Order and Chaos

ASK HER TO MARRY YOU ON THE SPOT, BUT IN 60 DAYS

draw up a prenup in which she gives you all of her Atlantian ocean treasures & pearls upon marriage, and then divorce

We should learn what this watery lady's deal is. Is she a bandit? A rebel? Free on Thursday for a date once we've worked out this whole kidnapping thing?

We should do something about this kidnapping thing, though. All you have to do is get her onto land, and you'll have the upper hand!

We should do something about this kidnapping thing, though. All you have to do is get her onto land, and you'll have the upper hand!

I slipped out of my captor's grasp easily, because underwater everything's slippery, and also because she let go. But as I escaped one trap, I became more deeply ensnared in another, less physical trap — her treacherous lust spell!

"Ha, ha, ha, we do have fun around here," she laughed.

We should learn what this watery lady's deal is. Is she a bandit? A rebel? Free on Thursday for a date once we've worked out this whole kidnapping thing?

"EXPLAIN THYſELF! BE YE BANDIT? AſſAſſIN? TRAITOROUS REBEL!?" I shouted, drowning. Suddenly, I remembered my supposedly-useless training! I spit up the water and held my breath. I hadn't inhaled deeply before the plunge, which would mean I only had about 7 minutes, tops.

"I'm... we're the guards of the moat. I gotta bring you back to the castle. Do you not... do you not know that? You've lived here your whole life. You cook meals for us. I was just havin' a little joke."

I scoffed. A likely story. "A LIKELY ſTORY!"

"I mean, can you imagine Malcolm Vindictus letting some murdermermaids who'd gank his daughter and heiress just, hang out in his moat? Right outside his own castle? I mean, look at what he had built for us," she said, gesturing behind her to a wall. Best as I could tell, it was an exact duplicate of the castle above, but upside-down and underwater, halting where the ceiling became ground. It did seem to make sense... No! No! I must resist her Mindfreaking Criss Angel ways with all my will! "Why are you using all those weird Fs? Do you have a lisp?"

"I'M THE ONE AſKING THE QUESTIONS HERE!" I said, not breathing. "Queſtions, fuck!" I coughed. "RELEAſE MY HEART FROM YOUR CURſE OF CAPTIVITY SO I MAY EFFECT MY EſCAPE AT ONCE, O FOUL ſIRENOUS CREATURE OF THE DEEP!"

"Curse? The ſuck...?" She looked extremely confused while I looked at her, which I knew was not a wise move while under her spell, but I could not help myself. Then a realization swept over her, and her eyes became as large as dinner plates fit for my appetite. "Oh, oh, oh!" She nearly doubled over, redoubling her laughter. "You've... oh my gods... You've, you've never seen a shirtless woman before, have you? In all your 19 years of study..."

I shook my head. "No, but I ſee not what that has to do with your libidinal treachery, wench!"

"Oh, honey..." she said, snickering into her hand. "I mean, your majesty. You're not cursed, you just think I'm hot. (And thank you, by the by.) It's a classic case of the you're gay."

Oh. Huh. Hmm.

ASK HER TO MARRY YOU ON THE SPOT, BUT IN 60 DAYS

"Well, then, be my attraction natural," I said, slipping into a tone a little more sly and less-long-s-filled and sensuously doggy-paddling towards her. "Would you marry me in 60 days' time?"

"You turn 20 in 49 days. Are you... are you trying to trick me? Everything you do is so, so... weird."

"No! No, my aim is true. I am just bad at arithmetic. I have never laid eyes on someone as lovely as you."

"Well I'm... flattered, but no thank you. I mean, first of all, you've known me for about 2 minutes. We're altogether too deep under the surface to be that shallow here." She could pun too! Alas, what could have been. "Second of all, I'm only into dudes. Third of all, merdudes. Fourth and finally," she gestured to her lower body, "have you seen this? There's nothing down there. We reproduce by vomiting eggs and sperm into a huge pile."

My heart sank, to a depth even greater than the one I was at.

