Courtney walked up the winding, stone staircase in a castle in England. She holds the mint green fabric of her dress in her small fists as she climbs up the stairs as fast as she could, high heels clicking on the steps. Finally, she shoves the heavy wooden door open and into her large bedroom suite at the top of the tower. Courtney slams the heavy door shut and slides the large metal bolt across the lock.

Her room was decorated fit for a, well, a princess. The bed was a queen-sized bed on mahogany posts, and the sheets were a creamy white color. There was a flowing canopy hanging down from the four posts above the bed, sweeping down to onto the floor. Various over-stuffed pillows and cashmere blankets were piled in various corners of the room, forming perfect reading corners to curl up in with the perfect book. Thick, royal rugs covered the cold stone floors. An over-sized mahogany dresser stood against one wall, packed with silk clothing. A creamy white vanity set with a large mirror and dozens of candles around it was pushed to the wall next to the dresser. The stone walls encircled the room in a circular shape, traveling higher and higher. At the very top of the ceiling, wooden rafters criss-crossed until a web of wood covered the stone ceiling. Large windows with fancy shutters let in the warm sunlight, making the whole room glow.

Courtney crossed the bedroom and opened two French doors, walking onto the balcony of her tower. She bends down to pick up her heavy, orange tabby cat who enjoyed being outside. But she takes her cat back into her room, shutting the French doors with her foot. Courtney collapses on her plush bed with her cat laying on her stomach and begins stroking the animal's fur. She always talked to her cat when she was depressed.

"Oh, Henry. I am so annoyed with Father! He thinks he knows everything," Courtney huffs. Her father, the king, had forbid his daughter to go see the large parade in the middle of town. She missed it every year due to his strict rules, but she had expected him to finally let her go see it since she had recently turned eighteen. The parade seemed like the last straw after a lifetime of being told what and what not to do. Henry lifts his head and meows at Courtney, who had stopped petting him for a moment. "Sorry," she apologizes and begins petting him again.

She started looking around her room, looking for a solution to her problems. One dresser door was open, spilling priceless garments all over her stone floor. Although, in her angry state, she didn't care one bit. Courtney finally registers a murky brown fabric shoved at the back of the dresser, piled in a ball. She stands up from her bed, leaving Henry meowing angrily at the end of his pampering.

"Oh, hush," she scolds him as she reaches an arm to the far back of her dresser. She grabs the rough fabric and pulls it out, holding it in front of her. It was a raggedy dress that looked exactly like a peasant's dress. Maybe it belonged to one of her servants whose laundry accidentally got mixed up with hers.

A slow grin spread across Courtney's face as she formulated a plan to escape the castle.

She stripped down into her bra and underwear and she slipped the crude dress over her shoulders. It was a ruddy ruby color, but had a more brown tint, making it look burgundy. The dress fell in pleats down to her ankles, and the fabric gathered at her waist with a thick white ribbon that tied behind her back. The neckline was a V-neck with a white collar. The sleeves were short cap-sleeves that cut off just past her shoulders, with white cuffs buttoned with a clear button. She took off her green high heels and changed into brown leather sandals.

Courtney spun in the mirror, satisfied with her new look. She seemed as if she was a pure commoner, like a servant or a peasant. Courtney took a brown silk scarf from her dresser and wrapped it around her head. She unlocked her bedroom door and quickly walked down the stairs to the main floor of the castle. She snuck into a crowd of servants carrying large baskets of laundry on their heads.

The women walked out of the castle doors, with guards guarding both sides of the open front doors. They walked across the wooden drawbridge, sandals and bare feet shuffling on the wood. After they were safely past the drawbridge, the guards lifted the drawbridge to reveal the moat again. The herd of laundry ladies turned a corner on their way to the river to wash the clothes, but Courtney kept walking straight to the center of town.

The tiny houses were made of a mix of mud, grass, and clay. Wooden rafters stuck through the hardened mix provided extra support, especially to the buildings with multiple floors. Clothing lines were strung haphazardly between high buildings, and the clothing fluttered in the wind. Salespeople with carts and stalls sold everything from jewelry to produce to clay bowls. A few entertainers performed acts like sword-swallowing, fire breathing, and magic tricks to try to earn an extra coin or two.

