The Beginning
“Sigh” the golden haired princess gazed out her window, her velvet clad elbows resting on the sill. She looked long and painfully at the verdant rolling hills and thick dark groves of trees, and then miserably down at the procession leaving through the gates below.
“Disgusting.” She frowned down toward the man who couldn’t hear her and wouldn’t look up anyway. Just one more simpering prince from some far away land. She turned her back on the window and cast her wide violet eyes at her bookshelf, one tome in particular stood out from the rest; a large collection of fairy stories her grandmother used to read her as a child.
“Sigh” here she was stuck in her family’s impenetrable stone palace, resigned to a fate of waiting for her parents to decide on a suitor…her brother had no problems like this, he was set to inherit the whole kingdom, and off an one adventure or another every other day! Was she never to have an adventure like the princesses in her stories? She walked over to the shelf and taking the book down she sat upon her down filled mattresses, opening the pages at random she came across a tale she had nearly forgotten. It was the tale of a princess who, while walking in her garden at night had chanced upon a fairy ring and fallen underground to the world of the shidhe. This princess had had many great adventures, but in the end came home whereupon she married the good prince who had been searching for her and settled down.
Slamming the book closed, her eyes narrowed to amethyst slits she looked to the last drawer in her bureau. She spoke in a whisper with a deadly calm. “This is it. I must make my own adventure.” In this last drawer she had hidden several objects she had collected over the years in preparation for any grand quest that might have been thrust upon her as it was for all the brave and wilting princesses alike in her stories. She stood and with purpose strode over to the drawer. Pulling it open she rummaged through the assorted vials of various liquids, clothes, small easily concealed weaponry, and other such items an upstanding young princess should never need have in her possession, and selected a large glass bottle full of blackest liquid and a large pair of silver shears.
She walked quickly to the tall mirror hanging above her wash basin. Her eyes were alight with a wild feverish glow. “This is it.” She repeated to herself as she looked from her reflection in the mirror to the jar and back. Steeling herself, her heart beating wildly in her chest she set the bottle down on the wash table and without pausing for second thoughts she took her long golden locks in one hand and the shears in the other and in just a few seconds her gleaming blonde hair was all around the hem of her pale lavender gown.
The princess looked at her new reflection. Short golden waves reaching just above her shoulders shown out from the mirror. She smiled wryly. “No going back now.” She pulled the cork from the top of the bottle and looked deep into the dark liquid within. She had bought this last summer at the annual fair. The Gypsy woman who sold it to her told her it would dye anything a deep midnight black, be it fabric, wood, leather, or hair. She hoped the Gypsy had been telling her the truth. After staring into the bottle for what felt like ages readying herself for one more plunge she flipped her shorn hair over into to the basin and set to work. She hoped it was working as she rubbed the dye into her hair. Keeping her eyes tight closed was very difficult as she longed to see if it was making a difference, but the Gypsy woman had told her not to let any of the liquid get into her eyes. Once she felt that her hair was thoroughly saturated she stood over the bowl for a few moments as she had been told to do, then rinsed it out into the basin. Once she felt it rinsed enough she cautiously opened her eyes and flipped her hair back into a towel. She dried her now much shorter hair in no time and soon she was looking at an entirely different girl in the mirror. Hardly recognizable! She laughed wildly, running her hands through her now ebony locks.
Spurred on by her new looks she shed her decadent velvet gown and rummaged in her drawer until she found what she had been searching for: A plain grey dress she had lifted from the servant’s laundry ages ago. She slipped in on and then pulled from her drawer a pair of soft grey suede boots and a long black traveling cloak. She went back to the mirror and smiled gleefully at her transformation.
Full of her new wild energy she bounded back to the drawer and pulled out her tiny silver dagger, which she slipped into her boot, all the vials which held tonics, tinctures, and mysterious ointments bought from both reputable and disreputable stalls over many years and a bag of marked stones, the same Gypsy woman had called runes and said would point her in the right direction were she lost. All these she dumped in her least opulent travel bag. She stood, bag in one hand, a long coil of rope in the other, looking for all the world like some mad woman who had just broken into the princess’s room. Suddenly her eyes alighted on the book of fairy stories still lying on top of her coverlet. She grabbed it and tossed it into the bag as well. Still standing next to the bed she tied one end of the rope around one of her four bed posts. She smiled, thanking her ancestors for building most of the furnishings from the same stone as the palace; her bed post was as secure a place as she could wish for. She tied the other end around the handles of her bag and striding briskly over to the window she glanced down to make sure no one was around at the bottom of the palace.
She reached out and dropped her bag straight down. A soft ‘wumph’ sounded as her bag hit the mossy ground three stories down. The princess turned and looked around her room one last time. “Goodbye home – I’m off and I shan’t be returning!” she climbed up onto the ledge and grasping the rope with one hand and steadying herself against the stone wall with the other, she kicked off without a second look back and descended to the ground.
Here ends my segment of our fairytale! Since I got to create her, I leave her naming up to whichever one of you has the next turn – I can’t wait to see what happens next!
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