Author's note: This story belongs to me - please do not reproduce without my permission or claim it as your own work. Constructive feedback is always appreciated. :D

So the princess grew into a beautiful young lady, enjoying the full benefits of the gifts given to her by the Eustacia and Eugenia. When she sang, windows cracked, and when she walked past a mirror, it cracked as well. Of course, all this cracking made things a bit difficult for the servants. They had to clean up all the sharp glass pieces before the king strolled by and freaked because when his Majesty freaked, everyone freaked.

One fine summer day (which also ironically happened to be her birthday…big surprise there…), Princess Imcursedndealinwithit was playing with her rubber ball (it was the only “safe” toy the king could find). As she bounced the ball on her head, she saw an old beggar woman approaching. The woman had a big basket on her arm.

Being a most impulsive teen, Princess Imcursedndealinwithit grabbed the basket and looked in, eyes wide.

The beggar woman grinned, peering through her many layers of wrinkles. “YA LIKE FLOWERS, PRETTY GIRL? THESE ARE ROSES. PRETTY, AIN’T THEY? RARE IN THESE PARTS, TOO.”

The princess was in awe. Never had she seen such beautiful flowers!

Being as impatient as she was impulsive, she grabbed a flower to smell it. She immediately dropped it. “OUCH!!! There are sharp things! Stupid flowers. Flowers aren’t supposed to have sharp thing….zzzzzzzzz.” She collapsed onto the grass, snoring loudly.

“NOW I JUST HAVE TO MAKE SURE NO PRINCE COMES ‘ROUND,” cackled Ugdaria as she quickly waddled off. The flowers wilted as she passed them since over the years Ugdaria had developed a very nasty stink to match her looks.

Meanwhile, Eustacia, Eugenia, and Eupigia stumbled upon the snoring princess. They were very dismayed at the sight since the three of them had been watching over the princess since her christening and had only been gone for ten minutes to get a bit of tea.

Sighing, they tried to pick her up to get her somewhere more comfortable. It wasn’t as easy as they thought, though, and this was their conversation during the whole ordeal (who said what doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things):

“My grandmother’s blue toes, she weighs a ton!! You wouldn’t think it with how thin she looks!”

“Watch your language, dearie. I told you it was a bad…oof…idea to give her those creampuffs! You know she can’t resist them!”

“Well, if you’d exercised with me and Eugenia once in a while, you might actually…oi…have some muscles to boast about for a change!”

“How long exactly is she supposed to sleep?”

“I dunno…a century and a half, give or take…ow…a few decades.”

“WHAT?!? Oh come on…”

“Yes, couldn’t you have found a spell with a shorter time span? That really is ridiculous. She’ll be an old hag by the time she wakes up! Any prince that finds her will take one look, laugh, and run!”

“Or barf. I’m thinking they’ll probably barf. I mean, most of the princes I know have very weak stomachs. ”

“And that has to do with anything….how?”

“Oh, hush. Besides that’s where…oof…we come in. We’ll just put everybody in the castle under a sleeping spell. You know, the one with anti-aging benefits.”

“Ah, good idea.” Pause. “Which one?”

“Well, we have…oh, my uncle’s blue hat, she’s heavy…three choices. Number One: Sleeping death potion, which is like a really, really, REALLY deep sleep – works well but can be harmful if used for long periods of time. Number Two: Preservative freeze potion, which will freeze time so that no one can move – again, highly effective but can be hard on the muscles and brain which are still functioning. Or Number Three: Both potions simultaneously, which is not recommended but has never been tested so…you never know…”

“Let’s go with Number Three.”

“I agree.”

“Ooo…I love experiments! This will be one for the scrapbooks! And I just bought a new pair of decorative scissors that would go great with –”

“Lovely story, dearie, but heavy princess not getting any lighter! ”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

After putting the princess in her bed (the journey up the four flights of stairs was entertaining to say the least), the fairies continued with their diabolical, err, “helpful” plan. Soon everyone in the palace was in sleep freeze mode, and all was silent. The ecstatic fairies congratulated themselves and went home.

However, they forgot one tiny little thing.

Actually, it was a pretty big thing – about four feet tall (hey, that’s tall for a fairy) with a loud voice, thick purple hair, gnarly toes that would scare an ogre. Yup…Ugdaria the Ugly.

She had overheard the fairies’ plan and decided to make things a little more interesting. You know…because things weren’t interesting enough as it was for her.

First, she harvested the seeds from her Megamonster Spikeplant 2000 (she got the plant half-off at Home Depot with her Evil Fairy discount card). She planted the seeds around the castle walls. They magically sprung up, so thick, smelly, and thorny that it became hard to actually see the castle itself.

Then Ugdaria turned herself into a two-headed dragon (sadly, still quite an improvement from her usual fairy form) and stood at the gates to guard against any who would dare to try and break her spell. And many did try…you can count their heads above her fireplace….about fifty of them, give or take an troll’s head that was already there in the first place.

So as you can see, rescuing Princess Imcursedndealinwithit wasn’t exactly a very pleasant task, so after a while, nobody bothered anymore to Ugdaria’s delight.

And over time, the story of the sleeping princess became just that. A story.