THE PRINCESS AND THE DRAGON

The Princess and the Dragon,

Once upon a time there lived a Princess who was an orphan.  She lived by herself in a city out in the hinterlands away from the rest of her family.  She felt very, very much alone and so she called the coat she would wear, her cloak of alone-ness.  She wasn’t lonely for she had many close friends, but she lived alone with her favorite cat, Neze.  Neze was a lively kitten/cat and was always playing games on the Princess.  Neze would sometimes hide things on the Princess – especially when the Princess would leave her home and go away all day to go to work.  Although she was a Princess, she did not live in a castle and she did not have enough money to live royally, so she got a job at a castle in the city where she would take care of the local urchins.

It was here that the Princess met the Dragon.  The Dragon would sometimes sneak up from behind the Princess and suddenly start breathing fire on the back of her neck.  Or sometimes, he would come up in front of her and lean forward so his face was right in front of the Princess, and then he would let out a very loud roar.  He enjoyed intimidating the poor little Princess and she didn’t know what to do.

So every night after work, she would return home and play with her Neze.  As soon as she entered her house, she would look around to see if anything had been tipped over while she was gone.  Neze loved to jump around on the chair, and on the table, and on the window sill, and sometimes couldn’t help but knock some things over.  Then the Princess would look for Neze and scratch her head and her behind.  Sometimes when the Princess came home, she would find Neze hiding up on the rafters with a mountain lion trying to attack her.  It seems that Neze would sometimes leave the house by going out an open window and then would go exploring.  But there was a mountain lion, named Chester, who wanted to play with Neze but didn’t know how to play fair.  The mountain lion would play very rough with Neze and sometimes even hurt her.  So Neze would always run away from Chester and would jump back into the house through the open window.  But sometimes that wouldn’t stop Chester for he would leap through the open window after Neze.  Then Neze would be very afraid of being trapped so she would jump up on the rafters.  Poor Neze would have to just wait up there on the rafters until the Princess returned in the evening.  Then the brave Princess would chase Chester, the molester, out of the house.  Neze would be so thankful that she would jump into the arms of the Princess and let her rub her for a good long while.

Then the Princess would open her cupboards and refrigerator and decide what she was going to eat that night – alone.  She would put on her invisible cloak of alone-ness and decide if she wanted to cook something, or just heat something up for herself.  She enjoyed those times when she could just sit down and enjoy her dinner by herself and just think and reflect on all that happened that day.  And then she would think and reflect on what she would be doing at work the next day.  But sometimes the Princess would think how wonderful it would be if she had someone she could talk to in the evenings.

The Princess really enjoyed her work with the urchins.  The urchins recognized that the Princess was gifted with a magical power.  They heard someone say that the magical power of the Princess was called “empathy” but they didn’t know what that was.  All they knew was that it seemed whenever they got into trouble at home, or in trouble with another urchin, or even created trouble in class, the Princess would look at them in their eyes and then she would help them.  Even when the Princess was forced to discipline them, they knew that it bothered her but she did it fairly.  The urchins were not used to being treated fairly and so they loved the Princess.  The Princess loved working with the urchins because it made her feel that she could make a difference in the lives – even if it was only a little difference.  Eventually, the Princess got a nickname called the Angel-Wing Repairer.  This was because she treated all the urchins as if they were angels who had broken a wing which needed repairing.  And the Princess knew just how to repair them.  And the urchins weren’t used to being treated as being special so whenever they could, they would run to the Princess and ask her to help them when they needed some special attention.

Yes, the Princess really enjoyed her job of helping the urchins.  But she didn’t like having to put up with the Dragon all the time.  She would be in her room, and he would come barreling in and roar at her.  Or she would be with the urchins and he would breathe his fire and chase the urchins away.  The Princess didn’t dare fight the dragon because she knew he was much more powerful than she was.  So she just put up with his bellowing and this fire-breathing and just tried to ignore him and avoid him as much as possible.

So even though the Princess was around a lot of people, the urchins and the dragon, and the other people who were supposed to try to help the urchins, the Princess still felt alone there.  She was helping the urchins so she wasn’t one of them.  The other helpers all seemed to be so different that the Princess didn’t really feel like one of them either.  And the Dragon was a completely different animal.  There was no one around who was really like her or even knew her.  So she didn’t have anyone she could just talk to.  So she would just sit and think to herself – all alone.  And at home, she would eat her dinner and stay home – all alone.  And even on weekends, she would run her errands – all alone.  Sometimes she might visit someone or even have someone visit her, like her family, but she still felt alone even at those times.  She didn’t have a person she could just talk to.

The Princess would sometimes think and daydream.  But she would direct her daydreams so it would be about meeting a Prince some time.  She envisioned a Prince coming and taking her way where they would live in his castle.  She could see in her mind that she was putting up with the fiery breath of the Dragon and just wishing she could leave it all behind her.  She was tired of being attacked by this Dragon who seemed to be attacking her more and more.  And then, just when she felt she couldn’t take it any more, she would see this Prince.  And the Prince would come up to the Princess, put his arms around her, and then whisper in her ear “Let me take you out of here where you will never have to see this Dragon again and where you won’t be alone except when you want to be.”  And the Princess would be so grateful, that she just collapsed in his arms as he carried her away to a far-off land.

And the Princess would feel free to talk to the Prince and tell him things she would never ever tell anyone else.  She would tell him about how she felt that she was a Princess and not a Queen, and that she wanted to live like a Little Girl Princess.  She wanted a Daddy to embrace her and give her all the hugs she had ever wanted.  A Daddy who would love her, and take care of her, and see that she had everything that she needed.  And the Princess could play games with this Daddy, and watch movies with this Daddy, and go shopping with this Daddy, and they could go for a treat and have an ice cream cone.  And this Princess would be the apple of his eye. 

And she envisioned that this Daddy/Prince would help her to discover herself.  There was so much about her that she had never explored.  She knew that there were lots of things she would enjoy, but had never experienced.  This Prince would help her to experience all these new and wonderful things.  The Princess would get to know herself – inside and out.  She would learn all about herself – what she enjoyed and what she didn’t enjoy.  But she would know these because of her own personal experiences – not because someone told her what she should or shouldn’t enjoy.  The Prince would take her on this journey of discovery through the land of sensations and revelations. 

And she would envision this Daddy/Prince as being the one person in the whole wide world who would love her as she was – not as she was supposed to be.  And like a Daddy, he would help her.  He would soothe her when she was afraid.  And he would calm her when she was anxious.  And he would help her to develop.  He would help her to develop all those things she found interesting but never had time to develop when she was alone.  Now, instead of a cloak of alone-ness, she would be experiencing a cloak of sharing.

But this Daddy would also realize that there would be times when she still needed to be alone.  So he would give her those times.  She would put on her cloak of alone-ness but now the cloak seemed to be so much lighter.  It didn’t seem so heavy as before.  Yet it still covered her just as much as before.  So the Princess would take turns putting on her cloak of alone-ness and then her cloak of sharing.  And the Princess made a bunch of new friends in the land of the Prince.  And she got another job but it was a job which was ideal for her and there was no Dragon fire-breathing down her neck, or bellowing in her face. 

And the Princess and the Daddy/Prince lived happily ever after.

David Kimball