It looked different in the daylight, Mirabel thought to herself. The night before, all that could be seen was the rough outline of a cottage and a fenced in pen full of goats. But it was so much richer than that.

    The land surrounding the cottage was full of rolling hills and tall grass that swayed in the slight breeze. Off in the distance, trees could be seen along the skyline, edging the horizon with the sharp tips of conifers. It was a kind day, the weather mild with a pleasant breeze, and Mirabel was almost tempted to spread her arms, as if ready to take flight. She probably would have had it not been for the young girl holding her hand.

    Esther dragged her along, laughing the whole way, and Mirabel felt her own silent laughter bubbling over. There was something about the girl that made her laugh contagious.

    A little ways off, Mirabel could see the goats browsing in a field, and Tomas standing off to the side with Ansel beside him. Mirabel nearly tripped, stumbling on a rock in the hillside, but managed to right herself before she landed face first and found herself rolling down another incline.

    When they got closer, Esther began to shout. “Hey! Look who’s finally out of bed!”

    Tomas turned around at the shout, and lifted his hand in a wave. Ansel looked up from whatever he had been doing on the ground in front of him, and lifted his own small hand in a wave.

    After that, Esther quickly began introducing her to the goats one by one. Mirabel found it impossible to remember their names, not at the rate that Esther was going. The only one she did remember was Connie, from the night before, but even then she couldn’t tell which one Connie was. They all looked rather the same.

    The only other one she could remember the name of was Snowtime. He was a male goat, with large horns and a white beard on his constantly chewing chin. Named for the white beard, Tomas assured her, “I had nothing to do with the name, don’t blame me. That was all Esther.” Mirabel had smiled at that; she thought the name fit the goat just fine.

    However, after spending a while longer with the goats, she began to discover just how unappealing the creatures were in real life. She’d never met a goat before, and had only read about them before. In theory, she quite liked goats; they were animals, and she’d always had a soft spot for any animal that wasn’t likely to harm her. In practice, however, she found that she didn’t like them quite as much as she’d previously thought.

    They were noisy creatures, for one thing. She’d soon found that Connie was only the most vocal of them, not the only vocal one. If she got too close to them, they would begin nibbling on her hair, leaving their slimy saliva on the ends before she could pull away. And to top it all off, they smelled. She’d never thought of what a goat would smell like before, but it certainly wasn’t what she would have been expecting. It was an unpleasant stench, reminding her a bit of wet wool.

    Tomas soon started pulling goats out of the herd and tying them to a pole while he milked them. Mirabel watched in fascination as, with deft movements, he squeezed the milk out of the goat’s udder. She’d never seen someone milk a goat before, either.

    Esther pushed Tomas out of the way soon enough and began milking instead, saying that, “I like doing it. It’s fun to squirt into the bucket.”

    After Mirabel had watched for a while, Esther looked up and grinned. “Do you wanna try?” And with that, Mirabel found herself on a stool beside a goat, feeling a bit intimidated.

    “Go on!” Esther encouraged her, and Mirabel lifted one hand to the goat’s udder. It felt odd in her hand. It was extremely warm to the touch, and surprisingly firm. Her eyebrows knit together and she bit her lip. Being very careful, she squeezed.

    A spurt of milk came out, missing the bucket and instead getting on her dress. In surprise, she let go of the udder and stood, knocking the stool over as she felt the warm liquid seep through the woolen dress.

    Esther laughed at Mirabel’s predicament. “You forgot to aim, silly!” And so she took over again, showing Mirabel the proper way to milk a goat, the occasional giggle escaping.

    The rest of the day went by in a bit of a blur. Chore after chore filled any empty space that might have had the chance to be, just as water would fill the gaps in a jar of sand.

    They’d been running low on firewood, so Esther had taken Mirabel with her to gather some; they needed to fetch a bucket of water from the well; they needed to cook lunch - something Mirabel found she was rather inept at, having never cooked before; Esther needed to pick up her toys and again recruited Mirabel to help her; the list went on.

    By the time the day was only halfway done, she was exhausted. She wasn’t used to so much work; as a matter of fact, she wasn’t used to hardly any work at all. She normally woke up, had her breakfast, and went to her lessons. She’d never had to cook, or clean, or, least of all, fetch firewood.

    It was strange how different it was, and it only served to prove to her just how strange and different she really was. Everything she would normally do, no one did. There were no lessons, no learning about the history of the kingdom. There was no etiquette, no talk of how it was appropriate to walk, or how to curtsy properly. Instead, it was all work. She’d never thought of how the servants days were, but she found herself realizing it must be rather like this.

    Her entire body felt stretched and pulled in ridiculous ways by the time the day was done and they’d settled down to dinner. Her muscles ached and her legs could hardly support her anymore; this wasn’t her life.

    As they ate dinner, she found herself almost falling asleep in the soup. She forced herself to stay awake, however, simply because of her stomach. All the work of the day had made her exhausted, and very, very hungry.

