• Princess Kiko sighed. She was stuck in a tower all day long waiting for rescue that may never come. Her parents told her (through a magical crystal ball) that a prince would come one day. She read about a princess who's prince never came because he got eaten by a troll on the way. Some prince.
    The dragon treated her well in the tower, fed her the finest foods, dressed her in the fanciest clothes, and gave her all the jewelry he could find from the villages he pillaged, but that didn't matter to Kiko, nothing mattered to Princess Kiko because she was BORED. So one day, she did the one thing that a princess of Gaia never did: escape.
    She got the idea from a book she read about magic tricks, the one where you keep pulling on a hankerchief tied to another hankerchief and it keeps going and going until it finally stops. Princess Kiko was going to lower herself to the ground with the hankerchief rope. She could ask the dragon for whatever she wanted. So the next day, when he came to the tower with breakfast, she told him:

    "Dragon, I want 1,000 hankerchiefs."
    "For what?"
    "I want to um, sew, yeah, that's right, sew."
    "Then I'll get you the finest cloth, not hankerchiefs, and a needle and thread."
    Princess Kiko thought for a moment, "Hmm... I guess cloth would work too. So I'll have it."

    She waited in her tower for two days. Finally, the dragon returned, with bits of what looked like cow stuck between his teeth.

    "Took you long enough!"

    The dragon puffed and dropped a heap of cloth on the floor and handed her a needle and some thread.

    "There, happy?"

    Without waiting for an answer, he left mumbling, "I work hard day and night and I get stuck with this brat..."

    Right away she jumped into the pile and tied shred after shred together.

    With the last piece attached to the rope, she flung one end through the window and tied the other end to a table. She climbed down the rope to the ground and ran away happily ever after.

    **************************

    THE NEXT DAY

    A handsome prince walks into the tower with a broken arm and a giant bump on his head. Under his arm is the head of a dragon.

    "I'm here to rescue you!"

    He realizes no one is there but finds a note on the table:

    Dear Prince,

    I have waited FIVE YEARS for you to come, and I got bored and left. Too bad. Go rescue some other princess, before she leaves.

    Have fun,
    Princess Kiko

    At that point, the prince broke down and cried.

    THE END