onepassingnight | Tinderbox

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Tinderbox

On his way home from a foreign land, a young man with a retinue of three meets an old witch. The witch asks the young man to climb down into a hollow tree. Inside, she says, he'll find three rooms: one filled with copper, one with silver, and one with gold. Each room will be guarded by a dog. In the first room, the dog will have eyes the size of teacups. In the second, it will have eyes the size of mill wheels. The third dog will have eyes each the size of the Round Tower.

She gives him an apron and instructs him to pick up each dog and lay it on the apron and then help himself to as many coins as he wishes. In exchange, she merely wants a tinderbox, which her sister left last time she was down there.

The young man agrees, leaves his retinue to keep company with the witch and climbs down into the tree.

Inside he finds the three rooms with the three dogs with enormous eyes, exactly as the witch said, and he fills his pockets with coins. He leaves the tree and asks the witch what she wants with the tinderbox. She says it's none of his business. He says, "Tell me, or I'll have your head chopped off."

She says, "No." And he orders one of his retinue to chop her head off.

He takes the best room at the best inn in the nearest city -- a city which is home to a beautiful princess who lives in a copper palace and is never allowed to see anyone but the king because it has been foretold that she will marry a foreign man -- and he spends every coin he has on food and entertainment.

One night, he uses the witch's tinderbox to light a candle, and the dog with eyes as big as teacups appears and says, "What is my master's command?" He promptly asks for more money, and the dog fetches him a sack of coins. After some experimentation, he learns that if he strikes the tinderbox once, the dog with copper coins comes. If he strikes twice, the dog with silver comes. And if he strikes three times, the dog with gold coins comes.

One night, the young man decides he wants to see the princess who no one ever sees, so he summons the dog with eyes as big as teacups and commands him to bring him the princess. In seconds, he returns with the princess on his back, asleep.

ooc: This is the tale the above is from, feel free to be the princess or one of the trio traveling with the young man (Rufus).

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Well, usually when princesses are locked in towers they have some sort of curse or are otherwise defective in some way. Considering this princess was... actually a prince, most would consider that a major problem. It wasn't for a lack of trying though, the King and Queen had done their best in educating their son in a variety of things. He'd learned dancing and sewing as well as far more useful things like swordplay and how to recognize poison when he saw it.

Giant dogs though?

Not so much in the training, especially when they kidnapped him in the middle of a rather nice sleep in a comfortable bed.

Congratulations Rufus, you have the Worst Princess Ever on your hands now.

Okay, admittedly when he'd ordered the dog to fetch him the princess he'd expected an actual female instead of the man that was currently resting on the dog's back. Fortunately he noticed that little issue before he'd bent down to kiss the 'princess'.

Well..this certainly put a rather hitch in his plans involving the princess and this place. He thought about ordering the dog to return the man back whence he came but decided against it for now. Perhaps he could get a few questions answered about why the city believed they had a princess... when it was rather obviously a prince instead.

"You're the 'princess'?"

"Technically, yes." Tseng replied, hopping off the dog. "Sorry to disappoint."

He wasn't really, but he was rather grateful to the guy for getting him out of that tower for once. "I bet you're wondering why I'm not a lady."

"Yes, you could say that. Care to explain?"

After all, surely there has to be a reason for everyone believing the man was actually a woman. Perhaps there was either a witch or a scandal involved which warranted it. It certainly did explain just why the 'princess' had been locked away and no one could visit 'her'.

Tseng shrugged, "There was this whole prophecy where my sister would marry a rich foreigner and prosperity would rain down upon the land and everyone would hail the king. Apparently, nobody told the dragon that and he ate her."

There'd been a funeral and a great big hunt for the beast.

"Mind you, they still needed a princess so... I had to attend my own funeral while pretending to be my sister." He sighed, "So they decided that putting up a tower and trotting me out twice a year for public appearances was the best idea to keep the whole thing secret."

"So because of some prophecy which you don't actually know if it'll come true or not, you're forced to stay locked up in some castle and cross dress twice a year just to keep up appearances that the needed princess for this so-called prophecy was still around?"

There was a slight raise of one blond eyebrow as he watched Tseng. "The people of this town aren't all that bright are they?"

"It was made by a very reputable prophecy maker. She was the one who made the prophecy about those two families in Verona. Plauges on houses and all that, terrible situation. really but what do you expect when teenage idiots want to have sex." Tseng replied matter of factly.

"Well, it helps that I make a rather convincing woman when I get dressed up properly. The long hair doesn't hurt either."

That got Tseng a rather amused look, and the blond briefly entertained the mental image of the man before him in a dress. "I believe you've got a chance now to make that prophecy come true and get yourself out of that castle if you want to go along with the idea I've got in mind."

That dog? Is kind of an idiot. For all his teacup-sized eyes, apparently he has no idea what a princess looks like, because instead of royalty he's brought back some peasant girl from the sticks, none other than Reno, who some call Little Red (but usually not to her face, because she doesn't like it).

Also, she woke up on the trip there, and she is now decidedly not pleased at having been carried around by some creepy dog, because just envision a dog with eyes that are really the size of teacups, and you'll see what she means.

When she takes in the sight of this guy, she rolls her eyes. "What the hell do you want?" Sure, men who control mutated magical dogs are probably the kind of people you want to look out for and not antagonize, but she's already here and pissed off, so she might as well be honest about it. "I was sleeping."

