NightIntent: Sorry, it took longer than I expected. But I got a better idea for it and deleted what I'd had before. So it took a little while. I hope it was worth the wait.

Disclaimer: I don't own te fairy tale.

A princess's love, and over-protective parents. A "good" plan gone very, very wrong. This is Briar Rose.
"Derek, I think my parents have found out about us," Princess Karen said. "We might have to stop seeing each other."

"But why, my love?" the man sitting next to her asked. The darkness hid his expression. "Shouldn't they be happy that you're in love with someone? After all, you're their only daughter."

"That's the problem," Karen murmured. "I'm their only daughter, they want me to marry a prince. I'm afraid they may do something drastic."

"Like what?" Derek demanded. "Put you to sleep for a hundred years, like in that fairy tale?"

"Actually, they've threatened."

Derek snorted. "Again, you're their only daughter. They won't do that."

"We'll see."

"Yes. We will."

"They did what!" Derek demanded the next day. "They put their only daughter to sleep, until they feel they can find a prince suitable enough for her? Are they completely insane?"

"Seems that way," the man he'd heard the information from said. "But they've done it. Bought the spell and got it invoked. Even showed the girl to a bunch of peasants like us."

Derek sighed. "Now what am I going to do?"

"How about getting over her?" the man suggested. "I know plenty of women who would love to… get to know you better, if you know what I mean." He grinned suggestively.

Derek tilted his head a bit, thinking over the offer. Then he grinned in return. "Sure. Let me meet these women."

The two men stood up and left the tavern they were in, both grinning lewdly.

Years passed. Karen's parents interviewed countless princes, young and old, knowing that they could wait for a prince to grow up. While she slept, Karen didn't age at all. Despite this, they couldn't find a single prince they deemed worthy of their daughter. They grew old, and older still. When it became obvious that they wouldn't find anyone for their daughter, they ordered a castle to be built far from anywhere, with a tall, tall fence in front, covered by brambles and roses, and a tall tower where she would sleep. Behind the fence was an alligator-filled moat. To make sure no one who wasn't completely determined to get to their daughter got to her, they also threw in a slew of trained guard geese for days and a small group of dogs for the nighttime.

All in all, no one could get in unless they really, really wanted to. And no one wanted to.

More years passed. Karen's parents died, and Karen's cousin took over the kingdom.

Partway through the reign of Karen's cousin, a prince heard the tale of the sleeping princess and decided, peril or no, he would try to rescue Karen, and then marry her. This brave prince's name was Allan. So he set out on his journey. Unfortunately for him, his kingdom was the farthest away from the princess's castle. Fortunately, his family was rich, so they could give him fast horses. He reached the castle in a little over two months.

Allan used the journey to plan what he would do when he reached the castle. He didn't come up with much. He figured he'd just wing it when he got there, and not sweat the details. Allan was brave, perhaps, but not the smartest person ever.

So, about two months passed. Uneventfully for Karen, rather strangely for Allan. He was going through a lot of things he normally didn't, having never left home before. But he got through it. Mostly by thinking about what he would say to the princess when he woke her. He didn't even know her name.

"Finally!" Allan said, when the castle came into view. "Now maybe I can see the princess!" After he got through the brambles, over the fence and the moat, while avoiding the alligators, and evading the geese or guard dogs, depending what time he actually got into the castle. But he didn't exactly put this into account.

"Brambles first," Allan remarked. "I'll cut them down, I guess." He started to hack away at the plants with his sword, to nearly no effect. He sheathed the sword and looked at the plants. "hat doesn't seem t be working too well," he commented. "Burning, then. Shouldn't be too hard."

The brambles didn't burn too well, so it was nearly dark when they were all gone. "Better. I'll start over the moat tomorrow." Allan went back to his horse and gear, which was tied to a tree about a quarter mile away from the castle. The horse was a bit nervous from the fire, but calmed down quickly when there was a human presence nearby. Allan settled down for the night and fell asleep.

The next morning, Allan woke up early, when the sun was barely risen. He stretched, changed, reassured his horse, and walked back to the castle. He pulled a few ropes out of his pack. "Um. Now what?" Instead of using the ropes, Allan decided to climb the fence. It wasn't so hard. The stones were all fairly bad. Karen's parents had never bothered to check, so the builders had cheated them a good bit.

