fathers Posts

21Oct
2

The New Mouse of the House

Once upon a time, a mouse decided it was finally time for his two sons to marry, and that they would find their brides in the traditional way: they would gnaw at the stem of a sunflower until it fell, and marry the girl the flower pointed to.

Now, the house the mice lived in had no mirrors or other reflective surfaces, and for good reason: the two sons had no idea they were mice. Long ago, their father had decided he would really rather be human, so they lived as humans, the boys would marry humans, and, hopefully, their children would be more human than mouse.

So the brothers went out and gnawed on their sunflowers until they fell. The older brother’s flower fell, luckily, just towards the house of the very girl he had been wooing. He immediately went over and spent a long time convincing her to be his bride.

The younger brother, however, found his flower pointing toward the woods, and he walked for a very long time before he found anyone at all. When he finally did, it was in a quiet little cabin under a lovely willow tree. She had a pleasant voice , and readily agreed to be his bride.

Also, she was a mouse.

He fretted about that a little on the way home, but reasoned that his dad was a mouse, and wouldn’t mind so much.

He was, of course, mistaken, and he was very worried indeed when he made his way back to the cabin. As a test, his father had instructed him to have his mouse weave a sample of the finest cloth ever for him.

He was even more worried when he explained the situation to his mouse, and she simply handed him a piece of cheese. It was a delicious piece of cheese, surely, but not at all what his father had requested.

So he did all he could of to do, and took his bride home, thinking to win his father over with her grace, beauty, and adorable whiskers.

But just as the pair were approaching the house, something surprising happened.

His father flew into such a rage that he physically attacked the little mouse, knocking her backwards into a pond. Without thinking, the son jumped into the water and swam after his bride. As he pulled her back to the shore, he got the greatest shock of his life: he was clearly a mouse, and not a man at all. Years of prejudice against mice  and identity issues finally made sense to him.

He left  his house, married the mouse, and they lived happily ever after.

The End

Source: The Mouse Bride, Finnish fairy tale

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Fairy Tales and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
09Sep
0

Polar Bears, Penguins, and a Dance Off

Once upon a time, a man tried to fix his window while his three very cold daughters waited inside. Unfortunately, this particular man had never been good at fixing certain things, and the window turned out to be one of those things.

The situation became so desperate that the man resorted to asking anyone who walked by to help him out with the window. The first passer by to agree was a tall, broad shouldered polar bear, who happened to be very good indeed at fixing windows.

“Thank you, kind bear!” the man said when he was done. “Is there anything I can do for you in return?”

Yes, there was, the bear answered. And then he demanded the man’s youngest daughter for his wife.

When she was informed, tearfully, by her father about the arrangement, she just shrugged and agreed to go.

At this point, the narrator feels obligated to share with you certain information: the two elder daughters were dancers, famous throughout their town for their skill. And their younger sister, the one who agreed to go with the polar bear, was always their choreographer.

This is important because as soon as the girl reached her new home, she found a large crowd of bears waiting to be instructed in dancing. You see, the polar bears had long been at war with the penguins, and it had been decided centuries ago that the only way to resolve the conflict would be through a dance off.

The time for the dance off was drawing near, and the bears had no dance.

And so, the girl thought up a dance, and spent her days and some of her nights teaching it to the bears and having them run through the routine again and again. After some time, she discovered that she was actually quite happy living among the bears.

However, she still longed to see her family. When she thought to discuss her wishes with the bear, he agreed, but gave her one stipulation: she was not to tell her mother about the dance off, or the penguins.

And so the girl went home, and was received with much happiness and many hugs. She stayed up long into the night with her family, and before the sun came up, she told her mother about the dance off. And the penguins.

“That’s silly,” her mother said. “Polar bears live at the North Pole, and penguins at the South Pole. How can they dance against each other?”

The bear was cross indeed when he heard that the girl had told her mother, and what her mother had said.

“Now that that’s been pointed out to us, we will have to travel east of the sun and west of the moon, to where the penguins live.”

It was a very long journey, and the girl became worried that not all of the bears would make it. Every single one was vital for the routine.

Luckily, every bear survived the trip, and they danced their hardest and their fastest, and their routine looked even better than the choreographer could have imagined.

However, they did lose to the penguins. Penguins are fantastic dancers.

The End

Source: East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Asbjornsen and Moe

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Fairy Tales and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
15Jun
0

The Twelve Gaming Princesses

Once upon a time, the owner of the largest and finest house in a little town was in distress. You see, this man had twelve daughters, all with a year or less between them. They slept in twelve fine beds in one room, with fine covers and fine clothes. All their things were so nice, in fact, and their father so doting, that the townspeople not quite so nicely referred to them as the “Princesses.”

But something was wrong. The name calling he could deal with, and while he worried that his girls didn’t seem to have any real friends, he was at least comforted by the fact that they had each other for company. Lately, though, they’d been tired, listless. They looked fatigued, with dark sunken eyes, and their hands, especially, drooped. Their fingers were so tired they seemed unable to pour a cup of tea, or even sometimes to open a door.

Every night, the man sent his daughters to bed earlier and earlier, locking the door behind him. But every day, they turned up at the breakfast table as exhausted as the day before.

He decided he had to do something. At first, he tried appealing to the youth in the community. He didn’t have much to offer, since so much of his resources went to his daughters, but he tried getting some young men to follow his daughters around at night in exchange for $100 and two coupons for Outback Steakhouse.

No one agreed.

In the end, he decided that was for the best. He didn’t really need strange young men following his girls around at night anyway.

In fact, he was just about to give up hope when something happened. A little dog, perhaps the one from next door, dropped something at his feet. It appeared to be a dirty rumpled cloak, but when he picked it up, he realized that his hand had completely vanished.

That night, armed with the invisibility cloak, he locked the bedroom door behind him as usual, but this time, he was on the other side of it. To his amazement, every one of his girls got up from bed, quieted each other, and rushed out through a hole in the wall. He wondered how he had not noticed the giant gaping thing, and then rushed to catch up with the girls.

With their father behind them, the girls jumped down a green pipe into the water below. They swam until they reached another pipe, then crawled into it and emerged in a green field.

There, he discovered their secret.

The girls ran to the consoles set up all over the field. The played Mario 1, 2, and 3, battled each other in Guitar Hero or DDR, jumped through orange portals and shot down enemies.

He watched for a long time, and before he left, he grabbed one of the spare controllers and put it in his pocket.

At breakfast the next morning, the girls were exhausted. Their father was about to pull the controller from his pocket and reveal that he knew where they’d been and what they’d been doing, but then he realized something else. Even though they were so tired they could hardly lift their spoons, the girls were happy. He left the controller where it was and poured each of his daughters some extra coffee.

The End.

Source: The Twelve Dancing Princesses, Brothers Grimm.

Posted by Beatrix Cottonpants in Fairy Tales and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,