Jasmine
They were flying at a moderate speed, appreciating the fireworks above them. There was no hurry; they had their whole life to explore the world. And they would do it together. Carpet took them steady south, and it didn't take long before the desert before him changed into what looked in the darkness like never-ending woods. Jasmine was impressed. She had never seen so many trees in one place.
"We should rest here," she suggested. "Wait until the sun rises and then search for a good place to land."
Aladdin readily agreed. Snuggled close to each other, they soon felt in a light slumber, trusting Carpet to keep them safe.
When she woke up, Aladdin was already studying the map he had bought from a street vendor. The one who sounded suspiciously like Genie (the only reason they had followed his advice to take the map).
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
"I'm not sure. This doesn't seem right to me. Maybe I'm reading it wrong." Aladdin sounded frustrated. His reading skills were weak at best, but Jasmine didn't mind. Considering his upbringing, it spoke for his intelligence that he could read at all. He would surely catch up soon.
"Let's see!" she said and he wordlessly gave her the map. She immediately saw what the problem was. "The map of Happily Ever After? This has to be a joke." They hadn't bothered to look too closely beforehand, being busy with the preparation for the wedding and Jasmine's birthday party.
"I know – but it looks correct. See, there are the woods."
True, according the map, Agrabah's desert was bordering in the west and south on a big forest that contained a lot of castles. In fact, she could see one of those castles.
"Let's fly east," she suggested. In the east were the Literate Lands, which contained more recognizable landmarks. She certainly didn't plan to travel west, where Villain Valley supposedly was.
The map turned out to be right, but they didn't find any place to land at first. Every place under them seemed to be off-limits, to their disappointment. It was like an invisible wall prevented them from flying lower.
"What now?" Aladdin asked while they were watching some alley cats dancing and singing on the rooftops of a town called Paris.
Jasmine studied the map again. "Agrabah is marked green, but all the countries we flew over are marked yellow. Villain Valley is marked red. The only spot also marked green is there." She pointed at a city named Toontown far in the south bordering on a grey area called "Elsewhere".
"Should we fly back to Agrabah first?" Aladdin asked. "You're probably hungry."
"Carpet is fast." Jasmine wasn't ready to turn up at home so soon again. Aladdin had promised her a whole new world, and she wanted to experience it.
Luckily, Toontown was a success. And quite an overwhelming experience. Talking animals, strange looking humans, and a lot of other things they had never seen before in their life. Some people were quite sinister looking, but a friendly old lady with a yellow canary on her shoulder, readily pointed them to a place where they could eat something. "There is also an ATM in front of it, in case that you need to exchange money. Most businesses here take only Toon Tokens or Disney Dollars."
It was easy to figure out the devise. Just as Aladdin retrieved the money, the sound of a horn prompted Jasmine to turn around. "Look out!" She pulled Aladdin out of the way of the horseless vehicle that had decided to take a detour over the sidewalk, to slide into a parking space. A suit-wearing toad was jumping out of it.
"Are you crazy?" Jasmine asked.
"Sorry folks, but good parking spaces are a rare commodity in this part of Toontown. I'll make it up to you. Join me for lunch?"
Jasmine was too enraged to agree, but Aladdin was faster than her.
"Why not." Following the toad he explained Jasmine under his breath "he can certainly answer some questions about this strange place".
They sat down at table near the window. A waiter who looked more like a butler came to take their order. They followed their host's advice and chose magret de canard, while he went for the escargot.
The toad, who introduced himself fittingly as Mr. Toad, turned out to be very talkative indeed, especially after he realized who they were.
"Splendid! It's so rare nowadays to meet some of your folks."
"Our folks?"
"You know other Disney characters. In the old times, they all used to visit Toontown regularly. But by now, only the Duckburg Toons turn up from time to time. The others keep in their own zone, especially the human ones."
"And why is that?"
"Too much crime, too many villains who do what they want unchecked. They don't feel safe. The Powers That Be added a new police station and sent new characters on patrol, but Bonkers can only do so much. Plus, a lot of them think that some of the Toons from Elsewhere are too brutal and loopy."
