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When Pinocchio was still a puppet, he once had his feet burned off.
It’s not one of his fondest memories, understandably, but it’s not the worst of them, either. He didn’t feel pain or discomfort back then, not like in his current life, where turning around in his sleep means waking up with a crick in his neck – he understands, now, why his father would require a good push and some muffled curses to get up from the couch. Turns out age creeps up on you subtly, just like humanity.
The point is, he didn’t suffer when it happened. By the time he got to Ever After High, he’d already received shiny new replacements for his lower limbs; it had become nothing more than a conversation starter, the perfect option when people had played Two-Truths-And-A-Tall-Tale up in the dorms, though Pinocchio himself was never too fond of the game. Kind of pointless to guess which sentence wasn’t true, unless one tried to politely ignore the foot and a half of wood sprouting from the current player’s face.
He didn’t suffer, but he doesn’t register how a great many things he went through should have been more painful until his daughter is up and walking, enchanted wood feet pattering against his workshop floor. It’s only then that he starts feeling as if staring into a mirror, and he thinks, Ah, hex .
He’s always known that his childhood and teenage years weren’t always fairy desirable, both before and after signing the Storybook of Legends. He knew what he was signing up for when he had a kid, both for himself and his daughter – his botched request to the Fairy made things harder, sure, but it’s not like they were easy to begin with. Their destiny isn’t often kind to children, and never has been, that he recalls.
And still, it sinks in when he least expect it to, this realization. Cedar takes her first steps, then runs, then begins climbing onto shelves and workbenches, and all Pinocchio can think about is that she might someday be required to put those lovely little feet in a brazier and fall asleep, if her story demands so. The girl chokes on a bite of food, because while she might not need to breathe, per se, her airways don’t expand like a real girl’s would, and her father’s mind loops in circles around the rope that cut off his breath as he was hoisted up, up, up onto the tree branch. Whatever-after milestone his daughter hits, there’s always a reminder that comes with it, one that tastes as sour on Pinocchio’s tongue as the medicine he once had to swallow per his destiny’s expectations.
It puts a damper on what ought to be cherished memories, and that’s to word it mildly. He should be storing all these moments away before it’s too late, before he has to step up to be Geppetto and leave the starring role to his baby, but he can’t. It’s too much. It takes up entirely too much space in his mind, so much that sometimes he wishes he was still that silly little wooden head boy, so caught up in the wonders of the world that he couldn’t even suspect what said world had in store for him.
In short, it makes time flow by at Pegasus speed. One minute he’s crafting some dainty hands for a toddling puppet, and the next he’s standing before the entrance of Ever After High once again, this time with a teenage girl by his side who’s trying fairy hard to make him relinquish her luggage.
“Dad,” Cedar says, as petulant as a sweet kid like her can ever get. “Come on, I can carry it myself-”
“Nonsense,” Pinocchio dismisses her, smiling mischievously to cover his nerves. “I’m about to send you off for a whole year, I’m not going to speed it up- unless you’re just trying to get rid of your poor old father?”
“You’re not old. You’re just fooling around.”
That’s true. He had her as a relatively young man, especially compared to his own father. It helps, in a way, because it means she’ll soon be sharing classes with the children of his old schoolmates and thus won’t be lacking friends, but it also implies that in about four years’ time, when she graduates, he’ll still be in his prime when he gets swallowed by a sea monster. Hopefully he won’t miss too many workshop orders while he’s away.
The thought, as it often does, becomes a hard lump in his throat, so instead of trying to swallow it down, Pinocchio sets his load onto the ground and engulfs the girl in a bear hug – one Cedar melts in immediately and without hesitation, her efforts to claim the luggage be damned. “So, little helper,” he says, humorously but still soothing, “big changes, huh? Freedom Year. Take it literally, alright? Try stuff out. Get in all sorts of trouble. That’s what Ever After High is for, so I won’t be mad- as long as you tell me everything, that is. Don’t forget about your old folks toiling away and use that MirrorPhone from time to time.”
“Fairy hard to get away with trouble when you have to tell people it was you,” Cedar mutters, and then goes rigid in his grasp, a surefire sign that she didn’t mean to say any of that.
It is a pang straight to Pinocchio’s heart, but he can’t afford to let it show, not until he’s made it through the entrance ceremony and dropped his daughter off to her new dorm. In place of that, he simply presses a kiss onto her dark curls, hoping it conceals his face enough. “Ah, you’ll find a way. We always do. You’ll have to show all these stuffy princelings how it’s done- they can’t party without the puppet, anyway.”
Cedar remains quiet for a long, long moment. Then, when Pinocchio is near sure she’s about to let go, she whispers, so quiet it almost gone unheard in the hustling and bustling of parents and students around them: “Dad?”
“Yes, my girl?”
“Do you really think I’ll be good at all of this?”
A part of him wants to tell her the truth. He wants, no, he needs her to know the truth – about all the times their shared destiny cost him some friends as a teenager, about how even those who remained slowly drifted away, swallowed by the new duties imposed by their stories. He needs to tell her that there are other means of unkindness and mindless cruelty people might throw at her, worse even than tourists coming to their little town to gawk at the walking, talking puppet.
But he can’t. That’s his baby. He’ll walk back into that burning hearth before he teaches her to be afraid of the world, or of those feet she’s still standing on, solid and whole.
“I promise you’ll have the best of times,” he lies, and he hates how it comes as easy as breathing now, and he hopes his daughter isn’t real enough to notice how hard he squeezes her for a moment, as if terrified to let her go.
“Now, come on. I want to pick the best seats- they always gave us commoners the wonky benches, and I don’t want to fall on my backside when the headmaster walks in. Not again.”