Courtney soon got lost in the many side streets and alleys, but she didn't care much, since even the small shops on the outskirts of town were entertaining. She walks along the line of stalls, vendors trying to catch her attention. Finally, she reaches an apple cart with a poor peasant boy standing in front of it. He seemed to be about two years old with shaggy black hair and a ratty brown shirt that was one size too large for him. The little kid was bare foot, and staring hungrily at the apples.

"Aw, you must be starving," Courtney gushes. She takes an apple off the shelf and hands it to the boy, whose face lights up in delight. "There you go." Once the boy had the apple, he ran off with it, presumably to go share it with his family.

Courtney begins to walk away, but the muscular vendor stomps around his stall and grabs her thin wrist. She gasps as she was yanked back and asks, "Oh, can I help you?"

"Yes," he growls, "You can help me by paying me for that apple you just stole from me."

"I… I didn't steal the apple! I just gave it too that poor little boy. He looked hungry, and you obviously have more than enough apples for yourself…," Courtney explains, motioning to his stall with her free hand.

"That is called stealing, young lady! Aren't you aware of the penalty used for stealing?" the vendor threatens. He yanks her wrist and holds it against the wooden counter of his stall. He withdraws a long sword from a belt loop and raises it high into the air.

Courtney gasps and her eyes fill with tears. "No!" she shouts, pulling at her wrist with all her strength.

Suddenly, somebody plows into the vendor, and they go tumbling to the ground. Courtney falls backwards, since she had been pulling on her wrist when she was let go. The salesman's sword clatters away from the fight, and fists are being thrown. The man who had saved Courtney leaps off of the vendor and grabs her wrist, pulling her to her feet.

"Run!" the teen boy commands her, pulling her along. They race through several alleys and up multiple flights of stairs. A few men give chase, but the two teens are too fast for them. While they were walking up the last flight of stairs, he hops onto the rooftop and reaches over to help Courtney.

She takes his hand and she steps onto the stone roof, but immediately trips over a protruding rock. She stumbles into his arms with her hands on his shoulders, and he catches her with his hands on her waist. The mysterious teen smirks, revealing a row of perfectly straight teeth, and Courtney pulls away.

A blush creeps along her cheeks and she toys with the scarf around her head. "I would like to thank you for stopping that man," she tells him.

The teen waves it off and replies, "Forget it. It was no big deal."

He fumbles with the lock of a door, and Courtney takes that time to check him out. He had shiny, black hair that slightly covered his ears and a muscular body. He was wearing white ratty parachute pants that were full of patches and stopped just below his knees. His shirt was merely a green vest that showed off his arm muscles. Finally, he had picked the lock on the door and it swung open. When he turned to Courtney to motion inside, she noticed he had the most enticing eyes ever. They were a deep blue-green color that left her head feeling dizzy and her stomach feeling fluttery.

She stepped inside the little room. It was very dim, and the only object that she could make out was a flight of stairs that spiraled upwards. Other than that, there were broken clay pots, rotten wooden support beams, molding carpets, the squeaking of rats, boarded-up windows, and unrecognizable trash. "Is this where you live?" Courtney asks nervously.

"No, not really, I live at the top of these stairs. So, uh, is this your first time in the marketplace?" he asks.

"Is it that obvious?" Courtney replies as they begin the long ascent up the stairs.

"Well, you do kinda stand out," he tells her, "You don't seem to dangerous the marketplace can be."

"Yeah… Thanks for that, again. What's your name?"

"Duncan. And you?"

"I'm Courtney," she says, hoping he doesn't get the connection with her having the same name as the princess and no experience in the marketplace. Luckily, he doesn't. Instead, they reach the top of the stairs and he grabs fistfuls of fabric with dozens of patches and rips in it. He tosses the curtain aside and reveals the place where he lives.

"Alright, Princess, this is the place I call home," he announces, sitting down on a window seat with cushions spilling stuffing out of their broken seams.