At the top of the fence, Allan got his first glimpse of the moat. And the alligators in it. "Wow. Big crocodiles." He sat on the fence for a while, thinking about how he would get over the moat. "Okay. Let's try the ropes, then." Attaching a grappling hook to the end of a rope, Allan swung it over his head, in the style he always imagined people did. He aimed for the castle itself. It fell short. Very short.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," Allan said. "I'll try again." He threw it again, in the same style. After that one fell short, too, he tried to swing it at his side instead. It went a lot farther, almost reaching the castle walls. "Better." He tried again, swinging harder. It hit the wall, wrapping around one of the battalions. "Ha!" Allan blinked. "What now? Oh, right. I have to tie it to… something."

So, instead of doing what he actually wanted to do, which was play Tarzan and swing down on the loose rope, Allan climbed down the fence again and tied the rope to the top of a nearby tree. Scrambling up the fence again, he lost his footing and tumbled back to the ground. Since he had only gone about a length of his body up, he didn't hit too hard. Just enough to bruise.

"Ow," Allan said. He got up, dusted off, and started the climb again. In a few minutes, he was back at the top of the wall. He grabbed a small length of rope from his pocket, took off his pack, laying it on the wall, and, tossing the rope over the long, tied one, started his slide into the castle grounds. He picked up more speed than he realized, and just barely managed to stop from slamming full-length into the walls. As it was, Allan's legs got rather jarred by the impact they took from stopping his movement.

"Um. I think I'm stuck." He craned his neck to look down. He was far above the ground. Rather too far to drop. "And here I didn't bother to bring another rope." Carefully, bracing his feet and hands, Allan tried to climb up. When his hands slipped at the top, he decided down would be better. He didn't notice the geese that were clamoring at the bottom of the wall.

It took him a while, but Allan finally reached the bottom of the wall. And the geese. Before he was able to draw his sword, the geese had bitten chunks out of his clothes. Not to mention him. Mostly his rear end. "Yowch!" he yelled. The second his legs touched the ground, Allan drew his sword and started swinging at the geese. They tried to dodge, but they weren't quite fast enough.

There were eight geese in total. When three had been killed, four or the remaining five decided to flee. The last one was a bit slow on the uptake, and he joined his three dead brethren. Allan wiped his bloody blade on the ground and re-sheathed it. "Well, that was messy," he remarked to himself. "I'll have to remember to take these with me. They'll make a few good meals. If they don't rot before I get to them."

The tower was a formidable one. He looked up to the top, where there was a window. "Why couldn't I have noticed that before? I could have saved time and pain," Allan said. "What's done is done. Where's the entrance? I need to start climbing." The door into the tower was all the way around the tower. Literally. It had been a few feet to Allan's left, but he had been looking to the right, so he missed it and had to walk all the way around the tower. And he never realized his mistake, either.

"Oh no," Allan said, looking up the stairs. "This is going to take a while." Steeling himself for a long walk up a lot of stairs, he started up.

It took him the better part of the day, and a number of rest stops, but Allan finally reached the top. The stairs widened into a room that held nothing but a bed with a girl on it. The window was open to the world, and many different leaves had blown in. A gust of wind came in through the window, unsettling all the leaves and making dust fly.

Allan looked at the princess. "She's beautiful," he breathed. Or she would be, if he could see her face through the dust that coated it. Her hair was the only really clear part of her, and it was still dirty. That many years of not washing, anyone would be dirty. Allan walked closer to Karen, trying to decide if he wanted to kiss her or not.

Surely this wasn't a princess! he thought wonderingly. No princess, even one asleep for nearly a hundred years, could be that dirty and disheveled-looking. He decided that he might as well try. So Allan walked closer to the princess and dusted her face off carefully. She didn't so much as stir. He wasn't even sure she was breathing.

Carefully, Allan pressed his lips to Karen's. He pulled away, expecting her eyelashes to flutter and for her to wake up. Nothing happened. He tried again. Again, no reaction. "What is this!" Allan exclaimed. "Why isn't she waking up! Damn it all, all this work for nothing? I'm going home!" He went back to the stairs and started down. He had a long walk down, and then he'd have to get past the dogs and the moat and the wall. Again. He'd completely forgotten about the geese he'd killed, anxious only to get home.

NightIntent: The poor geese. I didn't want all of them to get killed, so they retreated. I'm not usre what I'll do next. Something or other. And it may take a while. But I'll try to update before the end of the month. Please review!