Perfect... For a little while possibly. Maybe a couple of times a hinted perception through the rosy scopes of a poochy male adolescent, maybe amidst my hateful baby rages my newborn eyes saw perfection changing my nappy.

The paper Princess - Dethroned by her unworthy progeny.

Ill-fated... Her majestic post, restricted within the courtyards and chamberooms of her inspiration. Her journal, lying between my unauthorised hands only hints at the possibility of the fairy tale, for the princess only grew courage enough to venture out of the castle gates towards a cold, unpatriotic world once. Her ventures brought her only to a paper land within the journal and she just got a chance to graffiti her title 'the paper princess' on the wall before the dark cut her journey short.

So that's me. the heir. The new princess for the Paper Kingdom . Unworthy.

But there is little use for royalty in such a 'real' world today. Where science brought it's army of facts and took away the diversions from life -
extinguished the timber burning away on a fire in the log hut ventricles of a wintry heart.
Demolished any beliefs; the foundations of so many fantastic kingdoms or even humble houses. Stole any hope and instilled the view that imagination outside of the scientific, ergonomic, utilitarianist arena is a federal offence.

The bastards.

So... in this, what can only be described as truly crappy computer generated age where everything moves so fast, like a magician's hands, so you can't see the tricks he's using to make it look impressive, kidding reality for a few minutes making you think there's something better, something more to it all. I'm the pessimistic teenager who beleives in fairies, who's sitting in the corner questioning it all for no reason but everything can be questioned and maybe, I want to be a magician too. Although I'm happy being a paper princess in an electronic cottage.

Happy? Oh God, happiness, now that's a long tale of woe and misfortune, in fact I forget where the happy parts fit in, it did, or does or something like that but my emotions are like a kaleidoscope and my mind is good at forgetting the things that made me smile in case one day they don't or I begin to miss them too much. Mum says we could all be sad, it's a lot easier than being happy, she gets worked up when she starts to worry I'll get depressed because she knows what it does to you. But anyone who thinks deep enough about anything, can understandably be a little PISSED OFF.

I can't do the things I want to do, I can't be the things I want to be simply because I don't know where reality begins and ends and whether what I want is realistic or whether the person I think I am is.

Frustration... Trapped in between the beautiful world of fantasy and the horrific ugliness of reality. The constant turmoil of a paper princess. Struggling to keep up in a digital world, moving around in space you can't feel or see - this is reality? Of course, there is truth in everything (and lies in a lot).

Apologies. My ability to go off on a tangent (an orange one, tangents are always orange) is amazing... my imagination grabs my hand and runs wild like a little naked child through poppy fields towards the setting sun... me and my soul mate, he makes the world such a better place, the way he always puts a smile on my inner child's face. I did it again. I'll never finish the introduction at this rate.. although, it might help if I knew what exactly I was introducing... but this is my life, I don't know what lies, like a dead grey bunny, on the road ahead. So all I can do is introduce me, but as I've said already, I'm still undecided on who that is, a teenager... yes. Who thinks she knows everything? No. I just entertain myself with the questions that come into my head and the answers only become right to me when I see them fit into the jigsaw puzzle which... I'm forever near to completing and then, I find a whole new set of pieces.

The facts speak for themselves.... They don't get on with each other, so I generally don't put more than a few of them together at once or all hell will break loose.

I little bit of psychomachia...

The Paper Princess sat on the rocky bank of the river and lay out fifteen round, smooth, grey pebbles....

"Fifteen.. How wise I am for so few stones from this beach alone." she chortled to herself... Then picked up all her pebbles, placed them in her lap, rolled her sleeves up, pushed her long, brown wavy hair out of her face... and proceeded to one by one, hurl the pebbles into the the dark, deep, murky river.

"Gone! I shall never see you again!" she giggled... then felt a little disheartened, and regretted throwing them all away so quickly.

Her grey pebbles... Undistinguishable from all the others , resting in the muddy river bed, too grey to glitter, even on a hot summers day... alas, gone and soon to be forgotten.

From that day on, she promised herself, that the pebbles she would collect in the future would all be different.. colourful.. patterned... sparkly and oddly shaped. So if she ever felt the need, she could dive into the river and recover them quite easily without accidentally replacing them with someone elses pebbles. But resolutions made in summer get lost as the autumn wind begins to bite and yap and howl around the valley.

...

She sings.

I remember the songs she used to sing to me and the way they made me feel, her voice echoing around the house, making it all seem open and warm, like the walls were all holding out their arms to catch her voice..like I'd got caught up in the hug of the house as it tried to envelop the contents, my mother having made them look and taste and sound and smell and feel so good.