"I'm not a princess!" Courtney immediately retorts, face turning red while trying to keep her secret.

Duncan laughs. "Don't get your panties in a knot, babe. Of course your not. Royalty wouldn't stoop down so low as to associate with us lower-class peasants," he says bitterly.

Courtney puts her hands on her hips. "Well, not all royalty feels that way. Some hate the way they feel trapped within the walls of the palace, and the way they're always being bossed around and being told what to do," she replies.

"Oh, and how would you know?" Duncan asks her sarcastically.

She lifts her chin and looks down at him. "I know people," she answers generally. Courtney turns to survey Duncan's home. The packed-dirt floor was covered with dusty rugs and random pieces of cloth. A wooden dresser was shoved up against a wall, drawers pulled out and stuffed with clothing. Ropes and more strips of cloth hang from the wooden rafters of the ceiling. Ceramic jars, jugs, and pots are stacked against one wall in a precarious-looking pile, like it could topple over at any second. But the thick layer of dust on the pottery showed that it had been there a while. Two lamps were fastened to the walls on either side of the room, and a rope was strung between the two. Clothing hung on the line, drying in the air. There was a pile of ratty pillows and shaggy blankets on top of a straw mattress, which Courtney figured was Duncan's bed.

It was nothing like the palace, but Courtney thought the room looked almost comfy, in a last-resort kind of way.

"How long have you lived here?" she asks.

"Ever since I was ten, when my dad left and my mom died."

"I'm sorry," Courtney murmurs.

Duncan shrugs and opens the curtain by the window seat, revealing an eagle-eye view of the entire marketplace. "I got used to it," he replies. Courtney walks over to the window, which was next to the pile of old cracking pottery. She peeks over the window seat, which had to ledge to block the far plummet to the street if one was to fall, to get a look at the tiny stalls below. Suddenly, a green-and-black tarantula the size of her hand falls from the ceiling and plops on the floor right at Courtney's feet. She lets out an ear-shattering scream, causing Duncan to wince at the high decibels.

Courtney backs into the wall of pottery, causing a few vases to topple over and smash on the floor. One jar topples over from the top of the stack and crashes onto the floor, right on top of the tarantula, and pottery shards fly across the floor. Some goo oozes out from under the mess, causing Courtney to scream again. She stumbles backwards again and trips over a pile of blankets, falling right on top of Duncan's bed.

"Scruffy!" Duncan exclaims, hopping up from the bed and carefully removing pottery shards from the green goo.

"What's a… Wait, you… That thing was… Was Scruffy… That tarantula was your pet?!" Courtney asks disbelievingly. Duncan nods, and she wraps her arms around herself to try to stop shaking. The last piece of pottery was removed, showing a nasty mix of hairy tarantula legs and goopy spider intestines.

Duncan scrapes Scruffy's body off the floor with a sharp piece of pottery and tosses it out the open window. He smirks at Courtney and settles back down on the window seat. She suspiciously sits up on his bed and lifts an eyebrow. "So… you're not mad? I just killed your pet! I mean, uh, Scruffy," she says cautiously.

Duncan waves off her comment and puts his arms behind his head. "Yeah. I loved him, but he ate too much. Two mouths are hard to feed when I'm the only one doing any work. I thought about killing him before, but hey, if I failed to kill him, he'd bite me. And he's poisonous, you know. I wasn't gonna risk my life for a little extra food," he explains. Courtney nods.

"So, do you need a place to stay?" Duncan asks, "You probably don't want to go back to the marketplace with the guards after you."

(Author's Note: Okay, so I don't think this was a good beginning. Blah. But did anybody notice something? I based this off of Aladdin, except they live in England, not the Middle East. But, God, I used to love Aladdin when I was little. Believe it or not, I used to be jealous of Jasmine. Lol. Sorry about how this chapter was a LOT like the movie, but I promise the rest of the story won't be like that. I'm only using the idea of how they met each other and their roles in the story: Courtney, the rich princess, and Duncan, the poor beggar.)