THE CURSED PRINCESS

The Royal Festival

"Come out, girls." Thana shouted to her sisters as she walked towards their bedroom. "I've been waiting outside for the past ten minutes. Why aren't you done yet?"

"Because we are busy dressing up." Rose replied.

"It's a festival and not a pageant." Thana snorted, trying to rein in her annoyance.

"And everyone else in the village is dressing up." Rose said.

"Everyone except Thana." Susan sighed.

Thana scowled. "That is enough. Let's go or we will be late. Everyone else in the village will be walking towards the village square now."

"Why should we rush?"

"So we can sit in the front."

"You know all the shows would be done on a high stage so no matter where we sit, we will get a good view of everything."

"But the king won't get a good view of us." Thana sighed.

"What has the king got to do with leaving early?" Rose scoffed.

Sometimes, she couldn't understand her elder sister.

Thana groaned loudly and ran her hand though her hair, careful not to scatter what she had patiently styled for half an hour.

"Have you forgotten so soon, girls? The king always gives out gifts at the end of the festival."

"The king and queen have always been generous. That is not news. Isn't that one of the reasons the people of Bloomfield love them so much?"

"But one person always gets the biggest gift. That is the person the king personally picks out from the crowd and awards at the ceremony. They get to shine like that because they sit where the king can see them."

"And you want to get there early today and find a front seat so the king can give you the biggest gift?" Rose asked.

Thana shrugged. "I don't mind if I get the biggest gift this year. I've been looking forward to that since last year so I want you girls to hurry up and not ruin my plan."

"You can go if you are eager to leave." Susan snorted with a roll of her eyes.

She wasn't leaving the house until she looked as pretty as she wanted to be. She rushed to the mirror at the far corner of the bedroom and applied the rouge she had bought at the market to it. The trader had sworn that it would bring out the beauty in her eyes. She applied a considerable amount of lip balm and smiled at her reflection.

Now, she was ready for the festival.

No, she wasn't ready yet. She winced as she remembered that she hadn't styled her hair and rushed to her closet to find the bonds she had bought for her hair.

"Why are you acting like this?" Thana sighed in frustration.

She missed those days when she could s***k them into submission. Her life would be easier at the moment if she could still do that.

"You can leave if you want to, sister." Rose snapped at her, tired of her overbearing complaints.

"And have our parents blame me for leaving you alone in the house." Thana snorted.

The last time she had gone out on her own without taking her younger sisters with us, their parents had given her hell when they came back from the farm and found out about what happened.

She still had nightmares of the punishment they had given her and shuddered at the memory. She wasn't about to experience that again.

"I'm not leaving this house unless I am done dolling myself up so your dream might get thwarted this year, sister." Susan said, turning from the mirror to look back at Thana.

"Why do you have to doll yourself up and waste my time?" Thana sighed. "I might win today. Do you want me to lose that chance?"

"You might win, sister. That is it." Susan explained. "There is no guarantee that you will win the king's annual gift even if you leave early but there is a guarantee that we would get to dance with a lot of boys at the festival if we look extra pretty."

"Don't mind her for asking why we have to dress up." Rose snorted. "As if she doesn't know how much fun there always is at the festival and how many boys we can get to flirt with."

"Do you only think of boys?" Thana scowled at her sisters.

"Why don't you think of boys?" They retorted at her.

"You have five minutes to be done or I'm dragging the two of you out by your ears to the village square. I don't mind if you get embarrassed in the presence of the boys you are dressing up and wasting my time for. I won't have you make me lose my chance." Thana hissed.

She walked outside, steaming with annoyance. Her sisters walked outside just as she moved in to fulfill her threat. She scowled all the way but forgot all about her anger the moment she got to the festival and saw people trooping in and having fun.

******

Shane's eyes sparkled with delight as he watched the serving maids moving towards his table. He salivated at the thought of having his fourth meal for the day. He always looked forward to the royal festival because there was abundance of rich and exotic meals, and there was no discrimination among the guests. Everyone was entitled to the same quality of food and could eat as much as their stomach could bear.

At the moment, Shane was ready to stretch his stomach to the widest capacity. He smiled as he made a gesture to the maid and she dropped a big bowl of soup filled with assorted meat on his table.

"Are you eating again?"

He turned at the sound of the voice and scowled at the speaker.

"Do you have a problem with that?" He fired at her in annoyance.

Why couldn't she mind her business?

"No," she shrugged. "I'm amazed at how much you can eat."

He smiled, feeling relaxed and relieved that she hadn't been judging him. He liked that she was fascinated by his actions.

"Keep looking at me and you will find out."

"Don't tell me you are going to keep eating?"

"Why not? It's free."

"And you can afford to eat at your house. Almost everyone in Bloomfield is financially okay, you don't have to stuff your face."

"Like I said earlier, it's free and I didn't cook it. I can afford to eat well in my house but today I want to eat the meals cooked by those handling the diet of our dear rulers. If they don't mind, I don't see why you should." Shane said, hating that his food was probably getting cold at the moment.

"Are you still going to eat more?"

"Watch me."

"I don't have a problem with watching you."

"Do you like me?" He teased, arching his eyes at her.