Princess Aurora came from a fairly normal if dysfunctional royal lineage. The usual stuff, drugs, incest, black magic, white magic, flights of fantasy and violent behaviour dogged her past. When she was but a baby her mother was cursed by an evil pin prick (so the story goes) and Aurora was never allowed to have full time education and was home schooled by three witches who regularly levitated because they were inspired by the Disney version. Her father, the King was prone to bouts of bad dialogue and would say things like "This will never do!" and "Over my dead body!" for dramatic effect.
After a while the curse got real because Aurora turned sixteen and went a bit mental. She would sleep walk around the castle as if one of the undead scaring everybody. It was amusing for a while but the staff got bored as she persisted with it past the funny point so most left. Nobody wanted to risk a confrontation. About the same time there was a plague of thorns that just covered up everything. The castle was in a bit of a mess due to the thorns and there was a rumour that a dragon was now squatting in the basement/cellar/dungeon. Sometimes acrid smoke rose up through the floors or hung in the air in stairways and corridors. As revenue from tourists, visitors and pilgrims dried up the King grew even more dramatic and decided to throw a great ball in the hope that a handsome and rich young prince would arrive and after a bit take away the petulant princess as his bride.
Soon the day of the great ball arrived. The thorns were pruned back by religious zealots and the witches laid on a nice spread and a finger buffet. Aurora however was having a bad day and decided to stay up her room, curled up on her bed clutching her phone and scrolling through Instagram posts. As the guests arrived the King decided he'd just drink himself stupid and ignore the plan and as many of the guests as possible. The Queen made a rare appearance and flirted with the princes as queens do. The party actually went well until the dragon awoke from it's slumber and whilst mumbling about gold and thieves knocked down a large part of the castle with it's swishing tail and incinerated a few of the less noble guests. Cough! Thankfully the bar and buffet were intact so the celebration rolled onwards towards midnight.
Aurora awoke, checked herself in the mirror and decided to head downstairs following the blue dragon vapour in the air. So still feeling strangely refreshed from her nap she arrived on the scene just as the sausage rolls arrived and the dragon was about to devour yet another young knight. She let out a loud shriek and the whole place fell silent. "Look, none of this is real" she yelled, "you're all just in my dream, I'm asleep for God's sake, I have been for nearly sixteen years!"
In a purple flash the soporific princess found herself both awake and alive. What's more she wasn't sixteen and she wasn't a princess. She was a thirty something pastry chef called Joan who lived in Blackpool who had come home from work at about 10pm and fallen asleep on the couch, still in her kitchen whites clutching her phone and scrolling through Instagram posts. A burned out cigarette was perched on the edge of the ash tray. "Phew, that was close!"
So you think this was another "only a dream" story? Well as Joan was slowly waking up and trying to sort out her confused thoughts formed from the images and experiences from the dream she heard a familiar sound. She turned around and looked out the window into the street. Everything looked familiar, the red brick houses, trees, cars, gardens, but there was the dragon, swaggering down the street, groaning and belching fire. Behind him there was trail of destruction, smoking ruins and rubble, in front of him was Joan's second floor flat. He seemed focused on it now. Joan opened the window, stuck her head out and waving frantically at the dragon screamed, "Shoo, Shoo!"
The funny thing about dragons is that despite having great strength and highly destructive powers they are easily led by firm words and vibrant body language. It would have been good had this dragon been inclined that way but he wasn't. In a few noisy, brightly coloured and fiery seconds he smashed the house and Joan to pieces and burned up the remains with his breath.
You're probably thinking that this is the end of the story now and you'd be partly correct. The thing is in the split second that Joan was evaporated by the dragon she found herself back in the palace as Aurora. No dragon, no party, no princes, just ruin, thorns and a sense of many years passing since that fateful night. But ...
Aurora was asleep on a bed, locked deeply within herself, tumbledown curtains, timbers and overgrown debris all around but any observer would see that she was breathing, still on the tattered bed, peaceful in the ramshackle surroundings of the forgotten palace. Breathing low. The royal family and their caravan of servants dead or gone, only Aurora left, still and silent in a coma nobody could free her from.
Then, once upon another time a wanderer was wandering by and saw the palace ruins and err... wondered about them. He was by nature a thief and an opportunist but so were most people these days so he was not burdened by the harsh reality of his wonky moral compass. He had to survive for some reason. The sun was low and evening time was slowly cracking across the pale blue into a fine grey. Then, through a crumbing arrow slit, he saw Aurora.
"Is she dead or dying, drugged or just out of it? This is not good. What if I'm spotted here? I've done nothing and now I'm seeing an unconscious girl or a dead girl and that implicates me in whatever might have taken place here ... wait a minute, she's really breathing, low but breathing. Phew!"
With that the wanderer steps back and pauses for a moment. He's thinking hard now, what to do, where to go, perhaps stay and investigate, call for help, what's best? Eyes are darting, here, there, near, far. There is a lot to take in. What's that glinting in there, in the shadows, far into the ruins?
Some say that the only treasure worth having is the treasure that a well lived and generous life builds up in a kindly heart. Earthly treasures are fleeting, shiny tat that poisons the mind and corrupts the soul leaving an dry and hollow husk of selfish emptiness. The wanderer was unaware of this thinking and quickly filled his pockets and backpack with the scattered spoils from the palace ruin which was in fact the princesses personal jewelry heritage passed down through the years from various long departed members of the royal family. As he turned to leave with his booty he playfully pecked her on the cheek and silently mouthed the words "screw you very much".
A few hundred yards away, hidden by a thicket of purple thorns the dragon silently sifted the air and opened a lazy, sleep stained eye. The moment had arrived. The dragon's back was arched, tense, ready to throw flame. And it did. Within a few seconds the flames had consumed the castle ruins, the bed, the princess and the wanderer.
Joan woke up with a start, gasping for air but curiously enough with the faint smell of smoke in her nostrils. "Fuck this for a laugh" she whispered under her first new breath. Back in the room again.
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