Overheard at Booth 3: The Story of the Princess and the King

#2WordPrompt
Princess and King

"I wish to marry for love!" demanded the princess.

So the King relented and allowed her to wed the serf.  

The Prince from the other kingdom waged war.  Many died. Including the serf.

"Why?" the princess in tears, asked her father.

"I chose Love," he replied.

 

2025-0906 

Story inspired by a writing prompt, #2WordPrompt, and uses a theme that I have been mulling over for many years, which runs contrary to the current idea of a medieval or Renaissance princess choosing her own mate against arranged marriages.   The idea is that many of these arranged marriages were for uniting various kingdoms, usually for protection, and often to prevent wars between said kingdoms.

 

Here is a longer version of the story.

 

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was of the age to be married.  Her father had indulged her and protected her as a child; however, he had never shied away from letting her know that one day she would be married, and that he would choose the husband from several of the princes of nearby kingdoms.

However, she was a willful child, and a favorite of her father, and as she was becoming a young woman, she realized that she had fallen in love with the stable boy.  They had practically grown up together, and he had become a handsome young man.

Her father told her one day of her impending marriage to a prince in a nearby kingdom.  She immediately rejected the idea, telling her father that she was in love with the stable boy and that she demanded to marry for love, not for station.

Her father begged her to reconsider and consent, but the princess would hear none of it.  Her father told her that the marriage had been arranged ever since she and the prince were children.  She did not care.  She would not be wed to a man she did not know - only to the one she did know and loved.

So, her father relented and she was free to love the stable boy and plan their wedding.

 However, because the arrangement was annulled, war broke out between the two kingdoms.  The invading army from the nearby kingdom, led by the prince, swept over the mountains and through the hills and plains and killed many, many of the king's subjects.

The stable boy, who was called to be a page to one of the knights and ride out to the fighting to tend the horses, himself was killed in one of the battles.   Word came back to the princess that the prince himself had killed the lad.

The princess ran to her father, who sat on his throne, despondent, while the dark clouds gathered all around the land.   "Why?" she demanded of him.  "Why this sacrifice?  Why did all this happen?"

"Because I chose Love," the king said to his daughter. 

 

 

[I can submit this to Bunker Squirrels, but as it is roughly 363 words, I will need to reduce it to 250 words]

 

[I can also use this in Anomaly] 

 

 

 

Overheard at Table 1: The Greatest Army

The Greatest Army

The greatest army we ever faced?  Strangely enough, it was the army that never came at us with guns or tanks or planes or bombs.  They came at us, babbling about their Savior, and how we needed to stop our killing and learn to love and live in peace.

We killed 'em.  Sure, we killed 'em.  By the dozens.  By the hundreds, but they kept coming.

That was the weird thing.  They kept coming.  Never stopped going on and on about their Savior.

Eventually, though, we did kill them all.  At least, we thought we did.  You see, they stopped coming, so we thought that was the end of it.  But of all the armies we'd ever gone up against, this was the one we couldn't forget.  Couldn't get it out of our minds - these crazy soldiers, always going on about their Savior.

Some of us even starting proclaiming this Savior.  Just a few at first, and then a handful more, and then more.

So, you see, it's almost as though, in the end, they won.  They were the greatest army we ever faced.

Overheard at Booth 4: Truth and Pain and Light

2024-0419
 

He sang “Start a fucking revolution” to the tune of “Glory Glory Hallelujah” in his car and fed it to his Instagram.  He had driven up from Florida the day before and was now sitting in New York City, a place filled with congestion and people and pamphlets and fences and he could feel the conspiracy crushing him with every breath.
 

He had a box of pamphlets that he’d printed.  The people needed to be told that they are being duped, led, controlled, and ultimately, would be abandoned.  If only the people would listen, but they never seemed to listen.  The people only wandered around in their own worlds, their own little minds, marching back and forth from their jobs to their homes to restaurants and high school football games like ants.  Like mindless ants.
 

They would have to pay attention.  The jury selection for the trial was underway and there were so many media cameras, he would get a perfect shot.  He would light up like a beacon on their cameras.  The media wasn’t good for much anyway, sending out nothing but lies and foam to keep the brains in fog, but at least today they were on a live feed, and they wouldn’t be able to pull away from the light.  
He got out of the car, with his box of pamphlets and the liquid fire.  He was Prometheus.  The bringer of fire the bringer of light the voice crying in the wilderness, “I am come to bring you light, to awake all you who are sleeping in darkness!”
 

He walked to the center of the small square, threw the pamphlets in the air, and doused himself in the liquid fire and lit the spark and suddenly he was light and with light there was pain and such pain it was such exquisite pain and he screamed and in the pain of the scream there was truth, naked truth, and now at last, everyone would awake to the Truth and the Pain and the Light

Overheard at Table 2: Her Words

She knew words were powerful, from the first time she wrote a story as a child and made her mother cry.

In high school, she wrote a story about suicide.  Three of her classmates took their lives before the end of the semester.

In college, she wrote a story about wild, unprotected sex.  The University noted a sharp uptick in pregnancies and venereal diseases that year.

In her twenties, she wrote a story about gun violence.  Murders in her neighborhood increased exponentially.

One day, she decided to write a story in which everybody in the world was caring and decent and kind to each other, and everyone lived in peace and then ...

nothing happened.

Nothing changed.

She realized that there was, indeed, a limit to her power.  To the power of her words.

Feeling a deep, profound disappointment, she sat down to write her final story, one in which every country decided to drop all their bombs, everywhere, all over the world.

Overheard at Table 3: Womb with a View

Molly dreamed that her baby had a "womb with a view" - peeking out through a pouch, like a kangaroo.

When she awoke, Molly saw a long, jagged cut across the top of her pregnant belly - her sharp thumbnail, still wet with blood.

Overheard at Table 2: Anomaly 11 The Little Village and the Candymen

Anomaly 11

Once upon a time there was a little village and it was a happy little village and the harvest came in every year and the generations grew and replaced the other generations and for a long time everyone was happy.

Then one year the candymen came to town and they had beautifully colored candy and it tasted so good and the children all loved the candy and they wanted more candy.  Their parents warned them against eating too much of the candy, because too much candy is not good for you, they said, and the children cried out "You're MEAN!  We won't listen to you!" and the children all left the village with the candymen and went off and the parents did not know where they had gone.

Then one day the children came back home when they were grown and the parents did not recognize their children because the children had themselves become candymen and they told the parents, "All the candy has made our stomachs hurt, and we are not happy, because the candy has never filled our bellies.  You should have warned us about the candy."

"We did warn you about the candy," the parents said.  "You didn't listen."

"Shut up!" the children who had grown to be candymen said.  "You are old now and we are still young, and so we are taking all the harvest and we are going to eat all the harvest and you can go live in the barns and we will take the houses and live there and invite other candymen to join us"

And so the aging parents were shoved into the barns, who died there when the winter came, along with the animals, who were untended by the children who had become candymen.

Then Spring came and there was no planting, then Summer, and then Autumn, and there was no harvest, and the children who had become candymen died in the houses, with the windows open and the curtains billowing sadly in the light breeze.

Overheard at Table 1 - Ribbons of Blood

ribbons of blood
spray from my 
knife across its
face,
the beast got my 
leg, but i
took its 
eye - 
yeah! run off
ye beast!

Now, i'll 
jes' crawl
over 
here - wassat?

that growl?

Ah Chroist!

Its mate!

MR

2023-1118

[for a horrorprompt, but can't find an horrorprompt prompt word - so I think it was free-written.

Can re-work it into "Anomaly"]