteen years with an infant in her arms again, swaddled tightly. Her sisters try to hide their fear as they look at her, wondering if the old power deep within them all is rising once again.
“Is it her?” They say, when they see a flash of green skin. What they mean is: Is there another?, and they are frightened of the thought.
Fauna nods.
“You know what she can do,” says Flora.
“Perhaps it would be best for all if this ended now,” says Merryweather, and for her the words are unusually gentle.
“No. There is hope yet.” Fauna cradles the babe to her breast. “This time, I will teach her restraint. Humility. What we have learnt.”
They do not offer to help. They still fear the power that is theirs combined, less used and less spoken but running as deep as the earth itself runs.
“Go back, and watch over the princess,” she says, because she knows that they want to. “See that things play out correctly for her.”
They have many ages yet, many turns of the world. She turns away before they leave, and strokes fine black hair back from soft green skin.
“You need a new name, little one,” she says softly. Words are powerful, names doubly so. “Propitious... yes, I think Propitious will do.”