A ROYAL C**K-UP

Still in the forest enclave where the fairies live...

Prince Chichi of the land of the fairies in the community of unknown or forgotten little folk in Ducksbill, an enclave lost to human sight in Brumpton Woods, was troubled. And, to be honest, it took quite a lot to trouble him because he was fundamentally a happy and outgoing fairy. But he had noted something about the society in which he was a prince that he didn’t particularly like.

It had to do with sex. Now, like any other fairy male he had been fascinated from a young age by the females of his species. Of course he had: it was that fascination that kept the population in Ducksbill at a fairly crowded level. As an example, his own father, the king, was so fascinated by his mother, the Queen, that she had been obliged to produce fourteen offspring, himself included.

Now he’d grown to be almost adult and whenever he looked at a female of roughly the same age as himself something lurched in his heart. It was involuntary and he didn’t particularly like it. And what's more, if the fairy that caused his heart to lurch had particularly beautiful wings, it was more than his heart that lurched. And he couldn’t help that either.

All would have been tolerable for him had the family living on an upper bough of his home tree where the paupers had their dwellings didn‘t have a spectacularly beautiful daughter. It wasn’t just her wings that drew his eyes towards her everytime she passed him by, but her gorgeous hair, her sparkling green eyes and her wonderful rosy complexion. Added to that she chose to wear the tiniest of pretty white frocks designed for any breeze to wisk it around, and every time she flew anywhere near where he was mooching her wings caused just the right breeze to do mischievous things to the skirt of that frock, and maybe it’s obvious how his heart was affected.

And there was more. She chose to fly past him far more frequently than would ever have been necessary, even on market day when the sight of fairies flying hither and thither wasn’t unusual. And that was largely because he was a boy fairy, she a girl fairy and she loved the way his muscular legs seemed to hang out of his fairy shorts, and to be fair to her his almost suggestive pose was often deliberate.

So there was a mutual attraction between Prince Chichi and the lovely Tinklebelle. And therein was the problem because he was a prince and she wasn’t a princess. In fact she was just a bog standard girl fairy, albeit generously supplied by mother nature with more than the right curves for her to be anything but perfect in his eyes.

He yearned that she should be his. He sat between twigs with his heart throbbing like a steam-driven sledge hammer, and gazed forlornly at her as she soared past him, and because she noticed the look in his eyes she often did a spin-around and soared past him again and again. But she didn’t speak to him, She daren’t because he was a prince and she was a nobody despite her physical fairy perfection. She was much too lowly to even think of even whispering to a Prince yet all she really wanted to do was announce her deep yearning for him at the top of her sweet and fairylike voice.

“Oh Tinklebelle,” he almost swooned, and he momentarily thought she replied “I love you, Prince Chichi” as she swooped past him.

But she wouldn’t have even dreamed of whispering that, would she? Not in Ducksbill Fairyland with an angry king bound to be spying on this particular son despite the fact that he had a baker’s dozen other offspring to occupy his noble royal mind.

But she knew deep inside her fairy heart that she loved Chichi though they had never actually spoken to each other in a meaningful way, and certainly never kissed, and unknown to her though often dreamed that Prince Chichi loved her too. And the actual truth was his love for her was so complete that he ended up quivering at the very thought of her.

But what could he do? He was of a sacred royal line that treasured ancient beliefs, and chief amongst those beliefs was the knowledge that the royal line must never be diluted by the addition of inferior blood. This was a convention that had been sorely tested when many an ancient king passed away, leaving only females to argue about which of them had the greatest concentration of royal blood in their sometimes far from royal veins.

Prince Chichi, meanwhile was beginning to experience the birth of a kind of insanity every time he saw the beautiful Tinklebelle on her wonderful wings doing aerial cartwheels in the air next to the Royal Snuggle, which is what they called their noble palace, which was nothing like a palace but more a kind of free bed and breakfast for their noble fairy family.

So when, on a particularly lovely day, Tinklebelle hurtled beautifully as close to the Prince as she dared go without incurring royal wrath, he’d had enough of rhe lurching of his heart and other more personal lurchings that not even he dared think about without blushing, and he took to wing himself.

As a royal Prince he had been taught all of the finest skills in aerobatics, so he had no difficulty in tailing her, and she was thrilled by the very idea that the love of her life was flying close behind her, and she decided to make the chase worthwhile.

Folding her wings so that there was almost no wind resistance to her flight, she made for Birk’s Pond, so named because in prehistoric times an ancestor of the royal line had crashed into it during a long, dry summer and severely dented his head because the pond was dry. It is said that the accident affected his mind and that henceforth he would never fly, but walk around in a most lop-sided way, using a knobbly walking cane to stop himself falling over.

But this particular summer had been a long but not so dry season and Birk’s Pond was far from being dry, so when she landed on it, sitting on a floating dock leaf like the beauty she was, there was no danger of her banging her head on anything, but drifting on the crystal waters like a crystal beauty.

Prince Chichi saw her and his heart was filled with so much pure, unadulterated adoration that his fairy shorts burst.

“My, my, my,” squealed Tinklebelle, “you are pleased to see me, then?”

“My love,” spluttered the Prince, “I will adore you forever, believe you me!”

“Then we must wed,” she replied, thus indirectly proposing marriage to him in a most unorthodox way.

“But I am a prince and cannot marry any old commoner,” he wept, “but must choose my bride from an aristocratic fairy family of wenches with big noses and small bosoms, and discard my true feelings for the one fairy I truly love…”

“What if I were to tell you that I have studied my own heritage and family tree, and that it goes back to even before the great Birk himself bumped his head,” she said, her sweet voice carrying with it the very cadence of perfection despite the fact that not a word of it was true.

“And that is true?” he gasped, “you are of an ancient royal line?”

“I didn’t actually say royal, but that will do,” she beamed.

“Then come! I will tell my father, and we will be betrothed forthwith!” he shouted, and the two of them zoomed into the blue skies, aiming for the royal snuggle where he intended to confront his father with Tinklebelle’s claim to royal ancestry.

But such was his excitement that he crashed head-first into an ancient oak tree and knew no more in this life. His brain was turned into mush and lost the capacity for thought whilst his heart would never lurch again.

“Prince Chichi!” snapped Tinklebelle, “are you dead?”

When he failed to reply she guessed that was it: he was dead his love forcing him to crash whilst in a headlong flight to see the king, and thereafter the tree where he died was known as the Prince’s Doom, and a blue plaque was attached to it mourning his passing.

And, in an afterthought, Tinklebelle realised that her deceased lover had siblings, and after all, one or two of them might do as a replacement for the one she’d lost. She was a commoner after all, and not at all choosy.

She gazed at her dead lover. “What a royal c**k-up,” she muttered, “time to start again.”

© Peter Rogerson, 07.05.23

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Reviews

[AYVID N]

This was so sad and funny at the same time. Tinklebelle knew what she wanted and is out to get it at any cost. The poor prince meanwhile paid the ultimate price. Such is love and all its pain.

[Peter Rogerson]

What an excellent review by someone who understands me!!!

[AYVID N]

It was my pleasure. :)