The dungeon below the palace hosted dozens of eerie metallic cocoons. Each cocoon was as tall as a man, covered in shimmering green veins, and suspended from both the floor and the ceiling. Light only came to these dark chambers in the form of torches carried by patrolling angels.
"I hate this place. It gives me the creeps."
"I know...Can't see the sky or anything..."
"Let's just find the one we need and get out of here quick."
"Yeah...Thinking the same thing, bro."
The two winged men crept past dozens and dozens of oversized cocoons. The brown-haired one often grazed the tips of his wings on cocoons. Fire sizzling on the end of his torch, he would pause near certain chrysali to read their serial numbers.
"Almost there...Almost there..." he muttered. His friend kept quiet as well, so as not to awaken those trapped within the cocoons. The two were so silent that they could hear hums emanating from within the shells. The fire burned, turning the very air into whispering smog.
At last they found the one cocoon they had been looking for, the one cocoon out of more than three thousand. The first angel raised his torch to the metal vines holding the cocoon towards the ceiling, while the second angel started burning the support wires on the bottom. The supports shied from the light, retreating with hisses, and the cocoon nearly dropped to the ground, magically hovering an inch from the old floor.
"Yeah, mission done, whatever. Let's get out of here." The angel's voice echoed many times.
The two angels prodded the floating cocoon along with their torches, but the cocoon hardly needed steering, its path preprogrammed hundreds of years ago. Flanked by the angels, it hummed and whirred along towards the elevator that would take them all to the surface...to the light...
Royce Belgrade swept through the glass doors, arms out and chin held high. Where other angels kept their wings to their sides, Royce's were always a bit fluffed, as if he were going to spring into flight at any given moment. When he walked, the breeze could not begin to lift the heavy golden curls of hair hanging over his forehead. Secretaries and lab assistants alike giggled when Royce walked past. He wore such fancy clothes! When his wings were the royal color of his hair, who needed that navy cape, those studded boots? Apparently Royce thought he needed them...
Royce's cape became stuck in an elevator door. He struggled with it a moment before a female lab assistant pried the dark blue cloth from the door's grasp.
"Thanks," he said, giving her a wink, "What's your name?"
"Margaret," the lab assistant breathed.
Royce let her look him in the eyes, and they examined one another with great interest until the elevator interrupted them with an insistent ding.
"Oh...that's, that's my floor. Bye Royce!" Margaret edged into the foyer of the sixth floor, waving at Royce. He waved back, and the doors slid shut. Royce leaned against the side of the elevator. His wings spread, and his legs crossed, Royce debated returning to the sixth floor after he had finished his business on the twentieth floor.
"Her wings were small, and white," he mused, "But I liked her hair...Still, no making up for smaller breast size; though those glasses were terribly cute...Ahummm..."
Ding. Royce smiled vacantly as the doors parted for him to step through. "Twentieth floor. Hehe."
Though daydreaming, Royce still had the presence of mind to sweep his cape out of the doors' path. The twentieth floor, which was also the very topmost floor, rarely had more than five people wandering its lone hallway. Royce rounded a curve in the corridor and started climbing a twirling staircase. The sky greeted him as he flung open the door. Spread out on the roof before him was a large, circular trapdoor.
"Good afternoon, Royce!"
Royce flashed a grin at the tiny balding man in the heavy white laboratory coat. "Good to see you again, Doctor Lohen." Royce couldn't help but compare the size of his wings to the doctor's. Where massive golden wings sprouted from Royce's back, Doctor Lohen only possessed what were often referred to as 'hummingbird wings.' Just little stubs of wings, really. No good for impressing girls!
"Let's get to work, you know the drill," Doctor Lohen chuckled, turning to a control pad and fiddling with some switches. Royce stifled his own chuckle. Royce found it much easier to throttle his laughter when the circular door spun open and the green cocoon lifted from inky depths. The circular door sealed itself once more, and the cocoon hung there as though suspended from an invisible string.
Royce turned his attention from the cocoon to Doctor Lohen's nimble fingers. The balding man flicked over switches and turned knobs swiftly, a skill honed by years and years of practice. Limelights attracted Royce's eyes back towards the cocoon. He saw his own reflection in its glossy shell before the chrysalis wrenched itself into thousands of tiny shards.
From within the destroyed cocoon, light, shining emerald, rose to blinding white, vanished with a small gasp. A human figure drifted to the ground and lay there.
Doctor Lohen adjusted his goggles while Royce grinned foolishly. The Doctor glared at him. "Don't just stand there, help the poor girl up!"
Royce approached the contents of the cocoon. Margaret? Who was Margaret? Royce's mind and heart felt for only one: This nameless girl, lying there with butterfly wings clutched about her arms. He scooped her up and held her close, just about to nuzzle her hair when Doctor Lohen's gnarled hand clasped his shoulder.
"Remember what you were put in for, Sir," Doctor Lohen said, half- jesting and half-serious. "Let's take her to the dressing room...Pretty little one, isn't that?"
"Oh yes, she'll make a fine addition to our courts. Hehe."
"Even though Fallow needs the labor far more than you do, at this point," Lohen further admonished the man. "And besides, you only go for properly winged girls."
Royce sighed, feeling breathless over the beauty dangling her perfect legs over his left arm, her head pressed against his chest. Small, portable, blonde-haired, with that luscious pale complexion that only a hundred years inside a magical cocoon could bring...He hoped he wasn't crushing her wings. That might hurt her...weren't bug wings slightly more fragile than bird? Royce mentally decided to make an exception to his usual rules concerning his quarries. As far as this...what was her name...this beautiful girl, Royce would not rest until he heard her utter his name with longing...
(A/N: Please review! . It's going to be one fluffy story!)