~~~
Fortunately for the Princess, the King and Queen didn't come to breakfast -- which suited her fine, since she would've lost her appetite. She found that eating and keeping her breakfast down was hard enough with Aarach chomping and slurping across the table. And when he wasn't burping, he would stare at her while she daintily cut her pancakes into tiny pieces and carefully chewed each tiny piece twenty times. She may have lived with a dragon for years and years, but she had never lost her manners!
"Wanna take a walk?" he said suddenly, in mid-bite.
"Close your mouth," she gagged. His mouth snapped shut. "Yes, I would enjoy a walk." Really. She would. No ghosts.
"Okay." He drained his last pancake with a gulp. "Let's go." He got up, started toward the door, saw she was still sitting, and belatedly offered his arm to her. She slowly stood, adjusted her skirt, and they started across the long, long room. Occasionally she pulled at his arm when he started walking too fast for decorum.
It was a small castle -- after five minutes, they were out the front door, and it took another fifteen minutes to traverse the inner courtyard. The Princess had been expecting a short stroll, so she was rapidly tiring. But she kept walking gamely, even after the path got rocky. Anything was better than the castle.
Except maybe a stone in her shoe. She fell further and further behind as she felt the stone push into her heel. She thought about stopping and dropping the stone out, but it seemed – well -- rather undignified and unsanitary for a Princess to sit on a dirty rock or a rotting log and hitch up her skirts to get to her shoe. And Aarach was too far ahead to call back, unless she bellowed. So she kept walking, hoping the stone would drop out on its own. Finally, the pain got to be too much, and she stopped, looking for a clean rock. Sighing, she finally settled on a dirty rock, then stared at it. That dirty rock was cleaner than any room in the castle. And there were no ghosts around it.
She looked around for Aarach. She couldn't see him --
"Boo!"
The half-formed thought she had fled. She jumped and whirled and glared at Aarach behind her.
"Oh. Sorry," Aarach said
What was the thought she had? "Aarach, I have to use the facilities." No, that wasn't it. But it wasn't too far from the truth.
Aarach looked dumb. The Princess didn't think it was too hard a stretch for him.
"I have to go potty," she blushed.
"Oh." Aarach brightened. "Uh--you can use that tree over there--I won't look."
The Princess turned white and her eyes got wide. "Aarach! Princesses use chamber-pots, not trees."
"Why?"
"Never mind."
"Oh." He thought a minute or so, and the Princess tapped her foot. "That's dumb. That means I have to take you back to the castle."
"Yes," she said flatly.
"Hmmph," Aarach strode away, clearly annoyed.
It was then she realized what she had been thinking. She stood stock-still, then strode after Aarach. Escape! That was a novel idea. Princesses didn't escape from their princes! They stayed captives of whoever -- or whatever -- was holding them, they suffered bravely and nobly, and they waited patiently for their Princes to rescue them. That was the way it was always done. The Princess was terribly surprised she had even thought of escape.
And, after all, she hadn't escaped from the Dragon, she had run away. Hadn't she? It was shear chance that Aarach had come at that point.
Aarach was stomping through the forest far ahead of her, but she barely noticed. The problem was that she didn't have a clue about escapes. Did she have to disguise herself? Did she just walk out the front door, or would she have to crawl down some musty, dirty, yucky passageway?
She was still pondering when she reached the castle, almost thirty minutes later than Aarach. She looked around the courtyard. He was nowhere to be seen. She realized suddenly that this was a perfect time to escape.
But-- she had no supplies. She needed more than the dress she had on. Even Princesses knew that.
She walked slowly to her room. Now that she had time to think about it, perhaps her impulse was not the best one. Her feet were sore, her legs hurt, and she didn't want to think about her lower back. Also--
But did she want to stay?
No!
She looked ruefully at her clothes. They were very pretty and very impractical, even as stained as they were after mucking around in the woods. Perhaps she could find different clothes?