pensnest | Fairytale Romance, complete

Right... I think it may turn out to be Pen fail at this point, possibly I got the addresses wrong or something, but it doesn't look as though the last two postcards are going to turn up, so here's the complete story.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Prince Lance was extremely disconcerted to discover, when he had got his precious cargo back to the castle, that the jolting journey had caused his glass-encased maiden to wake up and unfasten the catch on the interior of her coffin, having—she explained—jogged the piece of poisoned fruit out of her mouth. Prince Lance was not at all sure how to deal with an actual maiden, but fortunately the maiden was—although grateful—not particularly interested in Prince Lance. Instead, she devoted herself to cleaning up around Prince Joey, explaining that she had previously been employed in doing the housework for seven diminutive persons and that to take charge of a single gentleman, however slovenly, would make a welcome change.

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

His mother—possibly despairing of ever finding a mate acceptable to her son—threw a ball to which all the beautiful maidens of the land were invited. Prince Justin subsequently engaged upon a rather unusual quest involving a shoe. The lovely, golden-haired owner of the vitreous pump, who had been living imprisoned in a tower and had not had the opportunity to discover the impracticality of footwear made of glass until she attended the ball, was at once invited to his castle, where his mother had prepared for her a bed consisting of twenty-seven mattresses, under the bottommost of which had been hidden a pea. The maiden having passed this test by emerging next morning complaining that the mattress had been uncomfortably lumpy, she was then offered the opportunity to spin straw into gold.

Prince Justin is, as yet, unmarried.

The End