The Princess and the Farmer

But Can't We be Both?

"Some sunlight might be nice."

In a small, wooden house with no windows, lit up by candle lanterns using giant's ear wax, walls covered by vines made from frog intestines, scented sweet by marinated eyes and horns of unicorns—the princess walked around restless.

"Turtle tea or bull broth?" spoke the fairy from the floor above.

"Neither," winced Amora.

"It would calm you down a tad." The woman served herself a cup.

"I left without a word," panicked the princess. "Knowing my father, he must've burned the whole kingdom down by now."

She crashed down into one of the rickety chairs made from strewn-together sticks.

"This' what you wanted," replied the fairy, joining her guest by the hearth. The woman snapped her fingers, and a fire made from dragon's breath emerged.

"Not really, I—"

"You wanted to escape from the castle, and you agreed on the deal," reminded the fairy.

"It was a sudden decision—I wasn't thinking well..."

The fairy leaned over and put her cup on the little stand made from a stone sun disk propped onto a chopped log.

"Sad little princess, I can hear all kinds of voices coming from all around the world. They are the wishes and desires of people, but most are just little whispers, little quibbles, little nothings. But sometimes, I hear a voice so loud, with so much yearning for just one single wish..."

The woman tapped on her ear.

"I doubt just 'not thinking well' made you yell out so much I could hear you during my sleep."

The princess moped a little.

"Sorry for waking you," she said.

"So, what had you shrieking like a dying elk?"

The princess studied her own feelings.

"I was... upset," she spoke. "At that moment, at that time, I felt alone—as if... no one really understood me."

"What didn't they understand? Or rather, what did you want them to understand?"

"That I love Jody? That I don't want to have children yet? That I'm afraid of my father?" Amora scoffed at herself. "I don't even know myself, it's so childish and..."

"I believe I see something which could solve all of that." The fairy intervened before the princess became too sullen. "What do you think?"

"Solve everything?" perplexed Amora. She gave it a moment of genuine thought, and then said: "Marry her with my father's blessing? I suppose, but knowing my father—"

"Knowing your father?" squawked the fairy. "You speak as if you can predict his every move, his every whim."

"After nineteen years, you do."

"People never stop surprising you, little lost princess." The magical woman threw another hazel log into the hearth's fire, making it growl bigger. "And you seem to forget one small element in your predictions."

"His compassion?" snarked Amora.

"Yourself," told the fairy. "Your very absence causes him to upturn his entire kingdom, from castle to farmlands. You hold more sway over him than any other thing in the world."

"He's my father," emphasized the princess. "My parent. He rules over me. He controls me. I cannot go against his word."

"Yes you can," said the woman as blunt as a hammer. "Tell me, if you go against his word, what can he do to stop you?"