A/N: HI! I am alive! And I, after roughly 3,742 months without any sort of usable internet whatsoever, I have my computer back and up and running!!! So I can finally write and update!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Note the excitement by the dramatic use of exclamation marks.)

Okay. Here is a new chapter. Hear that? A NEW CHAPTER. Holy smokes, I know! Gasp! And it's fairly long. And new chapters will be coming in slowly but regularly. Slowly, b/c no one on earth (that I personally know) is aware that I write, except for one other person who hasn't read any of my stories. So I write only when I'm alone and have a guarantee of not being disturbed. And regularly, because I have GOT to get this finished eventually... it's been what, two years...?

Ahem...:

As soon as I got home, I made myself a cup of tea and settled down to read my e-mail and check on Cinderella's situation. She was doing wonderfully, shrieking at servants to sew her dresses with ONLY gold thread, demanding fresh bouquets of roses --- the three hour old ones were wilting, or so she claimed --- and practicing wearing a crown and sitting on a throne. Any free time she had was spent either gossiping and socializing with the ladies of the court and taking romantic walks with Prince Charming. She was positively blissful, and I was quite certain that THIS time, my job was close to being done. Of course, I knew from experience that I couldn't count on anything until my case report was written and turned in, but there didn't seem to be a great chance of anything bad happening.

After replying to a few e-mails --- mostly from Clarabelle, who had heard some of what had happened and was extremely anxious to hear if I was all right. Then I changed into my nightgown, and read for a good half hour before falling into bed, for a much-needed rest. I made sure to turn my alarm clock off.

The next morning, I awoke to sunlight streaming across my floor, and birds twittering outside. There was also a very strange sound coming from my kitchen...

Wrinkling my eyebrows, I crept out of bed, tied a bathrobe over my nightgown, and tiptoed to the door. It wasn't burgulars, it was too late in the morning for tha, unless they were extraordinarily stupid. And it wasn't Mother, unless for some strange reason she had decided to come home two months early from Jarujabell, and that was HIGHLY unlikely... Mother wasn't one to cut down on vacation time for ANY reason. Maybe Clarabelle had broken in, she'd done it before. But that didn't sound like her...

I cracked the door and peeked out and down my narrow hallway. I could just see the kitchen table. Someone was sitting there, with her golden-haired head on her arms, sobbing. I didn't recognize her for a moment, then:

"Cinderella!" I exclaimed, hurrying out of my room, clipping my hair up into a rather messy bun as I went. "WHAT are you doing here?"

She looked up at me, her eyes swollen --- but in a very ladylike way, of course. She sniffed, and wiped her nose daintily on an embroidered handkerchief.

"I... I..." and she burst into tears again. I felt almost sorry for her.

"Why don't I make us some tea, and you can tell my all about it," I suggested in what I hoped was a soothing voice.

"Raspberry," she demanded pitifully. I turned my head to the cupboard quickly to hide my sudden smile. Really, the girl was sitting at my kitchen table, sobbing as though her heart was broken... it wasn't funny. Or at least, it shouldn't have been.

"All right, raspberry." I bustled around for a moment, filling a teapot, rummaging through my messy cabinets, trying to find the tea.

"Why don't you just use your wand?" she asked after a moment, in an almost accusing way.

"It's against the apartment rules to use little magic inside," I explained. "Otherwise, too many other godmothers, godfathers, genies, wizards, and all the rest, would be completely overloading the building. Magic is for big things only."

"I should think using magic for a princess in sore distress would be considered 'big,'" she sniffed.

"Well, I would agree with you," I lied, "but I don't think I'd care to explain that to my landlord. Here." I handed her a teacup on a saucer, with a delicate little spoon next to it. She surveyed the china, then seemed satisfied --- she didn't complain about it, at any rate. I poured some steaming tea into her cup, offered her some sugar, which she brightened up considerably at, then settled myself down.

"So, what's the problem?" I asked, steeling myself to hear that the prince's marriage to anyone but a born-and-bred princess was illegal, or something like that.

"It's... it's..." she dabbed at her nose again with the handkerchief, "it's... oh, fairy godmother, it's so awful!"

