When Anasttasia walked back into the house. She found a grinning Drizella looking at her. 'They are here. Mom is expecting you in the ballroom'. Her face. Dri could certainly not hide her excitment. This might, just might, be the day one of them got crowned a princess. Anastasia smiled back vagle. She could not process any of this a the moment. She needed just to get it over with. At that Momment Louis words echoed her head: 'whatever it is, just take it'. It ocurred to her then that maybe that's why that comment had bothered her that much. She was all very used to 'just taking' not whatever came her way, but rather whatever mother wanted her to take. In truth, she was the one person she never dared disrespect.
Anastaisa enterd the room with her head lowereed. At the very nend, starring at her, stood her mother with expecting eyes. The shoe was on the table, in the middle of the room. It was color gold, like Anastasia's earrings. Gold like the Chandelier that hanged form the ceiling. A metal so beautiful yet so cold and invulnerable - properties she was raised with and learned to embrace from an early age.
"Try it" said her mother.
'And it better fit.' Anastasia added in her head, as that's what she could read in her mother's expression. She sat at the sofa in front of the shoe. It was smaller than she would have wanted it to be. Anastasia was scared to speak next.
'Put it on' her mother pushed her.
'I won't be able to. It's too small'
'Try it.'
Anastasia hessitated, she grabbed the shoe and tried slipping it on. It was not possible. Anastasia didn't dare to say a word. The gesture of trying to obvey must have been enough. There was no use anyway.
Her mother looked at her drily. Then she inhaled. She was evidently calming herself. After a long exhale she said 'Bruce, the knife.'
Anastasia jumped in her seat, and looked at Bruce with wide eyes. Bruce, the buttler looked scared as well. However, he nodded his head quickly and disappeared through the door. He was soon back with a knife placed on top of a cushion. She looked at Mrs. Tremaine, who gestured him with her head to walk towards Anastasia. Bruce placed the cushion with the knife on top of the table and stepped away.
'Cut your toe off' said Mrs. Tremaine matter of factly. 'The shoe must fit. You don't need toes anyway.'
Anastasia looked at her mother, then back at the knife that laid on top of the table. It was hard to breath. She understood then that the shoe must fit. This was an order. The shoe must fit, just like her too small of a corset fit. If she needed to get rid of of any part of herself to make the shoe fit, she must oblige to do so.
'When you are queen, you will never have to go on foot' Mrs Tremaine pushed her again.
'Neither would you' Anastasia murmured under breath. The first time she ever disrespected her mother.
'What was that?'
Anastasia didn't answer. She reached for the knife and held it in front of her. She could see her reflection on the metal she was about to use to cutoff a part of herself that would never grown back. Just like she had cutoff any part of her personality that did not fit with the mansion they lived in as she grew up. This was, just a physical version of what she had done all her life. If something didn't fit, you can just cut it off. She proceeded. Ever the brave or ever the stupid - she would never know. Maybe both.
Blood filled the room as Anastasia harmed herself between deep sobs. Sometimes weals. The pain was too much to bare. She slipped her newly broken foot inside the slipper that was as unforgiving and inhumane as the as the action she just took against her own body. Under the instructions of a mother that now looked more like a monster. It was the first time she thought of her that way. Mother. Monster. Maybe those two words had so many letters in common for a reason.
The slipper's metal was cold and uncomfortable. It made the pain of her missing toe sharper. She could not stand. She could only keep her feet on the ground. She stared at her mother then. Angrily. Tears slipping her eyes. Mts. Tremaine understood Anastasia was done with the assignment as a whole. She would not be making any additional efforts to please any prince after she just undergone this mutilation. She had earned that much. Mrs. Tremain nodded. 'Bruce clean the blood, and and carry my daughter to sit on one of the stable horses. She obviously she can't walk, and we need her to interact with the prince some how. They'll go for a ride as newly pronounced husband and wife. She'll only try one of the shoes as commanded. 'We don't need dear Anastasia to lose two fingers today.'
'dear Anastasia' Anastasia thought. What about me is dear? Why not 'submissive Anastasia' instead. If I stopped obeying would I stop being dear? Maybe, she had more in common with Cinderella than what she cared to admit.
Bruce came back and carried her to the stables where she was to sit on top of one of their prepared horses. As Anastasia left the room, she took a quick look at her mother, and found herself so disturbed and disgusted by her own actions that she had to look away. Something far deeper inside of her had broken up right there and then. She had, for the first time, betrayed herself so deeply in order to follow the instructions someone else provided her. How was she ever to trust herself - her own free will - if she had just demonstrated herself that cutting off a part of her own body wasn't within the portfolio of things she was willing to do under said free will. Why was she unable to stop it. She didn't feel like herself whatsoever, and probably would not do so for a long while.