Somewhere between the middle of the night and sunrise, Myrielle's family burst into the cottage.

"Myrielle!" Rose called out. "Myrielle are you here?!"

Myrielle emerged from the darkness in a plain beige dress. Her volumized curls had been brushed away and her eyes were glistening with tears.

"Hello mother," she said weakly.

Rose rushed over and squeezed her in the tightest hug.

"Time for a cup of mother's healing tea," she said warmly.

"Yes please," she said burying her face into her mother's shoulder. Despite the confessions she was soon to reveal, nothing felt better than being back in her mother's arms...

***

The family gathered around the tiny table, sipping tea and absorbing every detail of Myrielle's experience.

"How many boils?" said Thomas obsessively. "Were they oozing?"

Rose smacked him on the back of the head. "Let her finish!"

Some parts of the story seemed unreal to Myrielle, but she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep if she didn't confess it all. "Just to be clear I didn't mean to sabotage her face, but given that she was so unkind...and that I'd learned so many different concoctions from your special teas..."

Peter shook his head. "Rose, you've created a monster." His tone was somehow playful and it made Myrielle feel better.

"So then what happened?" said Emilia. "Did she turn into a monster and fly away?"

Myrielle frowned. "No...but she got her revenge pretty soon after."

Emilia gasped. "How?"

"By catching Fredrick and I..." She started to blush.

"Catching you with what?" chirped Emilia. "Stolen tarts?"

"More like catching us devouring each other's faces," Myrielle murmured quietly enough so that no one else would hear.

Rose nudged Myrielle's elbow. "Tell us more about this Fredrick."

Myrielle felt the familiar pain reawaken in her gut. "Emilia and Thomas should really be getting to bed now...."

"Don't change the subject!" Rose insisted. "It's obvious he became an important figure in your life, so what happened? Is he still working in the castle? And what did Bella catch you doing?"

The rapid-fire questions were all too much, and the healing family summit now felt like an interrogation. So she snapped.

"She caught us kissing okay?! And the prince found out but they couldn't be-head us because the contest was pre-determined by these votes which meant I'd already won alright?!" She paused to take a breath. "But if I quit they threatened not to clear the kingdom's debt so they made me stay but banished Fredrick to the dungeons, but then I ended up quitting anyway by pretending the glass slipper didn't fit, and then I went to the dungeon to try and save Fredrick but he rejected me, okay?!" She bolted out of her chair and ran into the closet that doubled as her bedroom.

The rest of the family sat in silence as they took it all in.

Thomas shook his head. "So we could've been royals?"

***

The following week was the ultimate angsty heartache that parents just don't understand. At least that was what Rose had concluded when Myrielle refused to leave her closet/bedroom.

On the seventh day, Rose knocked on the door persistently. "It's time to come out!" she urged. "I made squash tarts! Except without the pastry...and in a broth."

"I'm not hungry!" Myrielle declared from the other side of the door.

"But we're poor," said Rose to no one but herself, "we're always hungry." She shook her head in determination. "That's enough Myrielle, I'm coming in!"

She pulled open the door and found Myrielle nuzzled against a man-shaped ball of fabric made entirely out of scraps. It seemed that Myrielle had vaulted straight past heartache and landed in an alternate reality.

Rose slowly nodded. "That's fine...this is fine." Her face transformed into motherly encouragement. "Would you mind taking a break from your...friend for a bit? And pick up some things at the market?"

Myrielle lovingly squeezed fabric-man's arm and whispered something into his fabric ear. She rose from her cuddly position and smiled. "Of course mother," she said. She strolled out of the closet and Rose closed the door behind her, creepily eyeing fabric-man until he faded into darkness...

***

Myrielle reluctantly entered the town square, hoping no one would remember she'd been in the contest at all, let alone been a loser in the final round.

"There she is!" A child cried out. "The first loser!"

Myrielle groaned and tried her best to hide her face. She weaved her way through the square in hurried steps and as she took in her surroundings she realized that not a lot had changed since Bella's victory. There were plenty of decorations hanging from the rafters, but the available food and prices didn't seem that much better. Maybe it would take much longer to see a change, or maybe the queen was funneling all the resources into jewels.

She shook her head and tried to erase the chilling memory of the queen from her mind, along with anything else having to do with evil royals.

It was just a few more feet to the food stall and its dented vegetables, but before Myrielle could get there she was swarmed by a group of young girls.

The questions poured fourth immediately.

"Were your feet too long for the glass slippers?" one of them yelped. "Or too fat?"

"Fat," she stated, a deadened look in her eyes. "Too fat."

"How much more beautiful was Bella than you?" said another. "Twice as beautiful? Three times as beautiful? Or more?"

"Fifty times as beautiful," Myrielle proclaimed. "A solid fifty."

"Did the prince ever kiss you?" said another one dreamily. "And is he really as perfect as he seems?"

Myrielle could see that the girls were already mesmerized, hoping for the answer that would fit their gooey narrative. Was it wrong to shatter their dreams? Or was it harmless to let them carry around some hope?

"The prince is...the most royal person you could ever meet."

The girls gasped and clung to their fantasy, like a 'Tiger Beat' magazine showcasing 'heartthrob Lance Bass' before anybody knew that he was gay. And was that really so bad? She technically hadn't even lied, as the prince was indeed quite royal, it was just that being royal was everything that was wrong with humanity.

"Will you be teaching at Princess Bella's new school?" a fourth one asked.

Myrielle immediately gasped. "Princess Bella is re-opening the academy?!" Bella had never seemed like the type to believe in any form of schooling, but maybe becoming a princess had changed her for the philanthropic good.

The little girl laughed. "Not the academy! It's 'Princess Bella's School of Becoming Beautiful'!"

Myrielle laughed along with her, but her 'ha ha has' emerged from a place of pure bitterness. She wasn't a princess, Fredrick was gone (she was well aware that fabric-man wasn't real), and the only school in the Enraptured Kingdom would have honey-tar hair solution and corset options as its primary curriculum...

***

Myrielle wandered home from the market in an aimless fashion, kicking gravel and trying to get used to the incredible disenchantment of her life. It wasn't all that different from where she'd started before the contest, so at least she knew how to survive it.

As she arrived at the family cottage, Thomas and Emilia raced towards her.

"Will you join us in the stoning game?" Thomas begged.

For once Myrielle nodded as she put down the sack of produce. "Yes Thomas; yes I will."

It was Myrielle's turn to play the defendant facing punishment, and when she thought of all the choices she'd made throughout the contest, in many ways it was fitting.

After enduring an onslaught of pebbles and faking her own death, the children became bored and started playing with random sticks. Myrielle continued to lie there with eyes closed, fake-dead on the outside, and actual-dead on the inside.

"Myrielle?" said a young boy's voice.

She opened one eye and spotted the neighbor's eight-year-old son.

"Hello James," she said.

"Are you alright?" he asked, more curious than concerned.

"Better than ever," she confirmed.

"Well...if you're not too busy, my brother and I were wondering if you would read to us from one of your books."

She opened the other eye. "What?"

"Read to us; so that maybe we could learn to read too? And perhaps...if it's alright...you could also teach Richard who lives down the lane? And his sister Gwen?"

Myrielle sat up and wiped the gravel from her hands, feeling a sense of purpose for the first time in ages. "Let me go fetch the best book I can find..."