Both Plumerella and Maggie turned around to see Chad Abber. He was a much more attractive Chad with a chiseled jaw and excellent posture. Both his handsome eyes firmly in their sockets and all his tanned skin firmly in its place. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna getcha…even if I am a ladykiller.”

Maggie turned around angrily, disregard Chad, but Plumerella remained transfixed on him. Chad made a muscle. “Don’t worry, anything flies at you, I’ll give em the old one-two.”

He challenged the air to fisticuffs, causing Plumerella to giggle. “What brings you out here, Sir Guns?”

“Sir Guns?” Chad laughed and bowed. He removed his cap, showing his full head of hair. “I quite like that name, but I’m only a humble teaser.”

He walked over to them and sat beside them. Unlike the two girls, he did not dip his feet into the water. Instead, he sat with his legs crossed and smiled. “The festival got boring. Only so many times you can play Whack-A-Hog and eat pork rinds before it starts to get old.”

“You’re telling me,” Maggie muttered beneath her breath.

Chad reclined backwards on his arms. “I figured I’d get brave, venture into the woods and find out where the true action is…. and by the looks of it,”—the cad wiggled both his eyebrows—“I’ve found some.”

“Aw,” Plumerella said, putting a gloved hand forward. “We’re simply relaxing. Me and my new friend Maggie. Nothing too actionlike.”

“Hey, you never know,” Chad laughed. “You’ll never know when you’ll encounter one of those vile pigs in the forest…”

“Like yourself…” Maggie muttered but Chad seemed too daft to hear her.

“But that’s beside the point,” Chad said, and he gazed winsomely at Plumerella. “Who do I owe the pleasure to? The mysteriously masked Maggie and…”

Plumerella’s large blue eyes swiveled around before she fell on a name. “My name is…”

“Wait,” Chad said, closing his eyes. “Don’t tell me. It’s coming to me. It’s Plumerella, fairest princess in all of New Brushwick.”

“Eek,” Plumerella squeaked. “How did you know?”

Chad pointed directly at his eyeballs. “When your father makes grand proclamations from his balcony, these peepers always focus on that soft, cherubic face. I couldn’t mistake you for anyone else, my dear Plumerella.”

“Wow,” Plumerella exclaimed, “I never knew I had such devoted admirers. I’m truly honored.”

Chad politely closed his hands around Plumerella’s glove and gave it a gentle kiss. The stars from the night sky practically danced in Plumerella’s eyes. Maggie glared at him from behind her pig mask. “That mask is freaking me out,” Chad said at last. “Mind if you take it off?”

“She can’t,” Plumerella responded. “She got Wumped.”

“She got whomped?” Chad said, and he stood up making fisticuffs again. “Let me know what scoundrel did it, and I’ll put him in the ground.”

Plumerella giggled with her glove to her lips, she turned around and looked at Maggie. Maggie’s eyes softened from behind her mask. “He doesn’t seem too bad,” she said to Maggie.

“I guess so,” Maggie said, bringing herself to laugh.

As the world dissolved around Mena again, Maggie’s voice echoed through the void of the past. “It seemed I had let my guard down because of my new-found friend. But sometimes the greatest liars have the prettiest faces and tell the gentlest untruths.”

As the night sky glimmered with a bevy of cosmic delight, Plumerella lead Chad and Maggie to the country graveyard, where everything was cool and still. She smiled knowingly, “If you want to know how I got out of my heavily guarded castle, look no further than this secret tunnel beside my mother’s grave.”

Plumerella cast her hand forward and magically the grave began to slide, revealing a ladder down. “You can accompany me further if you want to see.”

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“Sure,” Maggie said, and she looked at Chad.

“Ladies first,” he said courteously, and Plumerella began to climb down into the plot. Once she had faded from view, Chad said, “After you,” to Maggie but right when she was about to go, he bumped her and knocked her mask off.

“Whoops,” he said, with a smug smile, but it quickly vanished when he saw Maggie’s face. “Your face…You got one of them, oinker noses.”

Maggie immediately covered it up. “Please,” she gasped, her eyes tearing up as she shook from fear. “No must know about this. Most of all, Plumerella herself. I see what they do to pigmalians here…Please…I…”

Chad Abber firmly placed a hand on her shivering shoulder. “Quit your quivering, piggie,” he said, with a very self-satisfied expression. “I’d never do any such thing. You can trust old honest Abber. I’m a downright honest gent to all the lasses…even pig lasses…”

Chad’s hand rested on Maggie’s shoulder until she shook no more. “Really?” she asked, tears on the rims of her eyes.

