The Sweet Shop on Main Street
Mary checks out and leaves the shop. They head towards the sweet shop in the village since Mary has been craving red licorice. Rabastan didn’t speak much on the way to the sweet shop. Mary thinks he is afraid that if he says a word she will actually kill him. The silence is boring though so she decided to ask him harmless questions.
“Rabastan, I was wondering, what is your favorite candy?” Mary says casually as they stroll down the street. She asks this question every time her father sets her up on a date with a random suitor. If they don’t give her the right answer then she won't even consider marrying them for a second, the right answer of course is red licorice. Mary has not had a single suitor answer correctly. Ever.
Rabastan appears confused that she is speaking to him first.
“It’s black licorice, may I ask why you want to know?” He says, and Mary can hear the fear in his voice. It almost brings a smile to Mary’s face at the thought of him being afraid of her..
Instead she rolls her eyes at his answer. She already knew there was no way she would marry him, but she had hoped he would at least like good candy and not her absolute least favorite candy in the world.
“You answered incorrectly.” Mary says knowing this would only confuse him more than he already was.
“How can my favorite candy be wrong?” He says as he scratches that back of his head and looks like a confused dog.
“The correct answer is red licorice. It is the best candy in the world.” Mary says it like it is a fact. “And I was planning on going to the candy store before we left and I wanted to know what you would get.”
Mary sped up, not interested in talking to him anymore after that idiotic answer. She has gone to Frank's Candy Emporium so many times she could find it with her eyes closed.
Frank Longbottom opened his candy store on the corner of Main St. 5 years ago, He makes the best red licorice in the whole world, and Mary has made sure she goes at least once a month since it opened. They have spent a lot of time together because of how often she goes, and he is one of the few people in the world that Mary would consider her friend.
Frank is a short man with dark brown hair, brown skin, and hazel eyes. He is soft spoken and very kind to anyone who walks through his doors. Mary has always liked that about him, he is the only other person that she has met in our entire kingdom that sees people as people and not as whatever their status in society is.
Mary makes it to Frank's first and has to wait about 3o seconds before the others arrive. She is actually quite annoyed by having to wait to go in even if it is only for a few seconds because her secret candy stash under her bed has gotten extremely low over the past couple of weeks, and she wants to refill it as quickly as she can. Plus she really wants to see her friends.
“I almost went in without you, but I figured that would be too rude of me.” Mary says nonchalantly before turning and walking into the store.
As soon as she walked through the door the smell of chocolate and licorice hit her like a brick wall, bringing a giant grin to her face. Mary starts to search for Frank through the crowd of people in line at the counter, when she catches sight of him standing in front of a pot stirring melted chocolate in the back.
“Frank!” Mary calls out to him as she waves her hands in the air to get his attention.
He looks over from his pot and grins at her. “Mary, I had no idea you would be coming today. I thought it would be another week at least!” He says as he walks over to Mary through the crowd of people.
Mary gives him a big hug as soon as he is close to her. He smells like chocolate, is warm, and he feels like home. She melted into the hug, feeling comforted knowing that there are still actual people out there who are not awful after spending hours with Rabastan.
“I missed you.” Mary whispered to him as she forced herself to pull away from the hug since people were starting to stare at them.
“I missed you too, Mary.” He whispers back. “Who is that guy you are with?” He asks as he points over at the entrance where Rabastan and the guards are standing. Rabastan looks absolutely horrified by the fact that he must interact with people ‘below him’.
Mary laughed lightly “That would be Rabastan, he is a suitor my father set me up with. Twice my age and believes he is better than anyone who is lower class.” Mary says annoyed “I despise him, and after today plan on never seeing him again.”
“Oh, I see.” he says in an understanding tone. Over the past year and a half Mary has brought more than 15 suitors to Frank's Candy Emporium, each and every one was awful. Frank always hates them, sending them death glares from his candy making station, and when his husband Gideon is there he has Gideon take over his station so he can talk with her so she doesn't have to spend more time with the suitor.
Gideon and Frank are an adorable couple that have been together for 2 years. They met when Gideon got a job at Frank's shop and the two immediately hit it off, and within a few months they were in a fully committed relationship and were married a year after they met.
If Mary is being honest they were the reason she started to believe in love again. Though she would never admit this to them because Frank would hold it over her for the rest of their lives.
See the thing is Mary didn’t always not believe in love. Until Mary was 16 she was the biggest hopeless romantic in the whole kingdom. Mary had never had anyone to love and would love her for her, not because she was royalty, until Emmeline Vance.
At Mary’s fifteenth birthday she was introduced to Emmeline. She was from the noble house of Vance, who worked closely with the royal family, but lived in another kingdom until they were moved into the palace so they could get their work done faster.
