“I am saying that you can take control of the matter, in your mind at least, if you take the precautions now that you wished you had then. It will make you feel safer in the present if you do. It may not even make a difference in your safety but it will help your peace of mind. I know this because I face dangers and have fears, too. Implementing ways of preventing your fears from happening, even if only in your mind, combats worry.”
The princess thought about this for a long moment. She sighed. “Okay,” she consented. “As a matter of fact, I have been more careful since my…accident.” She still had trouble talking about it.
The prince kissed her on the nose. “Good girl,” he remarked, and then released her.
The hardest thing, the princess thought, was not letting every remark and action anger her. Where did all the anger come from? Well, however it came about, her love for her husband would help her push it out and away from in between them. Perhaps after enough effort expended over the matter, her anger would not appear so often. She noticed her husband had become aroused during their little scuffle. Yet he was struggling against it, and she knew it was so that she could have time to heal. She really did have a lot to be thankful for, she mused.
The princess got up, renewed with energy from these realizations. “What next?” she asked.
“Nothing more for the moment,” he replied. “Tonight we will repeat last night’s ritual.”
“What?” the princess gasped. “Why?”
“Because the wizardess says so,” he answered. “That’s why. And frankly, I agree with her,” he added. “I, too, think a person should face their terrors, repeatedly, until they are no longer afraid of them.”
“Meaning I should not be afraid of such a thing happening?” she choked.
“I do wish you would stop turning everything I say around,” he said with exasperation. “No one can say what is going to happen in the future and, in truth, we are even somewhat limited in what we can do about it. But what I am referring to is the unrealistic terror you still have of this memory and everything that reminds you of it. Not to mention what it is doing to you. It is over. It is only a memory now. I will not allow the memory of that horrible ordeal to dictate the rest of our life together.”
“You will not allow!” she echoed, succumbing once again to the easily instigated anger.
“Look, princess,” he reasoned, “you promised to try. Stop fighting and arguing against me every step of the way. You have more than an obligation to the wizardess and to me. You have an obligation to yourself. Do you want what that man did to you affect you and me for the rest of our lives?”
“No!” she said indignantly. “Of course not.”
“Well, then, my dear, one would hope that you, as well as I, are not going to allow it to consume our lives.” And with this final retort he left her.
She huffed in frustration. This was indeed going to be harder than she thought!
But as it happened, when the time actually came for her to submit to the ritual, she found that it was not so hard after all. She certainly did not approach the event with nearly so much trepidation as she had the night before. In fact, she realized she was rather looking forward to having her body plied with the magic oil by her husband’s warm, firm hands. That part, at least, was something to persuade her.
The prince rubbed her body enthusiastically with the oil, until his own body was tense and fully hardened. He found his mind wandering to the things he would like to do to her once this problem was fully behind them. He did not want her to ever equate their intimacies with that other invasion again. To learn that that was what had caused her hesitancies with him in their marriage had been indeed hard to swallow.
He waited until she was fully relaxed before he determinedly broached the subject and once again encouraged her to talk about the event.
The princess was surprised to find herself answering her husband’s inquiries mechanically and with much less emotion than she had felt the night before. She felt little, in fact, except an intense hatred for the man who had violated her. The nerve of him! What a coward he was. She would like to see him dare to face up to a man like her husband and she told the prince this.
“I, too, would relish the opportunity of making his acquaintance,” her husband remarked in dangerously low voice. This comment sent a thrill through the princess, even in her present highly relaxed state. She had never felt safer or more cherished.
So once again they talked until late into the night and she could speak no more, and then the prince bathed her again and held her until she slept. As for himself, he did not sleep easily or well, but not because of his own fears or doubts as in the case of the night before, but because his body ached with a great need that could only be satisfied by Princess Dreadia.
On the days following, the prince continued to instruct the princess in more methods of protecting herself, and during the nights they repeated the wizardess’s ritual with the oil. By the fourth night, however, the princess was becoming bored. The massages she loved, but she was frustrated with the topic. At some point during the days that had passed, she had come to realize that the old memory was not worth the effect she had let it have on her life and, even more importantly, it was not worth this precious time they were spending talking about it. Surely they could be doing something far more enjoyable!
These thoughts brought the princess to the present with a start. Over the course of her treatment she had learned to trust her husband as never before, and the trust, in turn, had created a new intimacy between them that she would never have imagined possible. But more than that, she was becoming aware of a new emerging playfulness seeping into the space inside her that had previously been occupied with dread. Where before there had been fear and avoidance there was now curiosity and responsiveness.
What she wanted to do about these new emotions she was not certain; for her growth had been stunted altogether by the untimely misfortune of her past. It would remain for her to discover these things with her husband.
