One Selfish Wish

By Lady Onyx

Disclaimer: Insert the standard.

Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess in a kingdom called Themian.  Her name was Maran.  Now Princess Maran was tall and slender and had many suitors, but unfortunately she was, quite frankly, a brat.  Her favorite hobby was not dancing or sewing or painting.  Her favorite hobby was throwing tantrums.

One morning Princess Maran threw herself into a fine temper.  Over what, we'll never know, but quite frankly she threw the biggest fit she had ever thrown in her entire life.  She screamed, she cried, she threw small objects on the floor, she broke the furniture, she terrorized her mother's favorite poodle dog, and finally she stormed out of the castle, slamming all the doors she could find on the way out.

The princess stormed all the way across the drawbridge, out of the town, and some ways into the forest before she stopped.  Having spent some amount of energy by this time, Princess Maran stopped and looked around.  She knew this forest well.  It was near her castle and it lay on the border with the Esanama Nation, which was on very friendly terms with Themian.

Knowing perfectly well that she was quite safe, Princess Maran was nevertheless tired and hungry by this point.  A column of smoke was rising from behind the nearby trees past where the path bent.  Deciding that going towards the column of smoke was faster than going back to her palace, the young princess headed in that direction.

Meanwhile, the owner of the cottage that Princess Maran was headed to had just gotten home.  She was a fiery-haired sorceress, and she had been out stealing treasure from bandits this morning.  Lately the bandits in Themian had been pretty ambitious, uniting to become more powerful, so there was lots of haul.  However, the sorceress had used most of her energy in killing the bandits and was struggling under the load of treasure.

A young woman with dark hair and blue eyes had happened to be passing by and offered to help the sorceress with her load.  The sorceress rewarded the young woman by promising to grant her three wishes (being too cheap to reward her with treasure).

The two women had just sat down to relax after their labor of hauling huge bags of heavy treasure to Lina's house when Princess Maran arrived at the little cabin.  Without any hesitation or remorse Princess Maran walked right on in.  Both of the current inhabitants looked up at the sudden intrusion.

"Who are you and what do you think you are doing in my house?"  A smart person would have caught the dangerous note in the redhead's question.

Unfortunately for the princess, she gave the tone of voice no heed.  "I am Princess Maran, daughter of the ruler of this country.  I am going to rest and eat here."

The redhead's eyes flashed.  "No, actually, you are not.  And for being completely and inexcusably rude, I'm going to fireball you."  And she proceeded to do just that.

Princess Maran screamed when the fire hit her, and continued to scream as her clothes continued to burn.  She was about to catch on fire herself, and knew it, but had no idea what to do about it.  She was completely panic-stricken, so she just stood there and screamed.

The dark-haired girl put her hands over her ears, horrified at the sight before her.  "Miss Lina!  Please put the flames out!"

Lina folded her arms.  "She deserved it."

"Miss Lina!" the dark-haired girl said again.  "I wish you would put out the flames and heal that girl!"

Lina looked at the other girl in surprise.  "Are you sure you want to waste one of you wishes on her, Amelia?"

Amelia nodded vigorously.

The sorceress sighed.  "Okay."  And she put out the fire and healed the princess.

Things might have gone on much better after this little incident, but unfortunately for her (again) Princess Maran was not a very fast learner.

"How DARE you put me on fire, you little witch!  I demand that you show me proper respect!  I demand new clothes and food and a bed!"

"L-Little what?!  I'm not giving you anything, you pompous windbag!"  And in her anger Lina the sorceress turned the Princess into stone.

"And she can just stay that way," Lina said in satisfaction.

But Amelia once again took pity on the princess.  "You know, Miss Lina, throwing a fireball at her without warning in the first place wasn't exactly the nicest thing in the world.  I'm sure she found it very hard to cope with."

"So?" was the reply.

"I wish you'd turn her back."

"Oh, come on, Amelia!  Stop being so selfless!"  Lina thought it was rather silly of Amelia to squander her wishes on helping an incurably (for if a fireball's not going to teach you a lesson, what will?) selfish spoiled brat.  But Amelia was adamant, and Lina had to turn Princess Maran back to normal.

"Now," the sorceress told Maran before the princess could speak.  "You'd just better keep that tongue of yours in check, lest I do something else to you, you got that?"  The princess might have retorted, but her jaw wasn't quite un-petrified yet, so she was spared more of the red-haired's wrath.

Lina went back to her chair and sat back down.  "Now, if you pay me, I might be able to get you a sandwich or something," she smirked.  Amelia sighed and shook her head.

The princess's jaw was unstuck by now, and the young aristocrat was back on her mettle.  She stamped her foot.  "How dare you say such things to me?!  Do you know who you're talking to?!"

"Princess Maran?" Amelia asked dryly.

"Yes!  You should be bowing before me, you third-rate," and here she began to stamp her foot again with every word, "ugly, scrawny, stupid –"  It was amazing she even got that far.

"Okay, that's it," Lina growled.  "And Amelia's not saving you this time, you're gonna get everything you deserve.  DIMIL ARWIN!"  A rush of blue light flashed toward the target.  It looked like the foolish princess wasn't going to be coming back from this one.  Amazingly enough, she ducked just in time.  The spell missed her and hit the side and ceiling of the house.

