Two: Where it didn't get any better
Thank you all for those lovely reviews. You have been most encouraging and very flattering. It's lovely to feel loved. May I take this opportunity to urge you all to review. I write this for my own amusement, but sadly, I don't write HTML for my own amusement. Offhand, Soho is an area of central London well known for its restaurants, nightlife and other indecencies. Thank you, again.
~Jetso, the Red Red Sky Tail
PS: Thank you, Phasera, for pointing out the mistakes. Writing in the wee hours of the night can do marvels to ones creativity and some not-so-marvelous things for one's grammer. I've corrected this version. Ever grateful.
It is said that the best laid plans always go astray, so it can be safely assumed that not-so-well-laid plans will go cataclysmally wrong. Such was the fate of Princess Daniel's party.
The company representative was also to summon the fairies who had appeared at Daniel's christening party. The company representative thankfully handed the task to the blessings department, who were already very much harassed by the Princess Aurora's parents (They claimed they only received two blessings instead of three, as the last one was a counter-curse and not a blessing.) Fairies were not only busy people, they could also prove very elusive.
The task of gathering a menagerie of talking animals was passed from department to department, each very reluctant to accept the job, since talking critters could be more troublesome than an ingrown toenail. Animals that have mastered the knack of human speech seem to believe it is their duty to compensate for the silence of the rest of the animal kingdom.
The company representative invited all the Princes (and some of the richer dukes and barons). He had also added in the post script for the Princes to bring their magic swords. There was slight problems in this, since he was ever so distracted by the royal seamstress (and her interesting new wardrobe) that he had spelt a good many of the names wrong. Not only did this cause an uproar in the royal postal service, many of the letters did not reach their royal destinations and instead, fell into the hands of some rather unscrupulous characters.
"Love" proved just as elusive as the fairies, if not more so. All this didn't happen so long ago that one can easily buy bottled love. Those were made illegal by the fairy King Oberon ever since the rampant chaos just outside Athens. Only ones available were the ones in the black market, made illicitly by the odd witch who's bored waiting for her next meal to show up at her doorstep. With these there was always a risk that the intended target would end up hating/fearing/angry. There was also a risk that they'd be turned into a horrible tusked monstrosity or a cute three-inch fairy, but those were extreme cases.
Nonetheless, the company, with all its current lawsuits decided it wasn't a risk worth taking so took the easy way out. They hired some violinists (a bit squeaky, but people don't notice when they're in love), a ghost writer (specialising in sonnets and romantic letters), some courier doves (they're not as reliable as pigeons, but they're far more romantic) and a florist (specializing in roses.) With the above, the romance committee, they hoped to trigger some measure of love, without magic.
Wedding plans were neatly filed away in the company headquarters and promptly forgotten about. This one should be grateful for as the planned wedding involved large amounts of lilac roses, lavender doves, pink ribbons, purple gowns, white candles and effusive speeches. The company's wide experience with weddings evidently hadn't improved their taste.
"I'm not wearing that," declared Daniel, pointing at the heap of pink and green velvet the Queen had the discernment to call a dress. "I can't hide my wrist-sheathes up those sleeves and I fight my way through all those skirts to reach my knives and my shortsword simply won't rest on that skirt, I won't be able to draw it properly and I can't see properly out of that mask, anyone can attack me from behind or the sides and there's not enough room in those shoes for my feet, let alone my daggers. Even if I can get to my weapons how am I to fight with a dress that's heavier than I am weighing me down? I'd trip over the skirts when I try running or my sleeves will get caught somewhere or I'll be thrown off balance when I dodge or I won't be able to get back up when I fall or... Can't you at least let me wear mail underneath all that?"
"No one's going to kill you, dear rhubarb." The Queen used to call Daniel pet names like "pumpkin" or "lamb," until Daniel finally declared if she were to be a vegetable she'd rather be rhubarb since the leaves were poisonous.
"How would you know? There's all manner of people out there, not to mention animals... they could be spies, assassins, murderers, pirates, scoundrels, scallywags, knaves, thieves, outlaws, terrorists, smugglers, treasonists, rapists, kidnappers, blackmailers... or worse, paparazzi."
