Page 107 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

On the other side of the door was a room that would have been called a chapel if it hadn’t been located in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle, which was strictly nondenominational according to the Princess’s contract: the ceiling was high and vaulted, designed to create the perfect acoustic echo, while the walls were covered in stained glass friezes of scenes out of fairy tales. Snow White and the apple, Red Riding Hood and the wolf, and the Princess and her glorious coronation parade. The floor was pale pink marble, and a single coffin rested on a bier at the very center of the room.

Walking slowly now, the Princess approached the coffin, while Jack stayed behind in the doorway, clutching the frame with one hand. The Princess stepped up onto the bier and looked down. Then she sighed, smiling a small, sad smile.

“Hello, Tad,” she said. “Sorry about your girl getting turned into a dinosaur and all.”

The very dead, very human masked man in the glass coffin didn’t reply. Jack ran up next to her, looking down at him.

“He’s still here,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Which means…”

“In a dinosaur world, Vel would apparently have met him and fallen for him anyway, but he wouldn’t have died,” said the Princess. “That means that he’d still be there, so the world has created him to fit expectations. Unfortunately for it, that world hasn’t swallowed all the little pieces of our reality yet, so the original corpse sits right here, in my undigested castle. That won’t last long.”

“What do you mean?”

The Princess turned and gave Jack a regretful look. “This place is made up of the hopes and dreams and beliefs of children everywhere,” she said. “Right now, most of those children are human, mammalian and familiar with this iteration of me, of us. But the change is spreading, and when more of the children turn saurian, so will my castle, and everything within it. Tag’s corpse will disappear, and I’ll grow some pretty feathers of my very own.”

Jack stared at her. “How can you be so calm about this?” she asked.

“I’m calm because I don’t have a choice, sugar. The change is coming.”

Jack stared at her for a moment longer, then pulled a snow globe out of her fur-trimmed tunic and threw herself across the glass coffin, clutching at it like it was the world’s least comfortable teddy bear. She threw the snow globe at the floor as hard as she could. It shattered into a storm of glitter, prismatic flakes hanging impossible in the air, sticking to her skin, shining on her eyelashes. “I’m sorry, Cara,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry. I’d take you with me if I could—I’m selfish enough to try—but I can’t, and I’m sorry, I’m so⁠—”

The glitter pulled itself together, becoming a gleaming disco ball of power and potential, then burst apart, shattering a second time. Not into glitter—no, into the afterimage of Jack’s departure.

She, and the coffin, were both gone. The Princess blinked, trying to chase the echoes of the explosion out of her eyes, then shook her head.

“Aw, Jack, you do what you need to do,” she said. She turned to leave the room, chuckling to herself. “But selfish? Sweetie-pie, there’s not a selfish bone in your body. You wouldn’t know selfishness if it grew dino teeth and bit you.”

* * *

Jack and the glass coffin reappeared in a swirl of glitter and inexplicably warm snow on the front steps of the Hall of Mirrors. Jack pushed herself away from the coffin and stood, looking at her palms like she expected them to tell her fortune.

There wasn’t even a hint of blue in her skin. They remained as smooth and pale as they had ever been, faintly glittery, like a sidewalk with bits of mica embedded. She sighed and dropped her hands, then sat down on the coffin with her hands between her knees.

“I know you don’t like me very much, and I know I never even had a chance to be your heir, but this is your place, and your purpose, and I need your help,” she said, with perfect and serene calm. She sounded earnest and compassionate and generous—all the qualities her father had spent her lifetime trying to inculcate in her, the things he had hoped she most would be. She also sounded utterly resigned, like she was giving up something primal and essential to her understanding of the world. She sounded like she was giving up.

“Please, Mother. The world needs saving, or at least the world as I know it does, and the selfless thing would be to say ‘this isn’t hurting anyone, this is making things better for so many, and why do we need to be mammals anyway?’, but it turns out I’m not that selfless. The selfish thing says I like having hair, and I like my friends the way they are, and I just want everything back to normal, so please. Just this once, help me be selfish. Help me be the girl you didn’t choose. Just…choose me, this time.”

Jack stopped then, understanding that anything further would just be rewording the arguments she’d already made, and folded her hands tightly together in her lap, and waited.

And waited.

* * *

“I still don’t understand why he wants to see me,” complained Vel, letting Tag lead her through the hallways to the soundstage where her future was waiting for her.

Tag flattened his crest and bared his teeth. “Really? Velveteen, the last animus? The one who defeated Supermodel and her band of rebels? And you don’t understand?”

“He would have managed to catch her eventually.”

“Uh-huh,” said Tag, flatly. “Vel, we only survived because his assessment managed to flag us as animus heroes before we manifested, and sweep us off to protective custody. If Supermodel had managed to find us first, we’d be as dead as all the others.” He shivered then, feathers briefly puffing out like a startled hatchling. Vel shot him a startled look.

“Tag? You okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. It just felt like a scavenger was scratching around on my grave.”