"-And then EllaCinder got out her flamethrower and the scrapbooks were never seen again..." Cinderella said to the mice that scurried around, not really listening to what the Disney heroine was trying to tell them. At one point, one of the mice- probably quite a bit dumber than the others- stopped scurrying and stood on it's hind legs gawking at Cinderella. It was having this captive audience member that inspired Cinderella to throw a flamethrower into the story.

The prince moved his arm to protect his current scrap-booking project from his wife as he listened to her story. By the time she had finished, he realized he was using his whole body to protect it.

"Hey..." Cinderella said as she realized that there was a man standing outside of their hut, "how long has that guy been there?"

"I'd say he's been standing there for a good hour or so." The prince answered.

Cinderella rolled her eyes at her incompetent husband, rose, and went to the entrance of the hut. "Hello! Is there something we can help you with?"

"You can start by getting out of my house and letting my family and I get back in!" the man replied irritably.

Cinderella spun to face her husband. "Why did you take someone's hut without asking?"

"I don't know," the prince answered lamely, frowning on a smudge that was on one of his pictures. "The hut was empty so I figured it was up for grabs."

"I am SO SORRY" Cinderella apologized. She gathered her things, her mice, and her husband and left.

Unfortunately for her, the prince grabbed his scrap booking things.

"This time I'm deciding where we stay..." Cinderella said as she made her way down familiar roads.

"Where are we going?" the prince asked.

"To my old house." Cinderella answered.

"Your old house? You mean with your wicked stepmother and stepsisters? Would they really be okay with us staying there?"

"Well," Cinderella answered, "no."

--

Cinderella was surprised. She had no idea the walls of her stepmother's place where so thick and hallow.

"This is surprisingly quite comfortable" commented the prince as he realized that he did have some room for scrap booking.

Cinderella cringed as her husband's things began to take up a lot of her friends' space.

She could put up with this scrapbooking for a bit now...

...because she's with her old mice friends. The same mice friends who had been there when she had needed them the most. From "back in the day". Yeah, those mice.

Cinderella was sad to hear that all her other friends from then were dead, as she learned from gossiping among the mice. The prince was ignoring her completely as he was enthralled by his scrapbooking.

The scrapbooking and squeaking (gossiping) went on for a few hours before the prince got bored and started to whine.
"Ells, I'm hungry. When are we going to eat? And for that matter, where are we going to go to the bathroom at? Or take baths? Or make heirs? And when, on that last part? I'm not getting any younger, you know!" He kept nattering on at Cinderella until she could hardly stand it.

"You should have thought about all those things BEFORE you got us booted out of the castle." Cinderella scolded. "And I'll have you know that my mice friends are very generous hosts. Have some cheese. Oh, and more cheese!"

The prince nibbled the cheese with a pouty expression. He really hated cheese.

"You have a point with the whole bathroom thing..." Cinderella continued, "we can't just go anywhere like our friends here," she smiled and patted a few mice on the head. "I guess we'll have to sneak outside for that business."

The prince fidgeted, not liking this situation at all. "...and baths?"

"You should have thought of that before you even THOUGHT of starting a scrapbook." Cinderella said coolly.

"I was supposed to think about how would I bathe if someday I am stuck living in a wall with a bunch of mice before I started scrap booking?"

Cinderella looked thoughtful for a second.

"Yes." she replied. "Yes, you should have thought of that."

The prince caught a small sound of tittering coming from around them.

"They're laughing at me now, aren't they?" he asked.

Cinderella only nodded.

"And, err, the very last thing I mentioned? Does it not concern you too?" he said as he shrugged off the hulimation of being laughed at by mice. The poor prince looked as if he were going to strangle the mice eventually, but if Cinderella responded positively, he thought that he could be the "better man" and just ignore them. Though it was a very hard thing to do.

Cinderella was silent for a very long time and the prince started to fidget. "Will you just answer my question!" he exclaimed.

"I'm THINKING!" was the screeching reply he got. She pondered for a bit longer and found an acceptable answer for her prince. "I believe that we can procreate once you give up that silly scrapbooking habit of yours. Good enough for you? Seriously darling, you say you're getting older but your actions say differently!"

"Fiiinnnee," whined the prince. "But I still have to pee then! Since I can't use my wood any other way!"

Cinderella rolled her eyes. "That's why the Powers that Be created bushes. Just don't let anyone see you go out there."

The prince stared at Cinderella, desperate to find trace of joking around in her expression. Finding that she was actually serious, he sighed and headed for the exit.

Cinderella watched him exit, then turned to the mice.

"Doesn't that scrapbook look tasty, everyone?" she said, a vicious grin growing on her face.

This, unlike storytime, captured the attention of the mice and they began approaching the scrapbook and nibbling on the corners of the pages.

"You know, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," the prince commented as he reentered. "Unlike toilets, you don't really have to worry about aiming so much. You'd think that-" He interuppted his town sentence suddenly with a high pitched scream when he saw the mice snacking on his scrapbook pages. He ran forward, chased the mice away, and cradled the scrapbook in his arms. "It's okay! It's okay! I'm here!"

"Prince Charming saves the day again." Cinderella commented dryly.

"How could this happen? Look!" he held out the scrapbook in Cinderella's face. "Look! My pages have horrible bite marks all over the edges." He collapsed to the ground. "I can't go on!"

Cinderella watched her husband sob loudly on the ground. "Hey, be quiet, they're going to hear you."

The price didn't seem to hear her as his sobbing continued to grow in volume.

"Is it just me" said a voice from the other side of the wall, "Or do you hear one of those stupid mice… crying?"

"Come to think of it…" started another voice.

"Shit!" Cinderella cursed, putting her Disney princess contract aside temporarily. She quickly snatched her greiving husband from the ground and made for the exit.

--

They walked in silence for a while. The prince still clutching the offended scrapbook and looking reasonably devastated.

"Look," said Cinderella, "at least now you can always remember the time we lived with mice in the wall of our old home."

The prince smiled a little bit, "Yeah, and I peed outside and it wasn't so bad."

Cinderella laughed a little bit then refocused on thinking about where they could possibly live next.