Trowalina:
Part Three
By: Kitty E.
Prince Quatre returned to the little cottage in the woods in the
best of spirits. He had received a rather distracted agreement from
his mother, Queen Une, who was busy trying to keep her husband away
from the Far East Prince, Wufei. For some reason, whenever the king
spoke to him, the eastern prince would get rather lengthy nosebleeds.
However, when he tapped the windowpane his lanky betrothed did not
come. Frowning, he flew up to the roof, and then down the chimney to
see what was keeping Trowalina.
He found the old woman weeping into a bottle of brandy and clutching
at her thumbs rather protectively.
"Old woman, mother to dear Trowalina, where has your son gone?" he
asked, landing upon her shot glass.
The old woman stared at him rather blearily before muttering
something about hallucinations and reaching for the brandy once more.
Quatre crossed his little arms, and flew up to the old woman's face
to hover just beyond her nose. "Tell me, old woman, where is your
son?"
"A rather nasty looking toad took him," she sobbed. "He was sweeping
the front porch when this huge frog hopped onto the flagstone, and
took him for her daughter."
Quatre gasped, "But he's *my* fiancee."
"Are you the Fairy Prince? Please, please, don't break my thumbs. I
need them! I'm a seamstress, how could I sew with them?"
Quatre had already started towards the chimney, "Fear not!" he
called back. "I have no intention of letting his debt go unpaid."
Quatre knew there was but one place a frog would live, and flew as
fast as possible to the lily pond not too far from the cottage.
Looking quite displeased he landed on the lily pad upon which the
Frog Queen sat. "Where is my betrothed," he demanded.
"I've no idea, my prince. I took him from the old woman to wed my
daughter, but he refused. We placed him on a lily pad in the middle
of the pond to keep him from escaping. When I returned he had
disappeared, lily pad and all."
"Why you-you wretched � woman!" he stumbled over his words, quite
unaccustomed to being angry. "He's drowned!"
"No, not drowned," croaked the Frog Princess.
"Nani?" Quatre asked, daring to hope.
"I saw it all. The minnows broke the lily pad free, and then a
butterfly spirited him away," she explained.
"Why didn't you tell me?" demanded the Frog Queen.
"He was creepy, Mama," she whined. "He just stared at me, and didn't
say a word �"
Quatre left the two bloated frog women to their bickering, and went
off to search for the butterfly. At last he came upon one, drinking
from a honeysuckle vine.
"Butterfly!" he called.
"*Flutterby*," he corrected
"Nani?" Quatre asked, as landed upon a flower.
"Flutterby, my name is Flutterby," he said between sips.
Quatre scratched his head, "Well, whatever. What did you do with
Trowalina?"
"I carried him to land. I offered for him to stay with me, but he
said he had to get home," he said, still more involved in the
honeysuckle.
"Ah, arigatou," Quatre said, as he started towards the cottage once
again.
Along the way, he came across a large, beetle ridden tree. Taking a
shortcut through its branches, he collided with a forlorn, little
beetle that had been standing leaf looking out over the forest.
"Terribly sorry," he apologized as he got up and brushed himself
off. "You should be more careful," he advised before turning to take
off.
"Forgive me, Fairy Prince, but I'm nursing a broken heart, I've lost
my dear Trowalina."
"Your Trowalina?" Quatre asked, whipping about. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I was on my way back here, when I saw the most beautiful
little creature I've ever seen and I took him back here."
"But he's MY fiancee!" Quatre shouted. He was beginning to wonder
just how many unwed creatures there were in this forest.
"The others disapproved of him," he wept. "They threw him out of the
tree, and he landed in the opening of a mole's tunnel."
"They what?" Quatre blasted.
He didn't bother to wait for the answer, and rocketed down to the
ground. After some searching he found the molehill, and flew down the
tunnel, soon coming upon a door. He knocked politely and waited,
tapping his foot impatiently.
After some time, a mole appeared, "Yes, what do you want?" he asked
rudely. Terribly near sighted, he did not recognize the royalty
before him.
"Where's Trowalina?" Quatre asked, ignoring the mole's discourtesy.
"Trowalina?" he asked. "Why, that deceitful boy left long ago with a
sparrow. I found him lost within my tunnels and thought he was a
girl. I offered him my wealth and home, and he refused. When I tried
to ... ahem ... persuade him, I discovered he was a boy. I sent him away
along with the sparrow, lousy freeloader, and I haven't seen them
since." He blinked several times, squinting to get a better look at
Quatre. "Now, then, young lady," he began.
Quatre flustered briefly, and then flew back up to open air. As he
searched through the night for the sparrow and his beloved, his eye
began to twitch in a most disturbing way.
At last he came upon a nest of sparrows, one of which was quite
covered in dirt. "Sparrow. What did you do with my Trowalina?"
"Oh, forgive me, kind Fairy Prince, but I fear I was too weak to
carry him. I lost him somewhere in the land of the Rather Unpleasant
Grasshopper People."
Quatre began to laugh in a most peculiar way. When he finally paused
to catch his breath, he said, "Okay. I believe that brings the tally
up to three kidnappings, two attempted rescues, *and* one beloved in
enemy hands." His face took on a slightly pained look, and he rubbed
his temples to soothe the beginnings of a frightful headache. Taking
several deep breaths, he calmed himself enough to say, "All right,
I'm off."
The sparrows watched him leave; all agreeing that he was a very
strange fairy indeed.
Deep within enemy territory, at the Palace of the Rather Unpleasant
Grasshopper People, Trowalina lay before the court in chains.
The Grasshopper King laughed, "Such a ransom this boy shall bring
us. All the riches of the Fairy Kingdom."
The king's general frowned, "Ransom?"
The king stopped his evil laughter, "Yes, the ransom. Didn't you
send a note demanding a price for his return?"
The general paled, and shook his head.
"Well, why the hell did you think we kidnapped him?" the Grasshopper
King demanded.
"Because we're rather unpleasant?" he squeaked.
"Bakayarou!" the king bellowed, throwing his scepter at the cowering
general, but striking Trowalina instead.
"How dare you!" came a familiar, if somewhat angered, voice.
Trowalina tried to identify its source, but he was blindfolded. He
could only sit up, and listen to the sounds of a tremendous battle.
The fight went on into the night, and he found himself nodding off
several times. At last, the room seemed to still and the blindfold
was pulled away from his eyes. Quatre knelt before him, a weary smile
upon his face as he leaned forward for a silent kiss.
Trowalina waited patiently as his shackles were removed, and looked
about the great throne room. There wasn't a single trace of his
captors, or at least none he could recognize. Scattered about the
floor were small, uniform cubes of what could have been anything.
"Quatre, you did all this?" he asked, a little more than surprised.
The blonde fairy nodded, and extended his hand to help him up. "Hai,
I said I didn't want to fight, not that I couldn't."
With that, he lifted Trowalina up, and flew them back to his palace,
where they were married in a beautiful ceremony. Unfortunately,
peaceful or short would not be apt descriptions as several fist
fights broke out between Relena and Duo, as well as one lengthy sword
fight between King Treize and a blushing Prince Wufei. They lived
happily ever after ... far, far away from Quatre's family.
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