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Once upon a time, in a quiet glade, in a forest far from the kingdoms of Earthbread and the Soda Seas, a place known mostly in children's stories and dreams, there was a beautiful cookie, who slept eternally in a coffin made of glass.
White Lily Cookie, as she was once called, when she was awake, slept in the very heart of the Faeries' home, the Silver Kingdom, and she did not stir but dreamt of dreams that would make any cookie in a lighter slumber toss and turn all night and eventually wake in a fit, but White Lily Cookie was in a great sleep, a magical sleep, to protect her soul and her memory from the corruption of her other half, though, sharing a mind and a self with the Enchantress, her dreams swam with chaos, her heart rent apart as she could not escape the terrible visions of the world she had loved and still loved, torn apart by her hands.
Anyone who would witness her might think she was at peace and indeed, the Faeries who tended the glade and her old, dear friends and followers did pray that she was, as she lay, unpeturbed by the movements of the world, on her face the perfect picture of serenity and yet, the spirit beneath her dough was restless, a half-soul of sorrow and worry and great, great doubt and through the vines and thorns of her mind, one might find a small and scared cookie, wandering the ruins of the world her other half envisioned.
And this was how Eternal Sugar Cookie found her, when she was wandering the world of dreams alone.
Eternal Sugar Cookie was tired, bitterly tired, as she often was when wandering, when she found the sleeping Lily. She had heard the echoes of her Beast fellows under the great tree that trapped her, the ones who wanted to escape, the louder voices around her, promising to wreak destruction across all of Earthbread, to damn the world to lies and apathy. Sometimes, she would join in the cacophony but often, she slept through it. She often curled up in that prison, to leave it in sweet, pink clouds of dream and wispy consciousness, wrapping her feathered wings over herself as a blanket and a part of Mystic Flour's robe as a pillow - she would never have told her to stop, even though she did want Eternal Sugar to stop.
In these wisps of self, she would escape the Tree's prison, even if for a moment, to visit the dreams of the Faeries above. They were often insipid and useless to her and some, she would influence in the soft and loving embrace of the early morning to come back to bed, no one would mind if they just went back to bed, and she delighted in it when they did come back to those dreams, even if it was only a fraction of that power she once wielded, as she constantly felt the pull of the Light inside her, outside her, the Light through her, it made her feel just a little bit more like her old self.
Happiness, she thought often, floating through those dreams, what was Happiness? Had she been happy, then, when she was good and loved by the Witches and smiled upon all the world, when she had witnessed the cruelty of the world and tried to fight it, to her own destruction, her own exhaustion and her fall to… to what she was now. When she had let the Light of Happiness go and it remained beside her, twisted and torn by her inaction, her inability, she had certainly not been happy and she was certain that she could never be again, even if she tried so hard, even if she had made every cookie in the world happy, would she ever be? And what, then, was the point in getting up in the morning at all, what was the point in waking up and trying?
It was then, when she had come to this conclusion, that the Light of Happiness had turned to the Light of Sloth. She hadn't done anything to make it so. Maybe that was why it had turned.
And it was when she had been floating in her own memory, in her dreams, that she had heard the tears of another, in waking sleep, who cried with the same fears, the same doubts, the same terror that she could not change anything. Eternal Sugar, despite herself, was drawn to these cries and found herself sat in a glade, beside a cookie dressed all in green and white, who curled up on the floor and cried into her hands. White Lily Cookie did not recognise her when she sat down beside her, but looked up with tearful, pink eyes and sniffled as she spoke, "I'm sorry, did i disturb you?"
Her voice was sleepy when she spoke, unused to it after years of sleeping soundly under the Tree and Eternal Sugar smiled, "No, you didn't. We're still sleeping."
White Lily looked around. The glade was perfectly still, even in the daytime, and the smell of the lilies around her was sweet, "So we are… Are you a Faerie Cookie?"
"No, not a Faerie." She fluttered her wings a little, to wrap them around herself.
"What are you, then?"
