The Princes were lined up at their sister's wedding, to see her married to the King. All eleven of them were resplendent in their finest clothes of velvet and satin, adorned with beautiful gold embroidery. The youngest prince stood awkwardly at the end of the row of his brothers, unsure of himself, and horribly self-conscious of the thing which made him different. A golden circlet rested upon his golden hair, which was shining beautifully, as though somebody had managed to capture sunlight, and to weave it to his head. But the prince's head was bowed, as he tried very hard to make himself invisible, or at least to prevent people from noticing that which made him different: his one swan's wing, in place of his arm.
The incomplete shirt had left him the way he was, and there was no way to reverse it now. Whenever people met him, their eyes immediately flicked to the wing, and then quickly away again, pretending not to have noticed, or that it didn't seem to matter to them, but her often caught them staring at it when they thought he wasn't looking.
When he walked in the streets, he would often hear parents whisper to their children, "Look! There is the strange prince whose shirt wasn't finished! You see his wing! But he cannot fly on that." And the children would stare after him, and although when he approached them they bowed, as etiquette demanded, they were often hesitant of him, as one would be of a fierce dog.
And so, he often sought solstice among the swans, in the lakes and in the gardens. But they gave him little comfort, seeing as he was only half-swan, and regarded him with an imperial disdain. To them he was only a poor cripple and a strange being, torn between Human and Swan.
Even his brothers treaded him differently. But he could have coped with that (being the youngest of eleven, he had often felt outcast), if only he could be with his dear sister, as they used to be. But now, she was to be married, it seemed she had forgotten about him. This made him sad, a deep-rooted sadness that seemed to seep into his very bones. How could his sister have forgotten him? How could she have forgotten about how, as a swan, he had lain his head in her lap to keep her company while their brothers were out flying; how he had wept upon her blistered fingers, rubbed raw from knitted stinging nettle shirts, and how his tears had seemed to soothe her pain; how he had stayed with her when she was imprisoned, on the final night of her task, as she was making the final shirt, the one that would never be finished, and would be his. They had been the closest of siblings, but it was no longer so. Why? Because now she belonged to the king, to whom she had pledged her heart, and to whom she would become his wife.
And although the youngest prince had been through much, and had gathered up many memories and stored them in his heart, and although he had experienced more in his sixteen years than most people would in a lifetime, he was still only a child, a boy who was afraid because he was different, and afraid because he was alone. But the boy sadly watched his sister marry, and said not a single word.