"I'm sure..."
"But how can you be sure? The great hall is most dangerous. There are at least thirteen hiding places where one can hide and six obvious exits, five secret ones and..."
The Queen cut Daniel short before she could start another list. "You will come down to the party. Or else..."
It was the "or else..." that clinched it. The unfinished statement hung in the air. Daniel ended it herself with a dozens of brutal scenarios the Queen could never imagine. Shaking visibly, she pulled on the dress.
With preparations like that and a beginning like that, one would imagine that the party had nowhere to head but up. After all, this had to be where what stockbrokers called "the rebound" comes into action.
Wishing she was back in her lair in the library, Daniel waited for the herald to call her name. She closed her eyes to escape seeing the crowds and the decorations, but opened them again, stubborn not to let an assassin win by the element of surprise.
"I present to you... the Princess Daniel of Pyrai."
In dealing with their complex plans, the company had neglected some of the more mundane aspects of party. The decorations was one of them. They has concocted simply defied description, a motley combination of surviving decorations from past parties. A whole spectrum of jarring colours, put together in a whole new style of revulsion.
Daniel wanted to run, but a thought of the "or else..." kept her walking down the royal steps to the royal ballroom. The room was silenced. They expected a beauty, the greatest beauty that ever lived, the diamond-shattering celestially radiant beauty of the five-hundred-and-eighty-three-and-a-half lined epic poem (not that any of them had actually read all five-hundred-and-eighty-three-and-a-half lines). They didn't expect a rather shapeless (she wore the armour underneath) girl.
The queen had taken great pains to beautify her daughter. She had bleached Daniel's hair with lime and curl it, but this only resulted in a mottled sort of colour and a frizzled look. She fitted Daniel into what she thought was the most gorgeous dress ever made: yard after yard of pink and green velvet all trussed up with salmon pink lace and yellowish ribbons. Finally, she threw her hands back in dismay and hid Daniel's coiffure underneath a violet scarf and her face under a purple mask. The result was very vivid and eye-catching, if nothing else.
Secretly, the company representative, (or rather the royal seamstress whose idea this was) had spread a rumour among the royal suitors saying that the Princess was suffering under a curse that made her ugly to her true love, though others would still see her beauty. Since all the Princes hoped to win the heart of the diamond-shattering celestially radiant beauty, they were all very satisfied with what they saw. Afraid that they'd be murdered by jealous others, they kept what they really saw to themselves and praised the Princess Daniel. A few even quoting one of the five-hundred-and-eighty-three-and-a-half florid lines and most other simply misquoted. The other guests followed suit, not wanting to be found tasteless or blind, thinking it was the curse on the Princess gone awry, (as curses often did those days.)
The talking menagerie was never properly assembled with all the buck-passing the company departments did. In the end, the blessings coordinator begged his cousin (a part-time ventriloquist) and his pet pig to show up. The pig was on a leash, so not to cause any problems.
Daniel managed to blend in quite well with the other masked girls, dresses in outrageous dresses, some even harsher to the eye than Daniel's. She kept her back to a wall (in case anyone decided to attack her from behind), a hand on her weapons (in case anyone did attack), one eye on all the exits (in case anyone decided to barge in) and the other eye on all the windows (in case anyone decided to leap in).
The romance committee still lacked a proper schedule and plans, neither did they have a designated partner for Daniel so they drifted about the ballroom, the violinists randomly breaking into bouts of squeaky music, the ghost writer declaring dramatic love, the courier doves cooing and the florist flirting with the company representative (only until the seamstress found him and reminded him of Thibanese pastries in a dangerous voice.)
The fairies were late, sending the blessings coordinator into jitters. He paced up and down the ballroom until the company representative stated very calmly that the dance floor wasn't covered by the company insurance.
