The Princess and the Dragon by Levi Abadilla
What they tell you is this:
In the highest room of the tallest tower of a castle situated on a far-away mountain, there is a princess. She waits for the brave knight to take her away from this place. There is a dragon guarding her, fearsome and mighty. It breathes in blood and breathes out fire. It is bloodthirsty and unmerciful. The princess waits.
That’s all they tell you. They’re careful not to change anything too much.
They don’t tell you that the princess has forgotten her name, because there is no one but her to remember it. The dragon finds no need to remember, and so there is no one to remind the princess whenever she forgets what she is called. She is just The Princess now, living in a castle with no company.
They don’t tell you that The Princess has ripped up her curtains and bedsheets to fashion them into bandages, because she falls down the stairs too often. It’s dark in the castle. The dark whispers and hisses and growls and pushes. It claws at her until she bleeds. The Princess clenches her teeth as she cleans out her wounds, and fails to swallow her whimpers when she rips out a piece of rock that’s embedded itself into her calf.
They don’t tell you that The Princess dreams of music and wakes up confused. She doesn’t know how her dreams are of music. She doesn’t remember music. She doesn’t know music. The castle whispers desolation and the wind whispers freedom, but those are not music. Those are false promises meant to make her yearn for a rescuer.
They don’t tell you that when The Princess was young, she had guards and servants to wait on her. They told her stories of the kingdom, of the lands beyond, of how one day a handsome prince would rescue her from here. They didn’t tell her what she was here for, and they didn’t tell her what her parents were thinking when they sent her here.
They don’t tell you that as The Princess grew up, her friends – the guards, the servants – slowly left her, because the King and Queen told them to. The dragon was dangerous, see. The guards could only fight it off for so long until it devoured them all.
They don’t tell you that the servants who’d moved too late didn’t get out. They don’t tell you the dragon tore them limb from limb with its bare teeth, clamping jaw and dull-sharp teeth onto their necks and ripping until skin and meat were wrenched out of place and blood flowed. They don’t tell you about the corpses left in the hallways.
They don’t tell you The Princess stared at her bloodied hands and chipped nails, stared at the red red red. They don’t tell you she tasted the blood stuck to the roof of her mouth. They don’t tell you she felt it slathered all over her face and neck. They don’t tell you how her teeth hurt from ripping someone’s throat out.
They don’t tell you she cried herself to sleep that night.
They don’t tell you how she learns to hunt over the years. There are knights and princes who enter the castle, and food has run out months ago.
They don’t tell you how she feels the sharpness of The Dragon’s teeth and the bluntness of her own. They don’t tell you how she presses her tongue against the incisors until she chokes on her own blood.
They don’t tell you there’s only one person in the castle nowadays.
What they tell you is this:
There is a princess and there is a dragon.
What they don’t tell you is this:
The Princess waits for knights so she can eat. She is fearsome and mighty. She breathes in blood and breathes out fire.
There is a Princess and there is a Dragon.
Nobody tells you they are one and the same.
”I wrote this piece over seven or eight years ago when I was a teenager starting out with writing original fiction. I never did anything with it, as I was a very depressed high schooler who didn't believe that anything I wrote had any value to it. I was one of those kids who had parents with a very specific view of what my future should be and disparaged any interest in the arts. In recent years, and now with a bit more control over my life, I've decided to dive into my passion for writing. I've also done a deep clean of all my storage drives and found this. I'm an adult now, with years and years of writing practice behind me, and reading this story made me cringe. I understand that I was a child when I wrote this, but I find the concept and the wording very...well, childish. I find the execution sloppy and a little too try-hard, all the markings of a kid trying to write in a way he found cool. I was going to delete it, but then I remembered your zine. For all that I might find my younger self's efforts laughable, it was those efforts that kept me alive. I can cringe at my younger self all I want, but I wouldn't be where I am in my writing journey without this little story. So, instead of deleting it, I'm submitting it, and I can hope my teenage self finds some joy in that.”
Levi Abadilla (they/them) is a Filipino writer based in the Philippines. Their work has been featured in the podcast Short Stories After Dark. They can be found on Twitter (@nineaetharia) or TikTok (@escapedscp0). When they are not writing, they attend to the whims of their cats and dogs.