Eternal Sugar wondered whether to be honest or not, then remembered Shadow Milk's prattling, which only served to tire her out, and decided to just say truthfully, as White Lily couldn't hurt her here, couldn't leave her own dream, "Eternal Sugar Cookie."
"Oh." White Lily's eyes went wide and she wiped away her tears, "You should be- you ought to be under the Tree over there."
She considered this, "I am, I think, still under it. We're dreaming."
"It's still intact here. The Silver Kingdom." White Lily looked around in wonder and a little in fear. "Sometimes, when I dream, it's reduced to crumbs."
Eternal Sugar did not have an answer to this and so, leant her head against White Lily's shoulder and fell asleep again. When she awoke, she was in the roots of the Tree again, curled in Mystic Flour's robes and listening to the ambient duologue/argument between Burning Spice and Shadow Milk. Silent Salt was sat where they always sat, silent and sentinel. She didn't make eye contact with them, just in case.
Silent Salt did not dream. Their sleep was heavy and leaden and cold and scary. Eternal Sugar didn't like to visit them in sleep.
Shadow Milk did dream. He dreamt weird dreams. Eternal Sugar was not going to visit those anymore.
Burning Spice dreamt too, he dreamt of scorched earth and columns of flame and cities to crush beneath his feet. She hung out there occasionally but it was too loud to hang out there often. She had sensitive ears, you know, not nice to be somewhere so loud for long.
Mystic Flour had very pleasant dreams, she dreamt of soft, white cities in the clouds and old friends and things she was no longer attached to but still remembered. If she could have been sorrowful, she would have been but she was not allowed to be and so, that sorrow bled into her dreams.
Eternal Sugar only dreamt and visited a great many dreams and she preferred it to her waking life. She was weightless in her dreams, she moved without friction or effort, her wings carried her on the currents of sleep and she was happy to drift downstream as far as the river would carry her. She was not driven as her fellows, not as motivated as them but she was happy to follow their leads, to make herself small behind their silhouettes as they would protect her from resistance.
She did seek out White Lily's endless dreams again. When she did, her dreams showed the Tree burnt down, the Silver Kingdom ripped apart physically by rifts in reality, huge tears filled with eyes and the sky raining fire down on the trees that remained. Yet, the glade, intact, with its coffin and copse of trees and a cookie knelt by the lilies that grew up under her feet, White Lily Cookie who looked up and saw her looking down on her.
"Eternal Sugar Cookie?" She spoke up, "You're here again." It wasn't a question and yet, her voice wavered like it was.
She looked around her, at the ruin, "Mhm."
"Why are you here?"
"I don't have anywhere else to be." She said, plainly, and then, sat next to White Lily, "Is it meant to be destroyed?"
"I don't know. It's- It's what she wants to do." White Lily whispered, "Dark Enchantress."
"Isn't that what you want?"
"I don't want this… I don't want destruction." She looked about, "It's only a dream, I know, this… isn't how the world is. Is it?"
Eternal Sugar did not know how to tell her that she hadn't seen the world outside of dreams since the Tree was planted, and she imagined that it was much changed. But this wasn't a nightmare, not yet, only a bittersweet dream and Eternal Sugar nodded, "It isn't so destroyed as this."
"But it is some part destroyed?" She pressed further and Eternal Sugar only shrugged. White Lily, then, sighed, "I wish I'd never gone to the Banquet. I wish I'd never known."
She was silent for a moment and then, continued, "I'm not as strong as Pure Vanilla. I'm not- He could've surely handled it. He would've been able to understand the truth. He wouldn't have…" She looks down at her hands, up at Eternal Sugar and then, out into the burning woods, the flames beginning to lick at the trees of the glade.
"Maybe." She said and White Lily fell silent. "It's okay, though, you're safe in dreams."
"Safe, maybe but…" A sigh escaped her, "I can't affect the world here."
It went off in her mind that this was a hook. It also went off in her mind that this was a vulnerable girl, a cookie who was truly alone, wandering her own terrible, fractured mind. And Eternal Sugar said, softly and carefully, "Maybe that's for the best. Safer for you and safer for everyone else."
