Author's Notes:

Many thanks for the reviews and many apologies for the delay. Fanfiction.net going down for a while made updating difficult, then real life and other projects took over... no matter, without further gilding of the lily, I give you the next installment of the blatantly cliched story of Princess Daniel.

~Jetso, the Red Red Sky Tail

Five: Where it Follows A Set Course

When a lost pig wandered into the library about ten minutes later, he found two helplessly giggling heaps of what used to be royalty rolling on the floor. He caught their attention with a snobbish snort.

Daniel ceased her laughter and held her dagger between the pig and herself.

"Homo Sapiens... I suppose a sus scrofa (domestic swine) must exchange some pleasantries..." muttered the pig and in a clear voice said slowly, "How. Do. You. Do?"

Daniel's gaze narrowed. Prince Moon River laughed louder.

"Homo Sapiens these days..."

"You can talk?" spluttered Prince Moon River between giggles.

"Of course I can orally communicate by verbalizing, homo sapien. I can even soliloquize, declaim, pontificate, prophesy, ejaculate, cantillate, articulate, enunciate... do you really want a complete list?"

"You are a wonder, pig."

"I resent that term. I am a member of the genus Sus, of the family Suidae. I am a domestic swine."

"Mister domestic swine..."

"My name is Patrick Otto Reginald Kenneth Yorkson. It never is and never will be 'porky.'" The talking pig tried to hide the tag on his collar.

Daniel, who had been eyeing the talking pig ever since it entered, finally overcame the shock and started her standard interrogation. "How can you talk?"

"The fairy glitter leaking out of her wand acted as a catalyst for a series of internal exothermic irreversible chemical reactions, which changed my genetical makeup. I can provide the exact equations, but I doubt you barbaric royals have the mind to appreciate the precise art of science. To be brief and concise, it has enabled me to 'talk' as you so crudely put it."

"How did you get here?"

"You see, when two pigs really, really love each other, they can decide to do something very, very special. It is like a very, very special hug..." catching Daniel and Prince Moon River's baffled looks, the talking pig asked. "Was that a philosophical question, biological one or just general?"

"How did you get into the library?"

"Trotted. Wandered. Loitered. Sauntered. Ambled. Choose your preferred verb."

"What were your motives?"

"I was disoriented."

Daniel gave the pig another withering glare and sheathed her dagger back into her hair. "It's safe."

"'It?!' I am indignant."

Not for the first time, Daniel wished she could roll her eyes. "He's safe."

They sat (or stood in the pig's case) for long moments in awkward silence, until Prince Moon River broke it with a long dramatic yawn.

"What happens now?" He asked.

"Someone's going to die or mortally wounded..." muttered Daniel.

"According to the chronicles, this is where the hero, namely your princely self, and the heroine exchange verbal blows," said the pig with a knowledgeable nod.

"Done that," drawled Prince Moon River.

"Then they exchange physical blows."

"Not a good idea..." Prince Moon River glanced nervously at Daniel's daggers.

"Then they fall in love."

The Prince's temper suddenly soured and in a bitter (stage)whisper said, "She's probably got a sweetheart somewhere..."

"An absolute majority of royalty go on quests in situations like this one. Classic examples include the quest for the Holy Grail which was intensely popular during King Arthur's day. The Water of Life is also much sought after..."

"He's got two annoying hum-when-you-drink mugs and I've an incomplete set of marbles... and quests usually include fighting flame-breathing dragons and towering giants, fire-eyed demons and man-eating ogres, gruesome mutants and lightning-wielding titans, potion-brewing cackling witches and double-headed amphisbaenas, snaky wyverns and avian carnivorous rocs..."

Daniel took a deep breath. "...And massive coiling snakes and ship-wreaking sea-serpents, basilisks and cockatrices who kill with their poisonous glance, riddle-asking man-devouring Sphinxes and scorpion-tailed lion-bodied manticores, snake-haired gorgons and the monsterous evil-symbolising leviathan, creepy mantigers and the nine-headed serpentine Hydra..."

