Tag: anonymous

Untitled Descendants drabble (2015-09-06)

In one universe, while the four Lost kids are working on love potion cookies, Lonnie walks in, adds chocolate chips, cries, then leaves. With a tear of human sadness and despite the addition of chocolate, the potion works as advertised, making the consumer fall in love with the first person they see. In that universe, it makes Ben fall in love with Mal.

This is not that universe.

In this universe, Lonnie does not appear. There are no chocolate chips or tears of human sadness, and so there are no enchanted cookies. They have to use a different spell. One less… controllable.

“I can barely read anything on this page,” Mal complains, spell book flipped open to a different section.

“Let me see,” Evie says, and Mal lays the book flat so all of them can look.

They stare.

“Are you sure those are words?” Jay asks incredulously, not even flinching when Mal smacks his arm, because, well. Scribbles would be a generous description.

“The pictures are pretty clear,” Carlos says optimistically. Even if magic isn’t one of his skills, he has experience with making things work with patchwork instruction manuals–surely it’s the same with spells. It really isn’t.

“I suppose… We don’t have any other options, and we’re on a deadline.” Mal says, considering, before deciding on a course of action, “We’ll do it. Evie, first things first. We need this,” she points at the largest drawing: a flat, six petaled flower with a long thin stem. The top two petals are shaded in, no doubt meant to be a color of some sort, while the bottom four petals are left unshaded.

“Mirror, mirror… full of power,” Evie begins, “Show us where to find that flower.” The swirling silver smoke parts to show a field with dark purple and white flowers peeking through the blades of grass, a small stream flowing along one side. “Not so close,” Evie sighs, and the image zooms out to show the sign of Auradon Prep.

“It’s on campus?” Mal asks, disbelieving. Why would a key ingredient for a love spell just be growing where any student could get there hands on it? That’s stupid. Well, stupid of Auradon–convenient for her, so she shouldn’t complain.

“This campus is huge, though” Jay says, “that would still take us forever–”

“No wait,” Carlos interrupts, “I think I know where that is. I wasn’t sure, since the drawing is in black and white, but I’ve seen those flowers before.”

In the woods beyond the tourney field and bleachers is a deer trail, a narrow path that leads to a tiny meadow full of purple and white flowers. Carlos and Dude have been there before, found it on their very first day together. They go back, occasionally, if Carlos isn’t too tired from tourney practice to run around with his dog.

It’s easy to find again, even in the dark of the night. The four of them spend twenty minutes picking flowers, which, when Evie says so aloud with an amused smirk, causes Mal to scowl fiercely and Jay to stop.

“It’s for a diabolical scheme, okay. I’m not turning into some kind of airhead who sings to animals.” Mal says crossly, before adding, “Keep picking, Jay.”

“How many do we even need?” He grumbles, but does as she says anyway.

“Well, seeing as how we don’t have actual instructions, we need as many as we can get.”

In the end, they clear the field, flowers gathered into Carlos’ jacket as an impromptu bag, before heading back to the boys’ dorm room. They have a love spell to figure out.

But even if the pictures are pretty clear–flower, eyes, heart–the lack of words really is a problem. Not an insurmountable problem, no, but it definitely leaves a lot to interpretation. Like, say, everything.

“Ugh,” Mal groans after attempt almost two hours of trying to decode the scribbles, “Maybe we should go back to the first spell.”

“Tear of human sadness,” Jay reminds her with a grunt, sprawled on his bed and nearly half asleep, but stubbornly blinking his eyes open.

Mal just groans again, throwing her head forward into the cradle of her curled arms on the table.

“Why don’t we just wing it?” Carlos’ voice pipes up from behind her, where he and Evie have been lounging on his bed.

“You mean like the museum heist? Winging it like that?” Mal scoffs without looking up.

“Well, not quite like that,” Evie says coyly, “We have more than enough of these flowers, we can take our time and experiment. Imagine the havoc we can wreak on the school.”

That idea does sound appealing, Mal lifts her head and even Jay sits up in interest. Then startles–“What are you wearing?” He asks.

Mal turns and frowns at what she sees.

Carlos weaving a small wreath of the flowers around Dude’s neck, and Evie straightening a larger wreath as a crown on Carlos’ head.

Mal would scold them for using up their main ingredient, but the four of them really did pick an awful lot of those flowers. They have plenty to spare. But… just so it’s not a total waste, “You’re wearing that to classes tomorrow.”

Who knows, maybe something interesting will happen.

~

A/N: Uh… so first off–thanks for the prompt anon! And… well, sorry it wasn’t exactly what you prompted and more like the prequel to your prompt, instead. Mostly that’s because as I was about halfway through, I realized that the way I set it up this would have to be a complete derailment of the movie. Aaaand I don’t really know how to mesh that plot with this. But… yeah. This was pretty fun.

The flower I have in mind is Viola tricolor, aka heartsease, aka love-in-idleness, aka the flower that Puck gets the love potion from in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It also has the nifty built-in myth of changing colors–from white to purple when doing love magic.

Basically, the idea of Carlos in a magical flower crown and the whole Puck vibe he’s rocking during Set It Off! (specifically this part ) is really good for me.

Hope you enjoy!

edit: now on ao3 as part of Nameless, Worthy (Infamous)