Post by Andrea on May 31, 2006 23:53:22 GMT -5
The Frog Prince
She had grown up among fairy tales and magic, dragons, and pretty ladies in distress; a little girl with golden blonde hair and indigo eyes, a darling who was dotted upon. Mothers loved her and envied her, some coveted her, she annoyed some, and others smiled to themselves and knew she would grow up to be a very odd one indeed. Maybe odd wasn't the word for it, she would be entirely different. She was destined to be tested by the fair folk, a charmed bracelet, a cursed spindle, an enchanted frog, or perhaps a dragon was awaiting her in the future. And the world was waiting to see what it would be.
When she reached the wise age of ten she realized that she was getting old. She had lived a decade, and to her this was very old indeed; so old in fact, that she began to think that maybe she ought to share her great wisdom of fairy tales and magic with the younger generation. Therefore, for a week of her precious summer, she brought her worn copy of “Grimm's Fairy Tales” to the park and read to, or attempted to read to children playing there. Many days she was distracted and joined in the fun, other days, she sat under her tree and held 'class' as a few children named it. She made them sit quietly as she read until the mothers called lunch. As it turned out, most of the children didn't come back the next day, or the day after that, by the end of the week children were avoiding her tree like the plague. It was then she decided that she needed a different approach.
It was actually her teacher who managed to inspire her, he assigned then a short story to write, and write she did. It was supposed to be five pages, in large type and pictures for the second grade class, she wrote ten, her own rendition of The Frog Prince.
Years ago, when wishes still came true and fairy godmothers still appeared, when princesses always found their prince charming and kissing a frog most likely led them to him, when knights still fought over honor and prided themselves on chivalry, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so radiant that the sun itself blinked whenever it saw her, now the sun has seen all things, since the beginning of time, but the young maiden made even the sun do a double take when he shone over their castle. His attention made the castle grounds very warm and the maiden oftentimes went into the woods for relief. Under an old linden tree there was a well, and the king’s daughter often went there. If the day became long, she would pull out a golden ball, toss it in the air, and catch it, again, and again, and again, for it was her favorite pastime.
One day, in an unusual turn of events the ball, instead of falling into the girl’s hand from whence it had been sent aloft, fell to the ground near the edge of the well, and fell in. She followed it with wide indigo eyes as it sank; eventually it had gone so deep that she could not see it anymore. Her gorgeous indigo eyes filled with tears and she wept as she had never wept before, as if she would never be comforted.
“Ahh!” She yelled in frustration, the urge to hit her computer greater than it had ever been. This just, was not working. At least it wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. She had thought it would be easy, writing a book. Well, not easy, per-say, but not as hard as it was. Perhaps it was because she really had no plot, or a real character, well, she had a character, a nameless ten-year-old girl. Perhaps that was part of the problem. How can one write about a ten-year-old when one really knows nothing about ten-year-old children? She had thought it shouldn’t be hard, she had once been ten after all, and she had had a ten-year-old sibling at one point. Nevertheless, she had realized her error; when you’re ten you don’t think of yourself as ten, you always consider yourself perfectly capable of everything. You especially don’t think that you have to remember doing this because when you did this you where ten and you might need the information of how you felt or thought or acted when you were ten. No, no, no, NO; that would have made life way to easy.
“C’mon brain! It was only six years ago!” She yelled at her computer screen, which just glowed unmercifully at her, showing the meager fourth of a page that half her nights work had produced. “Why do I feel so old?” She moaned as she stood to go get yet another can or orange mountain dew. It was really the most spectacular stuff for a late night argument with ones computer. The amount of sugar was sky high and would get you along nicely for an hour and a half if you hadn’t become immune to it’s effects. It was obviously harmful to her but at sixteen who cares. Besides, it was helping her on her way to becoming the next J. K. Rowling, right?
“Wrong,” she muttered as her brother stuck his head out her door.
“Aren’t you done yet?” he moaned while she shot laser beams at him through her eyes.
“It’s two in the morning, go to bed.”
“You’re not in bed. You go to bed.”