She took another deep breath. "...And creatures without names because no one hs survived after seeing them long enough to say anything other than 'Aaarrrghhhh!'"

Prince Moon River suddenly brightened. "Let's go. Sounds more fun than a ball."

"They're almost as bad as the gutter-press and tabloids," panted Daniel.

The pig looked quizzically at the two and decided it was beneficial to his sanity to exit the room as soon as possible so trotted out of the royal library. This rather odd experience had been inspiring for him and he had grand plans in mind, which he planed to set into motion as soon as he found a way out of the palace.

Before Prince Moon River can launch a speech to convince Daniel to go on a quest with him, there was a crash of glass. A masked man stumbled into the room. The blade in his hand proclaimed his dark intentions.

Daniel's dagger was out in a flash and she shifted into Defensive Stance Nr. 234 (she had finally remembered it).

"No way!" swore Prince Moon River. (One has to understand that in the very polite country of Laguria, "no way" was considered a obscene language.)

"Prince Daniel of Pyria, I come from the blatant, brave, hairless and harming Prince Daniel of Tybia...." A flying dagger embedded into his throat cut his prepared speech short.

Daniel approached the assassin's body cautiously and drew her dagger from his throat. She wiped it on his fashionably black garments and sheathed it back into her hair.

Prince Moon River spotted a piece of paper tucked at his waist. He took it and unfolded it.

"You might be interested in this," he said, after scanning the coffee-stained note.

"Read it to me, Moon River."

The Prince winced at his name, but did as he was bid, reading expressively from the page with the appropriate (or inappropriate) gestures. "It says: 'Princess Daniel of Pyria, I come from the valiant, brave, fearless and charming Prince Daniel of Tybia...' It's his speech" He flipped through the pages restlessly. "It goes on for another five and a half pages.... Mostly the same drivel... 'You shall die a painful, agonizing, excruciating, traumatic and elongated death.'.... I'll not suffer you through it..."

"Does it say why he wants to kill me?"

"Yes... here... 'You stole my name...' and 'blackened, soiled and sullied my honourable, reputable, venerable, ethical, spotless, immaculate and spick-and-span name'... someone had fun with a thesaurus... Must have taken him ages to learn it. Though I have to note he made four mistakes in the first sentence. I suppose declamations that bad deserve death."

"Moon River..."

"Don't call me that," The Prince growled, his mood darkening at his name. A glance at the fear on Daniel's face softened his mood. "Call me 'Moonie' or something... just not 'Moon River.'"

"Well, Moonie," she begun again, "I have to say I don't feel very safe here anymore..."

Suddenly, a gaggle of journalists, poets and illustrators stormed into the library, bombarding questions, muttering rhymes and sketching. They had managed to evade security because of the commotion in the royal ballroom and had found their way into the royal library. The journalists were looking for new 'dirt' on the royal family. The poets were looking for inspiration; all of them aspiring to be the next great poet of five-hundred-and-eighty-three-and-a-half florid and over-quoted lines. The illustrators were looking for material to accompany the journalists' articles on the latest 'dirt.'

It doesn't take much imagination to guess what the conclusion the journalists jumped to when they saw the two half-dressed royals and the body of a dead assassin. Their probing questions were of an indecent sort, so will not be repeated here, but it is enough to say that they a) had nothing to do with books and, b) had even less to do with assassins. Daniel blushed (which they took as a silent confirmation of what they supposedly did in the library) and Moonie wrapped a protective arm around her (which they took as further confirmation.) He herded her out of the royal library and into the nearest room with good solid locks on the door, which happened be Daniel's room (which the journalists took as even further confirmation.)

With a mob of rabid journalists, poets and illustrators on the other side of the thick, octuple-locked door, Daniel was panicking. Moonie started ripping up her bedsheets.

"Moonie, I think facing all those monstrosities out there would be preferable to facing those... people..."

"Help me tie these sheets together. We'll make that cliched rope of knotted bedclothes."

