This month’s writing invites you to be inspired by your favorite fairy tales. Retell the story with a little twist or let the tale be a springboard to something entirely new. Tell the story from a different perspective or imagine what might have really come after.
Prompt taken from http://doingthewritething.wordpress.com/, the story started off as a retelling of East of the Sun and West of the Moon from the Andrew Lange collection of fairy tales.
Once Upon a Time there was a beautiful castle which lay east of the sun and west of the moon in a land which was hidden. Inside this castle lived a prince who by day was a great bear and by night a man.
The only way he could stop transforming to a bear during the day was to marry a girl chosen by his family or he could marry a girl he loved from far off if he she would live with him for a full year never trying to see his face as a man or learning the reason why.
If she did this he would be able to bring her with him back to the castle but if she tried to see his face or found out why he would be whisked away. Then they could only marry if she somehow found the hidden castle herself before sunset a year later.
He left the castle and began his search to find someone and one day he saw the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, after watching her for a few days and seeing that she was also kind and caring he fell completely in love.
The girl was the oldest of a poor family and so he offered her a good life for her family the rest of their lives if she came to live with him for one year. She wanted nothing more than to take care of her family and so she agreed.
They were happy spending days together as bear and girl and she came to truly love him but as she began to love him the need to see his face as a man began to grow. So one night when the prince had fallen asleep she crept to his bedside and lit a candle and finally saw the face of the man she had come to love.
He awoke in the sudden candlelight with a start and desperately tried to tell her what she had done and how to find the castle but was barely able to tell her the castle was east of the sun and west of the moon before he was magically carried back.
The prince hoped that the girl would somehow find him but as the year came to an end she still had not found him and he was resigned to marrying the girl chosen by his family. The day of his wedding shortly before sunset a rumor reached him that a beautiful girl dressed in rags who claimed to be from a far off land was trying to enter the castle to see him.
The prince ran to the main gate of the castle and saw the girl he loved; she had searched for a full year and had found him just in time. He swept her into his arms just as the sun slipped below the horizon and so was able to marry the girl he loved instead and they lived happily ever after.
