I apologize for not having written in so long. I offer you, for your patience, a story. Just for fun.
** ** ** ** **There was, once upon a time, in a land far away, a princess who was overtaken with the greatest sadness. She had discovered, on her 16th birthday, that she would be claimed by a handsome prince, who would slay a dragon for her.
In this kingdom it was customary when a princess became a young woman, to tell her this. This way, she would begin her initiation into the rites of womanhood. She would begin, for instance, to wear her hair down, and to learn womanly arts, and to practice how to emit delicate, appealing shrieks when faced with such unspeakable horrors as dragons.
This is not to suggest that dragons are truly unspeakable horrors. But tradition is tradition, and so each time a prince was to claim the hand of a princess from this kingdom, he would have to slay a dragon. The father of the princess was generally kind enough to procure a dragon for this purpose.
Our princess’ father was a man who believed in planning well in advance and so had procured a dragon for this purpose quite some time ago. The dragon had been hatched from an egg in a large garden off in one corner of the royal gardens that bordered on forest. No one besides the game keeper went there, and princesses were certainly not allowed there.
Alas, our princess was a plucky sort of girl and not very given to following rules. She was barely six when she discovered a hidden path leading behind the peacock gardens, past the Royal Fountains, and into a strangely unkempt, pleasingly wild corner of the grounds. She followed, curiously, the sounds of snuffling to discover, in what looked like a large ring of light hovering a few inches above the ground, a small, grumpy-looking dragon.
She knew it was a dragon because she had begun reading picture books quite early. This dragon wasn’t majestic-looking like the ones in the pictures. It was mostly gray, with bluish undertones, and its wings were tiny, useless things perched ludicrously on a bumpy, scaly back. Nor was this dragon very large; it stood now with its back to the princess, and she could see that it was perhaps a few inches shorter than herself. There was no evidence of fire-breathing; the sniffling gave rise to morose little puffs of smoke, but that might have been only because the air was so cold. The princess sniffed experimentally, and sure enough, she saw little clouds in front of her nose. Some dragon this was turning out to be.
The princess, disappointed, began to turn away, when the dragon emitted a particularly disdainful sniff and muttered under its breath, “Typical.”
She stopped short, surprised. “You talk,” she said, somewhat unnececessarily.
“You talk,” countered the dragon.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But I”m a princess.”
“And so I should excuse yu for being ill mannered?”
“Ill mannered!” Now she was indignant. “Am not!”
“You just spent five minutes staring at me and were about to walk away without so much as a how-do-you-do!”
It was true! The princess felt abashed and dropped an apologetic curtsey. “How do you do,” she mumbled.
“Hmpf,” said the dragon.
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