    It was good soup, though of course not quite on par with what the palace had to offer. It had a different quality to it, something Mirabel couldn’t quite put her finger on. Adelaide had recruited her and Esther to help cook the dinner while the ‘men’ finished up the chores, but Mirabel had found herself entirely useless. She didn’t know how to cook soup any more than she’d known how to cook the whatever-it-was-called they’d had for lunch. Instead, she’d sat off to the side, embarrassed, while Esther helped her mother.

    All in all, if anything, the day served to make her feel as useless and stupid as possible. She didn’t know how to do anything, and anything she did know how to do wasn’t helpful. Adelaide had given her odd looks the whole day, and Mirabel couldn’t help but think that she thought she was entirely stupid. She certainly felt like an idiot.

    “Mummy, why doesn’t Dove talk?” asked Esther suddenly, drawing Mirabel from her tired thoughts.

    Adelaide also looked up in surprise at the question. “Well, sweetheart, I’m not really the one to ask about that.”

    “Well, I asked her, but she said she didn’t know,” Esther said, looking a bit disappointed.

    “She did what now?” Adelaide questioned curiously.

    Esther repeated herself. “She said she didn’t know why she can’t talk. She said she was born that way. Mummy, how can someone be born with no voice?”

    Adelaide’s eyes turned to Mirabel in question, and she nodded. Esther had asked her earlier that day about why she never said anything. Being such a natural talker herself, she found it strange to meet someone who didn’t speak. Mirabel had motioned to her, similar to what she’d done when Tomas had asked her the same question. Esther had caught on, and they’d managed to carry on a short conversation in that manner. It was the most she’d communicated with anyone aside from Tomas since leaving the palace.

    Adelaide returned her eyes to her daughter and spoke. “I don’t really know, sweetheart. I’ve never met someone without a voice before either. Maybe,” she said after a short pause, and then leaned in close. “She was cursed, like in the fairy tales! Maybe a nasty fairy stole her voice!”

    Esther giggled. “What would a nasty fairy want with Dove’s voice?”

    “Maybe,” Adelaide began in an intense whisper, loud enough for everyone at the table to hear. “The fairy was jealous of Dove’s voice and wanted it for herself? Maybe she had the most gorgeous voice in all the land, and the fairy wanted to have such a wonderful voice, so she stole it?”

    Mirabel found herself smiling as Adelaide wove a fairy tale around her missing voice. Esther was enthralled by the story, and Ansel looked captivated. Mirabel’s eyes caught Tomas’s as he glanced at her. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. It seemed to her that this wasn’t the first time his mother had broken into a fairy tale during dinner time before. He seemed used to it, and continued to eat his soup, while his siblings ignored their food in favor of the story.

    After the story was over, Esther grinned and bounced in her chair. “Tell another story! Please?” Ansel soon joined her plea, and Adelaide laughed.

    “Not until you finish your soup. It’s probably already gone cold,” she said with amusement.

    Reluctantly, Esther and Ansel returned to their food, eating quickly. Mirabel smiled at their antics, suddenly wishing she had younger siblings of her own. She’d never had someone who treated her quite the way that Esther did.

    After dinner was over and they’d cleaned up the dishes and everything, Esther insisted that Mirabel play with her, pulling out a pair of cornhusk dolls.

    “We can play out mummy’s fairy tale!” she said with a grin. “I’ll be the nasty fairy, that way you can be you.”

    Mirabel hadn’t played dolls in what seemed like forever. She remembered long ago when she would get her nurse to play with her, acting out stories and things. An odd sense of nostalgia washed over her at the memory.

    Adelaide chuckled from across the room. “I thought you wanted another story?”

    Esther perked up. “I do!” Then she paused and looked at Mirabel. “Do you think Dove could try and tell a story, and we could try and figure it out? She can act it out.” She looked at her mother with pleading eyes.

    Adelaide blinked in surprise and looked at Mirabel. “Well, if she wants to, then-” She was cut off as Esther spoke up again.

    “Please!” she said, drawing the word out. “It’ll be fun!”

    Mirabel smiled, unsure if she should or not. She wasn’t sure what story she would tell. But as Esther continued to plead, she gave in, nodding.

    “Yay!” Esther cried out with glee. She picked up the dolls and handed them to Mirabel. “You can use these to act it out, if you want.”

    Mirabel took the simply made dolls, just corn husks tied and braided into vaguely human like shapes, holding them uncertainly. She glanced up and met Tomas’s eyes. He’d been quiet so far in all this, but he offered her an encouraging smile, and she couldn’t help but return it. She seemed to have smiled more in the past day than she had for a long time. Their smiles were all just too contagious.

    Taking a doll in each hand, she began to act out a story her nurse used to tell her when she was younger and didn’t have so many lessons to attend. Every so often, she would pause and wait to see if they knew what she’d acted out, and sometimes she’d have to do it over again if they didn’t get it. Esther was surprisingly good at it, making it into a sort of game. Ansel was quieter, piping in every so often if he thought his sister was wrong.

    As she acted it out, she found a smile on her face once more. For the first time since she’d been kidnapped, she realized, she felt happy.

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A/N Aaand, back to Mirabel :3 Hope you're enjoying! This chapter was a little harder to write, but in the end it got going. Let me know what you think, eh? xx