A/N: Written for the Diversity Challenge, Section B (501-1000 words) prompt 1 – write a poem between 15 and 30 lines. This is 26 lines, regardless of how it might look butchered because of monitor sizes. :D
The Running Princess
The screams and clashing of metal follow her deeper and deeper into the forest's depths as she runs, her dress hitched high and caught and torn
by the thorns that mar her path – and her still tender face, youthful and inexperienced by the ways of harshness in the world
but still she runs into the depths of that unknown shadow, away from the slaughter on her father's chair
And with each step she clears she wants to turn back, but she knows she can't: she carries
something of far too much value in her blood: the weapon that can bring doom and disaster upon them all, and thus she must flee,
she must continue on her path through the forest, beyond the monsters that give chance when the smell the smell of fear
and fresh blood, until she can find a place of safety and peace, where she can collapse, and then hide herself forevermore
But she can't seem to outrun those monsters: instead they steal her escort and last shreds of safety
away from her, leaving her alone to fight for her life with nothing but the thin gold crown on her head
and those wits of hers that had never been sharpened beyond the castle walls….
But fortune smiles upon her, and drops a bounty hunter in her path, one who can fight, who does fight
such monsters for her pay, her life – because, after all, such is a bounty hunter's life, to fight such wretched beasts
that cloud their world, and the princess is the frail blossom those fights, in the end, protect
And frail as she is, she hides, she stumbles back in fear, and they fall: the hard-hearted bounty hunter as well,
captured in the web of fate that has ensnared them both, handed the weapon that lives in their blood over to another
and giving the princess a commoner's form, through which she can step out of the shadows and fight
But it's not the princess is not the fighter, but the bounty hunter in the princess' form, and so she fights with her sword: that monster
and then the beasts that stand upon the king of Farland's throne, and she takes that throne that belongs to her in body, but not in soul
and thus she goes on to rule, with her heavy blood coated sword and her pretty torn dress, in which she looks a doll all dressed
with form-fitting but ill-matched clothes. And really, that is what she is because she's no princess who loves her country and her blood
but a bounty hunter who thirsts for destruction and revenge – and yet she becomes the queen, and learns to love, just as the princess soul
learns to love
And there's the revelation of truth: the traitor, the killer who'd spilt the fair old king's blood upon his chair, was none other
than the brother that princess from old had clung to so very much: the hope for the both of them, for freedom for one, and peace for the other
and their world – but it wasn't to be, and the bounty hunter turned queen was to stay on that throne
forevermore.