"What is it?" I asked, trying to sound concerned over her welfare. "Is everything all right at the palace?"

"'Is everything all right?'" she repeated, suddenly almost hysterical. "Of course everything isn't all right! Would I be sitting here in this tiny apartment instead of in my enormous suites at the palace if everything was all right?"

"No." I left it at that. She didn't need encouragement.

"I supposed I had better start at the beginning," she sighed, returning abruptly to her damsel-in-distress lachrymose attitude. "Do you have any chocolate? It always improves my mood, and I know you want me to feel better!"

"Yes," I said, standing up. I went back to the cupboards, and rummaged around, finally producing a large bag of Choco Toads. I looked at them, decided a toad was definitely not a shape I wanted to serve Cinderella --- who knew how loudly she'd shriek? --- so I opened the bag and quickly transfigured them into cute little butterflies, then dumped them into a large bowl so she wouldn't see the wrapper, which had large cartoony illustrations of warty toads with long, slimy tongues, happily eating big juicy flies.

"So," I said, sitting back down, "what seems to be the problem?"

She reached into the bowl and pulled out a rather large handful of the butterflies, and morosely ate one. I waited. Then she sighed heavily, dumped the rest unceremoniously on the table, and put her chin in her hands, staring glumly at the cheery, bright flowers on the white bowl. I waited.

"Well..." she started eventually, "I... oh, it's so sad! The prince and I... we... yesterday, he and I were working on picking out my wedding clothes. And... and we had a bunch of dresses selected, and the hair things, and gloves, and a bunch of crowns that we like... and then..." she took a deep breath and blinked as though trying not to burst into tears again. "He said I had to wear glass shoes!" she finally burst out.

"Well, that's stupid," I said, helping myself to a butterfly.

"Glass shoes!" she exclaimed dramatically. "Glass!"

"Tell him that you won't wear them, they'll break," I said with a shrug.

"I did!"

"And?"

"And he said that they won't break, they'll bend and stuff. They're fairy-made," she added. "Not like YOU. One of the little ones."

"Then what's the matter?" I asked, slightly puzzled. There was no logic behind this drama.

"I think they're ugly!" she said, as though this should have been obvious. "I don't want to wear them!"

I paused and tried to come up with some wise counsel she'd understand. I bit back the urge to say something along the lines of "Tough noogies." Finally I grabbed a floating thread of an idea, and started talking, feeling extremely grateful for the Marital Counseling class I had gone through for my degree.

"You love the prince, right?" I asked. Her answering gave me more time to come up with some sort of reply.

"Yes. But that doesn't mean I should have to wear ugly shoes!"

"That's true," I said slowly. Okay, now I had to convince her that if she really did love the prince, she should wear ugly shoes. It was the kind of logic that children end up going to psychiatrists over later in life, but I didn't really care... get her married, and the psychiatrist could deal with it, my part would be over. I was starting to question why I had chosen this as a vocation and not gone for something simple, like... dragon taming.

"So you do love the prince. Do you want to marry him?"

"Not if he's going to make me wear ugly shoes!" she wailed. I shot her a stern look. She sighed. "Okay... er, I mean, INDEED. I do indeed wish to marry the prince. But not in those... things!"

I ignored the last comment.

"In a marriage, you'll need to make sacrifices. Once you're married, you need to work to get along with your husband. Marriage isn't easy."

She looked shocked at this. I decided to start backpedaling REAL quick.

"But it's worth it," I stressed, "in return for your hard work and sacrifice, you are going to get a wonderful relationship with the prince in return. Your marriage will be a strong one, full of love and fulfillment." I was starting to sound like one of my cheesy old textbooks. "And besides, you aren't going to have to work very hard to have a fantastic marriage. You are marrying the PRINCE, after all."

She looked smug at this reminder. I continued.

"Sometimes you will have to make tiny sacrifices, like wearing shoes you don't care for. But in return, you'll have a happy husband. And next time he wants you to do something like this, you can remind him that you wore ugly shoes for him, and so you shouldn't have to do whatever it is this time." This, of course, was the sort of thing that leads to UNhappy marriages, but Cinderella didn't need to know that. Besides, she'd probably have done it anyway, without me telling her to. "It gives you a certain amount of power."