Enchanted by the princess and her fiery red hair.

And now, her singing, although still leaving a trail of soft kisses around the house, lost it's glitter and just became part of the hum. Part of the noise filtered into my head, my thoughts and my dreams. And when my dreams turned to nightmares it sprinkled an eerie frost on all the warmth I ever felt from the house. Maybe her voice got cold, maybe that's why it sends a shiver down my spine.

She's cold and lonely too.

And I feel guilty that I resent the fact I'm left here to satisfy her with my love, when I know it will never be enough or a replacement for the right kind. and I feel guilty that I resent the love she gives me, that I feel smothered , her warm kisses freezing on my cheeks because I know they are not for me but for him. It used to make me happy when she'd sit me on her lap and hold my cheeks in her big soft hands and smile and say how like my father I was, but now I just resent it all. The entrapment, the cold cold draught and the shiver from facing the fact that everytime I look in the mirror , I have to look at a stranger's face. I have to look at HIM.

...

So I shut it out with songs and stories

"..Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea..."

...

but she liked the one that she had so nearly caught.

She'd liked the way he had looked.

At her.

Seen her, seen her playing her game . and smiled. and smiled at her. Like she'd been entertaining him, a ballerina dancing, in front of his eyes,

with ease.

For she hadn't even realised she was doing it at the time. She'd been busy watching the people get wet outside.

She liked to think she'd made him smile. By just being herself, by just doing what she did. She'd liked him smiling without her asking for it. she didn't like to ask for things, she felt it took the feeling that you got from being given something without being ordered, away. She liked the smile, being given the smile , without him trying to give it, to force it into her hands, to say

"Here. look a smile, take it... Now what do i get in return?" She liked smiles. Natural ones. Ones that were there without being forced.

The princess had fallen in love with a man who'd smiled at her before.

A friend of her mother's. They'd been out and she'd fallen asleep on the couch and she woke with his warm face smiling at her. Just her. and it wasn't because she'd looked stupid, or was pulling a silly face or was asking for attention. It was just her that had made him do it. He'd carried her up to bed and placed a kiss on her forehead and it wasn't sex it wasn't dirty it wasn't a want or need of anything at all. It was just... warmth, a gift that everyone can give, that everyone can find, but so few so willing it seemed to the princess.

A special moment.

She knew it wasn't really love. More of a desire.. a dream created .

To have that smile shining down on her face again like the morning sun, from someone she loved, from someone she'd wanted to make smile, but didn't have to ask to do it. It wasn't him, although for a while she'd thought it was him, his concentration, his smooth movements. His calm voice, His patient gaze, her twelve year old mind melting delightfully in his chocolate brown eyes.

And this new little fishy had rekindled that dream, though he'd never know it. With just one smile...

"Rapunzel! Rapunzel let down your hair! Put on your glass slippers and this pumpkin shall escort you to the ball!" she dances around the room like the clockwork ballerina inside the jewelery box and smiles with grace broken only by the obvious excitement welling up in her eyes.
Back at her daughters side, she collects up her brown wavy hair, still lightened by the kiss of the summers' son when the leaves were still clinging to the trees, dancing through the night to the bird song's that carried through the breeze.
She twists the strands up up and places the heap of hair onto my head, where it stays for a couple of seconds and then drops back down, resting against my back like the leaves now lying peacefully in their golden funeral dress on the frosty autumn floor.

"Maybe not down, maybe up" She says again coiling the hair idly around my head, "show them your pretty face... Let them see the moonlight twinkle in your pretty eyes."

I wanted to hide under my hair like I always did, let the moon light up the stars in the sky and leave me to the dark corner in which I wished to stay and watch the night as the party commenced.

"I like it down." I say taking a hairbrush and brushing my long tangle of hair with nervous strokes, getting frustrated with the knots that sit in angry clumps like little grumpy cross-armed children who don't want to leave the safety of their rooms on the first day of school.

