Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a young girl who was not quite a princess, yet sure expected everyone to treat her like one.
All day and night it would go like this: badger the servants, sit in the drawing room and stitch, and follow that all up with a vigorous round of demanding from the stables any news from the wider barony. The gossip around the villa was that she was always a bossy, snooty little girl, but what they didn’t mention was that she hadn’t always been as such. In fact, Mina Ha could clearly remember the days when she had no cares, where she wasn’t running to and fro trying to make something of herself. That girl would simply go into the garden, and play all day long, and Mina Ha would be happy.
There was no time to be happy now.
Instead she went back and forth, back and forth, beseeching her parents, beseeching those far away recipients of her letters. She had no time to be a silly little girl playing in the garden. Instead of playing she simply walked it, tossing her golden ball up and down, up and down.
Until a moment where the ball did not land back in her palm. It slipped from her grasp, bouncing off a stone and careening pell-mell across the garden.
“Shit!” she said.
She rushed after it, all highborn dignity forgotten, anxiety rising in her throat as she crashed through her mother’s cherished landscaping, the smell of snapped boxwood branches sharp in her nose. Stupid for thinking she could let her guard down for one moment, stupid for ever coming here.
The ball left her sight for only a moment. When she cornered the rhododendron bush, it was slowing, but when she stepped back into the sunlight she saw this: her favorite golden ball, tumbling down a well.
“Guhhhhhhh,” she moaned in a drawn-out expression of grief usually reserved for children, and sat down hard on the edge of the well. “This too? My ball? Uhg, another day as the universe’s favorite punching bag.”
“I can think of some people who have it worse than you.”
Unburying her face from her hands was an otherwise lethargic action punctuated by a sudden yelp as her mind caught up with her situation: there was a stranger’s voice on the seat next to her.
On the lip of the well was a frog. A frog who definitely just talked.
Mina skittered away from the intruder like a crab. “Who- who the hell do you think you are!” she said.
It’d be dumb to say something like oh my god a talking frog or aaaaaaaaaa!, even though she really really wanted to. She wouldn’t be thrown off by some random magical crap in her garden. She had her dignity. Ignore the crabwalking.
“I’m…” The frog’s wide eyes looked around, deciding to take on Mina’s unspoken question anyway. “…Pocket. I’m a frog.”
“No shit.”
“It’s a new development, I’m still figuring out-”
The frog’s eyes popped back into its skull one after another. Mina got the impression this was the frog equivalent of shaking its head to clear it.
Wait, what the hell was she doing? Reading into frog body language? She had better things to be doing.
“Well Pocket,” she said, wiping gravel off her dress. “I don’t care if you’re an illusion, or some shapechanger or-”
“A human being cursed by a witch,” Pocket supplied helpfully.
“No one gets access to the grounds of the Ha estate without an express invitation,” she finished. “And I’d remember you on the guest list. So get the hell out of here.”
“I can’t leave, I still need to-” The frog swallowed. It sounded faintly like a ribbit. “Listen, Mina-”
“How do you know my name? Not only a frog but a creepy stalker frog.”
“Look, I’ve been cursed alright. Don’t you know how these things go? I’ve been cursed to be a frog and I need you to kiss me back into being a human.”
Many different levels of revulsion bubbled up in Mina, from the sheer audacity to the physical, slimy reality, which culminated in one word: “Yuck!”
“I know, I know-”
“I don’t think you do! Why on Earth would I go around kissing strangers, let alone strange, creepy, stalker-frogs?”
“Because I’m not-”
The little green annoyance finally fell silent. It looked so… small when it wasn’t speaking, as though projecting the voice of an adult human convinced her it was one. She didn’t let that sway her. She put her hands on her hips and gave it her best this better be good look.
“Listen,” it said finally. “You’re the richest mercantile family in the barony, you’re used to everything being transactional, right? If I get that ball for you would you give me a kiss in return?”
Her heart leapt into her throat. In all the excitement of the frog’s arrival, she’d forgotten her loss, and she rushed to the shallow lip of the well once again. The ball glittered in a narrow band of sunlight.
She worried her lip. “You could fetch it?”
“Easy as falling.”
“And getting back up?”
The unarticulated face of a frog could hardly change to accommodate a smile, but it said, “I’ll hop.”
Damn. Well. Nothing to lose. “Yeah, sure, whatever. You get me it back and you’ll get a stupid kiss for it.”
“Fantastic.”
And it leapt into the well.
There was a moment, standing there, where Mina wondered if she had just experienced a brief, two minute departure from reality. Surely when she just saw a talking frog was a momentary slip in sanity, a fit of nerves caused by prolonged stress. But Mina was not good at leaving things unanswered for too long. She stuck her nose over the edge. And there was the little frog, glittering ball in its mouth, hopping diligently up the stonework. It would find its purchase, coil its legs, then throw itself to the opposite wall, bouncing expertly to the top. Within a moment it was out, puffing with self-satisfaction.
“You…got it.” She pursed her lips so her amazement wouldn’t be as apparent. “Give me that.” She snatched her ball back. The thread was soggy with wellwater.
“And now your end,” the frog said expectantly, mouth freed from payload, perfectly prepared to accept a kiss.
