Okay... cover of a kiddie story I wrote! =D There was once a princess from a far-off land. She was nothing extraordinary, nothing special. She was small for her age, quiet and very plain. but mostly, her heart was constantly aching, for she so wanted to be loved. Eventually she discovered something. "Aha!" she cried. "If my heart is ice, I can feel no pain. Cold is numb. I shall be numb!" Slowly with each passing day, the princess was coated with more ice. First her heart, then her eyes, then her entire body. Encased in glittering ice, she became tall, elegant, and beautiful. However, she lacked emotion, felt nothing at all. No fear, no love, no sympathy. All she knew was that she no longer hurt and that she was beautiful. She was so proud that she allowed no flame near her. She knew that a flame would start to melt her. Many flames came viciously, to melt her lovely, cold crown of ice. She sent them all away, and none prevailed. One day as she strolled gracefully through her icy garden, she saw a young man with deep red hair, kneeling at a statue, bundled up against the cold. He had a scarf wrapped around a bouquet of blue flowers. She felt a pang, deep inside her ice-coated heart, and she fled. In her haste she fell, fer foot twisting beneath her. She could not move. "Help!" she cried out. The red-haired man scooped her up in his arms and carried her into her palace. After she had rested, he came to visit her, kneeling by her bedside. "Who are you?" she asked haughtily. "No one important," he smiled, then took her hand, rubbing it between his own. It began to thaw almost immediately. "My! You must be freezing!" Though she was reluctant to let him thaw her, she couldn't pull away. She was smitten. And in that instant, something in the princess began to change. The young man visited her daily. Slowly the colour came back into her cheeks. For the first time in years, she laughed. Her eyes went from frozen blue to a clear, cheerfuly, summer green. Every day they walked in her garden at dawn. One day she began to cry. Having forgotten tears, she ran to her most trusted advisor. "I'm broken!" she gasped, panicked, wiping tears from her cheeks. "Fix me! Fix me!" The advisor threw up his hands. "Nothing can be done, dear Princess!" The next morning when she met with the young man, she confided in him: "I've begun to break. It's started with my eyes! They leaked last night. Isn't that absurd?" Some time passed, and a ball came to be held in the princess's honour. It was for her twenty third birthday-- she had been frozen for five years. The man was there, dressed all in white. For the first time since being coated in ice, the Princess wore a simple green dress, her snowy white hair up in a beautiful, though untidy, bun. She ran to greet the young man. He wrapped his arms around her. "Do you feel any different?" he asked. "Oh, yes, very different!" she smiled. "Then I've won, my Princess." She looked bewildered, the realized suddenly what the man was. He was a human flame! "I didn't come to melt your crown," he said quickly, sensing her rage and her hurt. "I came to melt your heart." She stared at him a long time. "You win," she finally said. As soon as the words escaped her lips, she began to change again. Suddenly, instead of tall and beautiful and immune to feelings, there was the princess - short, plain, with her brown hair and freckles, in the arms of her human flame. And for the first time in the princess's life, she was truly happy to be alive. The end! =D