The Never Ending Story # 2

This is like the first one, except we are really only going to add one sentence to the story at a time. And I'm only going to start it with one sentence.

Here goes.
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There once was a beautiful princess who lived in a big, beautiful castle.

okay, I'll try reallyreallyreally hard to keep it to one sentence, though I reserve the right to add a semicolon in there
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The beautiful princess would spend every day alone in her room, seated before her mirror, admiring her reflection and wishing for nothing more than to gaze at her own beauty.

Then one day she realized that she was very lonely, and desperately wanted someone to talk to.

She was not used to being unhappy - wishing to remedy this situation at once, she clapped her hands for her servants to come to her side, and ordered that they find her a suitable companion.

One servant suggested they bring in the court jester, much to the princess' dismay, and she explained that she wanted them to find a friend for her.

They complied to the best of her wishes; over the next week, hundreds of people throughout the kingdom were brought in to sit by the princess and keep her company, but she was not pleased with any of them, and sent them all away after only a moment of their time.

The princess sat in her throne wondering if she would ever find a friend, and she suddenly decided that she would just go find a friend on her own instead of relying on her servants.

So decided that to do so she would travel her own lands, something she had never done before, planning to don the disguise of a peasant woman so no one would realize who she was.

She sneaked into the bedroom of one of her female servants to rummage through the closet, then suddenly realized that should her Father realize she was missing he would send out a search party for her...

In her usual impulsive manner, the princess rushed to the bedside of the girl, waking with her a shake and a hand over her mouth.

It just so happened that this girl did NOT look like the princess, but she knew someone who did, and told the princess where the girl could be found.

Swearing the confused and sleepy girl to silence about this matter, the princess took off down the hallway to the kitchen staff's quarters several floors below, working out the rest of her plan in her head.

She decided that it would be best to leave through the secret passage that led from the castle's kitchen to a small clearing nearly a mile away from the castle.

The secret passage was mostly used for select kitchen staff to gather cooking herbs that grew in the forest nowadays, though in less peaceful times long ago it had been built as a means of escape for royalty; first, though, she had to pay a visit to the young lady who resided in the kitchens who would serve as her double.

She found the girl who was happy to go along with the plan, and was of course sworn to secrecy then helped the Princess to gather things she would need on her journey; and the Princess in return gave her pointers on how to be a Princess.

She explained that the girl who was to pose as her must do precisely as real princess does (remain locked in her room all day), in order to avoid detection, even though she did look quite like the real princess; and, when the young lady agreed, she meant it sincerely, and of course had no way of anticipating how things would really turn out in the real princess' absence.

And so the Princess finally left through the hidden passageway after gathering all her supplies and making sure her replacement was prepared; she was about halfway through the passage when she heard a great explosion and the ground shook fiercely under her feet and all around her.

The princess collapsed momentarily to her knees under the force of the explosive quaking, and when she arose to her feet, badly shaken, she saw through the blanket of dust in the air that the bit of light that had signified the end of the tunnel ahead of her had been blocked out by a wall of fallen rubble.

Now there was a dead silence and not a sound permeated the area where once there was a cacophony of sounds, of people.

The Princess turned back to see if she could return to the inside of the castle from where the tunnel began.

There was no chance as she had to head out into the world, via a small cullis, as a new unknown person.

[She cannot go back to the castle. She must go through a manhole grating above her. Not out into the wilds and not back into the castle.]

Siah wrote:There was no chance as she had to head out into the world, via a small cullis, as a new unknown person.

??? ok so both ends of the tunnel are blocked ??? Just want to verify this before i try to add to the story.

[She cannot go back to the castle. She must go through a manhole grating above her. Not out into the wilds and not back into the castle.]

oh my

The princess pushes and pulls on the grate above her, whining as dirt fell into her eyes; she finally pulled it lose.

Climbing out, as a stranger, she now stands in the common section of the town; receiving strange glances from the local populace for her drain-crawling antics.