"Oh." She looked thoughful, and started eating the chocolate again. I watched her closely, hoping for some sign that she agreed with me, and would go to the palace and stop causing trouble. And I got it.

"Fine," she said, leaping up very suddenly. "I'll wear the ugly shoes. Bye. Only I want to take that chocolate with me, the butterflies are cute."

"Help yourself," I said, one eyebrow raised.

"I need something to carry them in," she said pointedly. I stood, surveyed her for a moment, and went and got a plastic baggy. She sighed loudly.

"Not something PLASTIC," she said in irritation. "Something silk, velvet, or crystal."

"Oh, of course," I said, refraining from adding a very sarcastic "Your Majesty." At least out loud. For Pete's sake, this girl was high-maintenance! I darted back into my bedroom, rummaged through a tote full of fabric, and found a pink silk handkerchief which I had been planning on using for trim or something... it was too ugly and PINK to stand alone. I brought it back into the kitchen, dumped the butterfly chocolates into it, and tied it into a frilly little bundle.

"Thank you," said Cinderella, in what she obviously thought was a gracious voice.

"No problem," I said, NOT rolling my eyes. I handed the bundle to her, and she took it, then went and stood by the door expectantly.

"Bye," I said. She said nothing, just stood and looked at me. "Is there anything else I can help you with?" I asked at last, getting rather uncomfortable with that expectant stare directed at me.

"I can't walk back to the palace alone," she said.

"You walked here perfectly fine last night."

"But this is not last night," she said, as though that made all the difference in the world and I was extremely dense not to realize that.

"Well, I'm not walking you there, I have things I need to do today." This was the truth... I had planned on sitting in front of the television like an idiot until late afternoon, eating bon-bons and reveling in the fact that Cinderella was almost married.

"Call me a cab," she ordered. "An expensive one."

"Fine," I snapped. "But the prince gets to pay the bill."

"Fine," she sniffed in return. I went to the phone, dialed up the most expensive cab company I could find. They said they would be there in three minutes or less "Or the ride's free!" I was rather hoping they'd get to my apartment in exactly three minutes and two seconds... free ride, and I wouldn't have to put up with Miss Princess much longer than was absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, that ran very counter to the International Laws of Murphy-etic Comedy, which meant that the cab arrived exactly two minutes and fifty seven seconds after I had made the phone call ordering it. That was all right, though... I just made it quite clear to the cab driver --- this was while I was standing outside on the curb in my bathrobe, of course --- that he would be paid when he reached the palace. Cinderella objected quite strongly to this at first, but once I pulled her aside and reminded her in an undertone that it would be a wonderful chance to demonstrate of her wealth and benevolence to the general public, she brightened considerably and said that certainly, she would be happy to ensure that the cab driver was paid as soon as they reached the palace, and that she would also personally ensure that he was given a large tip, in "nice shiny coins!" He looked pleased with this arrangement, and soon, they were off, and I was left alone to bask in the silence of my apartment.

Well, for a while, at least. Fairly soon the hag upstairs --- and I mean that quite literally --- rolled out of bed at her customary late hour, and began stomping around as she usually did before her morning carrot juice, which, for some reason or another, served to wake her and turn her into an immensely pleasant person. But until then, she was loud and grumpy, and every loud and grumpy sound she made floated right down into my kitchen. So I turned on the morning news, dumped out the raspberry tea and filled it with peppermint, and settled down for some proper weekend wake-up time. Which meant sitting around in my pajamas until my long, leisurely breakfast was over, then sitting around some more until I finally decided to get up, get dressed, and do something productive. Such as go fly to the palace to do some snooping.

Not that I wanted to. But I was getting a whole host of those highly-annoying-but-it's-for-your-own-good-you-know prods in the conscience. I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I were to just do a little here and a little there and not fully look into the consequences of my actions, yaddi-yadda-yadda, said the voices in my head. So, at about noon, and after quite a few battles with what I wanted to do and what I should be doing, the conscience won the war. I packed my purse with a few devices --- the Xtra Ear, that sort of thing --- actually got dressed and slipped into a very Saturday-ish baggy blouse, capris, and flip-flops (which I sincerily hoped wouldn't fall off of the flight over), grabbed my wand, and left.