“You can’t boss me around,” she said, irked by his presence. “Besides you’re disturbing the clairvoyant waves of brilliance.” He scrunched his nose at her, which caused his walnut blue eyes to disappear under fuzzy brown caterpillar eyebrows.
“I bet you don’t even know what, clair-boyant means.” He said, sounding out the word choppily. She frowned, she didn’t, but she wasn’t about to admit that to him.
“It means you should be in bed,” she said with finality as she turned to have another go at the not-so-brilliant story.
In the midst of her hysterics she heard a voice speaking calmly to her, “what disturbs you so, little princess? Your sadness would melt a heart of stone.”
When she could bear to look up to see where the voice came from there was nothing but a dirt green frog sticking its big warty head out of the water. “Oh, it’s just you old waddler,” she said, “I weep because my golden ball has fallen into the well.” If it was possible, it looked as if the frog pitied her, but of course, that was not possible, frogs did not pity humans. Humans pitied frogs if there was any pitying to be done.
“Never mind, do not weep,” answered the frog. “I shall help you; but what will the gracious princess give me if I fetch you your ball?” He asked coyly, if frogs could be coy, but they couldn’t so, she was not too worried about binding herself to him in any way. A princess could not be bound to a frog, it just was not done.
“Anything you would like, dear, dearest frog.” She said, batting her long eyelashes at him “Any of my clothes, my pearls, or even my prized golden crown that I wear.” She said, really what did a girl her age need with pearls? She would only loose them. The frog frowned, if a frog could frown, but frogs cannot frown, therefore he wasn’t really frowning, there was just a frown in his countenance.
“Your clothes, pearls, and prized golden crown are not for me.” He said, almost in an offended way. However, frogs couldn’t be offended, well maybe if you stepped on one, or ran over it with your carriage you could offend it because you would have killed it, which is a capital offense. But she hadn’t trodden on him or squashed him with her carriage so therefore he wasn’t offended; he just had the air of someone who had been offended. “But if you would love me dearly, and have me as your companion and playmate, and let me sit with you at the high table, and let me eat from your plate, and drink from your cup,” He felt that he was on a roll at this point and decided to got all or nothing, “and let me sleep in your bed-if you will promise me all these things, then I shall dive to the dank, murky depths of the bottom of the well, and retrieve your golden ball.”
“Yes, yes, I promise you all those things if you will retrieve my ball,” the little princess agreed heartily. Our little blond princess never really stood a chance against the clever frog. “What nonsense he talks,” she muttered as he dove to the depths of the well. But she wasn’t muttering per-say, because a proper princess does not mutter she muses thoughtfully. “As if he could do anything but sit in the water and croak with other slimy frogs, he couldn’t possibly be my companion. I am a proper princess and proper princesses do not have frogs as companions, we have kittens, or lesser princesses as companions, not slimy well frogs.”
“Whoa,” Anna said as she looked at what she had written. “My little blonde princess has gone on a modest ego streak. But it works I suppose.” She said as she got up to use the loo. Now Cat wasn’t English, so really she was using the bathroom like an American would say, but she was obsessed with everything from the UK that was English, especially if it was male and had an accent. “See love,” She said to herself, hoping her brother had gone to sleep and wasn’t listening to her. “The problem with drinking all of that Mountain Dew means that you have to pee, a lot.”
Maybe it’s not normal for a sixteen-year-old girl to talk to herself, maybe it is a sign of insanity, or maybe it’s a sign of brilliance. Does anyone really know? Anna doesn’t seem to think so because she had always admitted to being crazy when someone confronted her with the idea. Now, if you have talked to many people who are actually seriously mentally ill, they think that they are perfectly fine and that you are the crazy one for asking them if they are mentally sound.
Moreover, maybe it isn’t normal for a girl who just reached her oh-so-sweet-sixteen to be wanting to write a masterpiece of a book, but who is to say that it’s not? In the medieval ages, girls who had gotten ‘Mr. Messy’, ‘red lipstick’, or ‘had the painters in’ were married and having children. Now, I do realize that this is the 21st Century and most think that young ladies should not be married until they are twenty-five and have had a solid career. Therefore, if you think that women should have a career at twenty-five maybe it is realistic for Anna to want to have ‘been published’ by seventeen is realistic.
