Title: One Night
Prompt:
writerverse challenge 28 December table of doom, prompt 03 ‘twirling skirts’
Word Count: 376
Original/Fandom: Hey, Cinderella! (Muppets)
Pairings: Cinderella/Arthur Charming
Summary: Cinderella dances with the prince - but she’d rather dance with Arthur.
Note(s): originally posted to the
writerverse wv_library One Night
She had never expected to dance with the prince.
All Cinderella had wanted was a night, one night when she could be someone else, to leave behind all of her worries and responsibilities and chores for just a little while. The ball was everything she had dreamed and more - her fairy godmother had certainly been a shock, and her magical gown was grander than anything she’d ever seen.
Until she arrived at the palace.
Everyone there was beautiful, wearing every color of the rainbow, dancing and swirling around each other, and even before the mix-up with the geraniums, she wondered how she would ever find Arthur in all the chaos.
She never did.
The prince found her, and she danced with him all night. He was handsome and charming and kind, but he wasn’t Arthur. He treated her like a princess, but only because she was dressed like one - Arthur, she realized now, had treated her like a princess in her ragged dress and dirty shoes.
Dancing with the prince would happen just this one night. At the stroke of twelve, when her magic wore off, she would go back to her chores and he would find a real princess to marry, and if she was lucky, perhaps she would glimpse them driving by in the royal carriage someday.
When they finally paused for a glass of punch, Cinderella couldn’t help glancing around her, hoping for any sign of Arthur.
Maybe gathering all these geraniums from the royal garden had demanded all of his time, and he couldn’t get away. Maybe he’d gotten sick, and hadn’t been able to come. Maybe he had decided he didn’t want to be seen at the ball with a ragged servant girl, after all.
But as she swept back out into the crowd for another dance with the prince, Cinderella could only imagine what Arthur’s arms would feel like around her, and when the clock struck midnight, she didn’t look back as she raced from the palace, not even when she lost her shoe.
In the afternoon, she would sneak into the palace gardens to look for Arthur, to make sure he was all right.
And she would have Rufus bury that glass slipper somewhere she would never find it.
THE END
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