Everyone was a little hesitant about the refreshments that stretched along the long buffet table. The company and the Queen were conflicting in their opinions on what should be served. The royal cook eventually got so sick of hearing the menu changing, he stitched the front of a chicken to the back of a pig and called it a "cockatrice" and washed his hands of the business. Or rather, he begged a most disgusted royal seamstress to stitch it in exchange for a dozen pastry coupons. He also whipped up an almond-covered pig's stomach stuffed with minced pork and spices, which vaguely resembled a hedgehog.
The royal cook had a niece who was very fond of a song about sixpence, so he attempted the proverbial "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." He made one big pie with twenty four live blackbirds and one small pie inside. The effect of releasing the birds was most spectacular, what the birds did in the hall after being released was less so. What the birds did to (or rather, on the pie while waiting to be released) was even less so, rendering the small pie quite inedible.
Most Princes didn't bother trying to engage Daniel in polite small talk, since where they came from a Princess was made more beautiful by their silence. And, they reasoned, Princesses never had much to say anyway. They did, however attempted at some one-sided conversations about how incredibly princely they were. Daniel managed to silence most of them with the comment, "I am ever so grateful for you braving the perils of the curse to speak to me."
At the Princes' surprise, Daniel would explain, "It has promised to strike down any who wish to speak to me. The evil fairy is jealous of the attention I receive..." She would then finish her speech with some very graphic descriptions (involving sheep, disembowelment and mathematical formulas) of what the evil fairy would to those who spoke to the Princess. She was most understanding when left her with an assortment of lame excuses.
The afternoon wore on an evening soon came, but the fairies still hadn't arrived.
"Calm down," said the pet pig, or rather the said part-time ventriloquist through th pig's mouth. "They'll show up."
The blessings coordinator didn't and started alternating between banging his head on the wall and mumbling what sounded like "I should have... I should have..."
"They're notorious for being late..." said the part-time ventriloquist through the pig in a high squeaky voice. "They're just hoping for a dramatic entrance..."
Everyone danced a little, or rather tried to dance. The music was constantly interrupted by screechy snippets of violin concertos, so the dances were punctuated by moments in which the dancers covering their ears and screamed (politely and delicately, of course.)
Daniel found it quite difficult to dance in her gown (not to mention, most dangerous since she would be open to attack with a Prince trampling on her feet), so politely declined the dances with her non-existent curse. "The curse prevents me from dancing with anyone other than my beloved and I don't want anyone to get jealous."
Thankfully, there had been a spree of very strange curses recently (the evil fairy was still on holiday and her understudy had a streak of originality when it came to curses) and the Princes bowed politely, vowing silently to free the beauteous Princess from the evil, albeit erratic, curse.
The Queen was (literally) wassailing in delight as she saw the Princes making their, though brief, acquaintances with her daughter and started a running commentary for the benefit of the King about all the Princes and their wealth. Between the descriptions of Prince This-and-This (who's oh-so-handsome and not-so-rich) and Duke That-and-That (who's not-so-handsome and oh-so rich), the King decided that Daniel must have gotten the loquacious gene from his wife. After some flamboyant pointing and another dozen statements (he's so-so-rich and oh-so-cute) the King left the party, claiming earache and having to attend to some "very important matters of state."
Before the blessings coordinator could kill himself with a spoon, the fairies appeared. The part-time ventriloquist was right about the dramatic entrance. There were wreathes of smoke, indoor fireworks (almost charring the drapes) and a chorus of ethereal music. Spotlights the castle never knew they had flickered on and off. The glass shuddered and the air crackled with suspense. There were flashing lights and neon signs, fanfare and rainbows, fluttering banners and dancing shadows, Easter bunnies (what did you think they do all year?) and lots of soot (from the chimney). The special effects department was evidently working overtime.
Never mind the banners were from a decade ago ("Happy Birthday Prince Henry!") or the fanfare was just a bad recording (marked with a director's comments like "It's a wedding not a funeral!"), never mind the Easter bunnies still had their Easter hats on and the neon lights were borrowed from Soho, the entire audience were very much impressed.
Correction: The entire audience save one, who ripped off her gown, threw off her mask, pulled off her headdress, unsheathed her knife, drew her sword and ran off to the library as fast as her newly sixteen-year-old legs can carry her.