“Tch,” she said, “yeah right!” and promptly sprinted out of the garden.
“W-what? Hey wait!” But the frog’s voice only grew fainter. “Mina! Come back.”
Such a thought made her stick out her tongue.
***
“Mina!”
Mina yelped in surprise, throwing her spoonful of peas to the chandelier.
“Shit!” she said, when all four chair legs were firmly back on the ground. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We had a deal.” And somehow that cheeky little grub-guzzler sounded indignant about it. “I need you to break the curse.”
“Go find someone else who will kiss your freaky frog lips. I’m eating.”
It was damn lucky she was supping alone, too. She couldn’t stand to be seen associating with the likes of some fanciful animal.
“I can’t,” it said. “For reasons that’ll be obvious after you change me back.”
“It’s not happening!” She rose, fully intending to take her meal to her room. “So I guess we’ll never know!”
But her destiny would not be shaken so easily.
It followed her all throughout the villa, hopping at half her walking speed, so whenever she sat to take her meal it showed up eventually. It tailed her on her walks about the villa, it stalked her to her private sitting room where she attacked her stitch-work so furiously that she stabbed a needle straight through to her nail bed twice in ten minutes. It even had the nerve to follow her all the way to her bed chambers.
“Mina.”
She shrieked, and her hemming almost went the way of the peas. Having a tiny voice randomly say her name right when she was getting comfortable would never not be freaky.
“How did you even get there,” she fumed at the amphibian in her windowsill. “That’s like a three story climb.”
“I hopped.”
“Then you better hop back down,” she said. “You’re gross and a pest and I can’t get distracted.”
“Distracted from what? All you do is wander around all day and tell other people what to do.”
“This I can’t trust to anyone else.” She smoothed her project out. “I need to finish this dress.”
The frog crept closer, eyeing her work for the first time, the thing to which the golden ball — now safely on the vanity beside her — extended into via a singular strand of golden thread. “You’re a dressmaker?”
“This isn’t just any dress,” she sniffed. “It’s enchanted. Proof I have latent powers, and enough of the weave to be valuable. The Collective requested it. If I can prove my worth, they’ll turn me into a vampire.”
A throat-expanding ribbit of shock. “A vampire! Mina you can’t. Those people at the Collective they’re- they’re evil.”
“Don’t talk to me like you know me,” she said. “I don’t need some amphibian who dropped into my lap this morning acting like it has any idea what I’ve gone through. I need this. My whole life has gone up in smoke.”
“Oh?” it asked nonchalantly.
“My stupid fiance went and got himself killed.” She had to release the dress. Kneading it like that would ruin the ruffles. “I was going to be a princess, not only that but the richest princess for the next three baronies over. But now he’s dead, I have no marriage prospects, and this is the only way I’ll ever get anywhere in this world.”
“You don’t seem to care much about the actual husband-to-be.”
“Oh, don’t get snippy with me. He was a pathetic loser that not even his own family liked. It was the money I was after. If you were human, you’d understand.”
“I was human.” The frog puffed up. “I- I still am human.”
“So you keep saying.”
“But Mina,” it continued, “just because a wedding falls through doesn’t mean you should go chasing vampirism. Everything that goes into that place becomes corrupted. You’re miserable now, but if you pursue this you’ll be feeding on other people. For the rest of your immortal life.”
“So?” she grumbled.
It all sounded like something her old self would say. What she expected her parents to say when she told them her plan, the thing they were no doubt thinking as they placated her with assurances and indulgent smiles. Why can’t you just say it, she thought, why can’t you just say you hate me, that you’re disgusted by the thing you raised?
“So,” it said, “give yourself more credit, and don’t give yourself to them. You’re a worthwhile person, regardless of money or marriage contracts.” It blinked over the dress, watching the way it spilled over her lap. “I mean, just look at this. You’ve been enchanting this for how long? It’s incredible. It's a waste to use it as some… bargaining chip.”
“It’s my finest work.” She thumbed one of the sleeves.
“Then keep it,” the frog insisted. “And, I know this involves a bit of trust but… I really do need your help Mina. You’re the only one who can make me human again. You’re worth more than what a bunch of witches and vampires think they can mold you into.”
Her lip was now bloody with worry. The frog was getting into her head, voicing doubts she’d never let rise to the top.
“Fine,” she conceded begrudgingly. “I promised a stupid kiss, I’ll give you a stupid kiss.”
It was easier than thinking about anything else in the conversation. And who knew; maybe breaking a curse would give her new insights into her own magic.
She scooped up the creature into her hands. Tiny, webbed feet shift nervously against her palm.
“You’re so gross,” she said.
“That’ll all be fixed in a moment.”
She leaned in and pressed her lips against round, wet mouth.
Nothing happened.
“Uh…” the frog said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a human now?”
“Yes, yes it was supposed to work, it was supposed to-” it cut off with something distressingly like a sob. A ribet-y sob.
It stabbed something sharp in Mina’s heart, the part of her that thought maybe something magical would happen, that fairytale endings did come true. That made her just maybe believe that she had any future outside the Collective. The disappointment overshadowed any anger, and she gingerly lowered the frog to her lap.