"Aw, now don't look so crestfallen!" she said, side-hugging. "There are other fish in the sea! I mean, not literally. Please don't try to fuck any more fish."

I nodded, but pouted. Someone above the water rung a bell that was high-pitched enough to penetrate the depths. "Ooh, just a second," she said, then she swam up, partially out of the water, and started clapping her hands and elbows and woofing, like a seal. She came back down having caught a turkey wing in her mouth — leftovers I recognized from dinner. Suddenly, she seemed a lot less attractive. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"I suppose you must be taking me back to my quarters now..."

"Right, right." She grabbed my forearm again, then hesitated. "No, no. I was, but I don't think I will... You're kinda pathetic. You're 19 and even though you're so damn educated, you didn't know literally the first thing about what lies outside of the castle's bricks, or that you liked boobs. I will help you escape.

She continued. "Instead of having to navigate your way through the forest while they search for you, I'll smuggle you through the spawning grounds, from which I can take you to almost any large, natural body of water in the world — I have one in mind. I will have to magically deprive you of your senses of sight, sound, and smell for the commute though, because the spawning grounds are sacred to us mermaids and not to be experienced by outsiders. Also, because it's really fucking gross, and I don't want your regular vomit mixing in with our sex vomit."

Finally, some good news! I consented to this arrangement and was led through the secret, sacred underground tunnels, blind, deaf, and anosmic, alone but for my thoughts, touch, and tongue — the three "t"s. So, in other words, I couldn't see how, once the entrance was sealed, the so-called mermaids would take off their fish halves, made from what appear to be the real bottom halves of really big fish hollowed out, stretching their regular, bloodied human legs and hanging their fish halves on meat hooks in lockers, including my guide. There was absolutely no way of me knowing that at all, nor where they got the fish bottom halves from, nor what the end game of this vast, baffling conspiracy was. (Certainly, that it was ultimately as simple as "people give mermaids a ton of free stuff," which would have had to have been a tremendous and implausible leap of intuition, based on evidence that I had no way of acquiring and no way of even knowing the existence of.)

Instead, I obsessively fixated on the fact that the blue paint on my nose had washed off in the water, and how I felt positively naked without it. Well, okay, not literally like that, it was just a little awkward and strange, you know? It's a turn of phrase that's common when you wear, like, glasses or a watch every day. It would probably help me not be recognized, at least. And I'm into chicks. How about that, huh?

Finally, I was let out of the so-called "spawning grounds" and floated unassisted to the surface of a large, natural body of water. As soon as my face met air once more, the sensory-deprivation "bubble" "popped." Now that I could see, hear, and smell again, where was I? Had it been a mistake to have trusted the mermaid?

no, you're still in the same moat, just on the other side of the castle

Sunshine, sand, clear water, brightly colored fish: it looks like some sort of tropical shore that may or may not even be part of your realm? Jeez, was there a teleporter in the spawning grounds or are mermaids just really fast swimmers?

In any case, our goal is clear: Find a hot, gay mermaid to marry

Sunshine, sand, clear water, brightly colored fish: it looks like some sort of tropical shore that may or may not even be part of your realm? Jeez, was there a teleporter in the spawning grounds or are mermaids just really fast swimmers?

I saw a beautiful beach before me. It was calm, gentle, serene. It was actually disorienting, to realize that I didn't have to do anything for once in my life. If I wanted, I could just sit here for hours, watching the water flow and the fish swim, not having a care in the world.

But I couldn't relax like that. I just didn't know how to. I immediately found myself with dozens of questions, starting with where exactly I was. I had no sense of how far the mermaids had taken me. They claimed to work for my father, but what if they had made a deal with Milton instead, and guided me away to some remote island? Or dropped me off in hostile territory? For all I knew, I could be anywhere. I couldn't see anything remotely familiar...

no, you're still in the same moat, just on the other side of the castle

...until I turned around and saw the castle behind me, across the moat. And in that moment, I realized just how confined I had been. Even when I was outdoors, it was still on the castle grounds. All this time, this beach had been so close, and I knew nothing of it until tonight.

