This is part 2 of a fairy tale I found that I wrote in Czech and am translating into English in short bits just for fun! If you want to start fromt he beginning, the first part is here: The Proud Princess and the Masked Mage.
Evening fell and the largest ballroom in the palace was primed for Princess Damarishka’s birthday celebration. A quartet of musicians in a nook produced magnificent melodies. People in glittering jewels and gleaming satin danced on polished parquet floors. Diamonds, crystals, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, gold, and silver flashed in the light of hundreds of thousands of candles in freshly lit chandeliers.
Damarishka danced most of all, alternating one partner after another, although each one seemed emptier than the next.
She inwardly sighed. Would she ever find anyone worthy? (Although, honestly, she couldn’t even define worthy. All the attributes she truly wanted had been interred with the childhood dreams she’d entombed long ago.)
At last, the time came for gifts. She opened them one after the other. Velvet dresses, satin gloves, silken scarves, golden bracelets, silver necklaces, gem-set rings, flutes decorated with jewels (not that she knew how to play any instrument at all), even a grand glass piano.
More gifts, and more and more…
But the one thing Damarishka wanted most of all was missing.
Everyone to be allowed to live.
No. That was not a thought she was supposed to have. She wanted a prince. Valiant. Gallant. Dashing. And—
Anything more she could want was stuffed down, back into the box of inappropriate things.
As was right and proper, she puppeted her way through the evening, smiling at everyone and thanking them for each useless luxurious gift while they sensed her insincerity and carped about her ingratitude.
Proud! Vain! Haughty! they whispered behind their hands. Someone ought to have taken a switch to her backside when she was a girl, no matter how tragic the loss of her mother!
Damarishka, attempting to empty her mind further, studied her cat. In the corner, he was lounging serenely on an appointed velvet pillow and licking his flanks, ignoring the gifts with extreme indifference. Watching him, Damarishka imagined he was lamenting the lack of cream for his sophisticated feline palate, morose that not a mouse poked about here or there among the ribbons.
This whole lengthy process is a chore, he thought clearly, startling Damarishka (was her mind so vacant that she was now hearing her cat’s thoughts?). For some mysterious reason, continued the cat in his disdainful vein, while lifting his leg in the air to lick the underside, people do not like rats. And why is the king huddled in the corner and muttering like a madman?
Indeed, Damarishka’s father was balled up in the corner, his eyes rolling until they were white-rimmed and horrified as they watched her.
Oh, Damarishka thought (distantly and detached as always), she had picked up the final gift, a small green box with a peculiar odor. (In truth, she had intentionally left this one until the end, hoping she could secretly remove it from the table during the course of the evening and no one would be the wiser, but she hadn’t managed it.) She didn’t even want to open it, but everyone in the hall was staring at her, and they already thought her ungracious; what would they think if she tossed out a gift unopened?
According to the card attached to it, it was from her father, but Damarishka doubted any gift from him would be very pleasant after his behavior today.
She crinkled her nose, then obediently unwrapped the strange box.
The instant the wrapping paper slipped from it, the entire castle shuddered from its very foundations. Everyone tottered, their wine spilled, cries torn from their mouths.
But the tremors didn’t last long, and no catastrophe followed. (No visible catastrophe, at least.)
There was, however, a golden ring with a strangely brilliant green stone now spinning in the air before Damarishka’s astounded eyes (it must have sprung from the box), then it dove downward and slipped itself onto her left ring finger.
What outlandish magic was this?
A fierce wind rose around her and whipped her hair every direction. Desperate and in vain, she strove to twist off the ring, but it seemed glued to her finger. What did it mean?
The ballroom doors slammed open, swiveling everyone’s attention that direction.
A tall man in a golden mask and flowing violet cloak materialized there, his full shirt sleeves pompously a-billow, his black-clad hips annoyingly trim, his boots immaculately glossy, his body perfectly posed.
Everyone froze as if carved from stone—speechless, amazed—as the unwelcome guest set off and sauntered slowly across the hall, his masked gaze fixed only on Damarishka.
His inexorable approach halted right before her.
You can find the next part here!
And now for something completely different. I occasionally like to lure writers into my lair and get them to write stories on demand. My victim last night was Nate the Great, whose task was to write a story using the following random list of words and phrases: Nancy Nun-chucks, aggressive-repulsive, barking spiders, The clock struck thirteen, and then the killing began, tender age, bedsprings, explosive diarrhea, oxygen-deprived, burlesque, corkscrew, princess, turn me on, I believe in aliens more than love.
Nate the Great performed fabulously. See for yourself:
The clock struck thirteen, and then the killing began.
At 1300 hours every solar day on Sigma-16 base, Kaya donned her space suit and massacred the daily assailants. Wave after wave of extraterrestrial arachnids to obliterate. Today she had competition.
“Who the hell are you?”
A buff guy in an orange cosmonaut suit manned the battle station, wielding a pair of spiked nun-chucks. He saluted. “Greetings, earthling comrade. My name Vladi. I—”
“Look, Nancy Nun-chucks. This is my turf. I’ve been squashing the barking spiders from a tender age. So shove off, Ruski.”
Vladi stiffened. “So aggressive-repulsive. OK, princess, I let spiders eat you.”
“You’re as welcome here as explosive diarrhea, you oxygen-deprived dead-head.”
He adopted a relaxed pose. “You passion for killing turn me on. I want you on bedsprings later. I bring corkscrew and wine from motherland, and we do the burlesque boogie, spasibo.”
She extended her bo staff. It glowed with plasma energy. “Comrade, I believe in aliens more than love. Let’s get let’s get through this round and see what happens.”
He shrugged. “Da. We do that.”
As the twin suns reached their zenith, the spiders came in a black wave of death. Kaya and Vladi stood back to back, bo staff and nun-chucks, to defend humanity’s last hope.
When I was twenty-two, I ran away to Prague, where I now sing to my black cat (who collects dustballs in her whiskers), eat chocolate for breakfast, and have lemon tarts every Thursday.
Sonya Lano 
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