The Gallant Hero groaned as he bore his heavy burden up the steep stairway. The Prissy Princess had bought a new treasure, a magical mirror, that she couldn't decide where to put. At first she had thought it might look nice in the entryway, so that when they came and went they could look into the magical mirror and ask it deep, ponderous questions, such as whether they were going to be late for work. But no, that spot hadn't seemed quite right to her. And so up the stairs the Gallant Hero went, lugging the heavy mirror.
In the bedroom, the Princess instructed the Hero to hold the mirror over her writing desk while she stood back in appraisal. "Hmmm," she said. "That looks nice." The Hero brightened. Maybe this would be fairly quick, and he could get back to his Master of Math studies.
But the Princess said, "I'm just not sure. Let's try some other places."
And so they went, all through the castle, up and down steep stairways and through dark passageways, to find the perfect spot for the magical mirror. The Hero began to dream about just allowing the mirror to slip from his fingers...it would never survive a flight of stairs, and he would not have to lug it around anymore. But the magical mirror would probably put some sort of awful spell on him for breaking it, in addition to the traditional seven years' bad luck. The Princess, having broken many a mirror in her lifetime, was currently under about 154 years of bad luck, and the Hero had no wish to join her.
The Hero began to fear that the magical mirror would meet the same fate as many of their other treasures, namely, consignment to a box in the dungeon. That is where things went when the Prissy Princess could not make up her mind about where to put them. He did not understand how she could buy things without having a place in mind for them. When he asked her about this, she would say, "Oh, I have lots of places in mind. I just don't know where it would look best." The best place, the Hero was coming to understand, did not exist, at least not in their household. If there were a best place for everything, there would be no boxes in the dungeon.
Finally, after much indecision and wringing of hands by the Princess and frustrated sighs by the Hero, the mirror was hoisted over the writing desk in the bedroom. But this presented another problem. How high should they hang it? The Hero, being several inches taller than his Princess, expressed a tentative opinion that it should be in the middle of the wall. The Princess, however, could barely see the top of her head when the mirror was in this position. Like Cinderella's fairy godmothers changing the color of her gown with a poof of their magic wands from pink to blue to yellow and back again, the Hero and the Princess each slid the mirror up and down the wall until, at last, a suitable compromise was reached. Which is to say it was where the Princess wanted it.
The Princess, who liked everything to be pristine (she was not called the Prissy Princess for nothing), was upset at the condition of the wall from sliding the mirror up and down on it. "It adds character," the Hero assured her. She was further upset when the nail-driver made one too many holes. "It adds character," the nail-driver said.
The Princess sighed. Another reason there were so many boxes of treasures in the dungeon was that whenever she and the Hero attempted to adorn the walls of the castle, inevitably they left gaping holes in the walls. She felt it was safer to just not put anything on the walls.
But looking at the new mirror, she gave a sigh of satisfaction. It added lots of character.
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