I was learning a good deal about myself on this journey, and it had barely even begun. Here I was, nearly twenty years of age, learning nothing save how to be a queen. And how much was I even learning about that?

I didn't even know what I wanted. I'd wanted to get out, but now that I had, where was I going? Was I looking for a lover? For friendship? For a hobby? Or did I simply want to, however briefly, understand what it was like to live in my father's kingdom?

What was I trying to do?

World tour, of course. We need to get the band together! Literal or figurative fugitive.

search for tity

It took me about 3 days to realize that the destination did not matter. Not merely in some trumped-up sense that the journey is ultimately more important, but that once I had escaped from the rigid confines of the castle, I had handed my fate over to... well, fate. The journey is all that there was. Wherever I ended up, it would not be on purpose, and it would not be tailored to my needs and desires.

My extensive wilderness survival training, though taught in a vacuum, served me well, and I was able to improvise camps, fires, water and sustenance. It was nice to know that if worst came to worst, I would be able to survive exile with nothing but the clothes on my back.

I was, in fact, sleeping ON my back in a hammock fashioned FROM my clothes when I was woken one morning by thuds at regular intervals. There was only one possible explanation for such organized thuddery — I was near other humans! Quickly, I pulled my (now tattered and filthy, having been run through brambles and torn-up for bandages and firestarting material) dress on and ran closer to the source of the noise.

It was a flock of lumberjacks, uniformed in flannel and beard (even the ladies.) They were all very hard at work attacking the nearby trees, but I couldn't help noticing they were using the wrong side of the axe. Some of them were even using baseball bats.

"Excuse me," I said, my voice hoarse from lack of communication, "is there a town nearby here?"

"Why, yes, stranger," said a lumberjack, his voice hoarse from a lifetime of smoking. "It's over there, in a distance and direction." He indicated with a gesture.

"Thank you, that's very specific and helpful," I said, walking forwards towards where I had been told the nearby town was. "And by the way..." I grabbed his backwards axe and turned it around, "I think you'll find it will work better this way."

He looked confused for a second, then swung and buried the blade of his axe in the trunk of the tree. His face lit up with childlike delight and the other lumberjacks peered around their trees to gaze at his handiwork, astonished, as he enthusiastically chopped the tree down, grunting all the way. When the tree finally fell, crushing one of his fellow lumberjacks to death, the entire lumberjacking expedition erupted into joyous celebration, laughing and dancing and crying from joy.

"I'M RICH, I'M RICH!" I could hear the raspy gentlejack holler from a distance as I was en route to Town. I am so smart, and so very helpful.

At last, I arrived in a hustling and bustling hamlet. A woman sprinted by me carrying a wicker basket full of water. Another was hocking apples and oranges from a stand.

"ORANGES, ORANGES, GET YOUR ORANGES HERE," she hocked. "APPLES, APPLES, INCOMPARABLE APPLES HERE!"

"I'll take an apples there," I honked, putting down a coin from my purse on the table.

She bit into the coin and tried to bend it. When it didn't give, she threw it back in my face, spat in my direction, and began to rant angrily about my shoddy clothes and funny money and throwing quite a lot of verbal invective at me as I backed away.

I was walking backwards when an arm yanked on the torn-for-scrap hem of my sweaty dress.

"Excuse me," a voice said. Presumably, it belonged to the same person as the arm. "Could you help us settle a debate?"

Certainly, I could! After all, I was so very smart and helpful. I pivoted to face the voice and arm that had tugged on my disgusting dress. Sitting up against a nearby dumpster with their legs crossed were three blind men, all identical twins, all disgustingly old. I couldn't tell whether the smell was from the refuse or from their general slovenliness. Perhaps they had detected in my untidy condition and white hair a kindred spirit, a fellow wanderer?

The middle man, who had been the one to tug my once-white-now-urine-yellow dress, spoke first. "The question is simple on its face, but vast: Is nothing a thing?"

