| After the doctor finished her
story, Cordelia seemed unmoved. "So what do you girls think?" They all nodded and agreed about the moral of the story and said that it was an important life lesson - all of them except Cordelia, of course. "It was pathetic. The princess should have never let her father make her marry someone in the first place." "But then she would have never learned to be humble." "So?" "Well then, tell me, Cordelia, why did you let your father make you come to this session?" The young girl crossed her arms and looked away, refusing to answer the question. The room grew silent. "That does seem like an awful thing to do to someone, especially a family member. I mean, shouldn't there be an easier way to teach the lesson of the story?" This time Amy spoke. She was nothing like Cordelia in a way, Julia could tell, but she still had something in her that made her close to Cordelia by the way they thought. Julia could tell that Amy agreed with Cordelia, but wanted to look like a better person, perhaps to 'suck-up' so that she could leave the session earlier. Well, she would have to work harder than that. "There are other ways, yes, but sometimes in order to learn something you have to get out of your comfort zone to understand why you need to learn. Take for instance the story of The Crystal Ball. A witch was very jealous of her three sons, and feared that someday they might overpower her. She became scared as they grew older and decided to bewitch them. First, she changed one of the sons into an eagle, then the middle son into a whale, but before she could change her youngest, he ran away. The youngest son had heard of a beautiful princess who had also been bewitched. He was told that she was waiting in a castle far away, and that twenty-three men had already died while attempting to save her. But he was not afraid; he thought that nothing could be more scary than watching his mother turn his brothers into animals. He set forth to find the princess, but had no luck in finding the castle . He was just about to give up, when he ran into two giants arguing over a magical hat that took the wearer wherever he wished. The giants knew that smaller men were much smarter than themselves so they asked the young man if he would help them decide who got the hat. The clever boy thought for a moment then told them they would race for it. The giants agreed to his idea and gave the man the hat and let him walk a distance so that they could run to him. As soon as he was a good racing distance from the two giants he shouted for them to start running. As they became increasingly closer by the second, he quickly shoved the hat on his head and wished to go where the princess was, and with a small 'pop' he found himself suddenly standing in front of a huge castle. He excitedly went into the castle and found the princess, but he was terribly shocked when he found her. She looked like an old wrinkly hag! "Are you the princess?" "Yes," she answered and went on to explain to him how she only looked like this because of the witch's spell. Then she told him that he could see her true beauty through a mirror. He took the mirror from her hands and gazed at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but noticed she had tears falling from her cheeks. "The Crystal Ball will break the spell, but it won't be easy to get." She told him that after he defeated a wild bull a bird would fly out of its stomach with an egg, and inside that egg was the crystal ball, but if it ever hit the ground or broke it would catch fire and destroy the crystal ball. The young man nodded and bid her farewell as he set off to get the crystal ball for the maiden. He went down the mountain as she told him to and then came face to face with the bull that had already killed twenty-three men. He struggled, but eventually defeated the bull. Just like the princess told him, a bird came out of its stomach and flew away. But as luck would have it, the young man's brother, in the form of an eagle, swooped toward the bird and drove him to the sea before killing him. The bird let go of the egg and it dropped into a hut by the sea which began to smoke as the egg caught fire, but a huge wave engulfed the hut and put the fire out. The young man's luck had not yet worn off and he saw that his other brother, in the form of a whale, caused the huge wave. The youngest brother went to retrieve the egg and found only the crystal ball. He went back to the enchantress who had bewitched the princess. The witch told him that he now had the power not only to change his brothers back to humans, but to become king of the castle in which the princess dwelt. He excitedly hurried back to the princess and found she had changed into the beautiful woman he saw in the mirror. He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately and they were wed the very same day." Amy thought about the story for a moment and was about to say something, but Cordelia spoke first. "These stories are ridiculous!" "Not they're not. I completely get it now! That must be why Ryan won't date me, because he only sees the beauty on the outside and not on the in!" Author's Note:
This is the second story of Dr. Julia Sporrenburg's 'Fairy Tale
Therapy.' So far things are not working out the way Julia had
hoped they were , especially since Cordelia seemed completely
unmoved by both of these stories. She still has hope for
Amy. Amy doesn't seem as near as closed-minded as Cordelia about
inner beauty. I included all of the important details, but I did leave quite a bit of small detail out for length issues. The original story had a whopping 1082 words in it, mine had only 932 including the beginning bit with dialog between the doctor and her patients. Other differences include linking this story with Shrek. I did not really think about the relationship between these two stories until I had read the original a second time. I thought that was pretty cool. This story is almost a brother to the first Shrek movie with the whole thing about the brothers being in human form for two hours of the night, while Princess Fiona had all day to look normal. In the next story, I am going to tell you about the well known tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and try to help out a third patient, Lauren, with being too shy and worried about what other people think of her. All of the patients are going to be girls because I think that this issue deals mainly with females and their self esteem. Lauren's reaction to this story could be helpful, but nothing seems to be going right for Dr. Sporrenburg so far. Maybe she was wrong about her idea of 'Fairy Tale Therapy.' Then again, maybe not. |
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The Crystal Ball by Cool Text
Crystal Ball by Aldersgate
Web source is Sur La Lune Fairy Tales.