I hadn't been to a party, not since parties meant trifles and cakes and pass the parcel and pretty pink dresses with puffed sleeves and matching petticoats.
I didn't want to go to this one, but something told me I should. No. More when I told my mother I had been invited the joy that came over her face when she thought of her chance to dress me up like a barbie doll seemed to override my reasons for not going. I didn't like to dissapoint her too often. Not with things like parties and invitations that seemed to mean so much to her. She liked to think that my prescence at such occasions was sought, demanded - that the party wouldn't be the same without her princess making a guest appearance.
I'd only been invited as part of some scam for the party thrower to get as many presents as she could, I wouldn't even have been invited because of this if it hadn't been for Juliet's best friend Emily, who I'd always known, since first school when she was the 'new kid' and I'd let her share my hand towel when we had to wash our hands before lunch. She'd always been nice to me, her pretty blonde curls bouncing against her shoulders as she walked with her rosy cheeks smiling out at the world. We were given the job of goldfish monitors and took it in turn to feed them and every week had the task of cleaning the slime off the pebbles in the bottom of the plastic retangular tank, being very careful when we fished their little orange bodies out of the tank with the net and running the slimy grit under the tap through a sieve. Mrs Hopkins had said that our goldfish were the longest living fish she'd ever known in the infant class.
If it hadn't been for Emily's sentimental heart, I wouldn't have been invited to the party at all.

Juliet didn't like me at all. Not at all. She'd said to Emily after she'd thrust the crumpled invitation into my cold hands, that she thought, as it was a halloween birthday party that I'd fit in fine and wouldn't have to make much of an effort to come as a freak. I wasn't sure whether she'd meant me to hear this or not, I don't think she really cared. Emily had smiled at her cruel comment though. Sometimes she was too kind for her own good.

So I sit in front of the mirror and look at my reflection. A quizical expression staring back at me, turning into a frustrated grimace as I bash angrily at my hair in the hopes that if I hit the knots hard enough, they won't want to stay sulking in their rooms and will hop onto the bus like good little boys and girls.

Mother's attention having now turned to my wardrobe, she throws my clothes onto the bed in an overdramatic way that seems to be keeping her amused.

"Oh I do wish your clothes weren't so black, so dead, so very... Un-fun." She prances around the room, holding tops and dresses up to her chest and gazes at herself in the mirror on the inside of the door. Her fiery hair lighting up the garments, bringing them instantly into a life they'd never led clinging against my dull body. Her still perfectly shaped body with a slight blemish where I'd ruined it; with my little baby fists and kicky feet where I grew inside her.
So much energy, so much life ... vibrance, going to waste - I didn't apreciate it anymore, infact her deluded act of happiness I resented, it all came so easily, too easily... To me it seems like madness. I can't think of one thing, one reason she has to be happy.

"It's a halloween party, everyone will be in black, it won't matter."I say still tugging angrily at my hair.

"Nonsense. You can wear my red satin dress.. You can go as little red riding hood, that big black cape of yours will finish the look off nicely." I sigh, there's no point in arguing, she'd already rushed off to her roomto find her long red satin dress, coming back in, twirling round and round inside her jewelery box world, dancing with the red dress to the chirp of one of the songs in her head. Finishing her dance, she drapes the dress across my lap, it's gentle cool material dirfting softly against the bare skin of my arms before it lays to rest.
She smiles at me through the mirror while coaxing the hairbrush out of my hand and running it effortlessly through my hair. She's better with obnoxious stubborn children than me, she doesn't even have to open her mouth and they'd do as she said.

I don't like the way I look in this dress, I don't like theway it shows off my body, like it's soething to be seen. Like a strawberry chocolate wrapped in red foil. The waythe material clings to my chest, not tight, but revealing. Leaving nowhere to hide... This fifteen year old girl, looking three years older, easily. I like being a child, in dungarees that I can go and play in the mud in. This dress won't let me be a child. I don't know if I'm ready for the adult that's inside this dress.

"It's great you could make it." Emily shouts over the noise, her cheeks looking a little more rosy than usual as she sips red wine out of the round, elegantly long glass in her hand. "I'll get you a drink" I smile, watching her battle with the cork wedged inside the 1989 chardonay; stolen from juliet's father's collection of vintage wines picked up from various trips around the continent. Her parents are making a trip to the medditeranian as we speak, to catch the last few days of sun before they have to chase it across the world to keep up their gravy brown tans, not to mention appearances in the local social clubs. They have a sun bed in one of the endless rooms but of course it's not the same.

"I like your dress... I can't remember the last time I saw you in something so.. Colourful." I daren't look down at my dress for fear that it's turned into some sort of hideous haiwaiian ensemble, she giggles
"It's funny, what you normally wear would probably fit in better with what everyone else is wearing tonight..." she breaks off, a witch with a green face and a coco pop stuck to her chin rushes past shreiking, she's being chased by a wolf in a cricket jumper. Emily looks embarassed. "Oh God, that came out all wrong.. I'm sorry... I didn't mean to... Oh, it's the drink I've probably had too much, I didn't mean to say.."

"It's ok" I say "My mum said the same thing."