"My position is that is obviously not," said the man on the left, "first of all, on semantic grounds that should be obvious. And, in addition, we simply cannot consider — cannot conceive of — that which is not, only that which is. Anywhere you turn your head, you see things; there is nothing before you but thing. With the thoughts of is-nots banished from our minds, we are left only with the is, the truth, and can not help but proceed rationally, as so:

"Immediately, it occurs to us that there is no division between what our senses tell us are discrete objects. Ironically, it was my blindness that helped me to see this. Not only is nothing not a thing, there is only one thing. Furthermore, for something to come into being implies that it once was not; this is patent absurdity! What is, then, must always have been, and likewise will always be. The same principle goes for the illusion of change. All is one, one is all there would ever be, and to consider otherwise would be deigning to lower ourselves into a cavern of falsehood and deceptions — for the is-not is synonymous with the false." With such a great exertion of breath, he practically deflated.

"You yourself use the word 'not' to describe your position!" accused the man on the right to the man on the left, seemingly only stopped from physically assaulting him by the middle man. Things were clearly heated between these two. "The existence of a falsehood implies an absence of truth. And furthermore us of all people, the blind, should know that no matter how we turn our heads, we see nothing! In this way, perhaps my blindness is actually the true sight, for I imagine there is much more nothing in this world than thing. For starters, if all was one, motion would be impossible, for there would be no empty space for moving items to displace. This alone proves my case for me!"

"Motion is an illusion," peeped the man from the left.

"Motion is an illusion, change is an illusion, everything is an illusion to you! What good is rationalization if it is unsupported, indeed is exactly contradictory, to the observable reality of the world around us? Bah!" The man on the right was eminently a pragmatic sort.

"How can we trust our senses at all to deliver us an objective picture of observable reality?" spoke the man from the center. The man on the right nodded. "Indeed, one we have in common has failed us already, which is proof enough, and the remaining ones can be fooled. How many times have you smelled something that you couldn't determine what was? You, young lady, does the area's odor emanate from us or the dumpster? You couldn't tell, can you? If some of our senses can be fooled some of the time, then it stands to reason that all of our senses could be fooled all of the time; and thus we must hold the entirety of reality in doubt.

"This is where I diverge from the man on my left — your right, though," the centermost man continued. "If it is true that all around us is an illusion, then it stands to reason that in reality, nothing could very well be the only thing! The exception is my own mind, which is what is used to hold reality in doubt — if my mind were not real, nothing would be holding reality in doubt, and it would collapse into concreteness once more, like a dam holding a river back!" He chuckled. Apparently that is what passes for a joke to him. "But truly, my mind is the only thing I cannot refute that I experience. You could say I am my mind. Other than that, I must assume there is nothing.

"Life," he concluded, "is but a dream."

"As you can see, we do not agree, because we are not the same person," said the man on the left.

"As far as we can tell," said the man in the center.

"Which is where you come in," said the man on the right. "Lay the question to rest for us so we can all finally die: Is nothing a thing?"

it's me!! i'm nothing!! woohoohoo

Cut off their heads

melons

Cut off their heads

They've got no tails, I found myself thinking. I suppose I'll have to cut off their heads this time.

I did no such thing. But it was a stark reminder of how absurdly similar this situation was to the last dream I recorded. True, they were men and not mice, but the dumpster was distressingly familiar. Even moreso considering the fact that we didn't even have any back at the castle. And... why had I felt so sure these men were twins, when there were three of them? It was as though the word "twins" had impressed itself upon me the moment I saw them.

The natural conclusion was that I was dreaming again, still resting on the road. Unless, perhaps, the mermaid had drugged me and returned me home to my bed, or captured me for some foul purpose. Or perhaps I had never left the castle at all, and merely desired it so strongly that I had chosen to escape it in my dreams.

Or perhaps I escaped the castle into my dreams.

The unbidden thoughts barely felt like my own, even though I knew they were. It reminded me of another part of the dream, another truth about myself that I had been afraid to confront.

Perhaps this was the time to face it.

it's me!! i'm nothing!! woohoohoo

"Nothing does exist," I said simply. "I know, for I know what it is to be Nothing."

