Perdita's Story: Difference between revisions

==Perdita's Story==

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Perdita, who lived with her father, her mother, and her brother in a little cottage in a big city. Her father was only a humble tin-cutter, and her mother's fingers were stained with rust from working in a ball-bearing factory, but Perdita was famous for miles around because of her extraordinary beauty. She was not a bad girl, but she was very vain, and spent hours every day preening in front of her mirror.  

And this she did.  

She walked and she walked and she walked down the streets of the city, looking for the humble tin-cutter's cottage, and stopping every now and then to tie a red balloon to a stop sign or a comm. kiosk or an abandoned shopping cart so that her family could find her. The night was dark, and the city that seemed so safe during the day seemed menacing and full of shadows. She tried to stay awake, she tried as hard as she could because Perdita knew that terrible things can happen to little girls in their sleep, even very beautiful ones.  

And Perdita, who was a good natured child, (if very vain) did.  

Together Perdita and the Clockwork Rat set out to travel the city together. The Rat promised he would show Perdita the way home, and at first the little girl's heart jumped for joy.  

But they didn't.  

The next time Perdita woke up, she found an egg-beater where her left hand used to be, and when she bit her lip she found her teeth had gone all thin and flat and sharp as tin.  

The end.  

"Clockwork Rat! Clockwork Rat!" Perdita said, as tears of bright oil began to leak from her eyes. "What if I'm not beautiful any more? Why hasn't my family come to look for me? Am I so hideous they wouldn't take me back?"  

...and something in the Rat's little tin heart began to melt at the sight of poor Perdita. "Oh, very well," he snarled. "If you truly want to find your family again, you must follow your balloons back to where you started and trust that they love you enough to be waiting there.

So Perdita turned around and began the weary journey back the way she had come. She walked and she walked and she walked, until she came to the base of a giant transmission tower. She remembered having passed it several times before, and to her dismay she saw three different trails of red balloons leading off into the distance. Now she noticed there were designs on the balloons. The balloons marking the path to the left were marked with the words "faithful apostles"; the ones in the middle said "noble truths"; and the ones on the right had "deadly sins" marked upon them. She couldn't waste time walking each one, for she feared that if she slept again, she would wake to find herself changed beyond all recognition.