"'Izzy, be a dear and pop down to the treasury and see if you can find a nice coronet for your sister...' Bah! Did Mother not consider I may _want_ to be around my own sister on the day of her wedding?"
Princess Izeal looked around the Great Treasury room where piles of money and jewels streamed from wall to wall. Priceless objects were mingling every which way. "Looks like the hoard check-room for a dragon convention!" Gingerly, she picked her way toward the center of the room, her slippers sliding a bit on the shiny coins beneath her feet.
"I know Father prefers the old-fashioned look for the arrangement of the treasury but it is a bother to try and find anything!" Pausing a moment to get her bearings, her feet slip out from under her; the princess fell gracelessly upon her royal behind and was carried across the room in a flood of silver coins. She lands in a flurry of clinking next to a cloth-covered lump. Using the cloth to help her up, it is revealed to be a large mirror. Izzy dismisses it without another thought; though, turning toward a pile of pearls, she mutters, "Mirror, mirror, on the cash: Where are the bloody coronets stashed?"
"That wasn't a very good poem," a petulant voice pouted, startling Izzy back onto the overflow of coins she had traveled on. Looking at the mirror, she noticed a pale face floating in it, occasionally accompanied by two ghostly hands. "But if you really want a coronet, check to the left of the mirror. There's a whole _pile_ of them."
"Great-aunt Blanche's mirror," Izzy breathed. Her eyes narrowed a bit. "Wait a minute, nobody ever said magic mirrors were so snarky..."
"Snarky?" The mirror-wight pointed a long finger at her. "Hey, princess, I do _not_ have to take that kind of attitude from the likes of you." The finger disappears. "Besides, I've only been in this mirror for a decade. Got the job when Uncle Ned needed a vacation. I think seeing all of those pretty girls was getting to him... So, who are you, princess, and why do you need to pull a coronet out of this golden haystack?"
Izzy moved to the left of the of the mirror, saying, "I am the Princess Izeal, Izzy to my family." She frowned. "The coronets aren't here."
"Other left, dear."
"Thank you. And I need to bring a coronet upstairs for my sister, to wear today since she is getting married." In front of her was a large pile of coronets, about a hundred or so. Sighing, she sat down to sort through them for one to bring to her sister.
"Well, you can call me Mirare, dear. So, why are you down here, Zy, when you should be up with your sister?"
"Mother told me it was one of my duties as Honeh's Maid of Honor. I think it was just so they could talk about wedding night things without me in the room."
"She's your older sister?"
"Younger. My only sibling." A *clunk* is heard as a coronet is pitched to the side.
"Ahh... but shouldn't --"
"-- there be three of us? I know, I get that often. No, Mother stopped with just two."
"The soon-to-be brother-in-law, how'd you get him? Killed a dragon, captured a band of outlaws, answered a riddle, what?" *Clunk*
"Pen-pals."
"Huh?"
"Honeh met him at one of those uber-boring royal visits we go on every other year. Eyes across a crowded room stuff. So they started writing and then about half a year ago, he asks for her hand in front of the entire court." Izzy spins a coronet in her hands and looks over at the mirror. "Can I see how this one looks on me? I'm sure it wouldn't look so bad if it was worn right..." A small portion of the mirror showed Izzy's reflection as she tried on the coronet while Mirare's face moved to the center of the remaining part of the mirror. Izzy grimaced, "I was wrong." Another clunk resounded in the chamber as the coronet went flying to land near the eastern wall.
"Nice throw," Mirare commented. "So, what's the matter with the guy?"
"Matter? Nothing is the matter; Honeh and him seem deliriously happy together. I'm sure they will do fine together. The matter is what happens after the ceremony... where every royal old bat from every kingdom within a thousand leagues of here will descend upon me to find out why _I'm_ not married. And they'll get nasty about it too."
The mirror hands clapped together gleefully. "Oooh, I want to be the matchmaker! Magic mirrors aren't just for spying, ya know! Come on, Izzy! I'll find you a real hunk of a prince, promise!" Mirare's right hand gave a V sign, slightly tilted.
