"Weren't you?" Anneliese asked gently, taking her hands. "May I?"
432 gave her a short, jerky nod and Anneliese carefully pressed her mouth to hers in a chaste kiss, pulling back with an exclamation of delight when the color rushed to her cheeks this time, turning them a bright pink, her eyes shifting from dishwater gray to a deep brown.
That was how, 432 realized. That was how some of the Undead had gained their lives back. They'd found people who loved them.
She should have realized it sooner. True Love's Kiss was a key component in so many spells, after all. The enchantment in the submerging liquid had brought them part of the way back, and then the kiss healed what had been broken, restoring the life that had been taken.
"My turn," Meri said, looking to 432 for permission before she took her hand and brushed a kiss across her knuckles, mimicking the kiss that had woken Anneliese.
432 gasped, her first true intake of air in too long, and then she felt the holes in her back knitting themselves together and the puncture wounds on her arms seal, unmarked pale skin in their wake. She sank to the ground, taking in a great lungful of air, tears falling in pain and shock as her broken arm pulled itself back into a whole.
Meri and Anneliese were beside her, clutching her hands and talking, words she couldn't decipher, keeping up a soothing patter of sound as her wounds finally healed. She couldn't ease the flow of tears, however, crying as if she'd never stop, leaning forward to hold tight to both the women who'd come to be her new life.
Once her body was whole her mind came next, and as the memories flooded back the words spilled out of her in a steady, stunned rush. Her mother's name. The first word her little sister had said. Her first kiss. The arguments she'd had with her father, and the way they'd both laughed over them later. Her fiancée's name. The knowledge of the way she'd died— going to pick a basketful of crimsonberries so she and her mother could make pies for the start of market season—and the year she'd died. So long ago.
She looked to her left arm, but all the names, the marks of being someone's property, had disappeared.
"My name," she whispered. "My name is Irina."
* * *
[Jae1]Threat of rape really necessary?
[Stephanie2]Reply to Jae (02/20/2015, 23:43): "..."
I thought so, since it's a reference to what happened in early versions of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale: instead of waking up at True Love's Kiss, she woke up when the twins she'd given birth to while still asleep began to try and nurse. In those, Sleeping Beauty and her rapist end up living happily ever after; I wanted to do a version where that character/archetype was punished rather than rewarded.
[Jae3]How are they speaking? There's no air underwater with which to hold a discussion.
[Stephanie4]Reply to Jae (02/21/2015, 01:05): "…" I remember thinking when I was plotting this scene that they'd talk telepathically somehow, and then I forgot to actually put that in. Good job, self. :) Thank you!
Last Petal on the Rose and Other Stories Page 18
