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It starts with the Dower faeries.
(No, that’s a lie, it actually starts long before that when Aurora was just a babe and a lone crow would sometimes perch on the edge of her wicker basket and stroke its very sharp beak over the baby’s silky thin locks when she needed calming.
I was grooming her! Diaval protests the first time Maleficent catches him at it.
She makes a tetchy hmm sound and flicks him into a form incapable of grooming or speaking so it is safe to say that she probably doesn’t believe him.
Only a week later, Diaval spies Maleficent press a considering finger to baby Aurora’s pale crown and murmur something about it being, “too soft to be real.”
Ha. And he’s the one who’s overly fond of the child. Ha.)
But back to the Dower faeries.
Diaval might actually enjoy their company occasionally—they remind a bit of himself in their fondness for collecting shiny things and general disdain of canines—but Aurora comes back from a long day of play at the marshes with… oh, something awful done to her lovely hair.
Dower faeries do not have hair, per say, so much as a coat of finely layered spines. As such, they are quite taken with Aurora’s curls and rather enjoy playing with it from time to time. Neither Maleficent or Diaval had seen any harm in this. Until now.
It might be better if only there were not so very much of everything, but whoever desecrated his wee girl’s head clearly does not know the meaning of restraint.
Diaval gapes in something approaching stunned horror as Aurora skips towards him and wraps her arms around him in an unreserved hug—which he instinctively returns—chattering a mile a minute about how much fun she had and all the things she saw and the new friends she’s made and “look, Diaval, what they did to my hair–”
He’s looking all right. It’s a bit hard to stop, there’s something hard and pointy jabbing into his chin.
“ –aren’t they nice? I’m going to go show Godmother right now.”
Aurora bounces away, a literal bundle of energy, while Diaval stares at her retreating back and her formerly pure golden tresses that are now tangled up in a variety of mismatched junk, colorful feathers and woven flowers and strings of glass beads and…is that a hunk of bark? And kelp?
Surely not.
‘Nice’ is not the word he would use.
“This,” Diaval chokes out, voice strangled by rising indignation, “cannot stand. Mistress!”
There are titters from behind him that sound suspiciously like they belong to Aurora’s inept former aunts, which Diaval forces himself to ignore as he sprints towards Maleficent’s nest. Fools who do not comprehend the most basic concepts of childrearing clearly do not see the severity of the situation.
Aurora hums to herself as Diaval mutters ferociously under his breath. Maleficent is lurking above them in her tree, keeping one eye on the whole of their home and the other on them. Her lips twitch in a smile that Diaval is too busy ranting to notice and mock properly.
“Ridiculous, incompetent– ”
Despite his tone, Diaval’s fingers are gentle as they comb through Aurora’s hair, plucking bit after bob free and setting them aside as he tries to get this squirmy fledgling clean. It would be so much easier if she were a bird, he thinks wistfully as he flicks a weed away in disgust.
“Is this a tooth? Why?” Diaval says despairingly. There’s a design to the madness after all. Least offensive to most. He shudders to think what he’ll find in the thick of it.
“It’s H’gla’s mother’s,” Aurora tells him, balancing the items Diaval had extracted so far in her lap and setting up what looks to be the beginning of a new kind of game. “It’s traditional, she said.”
“Did she now.” Faintly, Diaval separates delicate strands from a clump of dirt until it loosens and falls out. “How…nice. But that is not how we do things.”
“I am not a crow, Diaval,” Aurora chides him, gentle and a step away from laughing.
“Unfortunately.”
Maleficent smiles wider as Diaval sighs and keeps working.
It takes forever, two trips to the waterhole, and a painful discovery of three spines (“I think those were H’gla’s father’s,” Aurora remarks before setting them in her pile of treasures and kissing Diaval’s palm, where three dots of blood are welling. “All better!”) before Diaval is ready to declare Aurora’s hair to be in acceptable condition once again.
Naturally, the second he’s done, she’s jumping up, ready to go exploring, when a call from Maleficent stops her.
Diaval tilts his head curiously as Aurora meanders over and then proceeds to watch in shock as Maleficent turns her around, tells her to sit down, and then calm and cool as you please, plunges her hands into Aurora’s hair.
The protesting caw is out before Diaval can do anything to stop it—all his hard work, ruined!
Maleficent gives him an amused glance. “Watch, silly bird.”
And he does. He watches Maleficent take Aurora’s golden curls that fall to her waist and part it in three sections and then…she does something with a pattern, one part over the other over the other.
“It is called braiding,” Maleficent says. “I think this will suit you well, beastie. I’ll show you how to do it later, Diaval.”
When she is done, she holds the bottom of the new braid and summons a ribbon with a flick of her fingers, which she then ties and knots around the very smallest hunk at the end.
“All right, you’re done.” Maleficent pats Aurora on the shoulder lightly. “See how you like it.”
Aurora gets up and swirls in circles until she gets dizzy, falls over and lays on the grass, staring straight up at the sky. “I love it, Godmother,” she says, breathless and chuckling. “Thank you.”
“Hmm,” Maleficent makes a considering sound. And reaches over, tucking a black feather she pulls from nowhere into her design.
Diaval’s eyes narrow. A suspiciously familiar black feather.
Aurora blinks and Maleficent smiles at her, mushy and loving like Diaval always knew she was even back when she still refused to admit it.
“Humph.” Diaval glances around until he finds a larger, tawny feather discarded among the leaves. He slides that into Aurora’s hair next to the black feather and shrugs when Maleficent stares at him. “As long as it’s only one or two.”
“I think they’re perfectly grand,” Aurora announces, beaming at them both and just like Maleficent, Diaval is helpless to do anything but grin back in the face of such guileless joy.
“Perfect,” he agrees and means it.