Tutor read it to Audrey. For fun he had hidden a pea under her mattress. The next morning he asked her at breakfast how she had slept. She smirked her royal smirk, and handed him his pea. “I slept perfect,” she said, “because I took your stupid pea out first.”
This seems to be a parable about a fairytale, the interpretation of which would require a highly trained professional. So I asked my colleague, Dr. Amrit Chadwallah, Senior Adjunct in Charge of Hidden Meanings in Wealth Bondage, what it meant. He said it was emblematic of the historic change from Dynasty founded on blood alone to Dynasty founded on merit plus blood. "Audrey," he explained, "is the daughter of the woman who through her own merit, as a Trader, owns a controlling interest in the world, and Audrey through blood will inherit the world, and through merit, save it." He went on to say that in his considered view the parable is an update to Virgil's Eclogue 4. There he began to lose me. I had thought the fourth Eclogue was a coded prophecy of the second coming of Christ, disguised as apologetics for an Emperor and his possible son.
I have to say, though, that like any work of great work of art, my story about Audrey probably has many meanings, the most important being esoteric, hidden like the dried pea to see who among my readers is A Real Princess.
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