Once upon a time in Ventralli

Tangled Mask

Once upon a time in Ventralli  there was a king and a queen who wanted an heir. Finally they were blessed with a beautiful girl and the whole kingdom congratulated them. They spent weeks celebrating the arrival of the beautiful princess and each kingdom came to meet the small girl.

But in a stormy night, an evil woman appeared and stole the princess without anyone noticing. When they approached the crib, the child had disappeared.

They searched for her in all Primoria for years, but there was no trace of her. The king and queen were destroyed, losing hope every day that passed without finding their daughter. They cried disconsolately, begging for a miracle.

The evil woman had taken the child outside Paisly, hiding her in a tall tower next to the mountains. It had no doors or stairs, the only way to reach the inside was through a thick vine that had been growing for years.

The princess felt incredibly alone. She was only seeing the wicked woman when she brought her food. Apparently, she wanted revenge from the king for an old resentment of the past, and she was paying the consequences.

The girl sang, painted, wrote. She used her time with each new thing she could think of. But there really wasn't much to do, she had more than enough daylight hours and was completely boring.

She counted the days she had been locked up, looking at the horizon and hoping someday to know what lay beyond. Hoping for freedom. And wondering who she really was.

One day while singing, a boy who was passing by heard her voice and mesmerized by the beauty of the melody, he climbed the tower using the vine. When he reached the window and enter the room, he found the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Her dark hair was very long and she was wearing a mask on her face that made her even more mysterious. He wondered what would be making a Ventrallan there alone. She showed a mixture of surprise and fear, her innocent eyes never leaving the boy's. She obviously wasn't expecting him, not really expecting anyone.

When he approached her to introduce himself, he noticed a long braid falling from her mask. Too late he realized it was entangled in his legs and both fell to the ground.

"A strange way to know you" the boy said with amusement. "I don't usually introduce myself this way."

The princess blushed and the boy's smile grew even more, showing a dimple.

The girl told him her story, about the years she spent locked up without any sign of affection, and the boy immediately offered to get her out of there. Carefully, he helped her down the vine and brought her to his home. It turns out he was the prince of Paisly and he spent every day with her in court.

The princess couldn't be happier, her enthusiasm delighting the prince. She was quite shy for her years of solitude, but every day she was opening more to the people she got to know and who treated her so well. And she couldn't stay away of the prince either, who was so charming and attentive, which made her feel like the center of his universe.

But she just felt that something was missing, there was a hole inside her that no one could fill.

A beautiful evening, the kings of Ventralli arrived to Paisly on a diplomatic visit. Their eyes couldn't believe what they saw. They recognized their daughter immediately and hugged her, telling their story. The three of them fell to the ground crying and laughing with excitement about finally being reunited.

After spending several months with her parents, the princess could wait no longer and married the prince of Paisly. Her life was filled with happiness as their happily ever after had arrived with a whole family to replace her loneliness.