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There once was a kingdom far away. It was ruled by a King and Queen who had a single child, a Princess named Katherine.
Princess Katherine was cursed, so it was said. A drought had afflicted the kingdom from the day that she was born. The plants withered, darkness lingered, and the kingdom suffered.
Years passed, and Princess Katherine grew older. The curse seemed to grow as she did and many began to fear. The princess came of age, and the fear only grew. It began to be said that if nothing was done within the next few years, the kingdom would fall. The King and Queen, nervous their own selves, called across the land for answers, a way to break the curse.
An old fortune teller stepped forward in response. They said the curse was born of the Princess's empty heart. The solution could only be in marriage.
They spoke of true love, but the King and Queen did not hear. In their own empty hearts, marriage was the closest to love anyone could receive. It was clear that arranging a marriage for Princess Katherine was the way forward.
The princess herself was not on board with such a plan. Yet her attempts at reason with her parents fell on deaf ears. She was betrothed to a prince from a nearby kingdom.
This prince had been married and divorced six times over. The King and Queen saw this as a benefit: the marriage was easily arranged with his level of experience. Besides, the supposed cure was marriage itself, not staying wed. If the union was poor after the land was made well, it could clearly be easily ended.
Princess Katherine plead further with her parents, to no avail. The fiercest argument was on the day before her wedding, the princess filled with desperation. Her parents grew angry, and locked their daughter in her chambers under close guard so she would have no way of escape.
That night, a fierce storm overtook the kingdom. It was worse than any tempest the area had ever had, even before the beginning of the drought. Lightning flashed, rain poured, and the wind howled. The worst of the storm thundered about the center of the kingdom, the very castle. As the rest of the castle slept uneasily, hiding from the elements, the princess disappeared in between flashes of lightning.
The next morning, the rain was over, but clouds lingered in the sky. News of the princess's disappearance spread, until the entire kingdom knew what had happened. The storm had been the doing of a witch who had taken the princess, locking her away in her tower deep in the forest.
For their part, the King and Queen were aghast. Their only heir, only way to cure their kingdom, was gone. After much conference and debate, they sent a force of soldiers into the forest after the witch.
The soldiers had no luck. After weeks of wandering around in the forest's thick fog they finally made their way out, swearing they would never return.
Furious with these developments, the groom-to-be ranted and raved. The prince set out into the forest with the intent to find and marry the princess.
It wouldn't be exactly true to say that he was never seen again. Princess Katherine's betrothed did return from the forest, the form of a croaking brown frog.
With this occurrence, the King and Queen threw the situation open. They sent out a degree that whosoever prince or hero should rescue the princess would be handsomely rewarded, as well as receiving her hand in marriage. The offer was tempting, and for a while, many a prince or hero set off into the forest.
The lucky ones gave up after getting lost in the mists. The rest returned as frogs or not at all. The amount of willing suitors began to decrease and the King and Queen began to grow rather desperate.
Finally, they turned towards the dungeons. The storm that the witch conjured had reached out to sea, wrecking the ship of one infamous Pirate Joe against the shore. Despite his best efforts of getting back, he had been brought into custody, to waste away in the dungeons until the current issue had been dealt with.
Now, it would be a win-win situation. Pirate Joe was known for daring escapades and great escapes, making him the perfect candidate to delve after the witch. In the view of the King and Queen, he would either succeed and retrieve their daughter, granting him a pardon and great riches, or would perish along the way and no longer be an issue.
Pirate Joe, wanting to spend no longer in the dungeon, readily accepted the quest. He had no desire to marry a princess he had never met, but he wouldn't turn down any matter of riches. So he loaded up his personal raft, and started into the forest by way of the river.
The river proved the best path to follow, he would discover. It was perilous in the fog, but he had experience with rough waters. It also kept him out of all of the traps and spells that the witch had set throughout the forest. Where others had gotten tangled in thick branches, or drowned in endless mud, he persevered.
Not to say that his journey was without peril. Still, unlike most of his predecessors, he came upon the tower that was hidden deep in the forest. Although, it was really less of a tower in and of itself, but a cottage with a tower attached instead. It looked homely enough that Pirate Joe couldn't help but hesitate while standing before it.
