Written By: Natalia Flores
There once was a Kingdom that stood with women as beautiful as Aphrodite and men as handsome as, well, a man can be. The noble and absolutely gorgeous King Brent of the Toads, where Toads ruled the pious Woodlandia, was wed to Helen of the Broads. Helen stood ethereally, a true wonder to the eye, fair faced, delicate and kept like a garden of roses. And King Brent had his pick; for the King had never kissed a rose, or kept one for long, and followed what his nature desired. For what else had God intended such a maiden of a round face (and bosoms), so he took her for his wife, his bedside companion, in the company of angels. And as wished and very much deserved, He gave the virtuous couple a daughter. This child glowed as her mother, giving light and illuminating Woodlandia. All men stood for this baby, all women cried for this baby, for she was a child of Heaven, and they all wished and prayed to the sky down on their knees, obedient to His gifts, that they would own as much beauty as the noble princess. My Dear Reader, it is important to note that before the birth of the enchanting baby, Queen Helen was the woman of all Woodlandia. Her child only solidified her own beauty, for the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and God knew, the kingdom and its inhabitants knew, this baby was pure mother.
The baby was named Cassiopeia of the Stars. The King was enthralled by the beauty, created from his own being. He loved the fruit of his loins, while still hoping for a knight and he promised his wife he would protect this baby from all subterfuge. “Shall I be impaled; I will do my princess no dishonor.” The kingdom came, gathered at the castle’s entryway, equipped with gifts suited for a child of such fairness, but one woman, parrotlike in structure but a dove within, gave this child a marvelous whim. “May this child, from God’s Garden, be as beautiful as she is fair, as strong as she is divine, and make those she touches all that and some wine.” The guards marveled at this woman, for she was unsightly, and so in the court’s eye, anathema. But at the utterance of these words, and the placement of her fingers in the child’s grip, at once she was a dovelike lady, with eyelashes the fluttered sweet nothings at men, and pupils so endearing, it made even the most unassuming tear. And so, all that gave the beautiful Cassiopeia an offering would put their fingers in her grip and become as delightful as they can be.
King Brent took glory in his belle of a princess, seeing toads turn into flowers, stumps into evergreens, and the hideousness into beauty. Unknown to the kingdom, and soon a precedent that would set him up for the rest of his royal life, the Trolls of Wood had learned of Cassiopeia’s gift. For King Brent was a regular patron of the Wood, my Dear reader, helping the misfortunate through his charitable efforts. In this goodness of heart, he had found himself enchanted by three Trolls. For the power of three is unlike thee, and Cather, Joc and Edwina had enchanted the King of Toads many moons ago. In their thick skulls and skin that reeked of excretion, Brent saw bodies of crusting love, thus he quickly became a fixture amidst their sheets. The oldest of the three was Cather, with eyes as beady as that of a rat’s, and the true passion of King Brent’s life, or so she was convinced by their clandestine meets. The King loved women, and how their bodies sashayed across rooms, and their eyes met his with desire. But man and beast alike, the King loved Trolls, and his proximity to uninhibited nature, in that way he felt true power. Such a mighty man could not limit his love to only one of anything. And for that, he took Joc and Edwina as his lovers.
Cather, head over heels for Brent, set out on a quest for her true love’s hand. She took Joc and Edwina too, hoping to win over the eyes of the kingdom, and make a man out of her royal paramour. Making a ruckus at the castle’s gate and killing a handsome guardsman through one press of the skull, the three trolls set off through the Castle’s inside ways, to find the beautiful Cassiopeia to grant them skin so smooth and sweet, and eyes that would make even you, Dear Reader, see their . “Now I know, and now I see, what it means to have bosoms as round as thee,” said Joc. Out the castle they ran, with baby Cassiopeia in hand. In the morning, Helen wept, hoping to hold her baby, “My poor Cassiopeia is missing, what will I do? What will I be?”
King Brent was dumbfounded.Who would rob them of their preservation, who would steal the fruit of his loins, the apple of his eye, his one good doing in life?
Two nights had gone by, and his Majesty received, in what was categorized as the honorable affairs of Brent, a note, with writing familiar to him on papyrus with a scent that made him forget his missing daughter. When he planted his feet firmly on the ground, he could read words that were not as sweet.