"Ridiculous," said the man on the left. "We cannot see you, but we can hear you. We can smell you... well, we could if the dumpster's odor weren't so strong. My brother even touched you. Yet you say you are not even here?"

"Nothing takes lives," I continued. I stared at the three blind men, feeling strangely sure. "Lacking in identity, it chooses to consume it, becoming whoever it kills."

I approached the middle man and shoved him to the ground.

There was no sound as he landed, for he did not. I never even touched him.

He was not there. He had never been.

"In this case, what it killed was your brotherhood. You two were born twins. You had no third brother; you had a simulation of a brother. So long as he was present, the two of you found yourselves growing further apart, even as you continued to travel together."

The two men had already stopped listening to me. They locked themselves, tears streaming from their sightless eyes.

"Brother! How long have we squandered our time together on a useless argument?"

"Too long, brother, too long. What does it matter that Nothing was real? What mattered more was the reality of our love, and for years we have denied it."

"I've never wanted to live more than I have at this moment."

"Myself as well, brother."

I still wasn't sure if I was in a dream. I wondered how I might work it out.

melons

That was when I glanced down and saw the rotten melons that had fallen from the dumpster. I found myself contemplating them.

I had never tasted rotten melon, for rather obvious reasons. If this were a dream, surely the flavor would be familiar, what I expected them to taste like. Could I learn the truth if I simply bit into one?

I picked up one of the rotting husks and contemplated whether I was truly that desperate to know if it was all real.

ppprrrooobably not.

no, take those melons and use them to fertilize the next tree you see

summon rotten melon minions

no, take those melons and use them to fertilize the next tree you see

Yes, what the world needs, is... more trees.

Wait, what was I thinking? There's a whole forest out there. You know what? Fuck trees. There's too many of them. I hate air. And maybe once I get some of these god damn trees out of the way I could actually see the forest.

ppprrrooobably not.

I shook my head and focused on the issue at hand. Was I going to just go ahead and eat a rotten melon?

No.

No, of course not! Though I may have been affecting the station of a commoner, (who I imagined were just eating out of dumpsters, like, all the time, whenever,) I was still a princess. I put the rotten melon back down on a doily, then curtsied my farewells to the twins.

"ſo long, gentlemen," I said, "but I muſt be taking my leave now."

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

I woke up.

There was only one possible explanation for such organized thuddery — I was near other humans! Quickly, I pulled my (now tattered and filthy, having been run through brambles and torn-up for bandages and firestarting material) dress on and ran closer to the source of the noise.

It was a flock of lumberjacks, uniformed in flannel and beard (even the ladies.) They were all very hard at work attacking the nearby trees, but I couldn't help noticing they were using the wrong side of the axe. Some of them were even using baseball bats.

There was likewise only one possible explanation for my dream deja vu: The gods had been sending me prophecies in the form of dreams. Usually, they say these messages come in the form of vague, oblique symbols and recurrent motifs, like say, the number 3, or duplicity, that you can't rightly recognize as a prophecy until after the prophesied has passed unless you're REALLY keen. (It's really kind of a dick move.) Seeing as this one was just plain accurate so far, though, and honestly pretty boring, I was inclined to believe that the gods were just trying to get me to trust my dreams, and the NEXT one would be of supreme importance. It was also important to watch for the moment when things diverged from my dream, if they did. After that, I could retroactively recognize where it went back to oblique warnings or a regular dream. So I resolved to do things exactly as they happened in my dream.

"Excuse me," I said, my voice hoarse from lack of communication, "is there a town nearby here?"

"Yes, stranger?" said a lumberjack, his voice hoarse from a lifetime of smoking. "It's over there, in a distance and direction." He indicated with a gesture.

"Thank you, that's very specific and helpful," I said, walking forwards towards where I had been told the nearby town was. "And by the way..." I grabbed his backwards axe and turned it around, "I think you'll find it will work better this way."