"Did she? Oh that's ok then.. I mean... no it's not ok.. but... you know... I didn't mean to... offend you"

"No really it's ok" I smile again "Yes, it was her idea I came as little red riding hood. It's her dress, it's not mine."

"Oh wow, red riding hood, I see it now... yeh that's cool.... I wish, my mum had clothes as nice as that that I could borrow... Is she ok? Your mum I mean, she's still..." Emily searches desperately for a word to describe what it is that my mum is 'still doing.' She's not very consistent my mother, she doesn't go into words very easily. The only thing that has been 'still there' are her looks, her voice and her smile. Anything else can change with the wind, but she herself, stays sort of... timeless.
The wolf having given up chasing the witch comes to Emily's rescue

"Hey, you look like you need a hand with that bottle." Emily looks down at the bottle she's still trying to open in her hands.

"Yeh would you mind?" She hands the bottle over to the wolf who takes it and with a couple of tugs the cork comes free. He hands the bottle back to Emily and smiles lecherously at me. "I'll just go find you a glass.." says Emily and disapears into the kitchen, leaving me alone with the wolf.

"Hello, I'm tom." he says offering his hand, I frown

"You look like a wolf to me." I say, he laughs, I didn't mean to be funny.

"Yes, well I guess I am, I'm a wolf in sheeps clothing" he says tugging at his white cricket jumper "I know I know, quite pathetic really, but well, the sister's party and everything, you've got to make an effort."

"Do sheep like cricket?"

he frowns and looks at me quizically, I stay quite straight faced

"I don't know, I've umm, never asked one, but it is 90% woolen materials."

"Oh right, yes of course."

"You must be Esme.."

"Must I? Yes, yes I guess I must... I'm little red riding hood, I don't think it's in my interests to be talking to you." I say quite seriously, looking around me for exits. He just laughs thinking I have made a joke

"Hah, well yes I guess not..." Emily comes bobbing back with a glass full of chardonay and hands it back to me

"Sorry I took so long with your drink, I bumped into James in the kitchen... hmm I'm just going to go and show him around... feel free to help yourself to food and wine and things, I'll be back to see how you are a bit later ok?"

"Okay" I smile half-heartedly as she disapears up the staircase with James. James is her ex boyfriend they split up, I don't know why, but it seemed quite messy, although these things always do seem quite messy to me.

Emily meets Juliet on the landing, you can see the landing from downstairs, it looks out over the main hall. Juliet is stood looking out over her guests with a concerned expression on her face.

"She's waiting for Robin" Tom says "The whole party is some stupid scheme to try and impress him and win over his heart, she doesn't realise that she doesn't need to make the effort, she'd just have to walk past him in that dress and his heart wouldn't be won, well, maybe not his heart , but all the relevant other bits of him. He's a prick but I don't really care, dad does, he thinks his precious little slut should be with someone better than an apprentice mechanic, I think she's actually doing quite well for herself.. He'd kill her if he found out about all this, but he'd kill her if he found out half the things his little princess was up to."

"Or lock her away in a tower..."

"Yes or lock her away in a tower. I suppose I better go socialise now.. it was nice to meet you Esme."

"Yes" I smile and the wolf is gone. I unbutton my cloak, the room is quite full and it's getting rather warm, the noise is filling up my head and the people buzzing about feel quite disorientating, I fold my cloak up over my arm and decide I'll look for a place to hang it up.

Just under the stairs it's dark the dark is comforting, it makes the party feel quieter, all the hooks are taken however, and so there is a pile of coats on the floor by the little stone window in the corner of the darkness. Through the window you can see the stars shining outside all hanging around the full moon, like little fans around a pop star, their smiles twinkling at him to get his attention. And for a second or two i forget about the busy room and gaze at the stars, sat on the pile of cold coats and jackets, I look back into the party, the faceless crowds of people performing the same sorts of rituals over again.

Once upon a time there lived a dream, the dream lived inside a bubble which floated around the moon, and inside this bubble there was a castle suspended in air. The castle was made of tiny little glass pins and needles and inside the castle at the very bottom beneath the echos and the drafts was a marble rolling around on it's own, inside the marble there was flash of green light and inside the light there were thousands upon thousands of dreams and in the dimmest corner of the light, where the light nearly faded out there lived the tiniest dream on it's own. The dream knew it could venture out to be with all the other dreams so that together their dream could be brighter, but the dream always knew that it would be stuck inside the marble rolling around at the bottom of the castle that was suspended in the bubble that was floating around the moon. So the dream had to be content with just being a dream that nobody saw or ever even knew about, but because the moon was so big and bright, it could at least gaze out at that and wonder what it would be like to be somewhere else.

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