Cinderella was in her Royal Brunch Chamber with the prince. I could see them through the glass... they were sitting across from one another, talking, she looking very earnest, he looking very everyone-lookit-me-I'm-humble! Apologies were going on, of course. I dug my Xtra Ear out of my purse and slipped it in.

"And darling," Cinderella was saying passionately. "I will wear those slippers! And I shall not make one word of complaint, even though they are the stupidest idea ever to cross your darling royal brain ---" the prince beamed at the "darling royal brain" bit "--- because I love you and wish to marry you and live in peace and harmony, and after all, marriage does require a bit of work, but it's all worth it in the end because our marriage will be full of love and fulfillment."

The prince beamed. I grimaced.

"Those are deeply wise and profound words, sugar-muffin," Charming said gravely. The woman serving them looked revolted.

"I am a very wise and profound person, snookums," said Cinderella sweetly, leaning back and daintily shaking sugar onto her cantaloupe. The serving woman's face turned from revolt to utter disgust.

"Indeed you are, my little honey pie!" said the prince. He leaned forward, and he and Cinderella brushed their noses together affectionately.

The server made her escape.

"Honey bunny," Cinderella said. "When is the wedding?"

"Well, my little water lily, I was thinking that the spring after next would be lovely, don't you think?"

"But my ickle princie! The spring AFTER next? Why can't it be sooner? I want to marry you and live happily ever after as a princess should, but I can't do any of that until I'm an actual princess, and that can't happen until I've married a handsome little prince like YOU!" She was very passionate about this little declaration.

The prince looked blankly at her.

"You mean you're not a princess?"

Cinderella shook her head and smiled as if to say, "Oh, you funny cute little thing!"

"No, sweet cake," she said, "I told you that already. But according to royal law, I'll become a princess when I marry you."

"Oh. Then, my darling little buttercup, the wedding must be as soon as possible!" He declared. "How about next spring?"

"That's almost a whole year away!" Cinderella cried, clutching at her heart with her smooth and perfectly manicured hands, which now sported such an abundance of rings it would be impossible to pick out the engagement ruby the prince had given her.

"But sweetie pie," Charming said with an overdone air of helplessness, "it takes a long time to arrange a proper royal wedding."

Cinderella returned to sprinkling sugar on her fruit. She said nothing for a moment, then looked at him and said dramatically, "Not if we have help."

"We have help," the prince said flatly. "I'm the prince, remember?"

"Oh, no, dear, not that kind of help. Everyone uses that kind of help for their wedding. I'm talking SPECIAL help. MAGICAL help." The prince gasped, then looked very interested.

"MAGICAL help, my little piece of kelp?" He grinned happily. "Hey... I made a rhyme!"

"BACK to the subject, my darling cuddly teddy bear," Cinderella said. "Yes, magical help. I know just where I can get some."

"Tell me, love. What do you have in mind?"

I crossed my fingers, hoping Cinderella wouldn't say "my fairy godmother". The prince, I was sure, would react none too kindly to my messing in his affairs, and, though I was sure it wouldn't be hard to psychologically convince him that it was really his idea, it would take up time and energy I didn't have to waste.

"Oh," said Cinderella. "I have some..." She looked at him coyly. "Contacts."

"What do contacts have to do with magical help? Are your eyes naturally blue, even, or is it contacts that are making them that way? And I thought you had perfect vision!" He looked offended.

"Not THAT kind of contacts, my little maniacal munchkin," she said with an irritated air. "I KNOW people. I've got STRINGS to pull. Do you understand, honey-woney?"

"Oh. Of course I do, my little sugar-wugar!" They did the Eskimo kiss thing again, then settled into a pet-name-filled discussion of which flowers to include in her bouquet.

A/N: Okay, it's been a while. So you've GOT to review, just to let me know that someone out there is reading this! Pretty please? Grazie!