He looked confused for a second, then swung and buried the blade of his axe in the trunk of the tree. His face lit up with childlike delight and the other lumberjacks peered around their trees to gaze at his handiwork, astonished, as he enthusiastically chopped the tree down, grunting all the way. When the tree finally fell, crushing one of his fellow lumberjacks to death, the entire lumberjacking expedition erupted into joyous celebration, laughing and dancing and crying from joy.

"I'M RICH, I'M RICH!" I could hear the raspy gentlejack holler from a distance as I was en route to Town.

At last, I arrived in a hustling and bustling hamlet. A woman sprinted by me carrying a wicker basket full of water. Check. Another was hocking apples and oranges from a stand. Check.

"ORANGES, ORANGES, GET YOUR ORANGES HERE," she hocked. "APPLES, APPLES, INCOMPARABLE APPLES HERE!"

"I'll take an apples there," I honked, putting down a coin from my purse on the table.

She bit into the coin and tried to bend it. When it didn't give, she threw it back in my face, spat in my direction, and began to rant angrily about my shoddy clothes and funny money and throwing quite a lot of verbal invective at me as I backed away. This didn't make any more sense (or cents) the second time around.

I was walking backwards when an arm yanked on the torn-for-scrap hem of my sweaty dress, right on time.

"Excuse me," a voice said. Presumably, it belonged to the same person as the arm. "Could you help us settle a debate?"

I pivoted to face the voice and arm that had tugged on my disgusting dress. Sitting up against a nearby dumpster with their legs crossed were three blind men, all identical triplets, all disgustingly old. I couldn't tell whether the smell was from the refuse or from their general slovenliness.

Wait, triplets! Yes! I hid my smile at this tiny difference and resolved to ride out what would be potentially the same three monologues over again.

The middle man, who had been the one to tug my once-white-now-urine-yellow dress, spoke first. "The question is simple on its face, but vast: Is nothing a thing?"

"My position is that is obviously not," said the man on the left, "first of all, on semantic grounds that should be obvious. And, in addition, we simply cannot consider — cannot conceive of — that which is not, only that which is. Anywhere you turn your head, you see things; there is nothing before you but thing. With the thoughts of is-nots banished from our minds, we are left only with the is, the truth, and can not help but proceed rationally, as so:

"Immediately, it occurs to us that there is no division between what our senses tell us are discrete objects. Ironically, it was my blindness that helped me to see this. Not only is nothing not a thing, there is only one thing. Furthermore, for something to come into being implies that it once was not; this is patent absurdity! What is, then, must always have been, and likewise will always be. The same principle goes for the illusion of change. All is one, one is all there would ever be, and to consider otherwise would be deigning to lower ourselves into a cavern of falsehood and deceptions — for the is-not is synonymous with the false." With such a great exertion of breath, he practically deflated.

"You yourself use the word 'not' to describe your position!" accused the man on the right to the man on the left, seemingly only stopped from physically assaulting him by the middle man. Things were clearly heated between these two. "The existence of a falsehood implies an absence of truth. And furthermore us of all people, the blind, should know that no matter how we turn our heads, we see nothing! In this way, perhaps my blindness is actually the true sight, for I imagine there is much more nothing in this world than thing. For starters, if all was one, motion would be impossible, for there would be no empty space for moving items to displace. This alone proves my case for me!"

"Motion is an illusion," peeped the man from the left.

"Motion is an illusion, change is an illusion, everything is an illusion to you! What good is rationalization if it is unsupported, indeed is exactly contradictory, to the observable reality of the world around us? Bah!" The man on the right was eminently a pragmatic sort.

"How can we trust our senses at all to deliver us an objective picture of observable reality?" spoke the man from the center. The man on the right nodded. "Indeed, one we have in common has failed us already, which is proof enough, and the remaining ones can be fooled. How many times have you smelled something that you couldn't determine what was? You, young lady, does the area's odor emanate from us or the dumpster? You couldn't tell, can you? If some of our senses can be fooled some of the time, then it stands to reason that all of our senses could be fooled all of the time; and thus we must hold the entirety of reality in doubt.

