The sound of crying filled the edges of Lily's awareness, and she took a quick glance in her hand mirror. It was her goddaughter Ella, who really cried far too much. But rarely like this, in scraps that looked as if they'd been torn from her body. Normally her scraps were much more neatly arrayed, and covered the smooth line of her flank and heaving bosom.
Lily supposed it was time to finally check on the girl.
She appeared in twinkle of twilight and a hint of starsong, causing Ella to look up with awe in her eyes, bright-shining with tears.
"Hello, my child," she said. "I am your fairy godmother."
"Oh, godmother!" Ella cried. "All I wanted was to go to the ball. My stepmother had forbidden it, but I thought maybe if I made my own dress ..." Her voice trailed away into choked sobs.
"You need to reinforce the seams, darling," Lily said, running her finger along one of the tears. Her finger might've slipped down to the skin below, tracing the line of Ella's bared breast.
Ella looked up at her, eyes shining now with hope. "Can— Will you help me?" she asked.
Lily smiled at her, accepting the power to decide her goddaughter's future. "I can help," she replied.
The night hung still for a moment. Ella blinked away her tears, and then blinked away her qualms. She caught on remarkably fast to which question Lily had chosen to answer.
That was the best thing about waiting until they were desperate, until they'd already had a taste of how life could kick them down and then kick them again before they got back up. They understood that people wouldn't help, not for free.
Ella ran her fingers along her breast absently, following the path Lily had laid. Then she cupped her breast in her hand, pulling it free of the small scrap of fabric that remained. She freed her other breast as well, and held them up like at offering, glowing in the moonlight.
Lily smiled benevolently. "That's a very good start."
She waved her wand, and a cucumber still attached to the vine floated over to her. A second wave, and the cucumber was transformed. She tied the vine ribbons around her waist and thighs.
"No, no, don't undress," she told Ella. "You look so beautiful like that, in the scraps of your dreams. It's quite inspiring."
As her lovely granddaughter knelt in the dirt of the garden, Lily considered the logistics of her wish to attend the ball. "A coach, coachmen, horses, a new dress, shoes," she muttered to herself. She studied Ella, who had thankfully stopped crying. "My, you do have a lot to pay for. We'd better hurry. You have a curfew, young lady. I expect my thank you at midnight."