Chad nodded and bared his teeth in a sparkling white grin. “Bet on your life.”

“Wow,” Maggie gushed. “I guess you really aren’t such a bad guy after all. “

“Of course,” Chad said, making another muscle in the air and winking. “I’m not a good guy, or a bad guy. I prefer to be known as “a cool guy.”

Maggie giggled and donned her mask and they climbed into the hole together. Together, they made their way with Plumerella all the way to the dungeon where Mena had met Chad initially.

Plumerella turned around. There seemed to be something she wanted to tell them. Her eyes looked towards Chad then Maggie. “I’d like to tell that this was the most splendidful night I’ve ever had and it’s all thanks to you two. I was wondering…uhm…would you like to spend the night? I’m not sure it’s safe walking through the forest at this hour.”

“Of course,” Chad said, and he gave a hearty laugh. “I know it’s the first date, but even as a gentleman, I am VERY reciprocating on the first outing and would love to give you a night of magic. And then in the morning,”—Chad raised and lowered his eyebrows again—"I could make us a strawberry pancake surprise.”

“Umm…” Plumerella smiled and fidgeted nervously. “I was talking about Maggie, Chad. You’re a strong man, you can probably clear through a hundred beasts with a single pickaxe. But for us lady-folk, it’s positively dangerous.”

Mena could see Maggie’s face, but from the way her eyes shined behind the mask, she was positively glowing. Chad, on the other hand, made an ugly scowl. It was more fitting of his cadaver self.

“Of course,” he said. “I see how it is. I’ll make myself scarce.”

As Chad stormed off, Plumerella called out. “Thank you for a wonderful night, Sir Guns. I hope to meet you again sometime. Perhaps I’ll have some tea with you next time we meet.”

But Chad didn’t even turn around, he had faded into the abyss of darkness. Plumerella turned to Maggie. “I feel so bad putting him out like that. But my father is very proper about me when I meet men. We first must be acquainted and in a proper relationship before he is even allowed to see my bedroom.”

“But…” Maggie said, “What about me? Do you think he’d mind?”

Plumerella put her gloved hand forward. “Ladies are always welcome. My maids are always allowed inside my private quarters, so why not a lady friend?”

Maggie folded her hands tentatively but nodded. “Ok, thank you, Princess.”

“Call me, Plumy,” Plumerella said.

Beneath the cover of the greys and whites of night, they tip-toed up the stairs of the dungeon, past the king’s towering throne room and up a spiraling staircase to the highest room in the castle.

When they reached the top, Mena gazed at the inside of Plumerella’s room. She had only seen the outside when they were crossing the void into the Unwritten Kingdom. It was as frilly as the princess herself with a pink and white rug of interweaved tapestries. Golden feathers adorned the wall, the princess had a round bed draped with a white cloth that resembled an enormous doily and lastly, a painting hung of young Plumerella. She stood beneath King Ink himself and a fair woman with golden curls and large almond eyes, much like the princess. “Wow,” Maggie said, astounded. “I dreamed of being a princess in all those fairy tales, but I never knew I’d get to see inside of real castle before.”

“Trust me,” Plumerella responded as she relaxed on her bed. “It’s nothing special. It may be large, but I’d much rather be outside and see the world. Your real home is where your friends are.”

Maggie pointed to herself. “You mean me?”

“Of course,” Plumerella said, “You are my very first friend. You are a…”

“PIGMALIAN,” a booming voice exclaimed, and before Maggie could turn around, an enormous knight in steely armor pulled a bag over her head.

Plumerella and Maggie both shrieked as Maggie’s mask dropped to the floor and she was pulled away from her friend. Mena did not have much time to see the princess’s reaction, but the princess was quickly tended to by two maids as the would-be assailant was dragged down the castle stairs

The world went dark for Mena, but when her eyes opened, her body did not feel like her own. She was nearly frozen, trembling in fear. The black sack was pulled off her head, and staring across from her, with the Golden Plume in hand, was King Ink himself. “Wait,” Mena said to herself, “Have I become one with Maggie?”

King Ink did not realize the blended consciousness of the witch and the halfling, instead, he spoke in a commanding voice. “So, you thought on the night of the Celebacon, a pigmalian like you would infiltrate our castle and attempt to undermine my royal empire? I’m very thankful I took the words of advice from that common man.”

Chad stepped out from behind the throne, a smirk on his face. Mena swallowed hard. Not only was Maggie in danger of being killed. Mena was as well.