"This is where I diverge from the man on my left — your right, though," the centermost man continued. "If it is true that all around us is an illusion, then it stands to reason that in reality, nothing could very well be the only thing! The exception is my own mind, which is what is used to hold reality in doubt — if my mind were not real, nothing would be holding reality in doubt, and it would collapse into concreteness once more, like a dam holding a river back!" He chuckled. Apparently that is what passes for a joke to him. "But truly, my mind is the only thing I cannot refute that I experience. You could say I am my mind. Other than that, I must assume there is nothing.

"Life," he concluded, "is but a dream."

"As you can see, we do not agree, because we are not the same person," said the man on the left.

"As far as we can tell," said the man in the center.

"Which is where you come in," said the man on the right. "Lay the question to rest for us so we can all finally die: Is nothing a thing?"

This time, there were no intrusive thoughts butting their way into my head like a headbutt. It was like the rails I had been on suddenly disappeared. I had to act on my own free will again. That's when I realized I hadn't been really listening.

"Uh," I said. "Um," I said. "Well, nothing... does... I am... uh..." How did it go? Shit. "Oh, who gives a fuck!? It's all semantics!" I said, frustrated.

And I think to myself: "What the hell, I'll just eat some trash! I will cross the line that divides man and bum." I picked up a rotten melon from off the ground and buried my face in it, gnashing my teeth through its skin and into its moldy core. It tasted worse than I could have ever imagined, and I had to fight the urge to vomit before I had even swallowed. (In retrospect, why I didn't just give in is a mystery.) I was now... a bum.

"Well," said the man on the left, "if it's all semantics, then I definitely win."

That's right, in the dream, wasn't he the one that doubted my nothinghood on the grounds that I existed according to all senses, when he was the one of the two that firmly took a stand AGAINST ever relying on the senses for observation? And what did it mean that I had once again become Nothing? Was it a warning, was I to later encounter a Nothing, or was it more symbolic than that? And what about The Boogieman, was he a god manifesting in my dream, or a demon, or a warning? What was I being told?

And even more importantly, which god was telling me it?

Someone grabbed me by the arm from behind. This was a total break with the dream.

"Excuse me," a voice said. Presumably, it belonged to the same person who was grabbing my arm. They turned me around and grabbed my other arm, leading me away from the triplets.

They were a knight in shining armor — minus, for some reason, the parts that covered the calves and forearms? Her grill was up and I could see her face, which was beautiful. "You're coming with me," she said, and I was perfectly happy to. Perhaps this was a potential lover, laid in my path by fate? Or, wait, perhaps she was what my dream was warning me about with the Nothing! Gods, so confusing.

While I was dreamily entranced by her face and lower limbs, and in a trance considering my dreams, she slapped me in handcuffs. Oh, she was a cop.

"Did I do something wrong?" I said.

"Well, let's see, since you showed up in city limits about an hour ago, we've officially recorded..." she said, "One count of manslaughter, one count of conspiracy to defraud the city treasury, one count of vagrancy, one count of counterfeiting, ten counts of public indecency."

"Ten counts of public indecency?!" I said. "I'm wearing as much as anyone else I see around! How do I rack up ten whole counts of it!?"

"Why should I care what you're wearing? We're not the fashion police," she said. "But your fingernails — no paint left, hardly — simply unacceptable!" She made me look at my fingernails. It was true, the green paint had mostly chipped off while I was out in the forest and hadn't had the time nor resources to reapply. "And since I found you, you've managed to rack up one count of eating trash that didn't belong to you, and THREE counts of attempted manslaughter!"

"Those old men? I was just talking to them!" I said. She stopped me in front of the stairs that led up to what I had to assume was the courthouse or jail.

"Do you know who those men are?" she said. I shook my head no. "Well, ignorance is no excuse," she said, and took one step up the stairs. Then, she stopped short of her next step, and returned to the base of the stairs.

"Might as well explain it," she said, with a hint of a sigh. I nodded — at the least it would extend the time until my trial or incarceration. "Their mother was a pastry chef, and a very pious woman, but she was never able to conceive a child with her husband no matter how hard they tried. She prayed and prayed and prayed, until one day her prayers were answered. Because she had been so unfailingly pious and such a great pastry chef, she would be blessed with not one child, but triplets — all of whom would be further blessed, with immortality.