Our darling Anna had returned from the loo at this point and was yet again frowning at her computer, maybe someone Should tell the poor dear that if she keeps doing that she’ll have wrinkles by the time she’s twenty five and has that lovely career started. It would actually be sad, to be twenty-five and have wrinkles, we shall definitely have to tell her. Anyway, she was ready to have another go at her rendition of our little-ten-year-old girls rendition of The Frog Prince.
After five minutes of very squirmy waiting on our princess’ part he returned to the surface with the glimmering golden ball in his mouth, he threw it next to the princess. But of course he was a frog and he did not really throw it because frogs can’t throw, so really, he spat it at her, but throwing sounds much nicer.
The Kings daughter was overjoyed and squealed rather loudly when she saw her ball had been returned to her. She took hold of it and immediately ran away with it, laughing merrily as she went.
“Stop! Stop! Milady wait! I cannot run as fast as you!” He cried as he hopped after her, but alas an undersized, slimy, warty frog cannot move nearly as fast as a young, healthy princess can.
The next morning, as she sat eating a wonderful breakfast of porridge and eggs a knock came at the king’s door. “Youngest Daughter of the King let me in!” She got up and ran to the door to see who was yelling her name so ungracefully and rudely at such a despicable hour of the morning. When she opened the door the frog was sitting outside and she resolutely closed it again before rushing back to her seat.
The King noticed that she returned rather quickly, and could hear her heart ‘thumpthumpthump-ing’ and said, “My dear, what are you afraid of? Is there an ugly troll at the door? Or perhaps a great fire-breathing dragon come to take you away?”
“Oh no,” She answered, “Just a horrid frog.” How had he found her? Why had he followed her? Yes she had promised him many grand things, but that didn’t mean anything, she hadn’t pinky-sworn so everything was all right.
“And what does the frog want?” the King asked, trying not to sound like he was holding back laughter.
“Oh papa,” she lamented, “when I was sitting by the well yesterday, in the dark forest, playing with my golden ball, I dropped it and it rolled into the lake. A frog offered to fetch it for me, and in return I offered him my world. But, I hadn’t actually been planning on giving it to him, because I didn’t really think that he could leave the water and come after me,” she said in a rush. “But now he’s here, outside the door, and he wants to come in.” She said, tears welling up in her striking eyes.
And then the whole castle heard the frog crying,
“Youngest Kings Daughter,
Open to me!
By the well water
What you promised me?
Youngest Kings Daughter
Now open to me!”
“What you have promised you must deliver, my dear, let him in.” The king said sternly; she had to learn that royalty did as they said.
The littlest princess sighed and moaned her misfortune in a very lady-like way as she slowly made her way to the door. She opened the door and turned, rather coldly away from him and marched back to the table, annoyingly, he followed.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Anna moaned, “is annoyingly even a word?” She asked herself, reaching for the oversized, college edition dictionary she had found in the back of her mum’s Tupperware pantry. “Annoying is a word. Annoying can probably even be a verb, like he was annoying so and so. No, was would be the verb, or is was the helping verb? Was is the helping verb, was annoying, is annoying. No that doesn’t really make sense either does it?” She moaned and closed the dictionary with a thud, “I don’t want to know, I truly don’t want to know.” She said, rubbing her eyes and frowning, we really ought to warn her about that.
She stood up and her knees creaked, she looked down at them in surprise, eyes wide. “I’m turning into an old woman at the ripe old age of sixteen!” She gasped. “Then again I don’t really feel sixteen. But maybe this is how if feels to be sixteen, maybe feeling sixteen is just like feeling thirty, only when you’re thirty you think you’re deathly old. Really thirty isn’t very old. People are living to be one hundred; it has almost become normal. Still doesn’t explain my knees creaking though.” She said as she stretched and her back cracked in multiple places. “Or maybe my body is telling me it’s bedtime. Three is really quite a respectable hour to be turning in don’t you think?” She asked the air before giggling and moseying down the hall.
