Queen Clarion had never expected that she would grow to resent the child she had loved so much when she was born. The day of Fiona’s birth had been the first day of Spring which, in the warmth of Mount Olympus, had meant that Clarion’s bed chambers were filled with the scent of the early blooming daffodils and poppies that scattered the garden of the Gods. Delivery hadn’t been easy, but it had thankfully been swift and soon the Queen of the Fairies was cradling the tiny form of her beautiful daughter. The love she had felt for Fiona at the time was so overwhelming that she could barely breathe, but it also helped to clear the fairy’s mind. She knew that to get the best life for her child, she needed to return to her home in Pixie Hollow and keep her daughter out of the reach of her father. Luckily for her, Zeus’ wife Hera was also keen to keep the fairy and her offspring far away from Zeus and Mount Olympus and a week after Fiona’s birth, Hera helped Clarion escape back to her home. To hide the child from Zeus, Hera used her own power to send Pixie Hollow away, allowing it to get lost to a realm that could not easily be infiltrated. Neverland.

For the first few years back in Pixie Hollow, Clarion did not allow Fiona out of her sight, constantly paranoid that Zeus would appear and demand rights to his child. At night, she would bring her daughter into her own bed and would watch Fiona sleep until she fell asleep herself, brushing brown curls from her daughter’s face as she watched her tiny chest rise and fall while she dreamt the night away. She hadn’t known it was possible to love someone else so much, and she wanted nothing but happiness for her beloved child.

In the two months following Fiona’s fourth birthday, three things changed the relationship between mother and child forever. The first was the appointment of the Blue Fairy as Clarion’s advisor. Blue took it upon herself to make sure that the Queen was making more connections with neighbouring fairy kingdoms, in the hope that the rumoured upcoming wars for territory would remain as mere rumours. She didn’t quite understand the attachment of the Queen to her child and insisted that Clarion rely more on the nannies and tutors for help with the Princess. Blue’s plans for connections to other kingdoms led to the second big change in their lives - the introduction of Lord Joseph to the Queen. Joseph was a fairy from the winter kingdom on the northernmost coast of Neverland. The third son of a Lord, Clarion had fallen for him almost instantly, and her feelings were certainly reciprocated. Fiona herself took to Joseph too, but his presence in Clarion’s life meant that the Queen had less time for her daughter. Fiona no longer slept in her mother’s bed, being sent to her own chambers instead, much to the child’s distress. The young princess would cry in the night, telling tales of shadow creatures climbing the walls of her bedroom, but when servants remained with her until she fell asleep, they would report nothing of the sort. Clarion’s sympathy soon turned to irritation, convinced her daughter was simply suffering from an overactive imagination as a result of being separated from her mother so abruptly, and the longer it went on, the less patience she had with Fiona.

Despite not spending as much time with her daughter as she had previously, Clarion still doted on Fiona for the most part. She made sure that she ate breakfast, lunch and dinner with the Princess each day, even on the days when there was a party or a ball later in the evening, too late for the princess to attend, Clarion would still make time to be there while Fiona was served her dinner. She would use mealtimes to chat with the princess, hearing about her lessons and the hobbies she had been enjoying while away from her mother. It was common knowledge in the palace that Clarion was not to be disturbed during those times, and that she did not take kindly to anyone who tried it.

While the presence of Blue and Joseph at the palace led to changes in the Queen’s relationship with the Princess, neither of those events changed their relationship anywhere close to as much as the day the prophecy of Fiona’s fate was revealed to her mother. It had been a warm spring day in Pixie Hollow when a wise man from the next Kingdom had arrived at the palace demanding to see the Queen on an urgent matter. With a trembling voice, he relayed the prophecy to Clarion, explaining to her that her beloved Fiona would become a dark stain on the world, the source of all darkness. He explained that darkness would infiltrate the realms, creatures created from that darkness bringing death and destruction, all due to her daughter’s power. The Queen couldn’t believe a word the man said until he had handed her the sacred book of Prophecy, a gift from his Kingdom, before insisting that Fiona be taken care of lest she fulfil the prophecy.

Years passed in the lives of the fairies, and with each passing day, Clarion found herself pulling back from her daughter. The book she had been given had told tales of the Black Fairy Fiona was fated to become, and though the princess had not yet done a single thing denoted in the tales, nor shown any trace of darkness within her magic, Clarion couldn’t shake the stories from her mind, allowing them to affect her relationship with the innocent child. She began to resent the choice she knew she would one day have to make, the choice between her people and her daughter, and subconsciously found herself withdrawing all affection from her daughter to make the decision easier.

At first, Fiona had not noticed the change in her mother’s attitude towards her until around the time Clarion fell pregnant with her first child with Joseph. Knowing nothing of the prophecy, the 8-year-old assumed that the new baby was the reason behind the change, the reason her mother no longer sat and ate with her, or made sure to read her a bedtime story. As Clarion’s pregnancy progressed, Fiona soon found that she could go days without even seeing her mother around the palace, not knowing that her mother was actively avoiding her due to her growing resentment. Days that used to be spent in the company of her mother and her ladies, being adored for her sweetness, were soon spent alone in the library, where Fiona would pour over book after book to distract herself from a growing emotion within that she didn’t yet recognise as sadness.