Snow White and the Seven Souls
Gaius

Under the watchful eye of her stepmother, Snow began to grow impatient with her pleasant but cloistered palatial home. She wanted to roam the hills again. She wanted to travel. To sample food from far-flung countries. To meet interesting people.

She had grown so restless that she almost brought up the subject of traveling to her father. Almost.

Leaving simply seemed too harsh of a thing to do to the man who had never fully healed after Yori’s abrupt departure. His new wife notwithstanding, there would always be a scar upon the King’s heart from the wound he suffered that November night.

Before his wedding, one could have said that the King’s emotional scar was not unlike Snow’s own, so keenly had they both felt Yori’s loss.

Since the courtyard incident, however, the Princess was forced by necessity to conceal a physical scar of more immediate consequence. Having so inconveniently not died when she was supposed to, she had become something rather like the creature who had given the wound to her in the first place.

That did not mean that she had lost all humanity, but she had assuredly lost a great deal of it. It was that void that drove her now. Made her want to explore, to travel, to replace that lost aspect of herself again. Given that the time was not right for her to leave her father’s home, she resigned herself to staying put.

Shortly after the wedding, Snow took to donning a nondescript cloak and slipping out of the castle walls for brief outings. She found some solace in weaving her way through the village streets and markets. Watching the people. Seeing what she could see. And yet it was never enough to simply watch the goings on. She needed to be a part of it. Somehow, she needed to take it into herself, to replenish what life she had lost. What Dalor had given had been a wonderful gift that she carried with her, but it was not enough.

After a few weeks of these meanderings, the day came when Snow met Gaius. It was a cloudy, foreboding type of afternoon. The kind that promises rain but never delivers, choosing instead to weigh heavily in the air until it makes everyone’s head sore.

Gaius’s head was sore for several reasons, aside from the weather. He had been up late working at the Green Meadow Pub. He was a bartender. Not the kind that you could talk to (before you get ahead of yourself imagining him as a listener). He was the kind that did not check if the tankard was clean and slopped the brew all over the counter, and more often than not your lap as well, when he plopped the ale down approximately in front of you.

The careless barkeep needed glasses, but was stubbornly refusing to wear them. The resulting eye-strain under the poor tavern lighting left him with a sore noggin more nights than not.

He had also been worried of late. His old friend the librarian had abruptly stopped coming by the ale house not too long ago. Though he would never admit it to anyone, he missed seeing the old man and wondered if he was doing alright.

If you had asked Gaius himself why his head was sore, he would have told you that it was none of your business. If he wanted to have a headache then that was what he would have. And there was nothing to be done for it, anyway.

Snow followed Gaius as he made his way through the village market, stopping here and there to purchase food for his late lunch. She followed as he carried his small packages back to his rooms, which were next to the cobbler’s workshop. Having uttered barely a grunt of acknowledgement to anyone that he passed, he paid his extra shadow no mind either.

It was little wonder then that Snow was able to stop Gaius’s door from fully closing behind him. Slipping into the dingy room, she made sure that the door was bolted after her.

“Eh! What’s this, now? Who do you think you are?” cried Gaius, dropping his packages grumpily onto the grubby dining table.

Snow responded by pulling back the hood of her cloak and shaking out her black hair as it cascaded down her shoulders. She heard an intake of breath as Gaius beheld her.

“You’renot... Your Highness!” he said, bowing slightly as the dots connected. “My apologies, I guess. That is, what are you thinking barging in here like this?” The more he got used to the idea of her being here, the less he was impressed.

The barman’s insolence made the Princess laugh. It was an almost normal laugh, but Gaius could tell there was something off about it. Tinny, like a cheap bell on the verge of breaking.

Then he looked into her eyes, where he found something he had been looking for.

Unfortunately for Gaius, it was something that he would have been better off never replaceing.