Eventually, Pirate Joe forwent stealth and knocked on the tower stones, his cutlass drawn. "My Princess! I'm here to rescue you!"
From the window at the tower, a dark head of hair poked out. Princess Katherine squinted down at him. "Do I know you? You don't look like a prince."
"That's offensive." Pirate Joe retorted. "I am the Great Pirate Joe, and I have come to save you from this tower prison."
Princess Katherine didn't seem particularly convinced. "If you're a pirate, why are you doing rescue work? That doesn't really seem like your style. Neither do princesses in general. "
Pirate Joe shrugged. "Listen, I may or may not have been shipwrecked in that huge storm, and as such, captured. So let's get you back to your kingdom before they put me back in the dungeons."
"Hmm... No thanks." Princess Katherine shook her head. "That kind of sounds like a you problem."
"Excuse me?!" Pirate Joe reeled back. "I'm here to rescue you!"
She shrugged. "I'm good, really. I don't actually need rescuing."
Pirate Joe raised his cutlass higher. "Oh, I get it. You're still under that horrible witch's spell. You won't be so ungrateful when after I get you out of here."
"Hey!" Another voice broke in before Princess Katherine could reply. "What do you think you're saying about my wife?!"
The witch herself stormed into view, her pure white hair whipping in the wind around her. She drew her wand, pointing it right at the center of Pirate Joe's chest. "Back off. I don't know where you princes get the nerve-" She grit her teeth.
"Technically he's not a prince." Princess Katherine herself spoke up, suddenly beside the witch. She stood up from the crouch that her jump from the window had landed her in. "He's a pirate."
The witch didn't move, even as small sparks of lightning began to dance around the tip of her wand and through her hair. "Prince, pirate, I don't care. He shouldn't be bugging you like this."
Pirate Joe scowled, leveling his cutlass towards the witch. "Well, Miss Witch, I don't care what vile sorcery you've done. I'm taking the princess back and that's that."
Princess Katherine sighed. "Yeah, that's not happening." She glanced between his cutlass and the witch's wand. "Both of you, stop fighting. Let's talk this out."
"But she kidnapped you-"
"But he was annoying you-"
Katherine chuckled. "Shelby, I'm fine. And Pirate Joe, there's a bit of a delusion that you're acting under."
The witch-Shelby, put her wand away, grumbling under her breath. For his part, Pirate Joe sheathed his cutlass with a raised eyebrow. "A delusion? What are you talking about?"
The princess shrugged, throwing her arm over Shelby's shoulder. "I was never kidnapped in the first place. What my parent's failed to realize when they tried to marry me off to a six times divorced prince was the fact that I had been dating a witch for the past few years. When they finally found out, they locked me in the castle. So my amazing Magia here-" She hugged Shelby close to her, her eyes soft. "-helped me out. We've been here since."
Shelby wrapped her arms around Katherine, looking up her with the most lovestruck expression. "I'll always be here to help you, Starlight." Katherine smiled sappily, leaning down to give her a quick kiss.
Pirate Joey coughed awkwardly. "I'm happy for you guys but..."
They broke about, both blushing. "Sorry."
"Anyways," Pirate Joe continued. "What happens now? Clearly, you're not going anywhere."
"That's right!" Shelby exclaimed, clutching Katherine's hand.
Katherine chuckled. "Now, I wait for my parents to realize that the supposed "curse" had nothing to do with me and was just a normal drought. Shelby can keep fending off prospective suitors in the meantime."
"And keep turning them into frogs?" The pirate asked out of curiosity.
Shelby shook her head. "I don't turn all of them into frogs! Just the jerks. The rest get sent on their way one way or another."
Pirate Joe nodded. "So, I'll be on my way then?"
"Something like that." Shelby said. "You'd have plenty of a head start to get off to sea again. Have fun adventuring, Pirate Joe. You're welcome back here any time."
"I will!" He replied cheerfully. "Farewell Princess. Farewell, Miss Witch!"
Katherine smiled, reaching for Shelby's hand. "It's Mrs. Witch, actually." Matching rings glinted on their intertwined hands. Pirate Joe broke into a smile of his own, waving as he set off down the river and off to sea once more.