"As the brothers aged though, they discovered that — well, that they aged. When they were 60, and the ravages of time were truly beginning to show how they would take their toll and not stop just because of immortality, they decided to make a pilgrimage to visit the gods and have their blessing lifted before they were too decrepit to make the journey.

"When they got there, they kneeled before the gods who had blessed their mother's womb. They came face-to-face with them — which was the last thing they'd ever see, because the gods struck them all blind for their impudence in visiting without calling ahead to make an appointment. Nonetheless, they were permitted to plead their case.

"The gods — Andrew, the god of doughnuts; Drew, the god of doughnut holes; and Andy, the god of the holes in doughnuts — told them that if they could simply agree on whether or not nothing was a thing and settle a centuries-long running debate between the three, they would lift their immortality and furthermore, graciously sic Cerebus, the three-headed dog, on them, to eat all three of their throats at once.

"It matters not that they are 111 years old now, nor that they wish only to die. It is always wrong to try and lead someone to their deaths, you monster." She spat on me. Nonetheless, she guided me to the courtroom, where my fate would be decided. I had to admit, I was nervous. I knew I was innocent, or was reasonably sure I was, at least. But could I convince the court that I was? I still couldn't fully understand most of the charges against me, and I had had no time to consider my case.

Now hear the word of the Lord...

"You have been acquainted with the charges against you," said the judge, who was dressed much like you'd imagine a judge would be, and sat atop a pillar that must have been two stories high. I'd imagine most of those unfortunate enough to be thrown before them were imposed by this — myself included. "How do you plead?"

EXEMPT FROM LAWS BY VIRTUE OF ROYALTY

You plead with an extensive knowledge of the law that ought to help you make your case!

Let's see, uh... Not Guilty by reason of Indecent Exposure (to the Elements of Nature)

I would lead to plead insanity, not mine though, his. And then you point to the prosecutor

"I do!" you say, completing the wedding ceremony to the knight, as conducted by an office of law, which as many know, is sometimes opted for as an alternative to wedding by church.

Innocent as sin.

You plead with an extensive knowledge of the law that ought to help you make your case!

I could, of course, declare my identity and end this charade. But that would simply be surrendering to the life I left behind. I hadn't escaped into the world only to be the princess again when it was convenient.

But I had learned more than a little law, certainly more than this judge would have expected. I knew my few rights as a citizen, and I knew what pleas were open to me.

Innocent as sin.

"I plead Innocent as Sin, Your Honor."

The judge stared at me.

"I don't believe I heard you right."

"Then let me repeat myself, a bit more clearly for those less versed in the law. I plead that I am as innocent as a sinful human may be. My only crimes are those thrust upon me by the very act of my birth. That is my plea, and I stand by it."

The judge rolled his eyes. I could tell he didn't care for defendants who actually knew the law.

"Very well, then. Let the record show that the defendant pleads Innocent as Sin. The trial shall now commence."

He slammed down his gavel, and an old pipe organ rose from the floor. Of course; a mere local courthouse would not have as grand and elegant a mechanism as the Harmony.

"Play," the judge commanded. "Let your song show your heart."

I looked upon the organ and felt a knot in my stomach as a dark truth struck me with full force.

Of the dozens of instruments Mother had trained me in over the years, not one had a keyboard. I had no idea which key was responsible for which note, and only a vague understanding that the keys were what produced the music.

But there was little choice. If I were to evade these nonsensical charges without revealing myself as the princess, I would have to play a song that showed my true feelings. I could only hope that my heart would guide my fingers to the right notes - that was how these Instruments of Law were supposed to work, at least.

That left me with one question. What song would I play to demonstrate my innocence?

Turn out to have a instant and immediate natural talent for being really good at this, and play the entire album Songs of Innocense, by U2 on the keyboard organ pipe piano thing

happy birthday