Once upon a time there lived a princess. She lived far off in the castle tower of her parents’ home. Her name was Mili and her hair was dark like midnight and her skin was fair and pale. She wasn’t a beauty to behold, yet she was happy in her room in the castle tower.

            Mili loved her tower high above her father’s kingdom. Her sister, Christine, lived in the other tower opposite Mili’s but thought it was silly for her to live up in the tower, unlike the way Mili’s sister thought about it.

            On most occasions, Mili did not get along with her sister. Christine was ungrateful, cruel, and hateful towards everything in her life. She hated her parents for making her act as a lady and never letting her leave the castle as a child. Mili didn’t  like learning etiquette  but she wouldn’t complain the way her sister did about it. She was quite content staying in the castle, completely opposite to what her sister thought about it. There were so many rooms to explore and the guards were always up for a game with her due to her sunny nature, unlike her sister whom they despised because of her meanness towards them.

            Now that the children had grown up, the king and queen thought it was time for them to have a courtship to some young gentlemen of the land. The news was spread far and wide in the countryside of the two princesses and soon the suitors began to ride, walk and sail in.

            The suitors rode up one by one to Christine’s tower to try to win a hand of the fair princess. In interest, Christine peered out the window at her suitors and dazzled them with her beauty. Mili’s suitors hadn’t begun to line up, yet she was also leaning out of her window, but for a different reason.

            Mili was talking to her friend, the moat monster, as she fed him pieces of bread for his lunch. She had named him Monty years ago when she had first met him. He had just swum past her window unhappily one day and they had ended up friends after that.

            Monty was a green moat monster who loved bread and seagulls. The seagulls would always crowd around Monty when he was out of the water because of the interesting water creatures that would end up clinging to him as he swam around in the moat. Monty was very shy and hated Christine with a passion because she liked to throw rocks at the poor sea creature; so he never swam near her windows.

            As soon as Monty noticed the suitors for Christine were now coming towards Mili’s window, he wished her good luck before diving down to the bottom of the moat where he wouldn’t be seen but was able to watch all that went on around him.

            The first prince had made his way up on the bridge and had now begun to climb the up the castle wall to Mili’s balcony. When he reached the top, he hoped he would find a beauty fairer than Christine's was but when he got there and saw Mili’s face, he took one look and fell down into the moat.

            Now, finding himself at the bottom of the moat staring in the face of a moat monster, the prince ran out of the water and away from the castle in terror. He had liked Princess Christine but Mili and Monty’s looks had completely scared him away. Never would he imagine being related to something as grotesque as they were.

            Just like the first suitor had, the next one tried and then the next, until all the suitors were gone that had come that day. Christine noticed this and complained to her mother and father.

            “Let Mili see princes on the days that I’m not,” she said. “I don’t want her scaring them away.”

            So on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the suitors for Christine came and on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, the suitors for Mili came. It was a good plan but it wasn’t in play for very long. Less than a week later, Christine met a wonderful prince who she ran off with and married the next day.

            The castle was much quieter after Christine’s eloping with the prince but no one seemed to mind at all. She had found faults with everything they had done. Ridiculing everyone, including her family was one of the things she had done, along with talking so much that everyday her father thought her lips would fall off. They never did but they may have after she left the castle; they never did find out.

            The next day after Christine’s wedding was Monday and so the suitors came, not knowing that Christine had already been married. Being a good sister, Mili told them that her sister had already been married and the princes then began to scatter. Without any princes to bother her that day, Mili left the window to go to breakfast.

            When she returned later in the day, she had Monty’s breakfast with her just as she had done everyday before that. It had been just a plain day as they always were in the castle except for the large amount of complaining that Christine would do and her continued daily objection to Mili feeding “that horrible moat creature”. Mili would always ignore her and went on feeding Monty anyways.

            As Mili came to her balcony to feed Monty, she was quite surprised to see a suitor still waiting on her lawn. “Christine has been married,” she yelled to them as she threw down the bread to Monty.

            “Are you not a fair maiden too?” the suitor shouted back up to her.

            “No,” Mili replied. “I am not fair,” she told him before throwing down Monty’s last few pieces of bread.

            The prince was shocked at her attitude towards Monty. Never had he come across anyone who had become friends with any type of monster.

            “You are fair and good. Please, let me come up.”

            Mili looked at Monty for help, but he had already dived down deep into the murky moat. Finding that she wasn’t going to receive any help from Monty, Mili agreed to let her prince up.

            The prince climbed up the side of the castle, slowly making his way to the patient Mili. Finally reaching the top, the prince finally gazed upon Mili’s awkward figure.

            A silent moment passed between the two. Mili stared at the prince’s dark handsome features while he stared back at her homely face.

            “I’m Prince Leander,” he finally said after staring at Mili.

            “Mili,” she replied as Leander grasped her hand and kissed it.

            Mili was surprised that this prince had not left as quickly as the others had disappeared. She had expected him to jump out the window just like ever prince before him had done, but he stayed.

            “I wish to marry you,” Prince Leander told her. “My brother was the man your sister ran off with and now, he is very unhappy. He told me of you and of his wife, your sister. I have heard that you are not a beautiful woman but as I gaze upon you now, I know that isn’t true. You are much fairer than your sister, Christine. Her ugliness is hideous as it shines through her outer beauty. It is hard to at first to recognize your beauty which lies within. I could see from far away as you fed that moat monster that all the things I had heard about your homeliness were untrue. At that moment, you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

            Mili wasn’t sure what to say to this prince. Never had she imagined this and she wasn’t sure what to do.

            “Please Princess Mili. I want all to see your beauty. You are not as the world asks beauty to be. They wish for perfection, glorifying pink lips and bashful eyes. They are magnificent but like your sister, some of them are the cruelest creatures that ever lived. You have proven that the beauty that I see has not come from the outside. I see inside you that there is a warm glowing fire that is lighting you up from within. Please, I ask again for you to marry me,” the fair prince said.

            Mili agreed and Prince Leander and Mili were married at once. They stayed in the castle with her parents since neither one wanted to see Christine and leave Monty behind.

            So, the prince and princess stayed in the castle as happy as could be. The effect of Prince Leander’s words seemed to light Mili up and even strangers would comment how Princess Mili was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She had not changed at all in appearance but they felt that somehow she had been transformed into a beautiful woman.

            When years had passed and Mili’s mother and father had died, Leander and Mili had their own children who in turn had grown up and left home. Monty was now an old and slow moat monster and Mili felt very old as she looked back on the past. Mili felt as if her beauty had passed by as her ages had but Leander proved her wrong.

            “Your eyes are not as bright as they use to be,” he began. “.. and your hair is turning grey but grey has always been a favorite color of mine. Your smile has become not as bright but my eyes could not take that brightness anymore. Your hips have become too big for me to encircle my hands around but my hands are nearly useless to me by now. Your face is wrinkled and wore like mine to match each memory we have but your heart is still warm and open, which is all that matters over the grey hairs, large hips and wrinkles.”