Watching a small man with a red beard chasing a bunny down the street with a rifle, Jasmine understood where they were coming from.
"But you don't care?" Aladdin asked.
"I was always more of the adventurous kind. And all the streets here end up in Toontown. You can't drive anywhere else. And you can't land anywhere else with your plane."
"Plane?"
"Flying vehicle. But I see you are using a more traditional method of transportation. Nice carpet."
Carpet was preening under the attention.
"So there is nowhere else to go?"
"Not really. Elsewhere is off-limits and I wouldn't recommend even flying over Villain Valley. Nasty place. Just ask Edgar over there." Mr. Toad made a vague motion towards the waiter.
"He doesn't look like the adventurous type." Aladdin said puzzled.
"Oh, he isn't, but he is a Disney villain, albeit a very pathetic one."
"Him?"
Jasmine eyed the man, who was now nearing with their food, with suspicion. But she waited until he was finished with serving them and way out of hearing range before she asked her next question.
"What did he do?"
"Poisoned the food of a bunch of kitties."
Aladdin spat the bite he had taken from his meal back on his plate.
"Don't worry he just used a sleeping drug. He doesn't have it in him to kill someone. That's why he is hanging around in Toontown. He is more or less banished from Paris, and the Villains in Villain Valley don't give him the time of the day. They are kind of ashamed of him – as much as true Villains can feel shame."
Mr. Toad dug into his escargot with visible gusto, and Jasmine and Aladdin finally followed his example. The taste was so different from Jasmine's usual meals, this alone made her day. Mr. Toad kept entertaining them with interesting (and outrageous) stories, explaining to them some of the things they could see through the window (apparently the horseless vehicles were called cars). Suddenly, he stopped in the middle of a sentence. "I have to go now! See you around." Before any of them could react, he vanished through the backdoor.
Seconds later the front door opened and a rat and a mole, clothed in a similar style to the toad were entering. "Has anybody seen a toad?" the rat asked in a very slow and nasal manner. The black duck who had entered five minutes earlier, taking place at the table beside them answered with a prominent lisp: "Some small fellow just went through the backdoor."
"Come, Mole!" The rat said and followed the toad, his friend close behind him.
"Shouldn't we help him?" asked Jasmine.
"I'm sure he can look out for himself. After all, he just invited us to a meal we have to pay for now." He looked over to the waiter, who was busy calming down the black duck, who had discovered the magret de canard on the menu. "As soon as the waiter is available again."
Over the next years, Happily Ever After was slowly changing. Literary Land got a steppe and a jungle. Paris grew and had now an impressive cathedral. Close to the mountains in front of Villain Valley was now "Legendary China" and at the shore grew new cliffs to become the home of native Indians and a group of settlers. But it depressed Jasmine that she could see all that only from afar. They visited Toontown a couple of times, but it soon got old. The same toons, the same streets. Genie came back at one point, but even with his powers couldn't do anything about it.
But then her next birthday came – or the same one occurred again. In the timeless state they lived, there wasn't much point in counting the years, but her father and Aladdin thought that they should celebrate her birth nevertheless. Her best present was a scroll. With disbelief she read the text.
"As member of the Disney Princess Club, you've been granted Princess Passage to the world of every Club Member."
Jasmine was dumbfounded. "I don't understand…"
"That means that our travel radius just expanded. Seven other princesses, seven worlds we are allowed to visit."
"But how…?"
"I applied to The Powers That Be," the sultan explained, as if this was the easiest and most logical thing of the world. "Happy?"
"Ecstatic! That has to be the best present ever! When can we fly?"
A/N: In case you are wondering, Aladdin and Jasmine are eating grilled duck breast and Mr. Toad snails.
So that's the start - lots of thanks to iki_teru who acted as my Beta for this one, and to canadianscanget, too. This is a WIP, but it's more a "World in Progress" than a "Work in Progress". I don't intend to end the chapters on evil cliffhangers, it's more a collections of small adventures the princesses and their princes have in "Happily Ever After". It's inspired by "Meeting the others", which I adore, but I intend to do a more serious take on the idea and explore the characters of the princesses and the princes. I'll will ignore all the sequels, prequels, midquels and TV-shows.