vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
princess

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term.

Comments

[marycatelli]

Leon looked up from breakfast. "Princess Isabella sent word. We're to gather at the classroom by ten."
Ava hesitated. They had, after all, been reading and walking and waiting all this week, and they came here to learn.
Perhaps she had gotten word that the last student would arrive today.

[marycatelli]

It might be something. It seemed magical. If it were a trivial enchantment, even so it might mark her out. She was a fugitive, she reminded herself. She did not want to look like a princess, but she also did not want to look like a moderately prosperous merchant's daughter.

[marycatelli]

"Dressed to impress the princess?" said Ewan, behind him.
Liam closed his eyes. For once, Ewan had decided to come into the garden. He could only presume it was to deliver that witticism.
"Yes, of course, why aren't you ready? She's going to arrive any minute. You shouldn't fail because you are the middle son. That's unworthy of you. I won't be able to persuade the princess of silver to marry you if you don't."
Ewan's sour face was incongruously framed with delicate pink blooms. "Dressing like a gardener's boy only works as a gardener's boy, in another kingdom's garden."

[marycatelli]

"I-ii-i do not kn-now much of d-deer h-hunts," she said.
His eyes narrowed a little, and she felt the heat rising her face. Her sister was as elegant as a princess, and she --
No wonder her father had brought her. To divert the low-born knight with the silly, clumsy maiden.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

Elaine had been dreading this day for months. Until now she'd been able to deflect questions, redirect interest, but not any more. Mary had hit the "daddy's little princess" stage.

How that girl had acquired a fake-silver plastic tiara, Elaine couldn't imagine. All of Spartan's Own knew where the boss stood on the matter. No way would any of them go behind her husband's back to give such items to his daughter.

But there she was on the terrace, twirling around as if on a ballroom floor in a costume drama. She'd found some of Mommy's cosplay outfits, and had managed to wrap and tie one of them into something resembling a formal party gown.

At least Spartan was on a mission today, so he wouldn't have to deal with the sight. But it still left Elaine with limited time to get Mary out of that outfit and to make it clear to her, in words a seven-year-old child could grasp, that Daddy wanted nothing to do with princes and princesses.

[marycatelli]

Always complications

[marycatelli]

The guards marched off with her, as if she were not a princess.
"Is there not another to be dealt with?" said a heavy-set man, in a crimson robe.
"That one is innocent of wrongdoing," said a thin, hunched man in black.
"She has no right to profit by crime."

[marycatelli]

"And therefore they must not speak?"
"Would you ask a laundress her opinion on your spells? Would the laundress ask a princess her opinion on soap? Would the princess ask your opinion on the proper gown to wear to a ball greeting a foreign prince? Let everyone know his place."