"Uh-oh..." was all anyone had time for before the house crashed, knocking everyone unconscious.

Meanwhile, the young prince of Esanama was riding on his white horse through the forest that lay on the border between his home country and the neighboring Themian kingdom.  His bluish hair waved in the same breeze that tugged at his off-white tunic and matching cape.  One calloused hand absently rubbed his sword hilt.  An accomplished swordsman, Prince Zelgadis was also a decent magic-user.

Unfortunately, neither of those skills was very helpful in his current quest.  His father the king had sent Zelgadis to find a wife.  This was not something the prince felt comfortable doing.  His father had given him a few tips before sending him on his way, but women were not really Zelgadis's forte.

In fact, he had protested the whole thing as much and as long as he could.  He was not good-looking (in his own opinion), he was not confident around women, etc. etc.  Eventually his father would have no more of it and sent Zelgadis on his way.

Suddenly Prince Zelgadis heard a rather noisy crashing sound.  Sending his steed racing ahead he soon came upon the ruins of a small cottage.  The young man tethered his horse before venturing into the ruins to see what he could find.  What he found was a lot of treasure, a lot of food, and three unconscious women.

'Well!  Problem solved!' he thought.  'I'll just marry one of these!'  And his eye went to the beautiful Princess Maran.  He went to her side and tried to wake her, but to no avail.  After a few minutes the prince realized that the women must be in an enchanted sleep (from the spell that destroyed the house) that could not be broken by ordinary means.  No matter.  His magic wasn't the strongest, but it could wake them up.  Just as Prince Zelgadis was about to cast the spell, he remembered something.

One of the tips his father had given Zelgadis was to be romantic.  Zelgadis thought about this for a while.  Then he thought about it for a while longer.  Then he decided that the best way to be romantic and convince the woman to marry him was to wake her with a kiss. (Or rather kiss her as she was waking up from the magic spell.)  Prince Zelgadis could feel his face going red.  This whole idea was ridiculous.  But waking her had to be done, so he might as well get it over with and do it properly while he was at it.

Just as he was about to kiss the beautiful Princess Maran and wake her up, Zelgadis suddenly had another thought.  He wasn't exactly experienced at this.  What if his kiss was repulsive?  That would be counter-productive.  What should he do?  Should he kiss her or not?  He thought about it a while longer.  Then a strange thought came into his mind.  There were three women here, and he only needed to marry one.  What if he practiced the whole kissing-and-waking thing on the other two first?  Zelgadis could feel his face heating even more at the thought as he stole a glance at the other two women.

'Preposterous,' he thought.  'There's no way.'  So the prince went back to thinking about it.  He thought and he thought.  Surely he should have reached the conclusion that he should just go ahead and kiss the beautiful one, and he would have reached that conclusion and done it, but every time he decided to just get it done with a little voice popped up in the back of his mind, worrying that he couldn't do this properly.

'Fine!' the exasperated prince finally decided.  'I'll kiss them all!'  And he went to the redhead and kissed her, casting the spell to wake her as he did.  What he got for it was a slap in the face.

"Get your hands off me, you disgusting ball of slime!" the girl yelled.

Was his kissing really that bad?  "I was just waking you," Prince Zelgadis muttered, rubbing the sore spot on his face.

"You were KISSING me, you liar!" she yelled.  Well, her lungs weren't damaged, so Zelgadis figured he could leave her alone now.  "You're imagining things," he muttered as he walked over to the second girl.

He was surprised when he saw the redhead begin to heal her bruises out of the corner of his eye.  A sorceress that powerful?  Rare indeed.  Suddenly he was grateful for a mere slap in the face.

Prince Zelgadis was rather tempted to just wake the dark-haired girl and skip the kissing bit, but as it looked like the sorceress was occupied, and his first attempt had been such a fiasco, Zelgadis decided he's better try again.  So, he repeated the process.

This time he received no slap in the face.  In fact, the girl stared up at him with wonder in her eyes.  Zelgadis decided to take that as a good sign.

The sorceress had looked up from her healing just in time to see Zelgadis kiss young Amelia.  She now made it her business to give the prince a piece of her mind.  The young man now had his hands full trying to calm Lina down without getting blown up in the process.

While he was thus occupied (and unable to fulfill his plan and woo the sleeping princess) Amelia continued to gaze at the handsome young man.  "Oh, I wish he'd fall in love with me and marry me," she sighed.

Despite her argument with the prince Lina heard Amelia's wish.  She grinned.  "Now that is a good, selfish wish."  And she cast the spell.

So Zelgadis and Amelia got married and lived happily ever after.  Lina used her treasure to rebuild her house and go back to stealing from bandits.  As for Princess Maran, they left her in her enchanted sleep, propped her up against the door, and used her for a coat-rack.

THE END

A/N: Well, that only took a couple hours to write.  Amazing.  Especially since I've only heard that story once some time ago.  Of course, I stuck pretty close to the fairytale as far as I could remember it.  The only differences were that the prince was a seventh son of a seventh son who had no reservations about practicing his kissing on the other two women (which is kinda scary since the witch was the traditional old woman), and the spells used on the princess.  Oh well.  Please let me know if you liked this, and if you did you can check out my other Slayers/Fairytale stories.  Ciao!