Izzy shook her head, but the mirror's enthusiasm was unquenchable. "Very well. It'll give me some practice for avoiding some of the talk after the ceremony. Go ahead." She reached for yet another coronet.
Mirare's image pulled a scroll from nowhere and placed it in so that only the back could be seen by Izzy. Mirare then put on a pair of small half-moon glasses on a beaded chain. One hand started taking swipes at the other with a small, flat, rounded tan piece of wood."First is Prince Arba... Arbiba.... Arkans... Oh, it translates to 'Dandelion fluff which floats serenely upon the waters of Time.'"
A coronet barely missed the top of the mirror. "Prince Fluffy? Are you insane?!? The man is a complete twit! Next!"
"Touchy..." the mirror sniffed. "Okay, how about Prince Challum? _I_ hear he has a _HUGE_ tract of land..."
"It's soggy!"
"_Izzy!_ You don't talk that way about a guy's --"
"-- land? But it _is_ soggy! Completely marshland. And completely useless. They have to import sunlight along with their food." Izzy absentmindedly polished another coronet with one of her sleeves. "And why do I need more land? I am my father's heir." She tried this coronet on, making a face in the mirror at the reflection before pitching it to the side.
"That wasn't quite what I was going for... You could always live here, you know." The mirror peered at the scroll again. "Any other objections to Challum?"
"He scurries."
"Scurries? Dear, servants scurry, not princes."
"Then _someone_ is in trouble because Challum scurries. Constantly." Izzy picked up a silver and ruby coronet and tried it on, turning this way and that. "Do you think Mother would let me wear a coronet today? Of course, I wouldn't pick one as nice as Honeh's but I _am_ royalty..."
Mirare replied back, half-consciously as names filed down the scroll, "Yeah, not too gaudy. Okay, so no Challum... how about...."
A servant appeared at the doorway. "Princess! The Queen commands your presence.... Immediately!"
Izzy sighed as she stood up. She was still wearing the silver coronet. For her sister, she is bringing a golden coronet set with many diamonds.
Mirare, on the other hand, hissed in surprise, "Shards, do you _know_ what you're _wearing?!?"
"A dress? I know it's bad but my aunts picked the design for the bridesmaids' dresses..."
"Not the dress! Zsaz's Ring! He was a big guy so it's a coronet on you... but the important thing is that whoever wears it can make a wish!"
Izzy took off the coronet and turned it this way and that. "Then why hasn't anyone used the wish yet?"
Mirare's eyes rolled toward the heavens. "Because you have to _trigger_ the wish by snapping your fingers three times. How many royals do you know who would snap a second time for something?"
The mirror's voice became louder with glee. "Go ahead, make a wish for the perfect guy! Tall, dark, dreamy, rich, a body that could make glass melt...."
Izzy frowned as she replaced the coronet on her head, thinking for a moment. Finally, her faces scrunches in concentration and she snaps her fingers three times. A burst of light and the rubies have changed to sapphires. She takes off the coronet once more.
The mirror's face looked around wildly and then pouted. "Awww, where's tall, dark, and droolworthy? What _did_ you wish for?" A look of horror crossed the mirror. "_Please_ tell me that you didn't just wish for sapphires instead of rubies..."
Izzy laughed. "No, I didn't." She smiled down at the two coronets, one for each sister. "I just gave Honeh and her soon-to-be husband a nice wedding gift. I wished that they live happily ever after together."
Mirare wailed in shock. "But you could have had a _Prince_! And he would have been yours no matter what or where he came from!"
Izzy straightened her dress and headed back toward the door of the treasury. "I've got to leave now, Mirare, but I'll be back." She stopped for a moment and turned back to the mirror. "Besides, if I had wished for one, it wouldn't have been fair for the prince." She replaced the silver coronet on her head... and then tilted it rakishly. "And I _am_ a Maid of Honor."
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