The mysterious oil seemed to be massaged into her very being after all this time, by her husband’s skillful hands. As her mind wandered over these revelations, she had been mechanically answering her husband’s questions. Now the magic took effect and she confessed in between inquiries, “I feel quite tingly between my legs.”
The prince’s hands stopped short when she said this. He was momentarily stunned by her statement, but at length his hands moved between the legs in question and he touched her there, asking huskily, “Do you mean here?”
“Oh,” gasped the princess. “Yes!”
The prince was not sure what to do next. He was overwhelmed by a strong conviction that if he proceeded incorrectly all would be lost, even as he fought a fervent urge to plunge one of his fingers into her body. He decided to be as honest with the princess as she was being with him. “I want you more than anything,” he told her. “But I need to know what you want.”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m really not sure how to make the most of this.” She sighed in anguish as she wiggled herself against his fingers. “What shall I do?” she asked him, confused and frustrated. “How can I get the same thrill from it that you do?” Declaring her innermost thoughts to her husband had now become as natural as speaking casually to him, so it did not even occur to her that she had just confessed another deep dark secret. Furthermore, her genuine agitation over the strong yearnings of her body and her ignorance about how to satisfy them were overriding any embarrassment.
But embarrassment would have been as ill-advised as it was a deterrent. The prince’s adoration for his wife soared upon hearing her truthful declaration. And even though the prince did not know the answer to her question he was nevertheless delighted by it. Truth be told, he very nearly got his “thrill” right then and there when he realized that he would be the one helping her find the solution.
With this in mind he asked her, “Where does it feel best to be touched?”
&n
bsp; “There is one little place,” she began shyly.
The prince kissed her lips as his hand continued to stroke her. “Show me,” he whispered into her lips.
Tentatively the princess moved the prince’s hand to the place she had been telling him about. She pressed his hand into the little bud of flesh that when brushed against would send little quivers trickling through her, foretelling an even greater pleasure that might be developed.
The prince rubbed the nub of flesh carefully, allowing his wife’s responses to guide him as he did so. Both of them seemed to be truly under the spell of the magic oil, for they approached the task of finding the princess’s secrets with the candor and sincerity of children. “I want to taste you,” he moaned.
“Oh, my,” the princess replied, in such a tone that the prince had no qualms about interpreting the comment for consent. Suddenly his warm breath on her swollen flesh melted away the last of her inhibitions. She sucked in her breath as she felt his coarse tongue delving its way into her, deeper and deeper, licking her with long and deep strokes. Meanwhile his fingers were becoming expert in their gentle encouragement. He surmised, correctly, that the continual stroking of that little nub of flesh that she had led him to would bring about a conclusive and pleasurable release, much like the repetitive rubbing of his own flesh, done in precisely the right way, brought about his own release.
The prince’s tongue continued its wriggling up and down along his wife’s slit, pausing to dip inside as he wished it, taking her with his tongue and forcing her to accept, and even delight in, this intimate invasion of her body. She was engrossed with the thought of him using his tongue on her in this way, and the only distraction was the rhythmic caress of his fingers. He was determined to keep her much too preoccupied with pleasurable sensations to backpedal into disparaging scrutiny of the liberties he was taking with her body. His fingers kept steadily coaxing her toward the longed for release. It heightened his excitement tenfold to feel her writhing beneath him, and to hear her little cries and moans of pleasure. He knew he would work on her all night if that was what it took to solve the puzzle; for to fail now would be unimaginably cruel.
Therefore the prince kept on, with increasingly renewed vigor. He allowed not even the smallest faltering of will. For each and every pause or hesitation in her excitement, he doubled his efforts. Later, once she knew she was capable of enjoying this part of their life together, he would find numerous and varied methods of satisfying her. There was nothing he would not try; their new awareness of each other would exceed their inhibitions.
Thus the prince replanned the whole of their life together as he taught her about pleasure, and it was the most pleasurable commission he had ever taken up.
Now it is a very real truth that any objective, if approached thoroughly and resolutely, will most definitely be achieved, and it was no different with Princess Dreadia and her husband.
With a sudden, swirling rush, an intense wave of exquisite pleasure flowed through the princess, causing her to shudder. The wave seemed to begin where her husband’s fingers held her and spread out from there to every part of her, diminishing in strength as it went. For a moment she was caught up in the dizzying surge, and the next it was gone. All that remained was a feeling of exhilaration. She could have wept.
The princess looked at her husband. She felt like she had been unlocked and opened. She was soft and wet, and wanted to feel him inside her. What pleasure! What bliss! Her husband poured himself into her, and now she knew exactly how he felt. She felt a brand-new delight in pleasing him.
That momentous evening proved to be the beginning of a very different life for both Princess Dreadia and her husband. The prince’s plans progressed exactly as he had determined they would that night, so that finding new ways to please each other became both of their favorite past times. It was never again necessary for either of them to revisit the unpleasant event that brought the wizardess to them in the first place.