"You're the princess?" Somehow he didn't believe it. It would appear that unlike the coins, having the dog's fetch people didn't really work out quite as well.

She sighed and leapt off the dog, rod in hand. (Yes, she'd been sleeping with her rod, but that was because she'd been sleeping out in the woods, and she needed to keep her weapon with her.)

"Do I look like a princess?" she asked. She was dressed more or less like a boy, in rumpled dark clothes, and her accent was certainly far more coarse than refined. "You figure it out."

"No, you look like a thief. The dog was supposed to bring me the princess of this city instead of you."

"I'm not a thief," she said, but she didn't sound too offended by the suggestion. "I'm an adventurer. On a quest."

She brushed off her clothes--she might not have been the most stylish girl, but she didn't want to be covered in dog hair. "So, you usually go around sending dogs to kidnap princesses? Classy."

"Actually, I was just curious about the princess they have locked up around here. Not everyone likes being locked away from the world. Who knows, she might have been grateful to taken out, away from the castle she's kept in."

Not to mention getting a grateful princess for a bride was one easy way to get into power. He had an easy access now to any money he might need, now all he needed to complete things was to work himself into power somewhere before he ended up returning to his homeland.

"What quest were you on? Perhaps I could help you on it to make up for this mix-up." Not to mention the quicker he got the woman away from town the quicker he could go back to attempting to gain that princess.

"What's the big deal about princesses?" Reno shrugged. She didn't get the hype, and she was arrogant enough to think she was better than any princess, not that she wanted to be carried off. "Speaking as someone who just got kidnapped by a seriously creepy dog, maybe you should find a new plan if you want her to be grateful. Besides, maybe she does like it, you don't know." It didn't sound like this guy knew much about it.

"I was trying to find some herbs to heal my village. I'd appreciate the help." Maybe she'd gone a little out of her way, but in her defense, those herbs were damn elusive.

If that dog was an idiot before, it was only getting more stupid by the second.

This person wasn't a princess, and in fact he wasn't even royalty. And he was rather pissed off because he had been in the middle of the best dinner in his entire life, and then that dog just waltzed right in, upset his table and picked him up in that slobbery mouth.

Reno was about to kill someone when the damn dog finally stopped, and he dropped to the ground in a bunch of dog drool.

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous now really so forgive him for covering his face with one hand as he deals with this new mess this dog has landed him in.

Dropping his hand back to his side, he eyes the stranger and barely refrains from releasing the sigh which threatens to escape. "If you want I can send you back to wherever it was you came from." he finally offers, because this is so far from princess it isn't funny.

Perhaps, once he's gotten rid of this man, the dog might eventually get things right, or maybe he just needs to summon and use a different dog.

Standing up, still covered in dog drool, he just gives Rufus a death glare. "Just one problem with that. If it's anything like how I got here, you can screw off."

He started wiping himself off, but only managed to sort of smear the gross stuff all over. This was definitely not a happy guy. "If I were you, I'd just put that thing out of its misery."

Well, he didn't think using the same dog would be all that wise anyway. Lord only knew if it could or would deliver the redhead back to where he came from, since it seemed to have issues with finding a princess that was within this city.

"How about astride the back of a different dog?" he asked as he dismissed the first canine and headed for the table where the tinderbox lay.

Reno gave the man a look. It was not a happy look. "I think I'll just be walking home now."

There was no way he was getting close to any dog, astride it or otherwise. "If you want to see the princess, why the hell don't you just wait outside her tower?" He snorted, still trying to get dog drool off of his clothing, and started to waddle away.

At this rate he was going to need a bath.

"I doubt they'll let me anywhere near her tower even if I wanted to see her publicly. At least let me offer you the services of my bath? I'm sure I can find you a change of clothes which will fit as well."

Best really to attempt to make amends so the redhead didn't cause him trouble later on down the line, he thought.

"No thanks," he mumbled, still walking away. Before too long, he paused and turned around. "Y'know, the princess isn't all that hot. Ya might want to find someone else to look at. There's some real buxom milk maids around here." Hesitating, he gave a shrug, then continued. "The princess looks like she's 80 years old, got warts and rumor has it the King is banging her."

Thanks for that mental image that he really hadn't needed, Reno. Shaking his head once, he gave something of amused noise at the the little speech. "Thanks for the warning."

He was likely to just up anyway, he didn't want to see what the dogs brought him the next time he tried asking for it to bring him a princess.

"No problem," oblivious to mental images, he grumpily walked away, still trying to shake drool off of his sleeves.

Between jobs and thinking that traveling as part of a retinue might be a safe and sure way of arriving at some city where he could seek employment that actually suited him, the scholar had done his best to-- do whatever the young man in charge required. Which was what those in a retinue seemed to be meant to do. Fortunately, someone else had been commanded to cut off the elderly woman's head.

Reeve didn't fancy himself an executioner. An inventor, an architect, a sparkling conversationalist, yes. But not an executioner-- or a guard for that matter. Though he wasn't entirely sorry to have drawn this night for that duty, as this night seemed to involve lots of traffic in supernatural dogs fetching people from far and wide to his young master's room. Thus far there had been a few men and a few more women. The latest had been another disaster. His curiosity having got the better of him at last, Reeve knocked on the door to Rufus' (for that was the young man's name) chamber.

"Ah, good evening! Everything all right in here, sir?"

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