Are waiting to be said.
Now this was embarrassing. Poor Christopher had been knocked from his metaphorical high horse, by that fickle fiend, Karma. The prince's bottom was still sore and throbbing, as he continued to massage his aching backside in a rather undignified manner. Due to his recent ordeal, Christopher's horn rimmed gases were askew on his face, and try as he might, the young prince simply could not set them right again. He was fiddling with his glasses just so, when his princely ears caught the sound of a distinctly feminine voice call from the window above.
"Are you all right?" the broom wielding maniac of a maiden inquired, somewhat bitterly, Christopher noted.
"Aye, fair lady," the prince raised his head towards the attic window, shielding his sensitive eyes from the afternoon sun with his right hand, and answered the girl sardonically, "no thanks to you."
Immediately following Christopher's words, the poor, deranged little thing released another of her murderous squeals, and slammed the shudders of the attic window shut, leaving Christopher without so much as a goodbye.
"Honestly," Christopher sighed with a roll of his hazel eyes, "some folks have absolutely no manners whatsoever."
With a shake of his head, the prince decided that it would be most prudent for him to start making his way back to the palace. It had been several hours since Christopher last left his father and brother, and by now the royal family surely had sent out a brigade in search of the helpless prince, lost and lonely in the Forever Wood. Christopher made an aggravated noise in the back of this throat; if he did not return home soon, his mother would cast him into the deepest pit in hellfire for worrying her so.
Craning his neck to the left, Christopher spied his hunting rifle laying abandoned at the foot of his arch nemesis, the deadly apple tree. Glaring at the abominable tree, the injured prince limped over to where his gun lay waiting, giving periodic yelps of pain along the way. Finally, having reached the rifle, Christopher stooped low, and took the weapon in his hands, slinging it over his shoulder by the leather strap. Then he straightened his body, and whistled for his animals, who came faithfully at the sound of his call.
"Arrow. Sage." Christopher spoke sternly in his agitation, "It's time for us to start home, now."
With his dog nipping at his heels, the prince proceeded to place his right foot into Sage's stirrup, and swung his left leg over the horse's back as gingerly as he could. Only, the poor boy could have landed smoother than he did, as he upset a particularly sensitive part of his anatomy, and gasped in even worse pain than before. Christopher cursed under his breath, and slid off his horse, determined to remain sprawled across the grass, until his excruciating suffering subsided.
Christopher simply lied supine on the grassy knoll, as Arrow lapped at his face with a slimy tongue. Ignoring the friendly basset hound, the boy kept his eyes scrunched tightly together, thinking, 'I don't deserve this.' However, as soon as those words left his mind to float off to some unknown land, the temporarily incapacitated prince heard a silvery laugh hovering just over his head. Her laugh had a pretty sound to it, and if Christopher weren't so annoyed at the moment, he might have appreciated the girl's almost musical giggles.
"You deserved that, you know?" were the girl's exact words, followed by some more of that silvery laughter.
With a heavy sigh, Christopher opened a single eyelid, and from his current vantage point the girl looked about a thousand feet tall, making the prince feel uncomfortably small in her presence. Well, this simply wouldn't do. Christopher would have to rectify this at once.
The boy pushed himself to a sitting position, resting the palms of his hands on the soft grass behind his back, and replied with one of his signature smirks, "I beg to differ, My Lady of the Broom."
Just as he had hoped, his words had some effect on the girl, and she widened her cornflower blue eyes in apparent shock, "You startled me!" she gasped, "It was entirely your fault!"
"Ah yes," Christopher raised an index finger at the girl, "but aside from that initial startling, you lost your temper dismally, and attacked me with your broom, remember?"
Then the girl's cornflower blue eyes lit with a fire Christopher couldn't help but admire, and he thought to speak before she could erupt into another one of her dangerous tantrums.
"Temper, temper," he warned, wagging that very same index finger at the girl whose name he had yet to learn.
She huffed, and displayed her aggravation for Christopher, by crossing her arms across the bodice of her tattered dress, "Who are you, anyway?"
"Christopher," he answered innocently, widening his own eyes at the girl, "But I've already introduced myself. Have you that bad of a memory, or are you simply dimwitted?"
