Last night, I watched The Thief and the Cobbler for the first time since I was about four years old. I find the movie and its messed-up history pretty fascinating. As a child, I remember almost nothing about the theatrical release of the movie; I thought it was some weird, disturbing Aladdin ripoff and promptly forgot absolutely everything about it. Then last night I was watching the Nostalgia Critic's review of the movie, and, well, it all went to hell from there.

The "recobbled" version of the movie, as I watched last night, seems, despite its unfinished-ness, to have really great potential. It's too bad that control was wrested from the original creators the way it was; it had the potential to be something really, really amazing in its original vision. In any case, this story takes after the original movie - the one in which Tack is essentially mute, as he was meant to be, so the characterization here is based around that silence. I'd also just like to say that I'm fully aware that, in such a minuscule category as this, just about nobody will ever read this story, but if you do, please let me know what you think of it. It was a really great, fun exercise in soft, concise narrative and figurative language, and, hopefully, successful in carrying multiple recurring themes throughout. Writing fanfiction is a fabulous way to whet the creative knife.

In the great golden kingdom, the Princess walked her smooth stone floors. The marble and granite beneath her feet had been carved and smoothed and polished to perfection in ages past by the greatest artisans of the land, arranged in their intricate patterns up and down halls – at some points invisible in their flawless geometry, at others forming beautiful steeples and falls in purest illusion. The Princess closed her eyes. A holdover from her childhood, she still at times feared to walk the palace alone, lest she be lost in its twisting corridors.

But now was not the time for fear.

"Walk, now, dearest, more slowly," Nanny called from behind. The Princess closed her lovely eyes and straightened her back. Her steps became smaller with her concentration, more delicate; she swayed her hips and let her hair fall free, glimmering with each step. "Your body, Child," Nanny crooned from the down the hallway. "As your mother, as all her sister wives and all the women in your blood: your womanly power, your grace, take it from the palace."

The Princess screwed up her eyes tighter in concentration, realized it was not increasing her desirability, and let herself relax. The palace, she said to herself. The turns, the delicate build of the city itself. It is a lovely woman. She will teach me.

The Princess opened her eyes and let herself step in rhythm with the tiles, which coalesced into and out of one another like poetry. Her free femininity, her subtle strength and wisdom, were in the tiles and walls, there to teach her should she open her senses to understand them. She pranced, leaped, swayed, and turned in the checked hallway, dancing on nothing at all.

On her last step, she alighted gracefully to the ground once more and stood straight and attentive, gazing down the hall to where Nanny stood by the doorway. The elderly nursemaid smiled glowingly from beneath her heavy robes.

"My dear, any man should fall to his knees for you."

–

The Princess stole from the remote hallways of the palace to the royal quarters, to her own quarters. Nobody was about but for a young chambermaid dolefully changing the stained sheets upon the king's bed. The Princess took a deep breath and thought to herself where else she might look. Tack was somewhere. Yet, an hour and one kitchen, one throne room, and a dungeon later, the cobbler was still nowhere to be found. At last the Princess made her way to the garden. Pushing aside the many weeping vines of a willow tree, she found her husband crouched like a sage by the edge of the duck pond.

"Tack," she said softly. He turned to smile at her, that sad, almost reluctant smile that she loved so very very much. She made one step towards him before recalling suddenly her practiced movements; on the next, she swung her hips with great exaggeration. She craned her neck, slimmed her waist, and made prominent her bosom. Within ten steps she was at Tack's side, swooping down next to him, allowing her hair to brush tremulously against his neck, to give his eyes time to linger on her chest as she leaned over to seat herself next to him on the grass. Even when she glanced back up finally, however, having arranged herself as seductively next to him as she could manage, his eyes still were fully on hers, smiling lovingly at her. She faltered. He wasn't showing it, but he must have taken some notice. So she let herself smile back.

The cobbler-cum-Prince wrapped his arm about his wife. She laid her head against his shoulder and the two of them together turned their gazes towards the duck pond, sparkling in the afternoon sunshine. Birds chirped happily in the sky and in the trees. The Princess closed her eyes and snuggled closer. Tack gave her a brief squeeze, but never looked over. There they were silent for a few moments.

Birds continued to chirp. A bullfrog croaked from the reeds. The royal couple remained motionless on the banks.

The Princess licked her lips. Surreptitiously, she arched her back in closer so her breasts rubbed lightly against Tack's chest. He took a deep breath of morning air and finally looked over at her. Excitedly, she arched a little more.

But the cobbler smiled and only kissed her ever so lightly on the forehead. Resting his brow against hers, he tenderly reached to her hand and held it in his. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring her touch, before smiling again and turning back to the duck pond, quite content to ponder, perhaps all day, the beauty in this small place, holding the hand of his beloved.

The Princess, in the meantime, was crestfallen. She slumped, no longer working to expose herself to best advantage. In only a few minutes more, she announced she was feeling quite warm in the sun, and excused herself to leave for the cooler indoors.

Once inside, she spent the rest of the morning laying prostrate in bed, distraught at only her latest failure out of many.

–