"I thought you didn't like cliches."

"This one's too much of a classic to dislike," he said with a grin. "Ready for that quest I spoke of?"

Daniel casted a fearful look at the shaking door and nodded. "You?"

Moonie spat onto a corner of the bedsheet and rubbed his face with it, removing the makeup and revealing is blue-tinged skin. "Been waiting all my life."

Meanwhile, back indoors, the company representative and the royal seamstress came to the rescue. The talking pig, who was loitering nearby, reported to the dynamic duo and they came as soon as they could. It took every bit of the company representative's persuasive powers and the royal seamstress's hypnotic powers to halt the rampaging herd of journalists, poets and illustrators.

Though the company representative and the royal seamstress managed to break up the herd and proverbially "kick them out of the palace," they were unable to hush the next day's tabloids. They were filled with reports of the little tete-a-tete of the Princess Daniel and the Prince Moon River in the royal library and their supposed elopement. Some more lurid tabloids gave a graphic blow-by-blow account of the meeting, filled with pathetically romantic love confessions and "events that follow" (taken straight out of romantic novels like "Leather's Passion," with the names changed.)

New epic narratives were recited all over Pyria and Laguria about the elopement of the two royals. Some credited it all to the Curse of Princess Daniel. Others spoke of the "evil" Queen/King of Pyria/Laguria. One poet in particular broke the record of the five-hundred-and-eighty-three-and-a-half florid lines with eight-hundred-and-thirty-one-and-a-quarter lines of pure gushing drivel, titled "Daniel and the Moon." That a quarter line consisted of two words: "beautiful clay" and what "beautiful clay" had to do with Daniel or the Prince is anyone's guess.

It started a series of new anecdotes of how Daniel had always loved the moon and rivers (odd considering how there aren't any rivers in Pyria, only lakes, the odd stream and a bit of coast). It also had a rather creative one of how she had vowed to marry anyone who can catch the Moon's reflection in the river and how the Prince Moon River had the beauty of such a reflection. This was, of course, complete rubbish, but the romantics in the land (like Daniel's dance tutor) relished every single on of the eight-hundred-and-thirty-one-and-a-quarter-lines, though they too were baffled by the quarter line of "beautiful clay."

Not all of these newly spawned epics, trying to cash in on the news, were romantic. In fact, there was four-hundred-and-fifty pages of swashbuckling prose about the duel between the weaponless Prince Moon River and three dozen armed-to-the-teeth masked assassins, all of which danced menacingly in the background as Prince Moon River heroically dispatched them one by one (poetic inaccuracies).

The King and Queen of Pyria reacted surprisingly positively to the news of their daughter's absence. The Queen went throught the standard routine of fainting and fanning, but she wasn't really worried. Princesses traditionally ran away, and usually showed up at the end of it all richer and married (even with children, at times.) Secretly, she felt that her grand scheme of marrying her daughter off had finally worked.

The King didn't find out until a week later, when he finally finished his "very important matters of state." He relaxed after knowing she didn't take with her anything of value (only extra changes of underwear, the marbles, extra handkerchiefs and the odd jewelry.) Laguria was a very rich country and an alliance would be most profitable.

All of Laguria was most pleased (in the most polite of ways, of course), since their mentally-different physically-unusual Prince was finally doing his royal duty. Censored versions of the epic poems were sung all over Laguria, with certain terms substituted for their politically correct counterparts. The overquoted line: "The short beauteous princess into the shining river look'ed" became "The vertically-challenged physically-attractive princess into the visually-reflective-and-distinguished river look'ed."

Both Moonie and Daniel were made painfully unaware of starring in these epics whenever then stepped into an inn or tavern. Sometimes, they couldn't resist opining in between the lines, but the patrons always silenced them. They seemed to prefer the frilled version to the truth, then again, what the ragged looking stranger said, was less likely to be true. Fortunately, the differences between their poetic-selves were too different from their real selves for anyone to recognise them.