Blood Red and Apple Blossom White were the daughters of the miller at the mill by the stream. Both were comely young ladies born to poverty. Both were doomed to live and die in poverty. (Poverty was the name of the mill.) A visitor, a hunter by his looks, rode his horse to the mill one sunny day. He was injured, a large wound in his leg, and he asked the miller for help. Apple Blossom White was an herbalist, and Blood Red was knowledgeable about blood. Between them, within a week, they had the young hunter on the road to recovery. (Recovery was the next town closer to the castle.)
Months passed with little of any interest happening at the mill. Ordinarily, years could pass thusly, but that’s beside the point. Blood Red and Apple Blossom White were walking through the meadow, one find day, when they espied some roses. Rose hips are an excellent source of Vitamin C (which had not yet been invented. This was the Middle Ages, after all.) Red and White began collecting rose hips.
Toward the edge of the meadow, roses were still in bloom. Blood Red reached for a particularly attractive rose, but pricked her finger on the thorn. A droplet of water shimmered on the rose petal, a droplet of blood hung from the thorn. When they returned to the mill, she fell into anaphylactic shock from the pesticides on the rose thorn. Since neither of those had been invented yet, what actually happened is that she swooned.
As Blood Red lay in her coma, a visitor rode up. It was the young hunter returned, save that his clothing revealed that he was the prince. He saw Blood Red comatose in her bower, and exclaimed “Woe is me! I have returned to claim Blood Red as my princess, only to find her at death’s door.” “Silly prince” said Apple Blossom White. “She’s in her bower. Death’s Door is the tavern down the street. Besides which, I’m available.”
“But it not you whom I love. You’re too much of a ditz.” “Aha!” exclaimed the prince. “I remember that our family healer claimed the legend that says a swoon by thorn prick can be cured by a shot and the recitation of a drabble containing the expression ‘the antelope once climbed the tree’.” “A drabble,” said he, “being a short story or poem of exactly ninety-nine and one-half words.”
“Alas”, bemoaned Apple Blossom White, “drabbles have not been invented yet.” And so it happened that Blood Red died in her swoon, the prince met a hot chick on the Road to Prosperity, and Apple Blossom White took over the mill after her father’s death. She turned it into a cider mill, became wealthy from selling Demon Apple Jack, and was half-sloshed most of the time.