White Lily was silent again and spoke no more, until she released a little tension from her shoulders and leaned into Eternal Sugar. She said nothing else and Eternal Sugar did not elaborate until she fell asleep on her shoulder again and felt a tear fall onto her face from above.
She awoke to a crack in the Tree's trunk. Shadow Milk was getting excited and she was confused and the others seemed very agitated, even Mystic Flour, but she was still. She stared into the crack in the trunk, out into the world. Through the haze of the still-unbroken seal, she could see the Silver Kingdom. It beckoned, shiny and pretty. It reminded her of home, somehow, and her wings fluttered behind her back, feathers out of place from their disuse and misuse as a blanket.
She could hear things from outside the tree, cookies without wings, maybe… four of them? Five of them? Five was a good number of things. And then, she could hear a voice that could only soothe, a voice often imitated by Shadow Milk Cookie in his mad plays of vengence.
She decided, very deliberately, to take a quick nap, tucking herself into a corner of the roots. And when she opened her eyes, the Tree was blasted open, the stars in the sky blinking eyes and the forest almost entirely leveled. New growth trees, like splinters and knives, shot up out of the ground and where Eternal Sugar flew shone with the light of Sloth, a pale and comforting pink. White Lily's grove, cool and inviting green, was all that remained as it was, untouched by her nightmares.
She shook, in the centre of it all, and when she looked up to see Eternal Sugar, there was a great fear in her eyes. She did not greet her, but asked only, "Is this what is to come?"
Eternal Sugar looked around, she saw plainly the mark of Deceit, the smell of it in the air, the terrible unrest that often followed her fellow Beast, "I think it is a dream." She said.
"Have you seen my friends?" Her voice slipped, "Pure Vanilla Cookie. I feel like he's here."
She knew that he was, had flitted in and out of his sweet-scented dreams, had seen gaps in his armour where she might stick claw into and knew that the thing he sought was right here before her. She nodded.
"Is he okay?"
"I can't see his dreams." She lied, "I can't tell if he is or not."
A frown crossed White Lily's face, an expression of concern that annoyed Eternal Sugar. "I think- I think I need to wake up."
"What?" She couldn't help it. She just couldn't help it. "No, why would you need to wake up?"
"I think he needs my help." White Lily looked about, "He needs me to help."
Her voice dripped saccharine, syrupy and thick, "Pure Vanilla Cookie doesn't know what he's talking about." She added, "You don't know what you're talking about."
"What do you mean?"
She moved a hand onto White Lily's arm, "You said, before, that he would be able to handle the truth, didn't you?"
"I did." Her voice shook like a leaf.
"The Truth has never done him any good, though." She said, "The Truth has never done anyone any good. Least of all you, Lily."
"I- I know."
"Do you think," She looked up into White Lily Cookie's eyes. Such lovely eyes they were, wide and shining with fear, "that he will be able to handle the truth when he finds out what you really are? What she really is?"
White Lily glanced at the sky and stumbled, "I- I don't- He's always been-"
"Forgiving. He's always been forgiving."
"Yes." She said, "Forgiving."
"He's not stupid though. You hurt him. You hurt his friends. You hurt everything he holds dear."
"I know that." Her pretty eyes brimmed with tears.
"You still love him," Eternal Sugar moved to hold her hand, to comfort her softly, "don't you?"
"Of course. Everyone loves him." She whispered, a secret shared between them.
Eternal Sugar nodded, "But he can't love you back. He'll find out the Truth, one way or another. All of them will."
White Lily nodded and fell silent at that, wiping away her tears with one hand but not pulling the other from Eternal Sugar's hold.
"How could they love you, when you're her?"
She did not speak. The stars blinked on at them and Eternal Sugar drifted off into sleep, as the lilies around her swelled and the great and beautiful stench of them filled her nose. Her head fell upon White Lily's lap and when she awoke from the dream, still she could smell those flowers all around her.
The Tree seemed patched up again and Shadow Milk fumed and Burning Spice was off in a corner and Mystic Flour was sitting quietly and Silent Salt was brooding and Eternal Sugar was already tired. She took one sweeping look about the Tree and decided to lie back down.