Author's note: this was an assignment of school…cookies for those who guess my mark correctly! But please, pretty please with chocolate sprinkles on top, please leave a nice review…even flame me if you feel the need….
The Lady or the Tiger
The lover cautiously crept across the dusty soil of the amphitheatre towards the door on the right, exactly as his darling princess had told him. He bit his lips in uncertainty, because he wasn't sure what would await him on the other side of that door. His hand, numb with fear, grasped the handle firmly, and with a swift tug he released the latch from its home and turned his face away in anticipation for certain death or life. The princess also turned her face away from the door, as she could not bear to see the result of her choice for him, could not bear to see the weight of her decision put into action. When the criminal of love finally faced his beast, his beast of beauty or his beast of blood, his trembling lips parted in a smile. He knew that he would never see his former lover again as the bony, cheese-white arms of his prize of innocence embraced him in a lovelock and the energetic crowd erupted in cheers of glee and the only face downtrodden by agony was that of the princess. She left the arena without a word or nod to any member of the ignorant throng, and walked steadily down the stone stairs with her brunette knot on top of her proud head held upright and unwavering. She kept her collected stride even and unchanging over the piercing gravel and the subtle billows of dust wafting over her bronzed feet and ankles. And she vowed to herself, as she looked out without seeing the black rooftops in front of her, that she would not cry, after all, it was her choice, her decision, her duty to let him live. She could not kill her lover, and if she truly loved him, she would be willing to let him sleep in the arms of another. But she would not cry, it really was the best thing. Wasn't it? The princess found her way to her room in the castle of her father, quite remarkably, as she was not paying a whit of attention to where her feet were leading her blindly, nor did she realize that she was reaching into the drawer of her bedside table for the bejewelled knife that her father had given her for self defence. She was startled when she woke from her trance-like state to find that she had pressed the blade into her flesh and she jolted off of her red velvet armchair and hit the chilled marble floor, for she was so shaken from her unfeeling choice of pain. She opened her glazed eyes and stared at her wound, fresh and sophisticated. Her eyes began to droop heavily and her breath grew short and she realized that she would not live to hear the jubilee of her lover's honeymoon, and she couldn't be bothered to care. Her pain dulled and her now frail body went numb and she could hear sharp ringing in her ears. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard, so as to see if she could feel anything. She felt nothing, no sensation whatsoever. In her last act of satisfaction, she dipped her warmth drained finger into the pool of her own blood and scrawled a blurred message on the cold, unforgiving floor that read: "I didn't cry."