Some East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Or Cupid and Psyche for those who prefer their folklore Greek. I personally like a little Northern flava now and then. Mixes things up. Cools things off. Except they beat the word "lassie" to exhaustion.
It took ferfreakingever and I may have wept a little over it at the beginning, but it became more pliant with time and the threat of scissors. Eventually, our luckless heroine even came to take on a sympathetic tint--who could not feel for her, plucked as she was from her little bed and her (however indifferent) family by a bear? (Though I suppose a pauper would be stupid to not give up his prettiest to the first talking animal that passed under the sill. If the silly girls aren't eaten outright, they're practically assured wealth and status--and, anyways, it's one less mouth to feed...).
But first she must survive the trip. In a robe and thin slippers, clinging to the hair of her stinking mount. Watching the landscape change from hard, to bitten, to barren. Leaving behind her own hearthspirits and her familiar little gods and watching a new cast take their place. Committing to memory names like wind and faces like snow while they peek from behind their bergs and eskers and furrowed lakes, eager to proclaim her an unworthy new queen.
Poor lassie.
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