Weekly News from the Wacky World of Fairy Tales. The Once Upon A Times keeps you up to date with all the goings-on in the fairy tale lands, from the Pleasant Kingdoms to the Seven Seas of Despair.
Spurned Sea Maid Strikes Back Against Unfaithful Admiral
Lighthouse Point, Borderlands - Last week, The Once Upon A Times chronicled the life of a flying fumigator now serving in the Odorous Air Force. This week, we turn our attention to the seas--which have proven exceedingly unfriendly to the Pleasant Navy's cause. In the past four days alone, storms have destroyed nine ships in the Royal Armada. While Pleasantimes Palace blames freak weather, our investigations have revealed a more surprising source of the storms.
Meet Ms. Marielle Siren, a mermaid--or rather, a former mermaid. Although Ms. Siren is tongueless and mute, she obligingly penned responses to your correspondent's questions. Her tale reveals shocking ill conduct at the highest levels of the Pleasant Navy--ill conduct that now jeopardizes the entire war effort.
"I grew up in the court of mermaids and on my fifteenth birthday, I made the traditional ascent to the surface of the ocean," Ms. Siren's account explains. "I saw a young man, Captain Buster Fairwind. Yes, the same Buster Fairwind who is now Chief Admiral of the Pleasant Navy. It was love at first sight. Oh, the lengths I went to so I could see him again and win him over. Suffice it to say, there was a witch, an enchanted draught that would turn my tail into legs, and a nasty moment where I had to cut out my tongue."
Transformed into a human, Ms. Siren soon became a steady, though silent, presence at Captain Fairwind's side. At first, the two lived blissfully, but her muteness soon proved troublesome. "Besides seafaring, Fairwind has no greater passion than cooking. I do not think there is anything he loves more than his lobster linguine recipe. However, seeing as I had no tongue, I could not taste any of his seafood dishes and I could therefore not compliment them. He used to mutter about how unappreciative I was! How unappreciative I was--after all I had sacrificed to be with him!"
Ms. Siren took a holiday to clear her mind, staying near Lighthouse Point. However, when she arrived, she ran into someone all too familiar: "Fairwind was there--and not to see me! Turns out he had been shacking up with a selke for months. And according to the inquiries I've made since, he has a different lady in every port!"
Nursing a broken heart, Ms. Siren soon found a way to strike back against the faithless Fairwind. "A few days ago, I finally got my chance. Admiral Fairwind was leading his armada toward the Odorous Realms, hoping to open a second front against the goblins along the coast. Well, I wasn't having any of it. I cannot turn back into a mermaid, but I can turn into sea foam, and when I'm angry the whole coast gets choppy and frothy. He'll think twice about bringing his sailors back here after the storms I put them through."
For the foreseeable future, the forecast holds no sign of smooth sailing for Pleasant vessels.
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Are you literate? If you're reading this, you probably are! Give the original fairy tale that inspired this article a read: The Little Sea Maid (aka The Little Mermaid) by Hans Christian Andersen (1837).
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Next Tuesday, The Once Upon A Times presents another special edition from the front lines of fairy tales...
