Just a silly story I wrote a little bit more than one year ago. I’m still doing rewrites so, yeah, that’s taking up most of my writing time. Re-reading this kinda makes me laugh. Someone said he and I could maybe work on a children’s book one day. That would be so awesome! Meanwhile, here’s the absurd and nonsensical tale. ;)
Sleepy Beauty
(Mari Anjeli, April 2012)
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a beautiful princess. Her name was Sleepy Beauty. Yes, you read correctly. Sleepy Beauty – not Sleeping Beauty. The latter was Sleepy’s cousin (once or twice removed) and was in deep slumber, as of the telling of this story. But the former, our heroine – she was not in slumber. She was in fact under a different kind of curse – one that never allowed her to sleep, yet made her eternally sleepy.
Thus Sleepy Beauty’s name. Sleepy was an unfortunate soul. Sometimes, she would sit at the dinner table with a spoonful of soup lifted up to her mouth when her eyelids would flutter and the spoon would fall to the table all a clatter. Other times, she would be brushing her hair by her bedside table and just when she would reach the hundredth brush stroke (she would brush her hair one hundred times every night), she would nod off for a second. And then she would lose count and would have to start her brushing ritual all over again, forgetting that she had actually already completed it. This happened almost every night. And so you can see how incredibly unlucky Sleepy was.
At night, you’d think she’d find reprise, but she never did. At precisely nine o’clock, she would crawl into bed (after brushing her hair one hundred times – or more). Then she would close her tired eyes. But, drowsy as she may be, her mind and body never reached that state of restfulness. She’d find herself aware of every noise, of every scent, of every movement – and she knew that she was not asleep. No, not at all.
The truth was, there was nobody to blame for this misfortune except Sleepy Beauty herself. She wasn’t always that drowsy. In fact, when she was just a child, before she turned 13, she was annoyingly perky. Coffee was not yet discovered during that time, but if it were, people would have described the child as “annoyingly high in caffeine.” She would buzz about, jump at people, giggle-giggle, and irked a certain witch so much (yes the same one that put her cousin – once or twice removed – to sleep) that the witch cursed her with that eternal state of sleepiness. Well, eternal, until Sleepy would taste of true love’s first kiss. Of course true love’s first kiss would always break the spell.
But who would want to kiss a drowsy dame who would doze off just when you are about to lean in? No one wanted to risk doing so because one time, a duke from a neighboring province did – and he ended up with a broken nose. A really broken nose.
And so Sleepy remained sleepy. And dinner time remained punctuated by cluttering utensils and she kept brushing her hair more than a hundred times almost every night.
But everything was about to change. One day, the princess met a dwarf with the same predicament. It was during a wedding of a maiden from another kingdom. The blushing bride had skin white as snow and lips as red as snow and was telling the guests the story of how the prince’s kiss was able to give her new life. She had been poisoned by an apple. Now, why would princes jump at the chance of kissing corpses or maidens who most probably would have bad morning breath – and not jump at the chance of just having a potentially broken nose? Anyway, it was during the maiden’s speech that Sleepy Beauty caught a glimpse of a tiny chap who was also trying hard not to doze off. She assumed that he was under the same curse that she was.
“Hello, my name is Sleepy Beauty.”
“Hello. I’m Sleepy. Just… sleepy.”
“Oh. A pleasure to meet you. Are you a friend of the bride?”
“Oh yes. I am. We took her under our wing when her evil stepmother tried to kill her and the hunter sent her away.”
“I see. We…?”
“Yes, I and the other six dwarves.”
“The other six d…” And before Sleepy Beauty could even say dwarves, she found her eyes closing and her speech drawling. Only when she heard a voice say, “Miss beauty, are you okay?” That she remembered that she was at a wedding and was conversing with a fellow drowsy one at that.
“How do you feel about having your nose broken?” Sleepy Beauty asked when she was (almost) awake enough.
“My nose? My nose doesn’t matter to me. And I don’t think it is likely to get broken. Dwarf noses are very squishy you know.”
“Is that so?”
You could probably guess the series of events that happened after that. You might argue that a dwarf could never be one’s true love, but who says the title is for Prince Charmings and Knights in Shining Armors only?
And so Sleepy Beauty was cured of her curse. But it turned out that Sleepy (the dwarf) was not cursed at all. He had a sleeping disorder called narcolepsy – but Beauty could live with that. When they got married, she changed her name. No longer did she call herself Sleepy Beauty – from that day forward, she was called “Sleepy’s Beauty” instead.
And you could probably guess that they all lived happily ever after.
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