Free PRINCESS BEAST by Pamela Ditchoff Page B

could leave the past behind with no more doubts about who I was; I would be a wife, a mother, and a princess of Arabia.  Foolish girl, foolish girl!"  Helga moans and her aura becomes brighter.  Rune fur puffs out like a Persian cat's from Helga's increased voltage.
    "I rose from the wedding feast and walked to the large window where the night sky was bright with sparkling stars.  A stork flew onto the balcony, and I stroked his feathers and thanked him for coming. From out of the darkness, a figure began to form and as it drew nearer, I could see that it was Michael.  After a year in Egypt, I had nearly forgotten his face; I could picture his hair or his eyes, his mouth, but it was hard to put them all together.  Instantly upon seeing him, the old flame of love flared inside me.  He said that the splendor, the glory of paradise is far greater than anything found on this earth.  And I pleaded as sweetly as I could to be allowed to look into paradise."
    Helga's aura grows so bright that Rune scootches three feet backward.
    "Michael lifted me up, held me in his arms, and this time, it did not burn.  He took me to a place, which cannot be described or imagined.  I felt transformed so that the splendor I saw before me was also within me.  I have never known such great happiness."
    Rune is more bug-eyed than usual. 
What could be more romantic
, she thinks,
than the one you love coming back from the dead and lifting you into paradise?
At that moment, she wanted more than anything to be lifted in an embrace of Hans, the former hedgehog.
    "Then Michael said we must return, but I begged for one more glance, one more moment in his company. He said we must return to earth because all the guests were leaving. One last glance, the very last, I said.  In a flash, I was back on balcony Michael was gone, and the great hall was empty.  I walked through the palace looking for Alli, my mother, my grandfather, but they were gone.  I went outside into the garden, and I saw the stork. I called to him, saying,
It's me, Helga, from the balcony last evening
.  The stork said I was mistaken, that I must have been dreaming.  I reminded him of the Viking hall near the great bog and how he had brought me the swan skin."
    Rune is so upset, she wants to scream, and she grinds her three rows of fangs together in agitation.
    "The stork said:
That is an old, old story.  It happened so long ago that my great-great-great grandmother was alive then.  It is true that such a princess once lived here in Egypt, but she disappeared on her wedding night and never returned.  You can read the story on the monument in the garden
.  Helga light is now so brilliant that Rune crosses her arms over her face.
    "I understood; a moment in paradise is a century on earth.  The sun fell on me and just as the rays of the sun in time past had changed me from an ugly frog into a beautiful princess, so did they now change me into one single ray of light that shot upward, and where I had knelt lay a withered lotus flower."
    "Did you join Michael?" Rune gasps her question.
    "Someday, perhaps I will, when all my sins are forgiven, when I have suffered enough to be worthy."
    The Andersen Land philosopher chooses this moment to fly over the girls squawking, "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."
    Rune stands abruptly, her very fur quivering with incredulity. “One hundred years as a bolt of light isn’t enough! Bear poopin prat,” she hollers and rips out a lingonberry bush. She tosses it over her head, “what about love and happiness in life not in some cockamamie paradise?” She jumps up and down with agitation, shaking three tree fairies out of their nutshells.
    “I’ll return when you have calmed yourself,” Helga says. “I will pray for you, that the Holy Spirit will come upon you. Then I can finish my story by telling you the rewards of a life dedicated to god the father.”
    Rune stops her