"Why you... you..." the girl was stunned speechless, her face redder than the fruit that grew on the branches of his arch nemesis. Christopher bit down on his lower lip; it was all he could do to keep from laughing at the miserable creature in front of him.
"Now, now," Christopher soothed, flashing a charming smile, "I forgive you. No use beating yourself over what happened in the past. You may help me up now."
The girl took one look at his outstretched hand, turned her head away from him, and spat, "You can go right ahead and help yourself up!"
"All right," Christopher feigned sadness, "but your mother should have instilled you with proper manners."
No sooner had the young prince gotten to his feet, then the maiden whirled angrily around to face him; she delivered him such a deadly look, even the bold young man Christopher was, resigned to take a step backwards.
"You don't know the first thing about my mother!" she screeched, pointing an angry finger at the prince.
"My apologies, miss," Christopher's grin vanished all together, "I didn't think..."
"Oh, but that's just it, isn't it?" her silvery laugh was laced with venom, this time, "You never think, do you? Your tongue only spits the first asinine thing to leave your brain! I've only known you, what, five, maybe ten minutes now, and I can tell as much already!"
The prince could think of no witty reply to this outburst, and stood there stupidly, blinking away in confusion. His horn rimmed glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose several times, and no matter which way Christopher pushed them back up, he was unsuccessful at getting them to rest in their proper place. Christopher flexed his jaw a few times, unable to find adequate words. He had offended this girl somehow. Perhaps her mother had died. For the first time in a very long time, Christopher felt ashamed of himself.
"Yes, I suppose you're right," the prince began softly, lowering his head, a silent gesture begging for the girl's forgiveness. For whatever reason, Christopher simply couldn't bear the idea of this girl being angry with him.
When Christopher again raised his head, he was surprised to see that the girl had covered her mouth with both her hands. This was... this was... curious, to say the least.
"I'm sorry," the girl spilled, when she finally removed her hands from her dainty mouth, "Father always said I had the temper of a kettle ready to be taken off the fire, God bless him."
"No, no," Christopher maintained, "I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the easiest man to get along with."
Once again, the prince's glasses slid down the length of this nose, and the girl laughed that silvery laughter of hers. As he pushed the bent frame back to its original position, Christopher could feel his cheeks flush. Suddenly, he felt uncharacteristically self-conscious of himself.
"Blast it!" he cried, ripping the horn rimmed frame from his face, seeing as it had fallen off his nose again, "this is the third pair of glasses I've bent this month! There's another trip to the eye doctor!"
Christopher waved his arms about his head dramatically, being ever so fond of drama, and his actions caused the young woman to produce even more of that silvery laughter. At this, the prince lowered his arms and pouted.
"Do you derive some kind of pleasure from my misery, Lady of the Broom?" he pouted his best pout, "There's a word for that sort of thing, you know? It's called sadism."
"No, it's nothing of the sort," the girl unsuccessfully attempted to hide her musical giggles behind her hand, "it's just... do you truly purchase a new pair of glasses every time you bend them out of shape? Why don't you simply... unbend them?"
"I never thought of that," Christopher admitted sheepishly, scratching his golden brown hair.
"That's because you don't think." she smirked in her own smug little way, "I believe we established that earlier."
"Touché," Christopher sighed in response, "I never did enjoy having a taste of my own medicine."
"Here," giggling, the girl held out an open palm towards the prince, "let me help you."
Christopher surrendered his glasses, and she reworked the horn rimmed frame with deft little fingers, before replacing them upon his face. And they stayed.
"I... uh... thank you," Christopher managed to blurt out, finding no eloquent speech at this time.
"Oh, it's nothing really. Father showed me how long ago..."
"What's your name?" Christopher suddenly cut in. He felt as if he couldn't go on, if he didn't learn her name.
"My... name?" the girl blinked her striking cornflower blue eyes.
"Yes, your name," the prince repeated, reaching for the girl's arm. Her arm, he noticed, had several foreign blue and purple marks trailing upwards in a sort of spiral. Bruises. "You've got a name, haven't you? I can't very well go on calling you 'Lady of the Broom', now."
"W-well..." the girl stumbled over her words for a moment, "in these parts I'm called... Cinderella."
Cinderella? Christopher mused. What kind of name was that?