Before a Once Upon A Time

The 'Princess' and the Assassin...Er...Pea - A Single Pea

Story 4  - The 'Princess' and the Assassin...Er...Pea

Part 2 - A Single Pea

Of course, it was quite a long trip. The country they were traveling too was actually quite close to the one that was plotting their invasion, another reason an escort made sense. This was all explained carefully to Marie who was prone to fidgeting on long trips, a childhood trait that had never been worked out and perhaps had even been enhanced with the country’s special training because it taught her to always be alert and ready to fight, ready to be on her feet in an instant.

Due to this, Marie spent most of her trip fiddling with a bracelet she wore on her wrist, one of the princess’s own, actually, silver and pretty and very entertaining to spin. The first 100 times. Or was 1000? Who knows? However, the clasp of the bracelet did give out on the way there, hilariously enough. To much wear. Sad really, but the bracelet was returned to the castle with the carriage that brought them to the kingdom. Good thing to. Would save her later. Oh shoot. There goes my big mouth again. Never mind.

The royal carriage actually broke a wheel outside of the town that the castle bordered-I know, irritating, right? I mean, the poor, fidgety girl already had to deal with so much and now she had to wait for a wheel repair too?

Well, she didn’t, but that’s another point, one I’ll get to in a minute. Since the land was so far away, it had taken weeks to travel there-it was a very long bit of traveling, since they had yet to discover many of the things they later would such as planes and atorines. And the poor princess-princess’s were supposed to show up in carriages and not in any other way. So how was she supposed to wait the week for repairs? Answer, she didn’t. Again, be back to that.

The whole reason for the rush was quite simple. In a far away land, called Trine, there was  a very picky queen who wanted to marry her son off for he showed a startling lack of initiative when it came to marrying princesses. She wanted his bride to be the most princess-y princess to have ever existed and that was what she was going to get. She could be picky of course because they were one of the richest and largest country’s in the world. The entire world. And it was a big world, not small like Pluto or Teran. So she began a competition. Every princess in the world was invited to come and try for the prince’s hand in marriage- and there were many tests for it. However, up to this point, every single princess who had come (And it was quite a lot, let me tell you. [For reason why, see above: Very rich and large country], but none of them are quite an interesting as this one so I’ll only tell you about her.)

But the word that they had been receiving their entire trip (Or the coachman had been receiving since it wasn’t polite for a princess to ask and an ambassador was supposed to be above asking anything of peasants) was that even though some of the girls were very, very, princess-like they hadn’t been up to the queen’s standards and had been sent home quite disheartened. One of the perks of sending Marie was also that if she was sent home for being unprincess-like the people could simply shrug it off and say’ Well, she wasn’t even the real princess so what could be expected?’ Which was a much better way to do things because it helped avoid international war simply because of a slighted princess’s honor.

And so Marie had been sent for that reason, for the reason that the country did not trust any other country to protect their princess, especially if it was so close to their enemies lair, and they wanted to make sure that the princess would not be in any herm without the princess ever having to be in the way of harm if she were going to be. If that makes sense. It does to me and that’s what counts.

So Marie was sent. Except that Marie was trained from birth in the same way as the princess but with the goal to protect the princess, unlike the princess who had been trained the same way as her protector to increase companionship and loyalty between the guard and her and to teach her how to separate herself from others and learn court etiquette all in one neat little package. So the two had been raised together, both reminded daily of their rank until they fit the roles they had been given by their parents and birth and by their actions and alliances and everything else that had to be factored in to create a good, honest idea of where someone should be in court hierarchy.