She was back to this, this blankly staring at the screen in what she called her ‘writing daze’. She knew vaguely what she wanted to happen, but had absolutely no clue how to get it from her fuzzy mind onto her computer screen. Pieces of paper cluttered around her; the remnants of attempts to move her vision from mind to paper (it hadn’t worked).
She woke up as she was falling out of bed, thankfully, she didn’t have far to fall. As a child she had oftentimes fallen out of the bed with a painful thump and an impact with the floor that oftentimes left her with a red nose. As a teenager, she had gotten a bigger bed, and only a few months ago she had removed the metal frame (mainly because she ran into it and cut her legs); making the drop to the floor only a foot and a half.
She reached up to grab a pillow in hopes that she could go back to sleep but her efforts were in vain, the small child that claimed relation to her was playing basketball. I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but, basketballs echo. They don’t have to be right outside your window to be loud, especially in the morning when your hearing tends to be especially sensitive.
Opening her eyes, she glared at the ceiling. It gave her no comfort but glaring gave her a weird sense of satisfaction, not that it helped her ever growing wrinkle any. Muttering nonsensical threats under her breath she sat up and quickly lay back down; black spots invaded her vision and she let them fade before sitting up, slowly this time; the room stayed stationary.
“Thank heaven for that,” she muttered, “I hate it when things move. Rooms shouldn’t move. Rooms are made to stay put.” She stumbled out of the door of her room, frowning a bit, grumbling under her breath as she stepped on books, pencils, clothes, shoes, and other miscellaneous objects that had been discarded on the floor.
She walked down the hall, past the computer and into the bathroom, a few minutes later she emerged, hair brush in hand she pulled it through her hair as she logged on to the computer. It started with a beep and she opened the file and stared at the few pages she had written. “Oh this is agony,” she lamented. What she wanted to see on the pages wouldn’t come out of her head, it was as if there was a plug between her brain and her fingers, she knew vaguely what she wanted but couldn’t make it appear.
Her mind was a blank page that needed writing upon. She slouched down in her seat, folded her hands in her lap and went into what she liked to call, her musing state.
The frog had demanded that she pick it up and place it on the table next to her. At first she had shaken her golden head in stark refusal but one look from her father had made her quit amiable. When he had eaten his fill, which consisted of a spoonful of pudding (the princess was thankful it was pudding and not flies) he told her to take him to her bed and let him sleep in her bed. I don’t know if you know anything about princess’s beds but they tend to have silken sheets and hand embroidered pillows. Not the sort of bed you want to find a frog sleeping in. Thus, the princess began to weep, large diamond tears that would cause the Wicked Witch of the West’s heart to break; not the kings though. His rage grew like a tempest and threatened to roar about the dining hall, destroying everything in its path. But if there is one think spoiled daughters know best it is when their fathers temper threatens to break. She picked up the frog with two fingers and fled the room, tiny velvet slippers whisking along limestone floors.
She put him in a corner of her room, beneath her wardrobe, hoping and praying to whatever god was listening that he would die there. Exhausted she lay on her bed, planning to keep vigil until he died and her life would once again be blissful. But beds have an uncanny ability to put people to sleep, and the princess did not contain a strong sense of will and she drifted off into a dream of a fine prince.
While she was dreaming the frog came out from under the mahogany wardrobe and came to be by the side of the bed. He awoke her by saying “I am tired too and I want to sleep as much as you do. Now take me up with you or I shall tell your father.” All children react to tattle tales badly and the princess was no exception. She reached over the bed and picked him up, pretty indigo eyes rimmed with the red of the desperate and her lovely blonde curls were disheveled from sleep. In her desperate rage she threw him against the wall with all of her anger and strength, “now will you be quiet you stupid, stupid, ugly frog!” She screeched as she threw him.
As he flew he began to change. Where once stood a frog now stood a handsome young man who matched the princess. Golden blonde hair crowned his chiseled face and lively indigo eyes shone as become out of a lighthouse. Her heart warmed at the sight of him and identical grins broke out of their faces.
As the story goes they became betrothed to one another and eventually married, living happily ever after.
“Ha!” Anna cried, joy overwhelming her. “I’ve DONE IT! For once in my life I’ve DONE it!”