Birthday Games

6 - Once Upon a Young Princess

Karin walked quickly through the park, ducking under low branches and with bushes brushing against her legs. This corner of the park was pretty wild, or at least curated to look that way by the gardeners. The paths were rough tracks, strips of grass between the larger plants, but most of the foliage was hardy enough to withstand kids running through it. Sometimes they played here, making a secret hiding place hidden among the trees where they could come to avoid adult attention. There weren't any children here at this time of day though, unless you counted Karin.

Karin was a sweet little cherub, thirteen years old and the most beautiful princess in all the land. A little voice in the back of her head told her that her thirteenth birthday had been a decade earlier, and that the fairy fluttering through the air in front of her was an illusion created by hypnosis, but she didn't need to think about those kind of things. She was enjoying the chase too much, because she knew that when she got to where the fairy was leading her, she might get her first real wish, and that seemed the most amazing thing in the world to her. She didn't even realise that she was glancing at a game on her smartphone every few minutes, where text appeared to tell her what she should feel the fairy doing to her next.

The fairy's name was Birthday. That didn't seem at all odd to Karin, because in the fantasy land she was now inhabiting 'birthday' wasn't really a common word. The celebration that had merited a wish from a fairy was her coming-of-age, and much too important to dilute the fun with a mere party each year leading up to it. It wasn't like Princess Karin was ever short of new toys, on any day of the year.

Birthday stopped dancing through the air when they were quite deep in the woods. For a moment Karin wondered if they'd stepped through a gateway into some kind of fairy landscape. She could hear the wind rustling in the branches, a babbling brook out of sight somewhere. But she couldn't hear any other people, and she couldn't see out of the woodland in any direction, quite impressive for an area only a hundred yards across. She felt safe, though, because she knew that fairies couldn't ever allow a human to come to harm, especially not one of royal blood.

"So what now?" the Princess giggled breathlessly, "Is this where I get my wish, or do I have to play a game for it first?" She knew that at both the major milestones of growth, thirteen and seventeen years, the fairies could choose either to grant a wish immediately, or to ask the child to prove their worthiness. She had no idea what kind of game might be involved, though, or how they chose who would merit a free wish.

"Which would you prefer?" Birthday smiled just as widely, and her whole tiny body bobbed up and down by an inch when she laughed. "No, there's always a game I think. Sometimes, it's just seeing if you think about what you're asking for. A lot of girls ask for things when they're young that they feel awfully embarrassed about later. I'm sure you can imagine that, but while I've already made one little mistake, I'll help you out a bit." This time the giggle was punctuated with a conspiratorial wink, clearly letting the young princess know that fairies weren't supposed to advise anyone on the choice of wishes. She didn't even wonder how a single wink could convey so much information.

"If you want, you can have a lot of little wishes through the day, but only one big one. And you can't take anything back, so if you wished to be taller then you couldn't wish to be shorter again if you change your mind. So you really should be careful! Well, we both got to be careful really. I mean, you might say the wrong thing, but I'm really nervous, this is my first big job, and I don't want to mess up your wishes. I don't know what would be worse!"

Karin's eyes darted back to the phone she didn't realise she was holding. On there now were three little cartoony pictures, of things that might happen at some time in the near future. There was the fairy, Birthday, sitting dazed on the floor with stars and little birds circling round her head, and little magic sparks zooming playfully around behind her. There was Karin with the fairy riding in her hair, holding up a trophy of some kind while behind her vague squiggles represented all kind of potentially humiliating slip-ups she'd managed to avoid. The third image showed Karin sitting in a puddle in the middle of a tiled kitchen floor, a spilled milk jug and an upturned bowl surrounding a princess who was probably too young to try making a cake by herself. The three images flashed through her mind as she thought about what might happen, wondering if a clumsy fairy could be even worse than a clumsy princess. She didn't notice the software tracking her eye movements, and she wouldn't have been aware which of the three images she had chosen, even before her post-hypnotic fantasy took the phone and the game out of her mind.

If Karin's subconscious likes the scene where her own mistake embarrasses her, turn to chapter 38

If the embarrassment comes from Birthday's mistake, turn to chapter 7

If she wants a scenario where the two of them work together to keep her out of potentially embarrassing situations, go to chapter 106

(And if the chapter you want isn't posted yet, leave a comment on the first chapter saying which one you want; or put a ♥ on the comment if someone else already mentioned it)