The Dark Princess

Mary

I spent two days in the forest after getting the princess out of the castle worrying and stressing. I had seen my best friend being dragged out of the burning castle. I had heard her scream. Oh, her demonic scream. It still haunted my nightmares and rang in my ears, even then, two days after it actually rang out. It was then that the Elfin Princess somehow managed to snap me out of my worried daze. Not surprizingly, it was a neglect of manners that did it . . . eventually. It still took a little while for me to notice her burping and chortling. She was so sarcastic, I'm surprised that it took so long for me to notice.

I finally noticed her astounding rudeness the evening of the second day. She finished a coconut's milk and burped loudly, then attempted to sctatch out some of its innards with her fingernails and teeth. Try as I might, I just couldn't help staring, aghast. She caught me staring out of the corner of her eye as she took another go at it with her teeth. She looked at me in a rather uncomfortable way as she slowly lowered the coconut, grinning.

"So . . . " she ventured, "Never been naughty or inappropriate a day in your life?" I shook my head, embarassed for being caught staring. "Well then, you haven't lived." The princess said this with such surety that I was almost convinced that she meant it. But . . . she couldn't mean it. She was a princess. She had to set an example for her people. Then she finally got a huge chunk of coconut out of its shell, and tried to stuff the entire thing in her mouth. Some strange instinct inside me surfaced. I tried as hard as humanely possible not to laugh. It didn't work. The rediculous, snorting laughter that I despised so much burst forth from my lungs. It was only out there for a few seconds, but that was long enough.

"You shall be a wonderful pupil," said the princess. It confused me, but I pretended to go along with it. That was the wrong thing to do . . . or maybe it wasn't.

-----------------------------------------*------------------------------

Early the next morning, I was woken up by none other than her highness.

"Lessons begin today!" I was now even more confused than I was the night before. She was serious? She saw the look on my face and laughed. "Didn't think I was serious, did you? Well, I was. I will be teaching you in the arts of mockery, sarcasm, when to hide these two arts, and knife throwing. My men will help your agility." This was news to me, but I didn't tell her so. "First up, mockery and sarcasm."

I was dragged out if my tent to find a whole group of soldiers assembled. There was something off about this particular group, though. Every one of the soldiers had their armor on wrong. Every time the princess looked at them she snorted out a short laugh and turned away.

"Okay," she said, "Pretend you are privately examining the newest recruitment of soldiers for your army, and this is them. What do you do?"

I was a little stunned, but I replied anyway. "I would politely help them adjust their armor so they don't look stupid in front of everyone else." She was shaking her head before I even finished.

"Maybe you kind of do that the first time," she replied, "but every time after that you laugh in their faces. The first time you snort and laughingly help them fix their armor so they can do it themselves." I admit, I saw the tiniest bit of wisdom in that. I nodded my understanding and she continued.

"What if there are commoners and servants about?" I thought for a moment. I knew what she wanted to hear. Something along the lines of laughing at them. But a phrase echoed in my head "and when to hide these two arts" I knew what to say.

"You do the same thing every time that you would the first time to show restraint. It should be an inside secret."

The Elfin Princess beamed. "You're catching on quite nicely." She held her hand out for me to shake. "You can call me Lily" I grinned as I shook her hand as only I can. I grabbed her thumb and jiggled it. I used to do that as a little kid, but I hadn't since my mother had gotten mad at me for it. We burst out laughing, grabbing our stomachs and falling to the ground. I think I've found myself a new friend, I thought. It was the only real friend I had besides Brooke. I'm never going back to distant, proper Mary again.

-----------------------*--------------------------------------------------------------

The next day was knife throwing. I wasn't very good at it, so we switched to sword fighting. I actually was pretty good at that, so she had me against one of her best soldiers all day. I got creamed every single time, and Lily laughed at me every time I made a mistake. I laughed with her. That night I had more bruises than skin, but I was happy about it. I had a new friend, and this was our bonding time.

Something did bother me though. I had thought I might make friends with Figi, too (she still hadn't told me her real name), but she had remained at the castle. She hadn't been offered protection from the elves. Only I had. She must've died in the fire. There was no way for her to escape. That night I mourned for my would-have-been friend. Little did I know I didn't need to.

The very next day, as the army threw dirt clods at me for my agility training, I was distracted by a sound in the woods, and got hit by the entire army's dirt clods at once. Their superhuman strength threw me to the dirt. I gave them a pionted look and got up. I walked over to where I had heard the sound, and was greeted by a sight for sore eyes. It was Figi. She looked pretty beat up, and was barely able to respond to me, but somehow she was alive, and that meant I could keep her that way. I took her back to camp and we nursed back to health. That night, after another fail in training, I asked her how she survived. She simply told me that she got lucky. I felt a shiver go up my spine. That kind of luck couldn't last long.