I watched from my secret place as they opened the grand Palace doors to the flood outside. There was nothing to see beyond the opaque grey sheet of the downpour. Out there, the whole world ended. All was dissipated half-light, falling steel, and silver. Fine quick rivulets of rainwater slid down like eels upon the ebony grillwork of the doors.
And then, she came in.
She was like gossamer. And she had come out of nowhere. One instant there was a maelstrom of whirling silver dusk wrought of sky water. And the next, she stood in the doorway, drenched like a gentle twig of white baby's breath.
Her skin was succulent white. It was the first thing I noticed, for I had a weakness for porcelain skin in the ladies of the court. They did not know it yet, though some had begun to suspect as of late--just as they suspected that I perused their plunging decolletage and the swelling half-moons of their chests with more than a boy's curiosity. For, I would be turning sixteen winters this very month, and my Birthday would be declared a National Holiday, while a Grand Ball would take place
in the Royal Hall of mahogany. There, my father would present me with a Medal and sash of violet satin, and I would be treated to exotic delicacies and champagne, and dancing with my choice of the most beautiful young debutantes. And, as rumor would have it, among them would be a fair number of foreign Princesses in disguise....
I stilled in fascination, watching her take a few tentative steps, dripping water upon the lacquered parquet floor. Her long hair was plastered to her delicate skull, thus appearing hueless, while filaments of it stuck to her swan's throat like wettened cobwebs. Her dilated eyes were utterly beautiful and vacant.
Their receptive vulnerability elicited in me what only could be called a pang of arousal. It was a sadistic immediate urge for which I hardly had words for.
The two Doormen shrank away from her in distaste. Here they were, in their impeccably fitted uniforms of heavy brocade, their necks sunken like monstrous stamen amid frothy petals of collar lace. And they were reasonably unwilling to get themselves wet. But it was the First Butler himself who noticed that she was about to fall. He came forward just in time to have her fade into a bundle at his feet, a marionette suddenly devoid of strings to uphold her.
She fainted like a felled blossom of a hothouse carnation, swooning down gently in a limp puddle of woman and water....
It all shimmered half-real in my unfocused mind, dislocated images of faerie movement, of her falling....
Her limbs were barely covered as she lay, in a fine soft cloth of dove grey, or maybe lilac which clung to her form with the intimacy of skin. I was not sure of its color, for the lighting here was poor, and the mother-of-pearl glow from the outside was deceptive, a tumult of storm silver.
There were images of her skin, or possibilities of such.
The doors were shut immediately thereafter, while the Butler leaned nonchalantly over her motionless body and called for assistance in a measured tone, even now retaining his polish.
"Poor child!" said a sudden familiar voice, and I saw the lean aging form of my father, the King himself.
Making his way through the corridor, and on to the Library, he had paused at the sight of her lying on the parquet. A careless commonality, his velvet evening jacket was slightly askew at the collar, while his belt sash had come undone and trailed on the floor behind him like a flaccid appendage of mulberry silk.
Yes, such was my father.
"Poor soggy child..." repeated the King, muttering under his nose hairs, and then gestured with one commanding finger, "Take her to a clean bed, and have my Physician look at her. Hurry, now!"
And with that, he again turned, shuffling, and was gone, while the whole household went into an uproar. It was a pointless flurry of activity, as chambermaids were called, and valets went running up and down the curving stream of carved oak stairs like roaches colliding with each other, while the floors shook under their aimless movement.
The Physician was nowhere to be found of course--though unlike everyone else I remembered very well that he had gone to town to fetch some fragrant smelling salts for the King's plethora of incomprehensible ailments. But the Queen was immediately notified. Or rather, my stately stepmother knew that something was afoot, from the noise in the hallways, and she instantly sent out her First Lady to snoop out the gist of the matter.
The Lady-in-Snooping did not lose a moment in informing Her Majesty that a mysterious, young, female creature, cold and dripping and now in an inviolate faint, had been allowed into the Palace.
"What idiot footman opened the door in such a storm and downpour?" said the Queen archly.
But she came downstairs nevertheless, quite in a hurry, it might be observed. She was trailing her onion-skin layers of skirts, while her gelatinous chest, uplifted by a tight corset was set to bouncing and quivering with each step, on the verge of spilling beyond the tight confines of ivory lace.
It was at that point that I came out of my secret hiding place within the walls, and moving aside the tapestry curtain stepped silently into the corridor. Then, I approached them--a matter of apparent coincidence--and made my presence known.
"Ah, Prince Glorian!" exclaimed my handsome stepmother with a little stiff smile, and made a slight inclination of her Royal head to myself, as Heir Apparent. As Her Majesty moved, I watched with perfect discretion the jelly of her Royal Teats set in motion.
"Ah, my Dearest Mother," I retorted with an equally tiny charming smile, "What has happened here?"
"Your Highness," said the First Butler, "Apparently, this poor girl has been taken ill at our very doorstep, and His Majesty happened by, just now. His Majesty has commanded that she be cared for immediately."
"Then proceed," I said without a seeming care, giving the fallen stranger an indifferent glance. And with a charismatic nod to my stepmother, I walked past them all. In doing thus, I was demonstrating a purposeful destination, but in reality was on my way to God knows where in this labyrinthine Royal structure.
)
She came in from the rain, a delicate pure thing of feminine beauty and refinement. And now things will never be the same again for one disfuctional royal family. An erotic dark fantasy retelling of the familiar fairytale The Princess and the Pea, told from the point of view of the young, sensually obsessed Prince.