They also decided that Mary needed a lady in waiting so they had their 16 year old daughter Emmeline take the job.
Mary won’t lie from the first time she saw her she was in love. Her dark black hair reminded Mary of the ocean at night, and her eyes were the color of chocolate. She was kind to Mary and they became fast friends.
They spent most of their time together and became more than friends after a few months. Mary thought that it was love and that they would last, but that did not happen. She broke up with Mary a week before her family was to leave the kingdom. Mary had begged her to stay telling her that it could work, begging Emmeline to not leave her.
She left her anyway. She and her family left the kingdom a week later. Her parents have returned multiple times since then to help her father but she has not come with them once. Mary has not seen her since.
After the breakup Mary was a mess for weeks trying to hold it together since her father did not know about the relationship and could never know about it, but she ended up breaking down in Frank's arms a month after Emmeline left the kingdom.
Mary did not believe in love for a while afterwards because she thought that love was always happy and you ended up together, not crying in your friend's arms and wishing it was hers. Or feeling numb all the time until you are hit with a wave of hurt that does not make sense because you are not physically hurt, but because your heart and soul was crushed by the person who you had trusted it with.
Frank and Gideon helped me pick up the pieces of the mess she left behind and helped her get over the heartbreak. It was also during this time that they got together and Mary saw for the first time what love really was. It was the small smile Frank would send towards Gideon when he was helping a customer. It was the laugh that only Frank could get out of Gideon. It was fighting over something dumb, but then apologizing to each other in hushed voices in the corner of the shop.
Emmeline and Mary never did any of that. Mary had been convinced that they were some great big love story, but they were not. They were destined for heartbreak from day one but Mary was too blinded by what she thought was love to realize it.
Mary became extremely close to the two after that and she loves them both very much.
“Well Frank I can’t stay long today, I think Rabastan will have a heart attack if he stays here for more than five minutes.” Mary says, looking towards the door which Rabastan is still standing next to, looking as though he is going to make a mad dash for the exit at any minute.
She goes over to the shelf that has licorice and grabs five bags of red licorice and one bag of black licorice because she felt like being generous to that asshole. Mary goes to the empty paying counter that Gideon is standing at to pay for the candy.
“Hi Gid.” She said with a grin on her face as she put the candy on the counter.
“Hi Mary. How are you today?” He asks as he rings up the candy and Mary pays.
“Awful, I came here with one of the suitors my father set me up with.” Mary glances towards where Rabastan is standing.
“It’s one of those visits. Well the sooner you leave here the sooner he is gone.” He says as he puts the candy in a bag tying a golden ribbon to hold the handles together.
“Yeah I am going back to the castle as soon as I leave here.” She grabs the bag off of the counter. “Well it was nice to see you, I will be back soon I promise.”
Gideon chuckles lightly “It was nice seeing you too, and I am holding you to that promise.”
“I know you will.” Mary laughs as she starts walking backwards towards the door.
Mary walks like that until she bumps into something. No, someone.
“Are you ready to go now?” Rabastan says back pressed against the wall to get away from the people so much that she thinks if he pressed back any further he would be in the wall.
“Yes, I am ready to go back to the castle now. Oh and I bought you something.” She says excitedly, the joy from seeing Frank and Gideon still there. Mary reaches into the bag and pulls out the bag of black licorice and hands it to him.
Rabastan looks so taken aback by this act of kindness that he just stands there stunned “Um, thank you, I guess?” He is clearly even more confused than when she talked to him earlier.
“It’s nothing just figured it would be rude of me to be eating my candy on the carriage ride back if I didn’t get you something to eat.” She says as she starts walking back to where the carriage is.
~
The carriage ride back is pleasant and Mary goes through an entire bag of candy by the time they are back at the palace.
Rabastan gets out of the carriage first and takes Mary’s hand as she climbs out. “I had a wonderful time princess, I hope that we see each other soon.” He puts on an obviously fake charming smile, and she nearly gags from how artificial it looks.
“Personally I hope I never have to see you again. I don’t think this will work out seeing as we are not compatible in the slightest, and I believe it would be best if you left the castle grounds as soon as I am inside.” Mary says with a mocking grin on her face.
Rabastan stands there shocked and my grin gets even bigger. ”Tell my father that you don’t think this will work the next time you see him. I hope you have a shitty life.” Mary walks over to where Pandora is waiting to bring Mary up to her room so she can get her ready for dinner.
Mary spends the rest of the afternoon in her room until dinner where she talks about her day with her father before heading back to her room where she falls into a deep sleep where Mary dreams of a life where she is free.