And in case you were wondering, the princess’s slippers were never again worn out from an evening at home with her husband.
PRINCESS FEMINA
“I T’S YOUR TURN TO MAKE ARRANGEMENTS FOR DINNER TONIGHT ,” Princess Femina reminded her husband.
“Certainly,” he agreed cheerfully. “What would you like?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You decide.” She stared at the clock and sighed. “If I had known the wizardess would be arriving so late in the day I would not have wasted my whole morning waiting for her.”
“She has twelve of you to visit,” he reminded her.
“All that talk about ‘discontent’ in our marriages,” she scoffed. “How can a married woman not be discontented? The whole institution of marriage is arranged for the benefit of men…no offense.” She made this little disclaimer automatically, without, in truth, the slightest realization of how offensive this statement was to him. But he remained silent, knowing from past experience that she was far less open-minded when others were as forthright with their opinions. She took his silence for agreement and continued. “I do hope she isn’t one of those old-fashioned types who will expect me to further subjugate myself to this male-dominated world when I have fought so hard to come as far as I have.”
The prince sighed. He wondered that she could so easily correlate her own personal beliefs to so many of the tired old platitudes. He resisted the urge to strangle her, and ventured to say, “Perhaps we should hear the wizardess out before we jump to conclusions.”
“I just know from experience how this is likely to unravel,” she insisted, settling herself into the defensive posture he was so accustomed to seeing her in with everyone who presented a new idea about anything. It was strange to him that she could be so adamant about having her views heard without ever attempting to hear anyone else’s.
“She is a woman,” the prince reminded her. “A career woman who has made her way in life by perfecting her talents as a wizardess.”
“Yes, well, we shall see,” said the princess, unconvinced. She was always certain that things were going to go against her, despite the fact that she almost always got her way.
“Yes, we shall,” he agreed. “Presently, in fact, for I think I hear someone approaching.” And sure enough, the bell rang just then. He left her to answer to the door.
The prince greeted Harmonia with much respect and honor, whereas the princess was suspicious and haughty. Within moments of arriving the wizardess had already assessed the situation to her satisfaction.
Now Harmonia was a woman who had fought hard to gain independence and respect, just as the prince had wisely surmised with his wife earlier. However, in the course of her struggles she had discovered that everything comes with a price and that with power came responsibility. Having paid the price and accepted the responsibility, she found herself disliking those who made claim to the same power simply on the basis of their gender or race. Choice and opportunity were indeed things that everyone deserved; power was not. Power, in the hands of the irresponsible, could be quite oppressive to everyone, and the wizardess could clearly see that this was the case with Princess Femina.
The wizardess reached in her bag and pulled from it a shiny green apple. “This will be just the thing for you both,” she said, holding it out to them. The princess, of course, reached for it first.
“An apple?” she asked, curious in spite of her suspicions.
“A magic apple,” corrected the wizardess. The prince stared at the apple with interest. How could a magic apple…unless it was a poisonous apple? No, he shook his head with the absurdity of such an idea. That only happened in fairy tales. Still, the image of his wife sleeping peacefully…
“Is one of us supposed to eat the apple?” he asked.
“Both of you must eat from the apple,” instructed the wizardess.
“May I know what kind of magic this apple possesses before I bite into it?” he asked.
“Of course,” said the wizardess. “Upon the moment of your both
eating the magic apple your spirits will exchange bodies, so that the princess will reside inside your body while you reside in hers.”
“What?” both the princess and her husband exclaimed at once. They looked at the wizardess in shock, but then slowly their gazes moved to each other.
“I would have thought that you, at least, would be delighted by the prospect, princess,” remarked the wizardess.
“Well, I am, of course, but…how long would we stay like that?” she asked.
“Forever, if you like,” replied the wizardess. “However, if you decide you do not like being in the other’s body, the spell can be reversed by both of you biting into the apple a second time.”
“I don’t know,” the prince said doubtfully. It was impossible to imagine his wife living his life for even a single hour. And yet, what better way for her to see his point of view? At any rate, it could be reversed easily enough.
“I’m game if you are,” he told his wife.
The princess had been thinking along the same line as her husband. “Okay,” she agreed.
The princess raised the magic apple and held it up between them. Both moved forward simultaneously, staring into each other’s eyes. Together they bit from the magic apple.
No sooner had the princess swallowed the bite of apple than she found she was staring into her own eyes instead of those of her husband. How strange it was to view herself from this perspective. It was quite different from looking into a mirror. The prince, from inside her body, stared back at her with the same astonishment.
“Oh, one more thing,” the wizardess now added. “You must wait at least twenty-four hours before biting from the apple again, or you could be stuck like this forever.”
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