A little while later, Angel was entering the abandoned mill. It was a spooky place, filled with shadows and fallen beams lying at crazy angles.

"Vaggie? Princess? You ladies still awake?" He called. There was no answer. "Come on you two, don't play any games now. This place is giving me the creeps."

Still no answer. He heard a clang from up above a ladder. He was about to climb up and investigate when Vaggie popped out to stop him.

"Angel!" She said. "What are you doing here?"

"I was just coming in to check in on you girls. Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. Yep, just fine. Nothing to worry about."

"Where's Charlie?"

"Sleeping."

Angel looked around the very small room for any sign of the princess. He didn't see her.

"Where?" He asked.

"Up there." Vaggie pointed upward.

"Why up there? That's a little unsafe don't you think?"

"Oh no. No it's plenty sturdy. Now why don't you go on back outside and leave her to rest. You wouldn't want to wake her up, would you?"

But Angel wasn't going to be easily swayed this time. He had a feeling that Vaggie was hiding something.

"What's going on?" He asked her.

"Nothing."

"You lie. Where is Charlie? Why is she hiding?"

"She's not hiding."

Just then they heard quick footsteps from up above and suddenly a rotted beam broke with a resounding crack. There was a scream and something fell. In the murky darkness, a figure slowly rose from the floor coughing. It looked very menacing at this angle. Angel panicked.

"Ahhhh!" He screamed as he pulled Vaggie behind him fearfully.

"No! No! No!" The figure cried.

"Oh no! Help!"

"Shhh!" The figure hushed.

Angel picked a piece of wood and held it up as a weapon.

"Back! Get back!" He said.

"Angel stop it!" Vaggie said. "It's okay!"

"What did you do with the princess?!" He demanded of the figure.

"Angel shh! I am the princess." The figure said moving closer. "It's me, in this body."

"Oh my God! You ate the princess!" He concluded.

"No!"

"What?!" Vaggie said at the preposterous notion.

"Can you hear me?!" Angel shouted toward the figure's stomach. "Keep breathing! I'll get you out of there! Alastor! Alastor- Mmmph!"

Vaggie clapped her hands over his mouth.

"No one has eaten Charlie ya moron!" Vaggie said in frustration. "Now I'm going to let go of your mouth and when I do, you will not scream or so help me, I'll rip out your voice box. Got it?"

"Mmm-Hmm." Angel nodded with his voice muffled.

Vaggie released his jaw and then she turned to the figure who was already trying to retreat into the shadows.

"No use trying to hide it from him any longer Hon." Vaggie said. "Come on out and let him see you."

The figure gave a sigh of resistance and after three minutes of still slience, it stepped out into the moonlight so Angel could see it better. Standing before him and Vaggie was an anthropomorphic female with smooth, fine, alabaster fur all over her body. Her face was like that of a doe yet at the same time like that of a fae, her eyes were dark but there was a red twinlke to them, white and fluffty deer ears were sticking out from her long blonde hair, and underneath her dress there wiggled a fluffty tail.

"What the hell is going on here?" Angel asked when he saw her. "Who or what is this?"

"It's Charlie." Vaggie answered.

"No way." He said in disbelief. Then again she was wearing the exact same dress that he had seen Charlie wear earlier. But no, no it couldn't be her. Could it?

The creature drew nearer to him.

"This is me." She confessed.

They locked eyes and despite the change in color, he saw Charlie in them. He saw the same high spirited yet gentle maiden who had become his friend.

"Charlie?" For once he was at a loss for words. "What happened to you? You look uh...Uh...Different."

"I'm ugly! Okay?!" She said bitterly, turning away from him and fighting back tears.

"Well I wouldn't say that." Angel said. "You aren't at all what humans expect in a female but um...Um...When did this happen? Was it that candy we bought? Oh man I knew some of it had to be cursed."

"No!" She said at the end of her rope. "I've been this way for as long as I can remember."

"What do you mean? I've never seen you like this before."

"It only happens when the sun goes down." She leaned over a barrel of water and looked down at her reflection in the surface. "By night one way, by day another, this shall be the norm. Until you find true love's first kiss, then take love's true form."

"What does that mean?" Angel asked. "Is that like some form of poetry or something?"

"It's a spell. Do you remember that story I told you about the white deer? About Saoirse? Well she was my great-grandmother. My father was one of her grandfawns, when he became a full grown stag, he fell in love with my human mother and became desperate to be with her no matter what. So he went to the an old fortune teller who was rumored to perform miracles and asked if she could make him human like his grandparents had once been. She gave him a potion that would grant him a human form and my father was so excited, that when he drank the potion he didn't finish it entirely."

"So did he turn into some deer-centuar thing?"

"No. He was given a human body but his blood remained unchanged. So I was born like this."

She pointed to her appearance.

"I was three when my father had me drink the remians of that potion but because it was such a small amount, I would only appear human during the day. At night I'd revert to my true form. My father tried to get more of that potion from the fortune teller but she told him that the potion would only work one time for one person each. Which meant that every night I would become this!" She looked back at her reflection in the water. "This horrible, ugly, beast!"

She smacked her reflection and swallowed down a sob.

"My father was so ashamed. He never wanted anyone to know what he really was and what I really was. So he forbade me from ever leaving the castle grounds after sundown and he made sure that no one outside the Ninth Kingdom even knew I existed."

"And when she turned seven, he locked her in that tower so no one would learn his dirty little secret." Vaggie added hatefully.

"That wasn't the only reason." Charlie defended. "The fortune teller told my parents that the effects of her magic could be broken by love's first kiss. I was placed in the tower to await the day my true love would come rescue me. That's why I have to marry Lord Vox tomorrow, before the sunsets and he sees me...Like this."

She slumped to the floor, held her head and wept. Vaggie sat next to her on the left side and hugged her in a comforting manner. Angel wasn't sure what to say, but did his best to console her.

"Alright calm down. Look it's not that bad. You're not ugly. What is ugly anyway? Beauty is in the eye of beholder as they say."

"But Angel I'm a princess and this is not how a princess is meant to look." She cried even harder. "Look at me! Not fully human! Not fully a white doe! I'm a damn freak of nature!"

"No you're not." Vaggie said.

"Yes I am!" She argued. "You two are different but there's at least one group that will accept you! No group will accept me! If humans knew what I really was they'd be disgusted by me! If creatures knew what I was, they'd be afraid of me!"

Angel sat next to Charlie on the right side and patted her back gently.

"Charlie how about you don't marry Vox?" He suggested.

"I have to." She said. "Only my true love's kiss can break the spell."

"But to tell you the truth toots, I don't think he's right for you. I think you should be open to other options."

"Other options?"

"Find somebody who'd like your day look and your night look."

"Like who? Who in their right mind would want me after finding out what I am?"

"Well you know, you're kind of a deer...Creature...Thing and Alastor...You do have a lot in common with him."

"Alastor?" She inquired