How Princess YellowBelly Began

Once upon a time there was a magical kingdom where all manner of good and benevolent characters from stories came to live.

And they built a great city where they put all the beautiful things they found and made – until one day their king decided that no more beauty could possibly exist in all the realms.  So he declared that no one was to create anything more, and that everyone would wear nothing but white, gray, or black…so as not to interfere with looking at the beautiful things they had collected.

So all the magical beings of the realm obeyed the king, and spent a great deal of time exercising and dieting, and congratulating themselves on being so clever that they could learn and discover nothing new.

All except for the king’s own niece, Princess Yellow Belly.

Now, Princess Yellow Belly didn’t mean to cause trouble, for she was a good and kind lady.  But she was also the feistiest of all the beings who lived in the magical city, and she was easily bored.

Whenever she grew bored, trouble seemed to find her.

She was forever climbing in and out of windows, instead of doors, running when she was supposed to walk, laughing suddenly in the middle of dry lectures.  And no matter what the king said, she would wear her bright yellow scarf around her middle.

One day Princess Yellow Belly grew so bored that she climbed out a window on the outside wall of the city, and went walking across a beautiful little meadow and into the woods.

After a while she came to a perfect glade which was open to the blue sky, and filled with soft grasses and wildflowers.  Best of all, at the center of the glade was a little pool, which was so perfectly still that it looked like a mirror with all the trees growing upside down in it.

Princess Yellow Belly went to get a drink from the little pool, but when she got there she simply stood and stared.

Inside it she could see regular people, walking and talking, laughing and creating.

Princess Yellow Belly had found the Lost Pool of Realms – where the creatures of the magical realm had once come to see what was happening in the world of humans.  She stayed a long time, looking into the pool, and as she watched the humans living their lives, she had a thought.

Maybe the magical beings had discovered all that was beautiful, but the humans had not.

So she went back to the magical city, and found a sewing machine that had been put away, and fabric, and a few patterns, and she began to sew.

This made the king very angry, but Princess Yellow Belly was too happy to care.

The next day she took all the things she had found, and her best friends from the magical city, and went out to live in the deep woods around the Lost Pool of Realms.

There they made a happy place where they were ever busy and curious.  And they went out far and wide, looking for new ideas, and created beautiful things upon their return.

Princess Yellow Belly and her motley crew of inventors lived very simply, in the still waters of the forest, in a great rock cave under the shivering pines, in small tree houses amid the soughing branches, and in huge mushrooms on the forest floor.

They had no real need for all the things they created, so they would drop their beautiful gifts into the Pool of Realms, so the humans could find them, and enjoy them just as much as they did.

And sometimes, when a human crafter was very still, they would whisper plans and inventions and patterns into their ears, so the humans could also learn.