The Frog Suitor (G, fairy tale AU)
Title: The Frog Suitor
Author: Cesare (almostnever)
Word count: ~3100
Ratings/Warnings: G. This story should be safe for people with triggers.
Summary: The one with the frog. A fairy tale AU.
Once upon a time there was a wealthy merchant who had a hand in every sort of business. He dealt in spices and he dealt in silk, in seeds and livestock, rope and iron, leather and honey. He lived in a marvelous estate at the foot of the mountains, and there, through a gully of rocks, coursed the cleanest, clearest stream of cool and wholesome water in all the land.
Once the merchant made his fortune, he left all his business matters to his partners. He settled his family in the estate and kept them in style thanks to the stream.
Anyone could come to take water from the stream, and the merchant sold them water-vessels so fine and so light and yet so sturdy that none would ever wish to carry water in anything else.
Word spread that the water from the stream was healthful, and stayed fresh and pure when carried off in the merchant's fine vessels, which sealed so neatly that never a drop of the precious water spilled no matter how long the journey. People came from miles around, and the merchant's family prospered.
Their only grief was the passing of the merchant's wife, much loved and much mourned.
Time passed as time will do, soothing their sorrow, and the merchant's two sons grew tall and strong. The younger son, David, was square-jawed, stalwart and handsome, eager to renew the family's business ties and build their wealth still greater.
The elder son, John, was thinner, taller, and sharper than his brother, with leaf-green eyes and a coxcomb of dark hair. He chafed to set out and seek his own fortune in the world, but his father would not give him leave to go. So John spent his time by the stream, talking with travelers from far and wide, steeped in dreams.
*
One day, a servant of the family came running to the house with a cup full of cloudy water, saying, "Master, the stream no longer runs clear."
Alarmed, the merchant sent his most trusted servant to learn what he could. This doughty fellow set out near dawn and only returned after sunset.
"Sir," said he, "I followed the stream as far as I could, and for leagues upon leagues, the water is clouded and brackish."
The merchant's younger son stood hard by waiting for news, and on hearing this, David said, "Father, let me go. I'll follow the stream to its source and find the cause of the impurity."
So the merchant provisioned his younger son and sent him with two servants to find the source of the stream.
Up into the mountains, David traversed a hard path alongside the rocky gully, til after two long days, he found the stream's beginning in a spring that bubbled up from a deep brimming well of stone.
Though they looked and looked, David and Evan and Chuck could find no reason for the water's stale and cloudy state. It seemed to gout from the very source already tainted.
Discouraged, they were making camp when a frog as big as a cabbage appeared among the stones of the well. It croaked twice and then said, plain as anything, "If you want the water to run clear again, you'll have to accept me as your suitor."
The three men were much surprised, not only because they had never heard of a talking frog outside of a storybook, but also, "I'm afraid," David explained, "we are three men; no woman travels among us, let alone a woman apt to take a frog for a suitor."
"Please yourself," said the frog with an amphibious shrug. "Until a man comes to the well who accepts me for a suitor, the stream will never run clear."
For the rest of the night, the men could get no more from the frog, and it must be confessed that in frustration, Evan attempted to catch it-- and, failing that, to dash it with a stone. But the frog nimbly jumped from every clutch and each attack, and eventually it disappeared into the depths of the well.
*
Defeated, the trio descended the mountain and brought the story back to the merchant's estate.
The merchant chivvied every woman in the household to go up with another expedition and accept the frog as her sweetheart, but not a one was willing.
"It wouldn't work anyway," said John, the elder son. "The frog asked for a man in particular."
And so then the merchant harangued the men of the household, and though his face showed only misery, out of loyalty, Evan might almost have agreed.
"No," said John. "It's our family that depends on the stream, so it's on me to take care of this."
"It's your duty to make a good marriage one day," said the merchant.
"I'm not going to make much of a match if we're poor," John answered. "That stream brings most of the water for the fields and gardens of all the land we own, and all our neighbors' farms. If it's gone sour, we stand to lose everything," he said, and his father allowed that this was true.
John added, "Besides, what would a frog want with a human husband anyway? There's got to be more to this. I bet it'll all work out if I just go and say yes."
With no other plan in sight and only a heavy heart to dissuade him, his father reluctantly agreed.
*
And so Evan, Chuck and John made the trek to the fount of the stream, where the waters of the deep well glittered in the setting sun.
They were just starting the fire when the frog appeared again. It croaked twice and said, "If you want the water to run clear again, you'll have to accept me as your suitor."
Evan and Chuck shrank away in distress. John stepped forward and said, "Okay then, I accept you as my suitor."
The frog croaked again happily and made a mighty hop toward him. John scrambled to catch the creature in his hands while his companions scowled in distaste.
Still, when they lifted glasses of clear fresh water from the stream, they drank them down eagerly enough.
"Let me drink from your cup," the frog demanded.
"Seriously?" John asked.
"Yes! You'd let a suitor drink from your cup," sulked the frog.
"Okay, okay, whatever," said John. "I didn't know frogs could even drink, I thought they absorbed water through their skins or something. Do you want it poured on you, or what?"
"Hold it to my lips," said the frog, and opened its wide, wide mouth and took a sip when John obeyed.
John inspected the glass afterward and made a moue and kept drinking from it, though Evan and Chuck fell about with disgust.
"So," John said, "if you're my suitor, what's your name? I can't just keep calling you 'frog.' If you're suing for my hand we at least ought to be introduced."
"Rodney," said the frog.
"Rodney the frog!" Evan snorted.
"Just Rodney, thank you very much," the frog said stiffly.
"Okay, just Rodney," said John, "I'm hitting the hay. Unless there's anything else my suitor wants tonight?"
"Let me sleep beside you," said the frog.
"Not alone!" said Evan. "I don't care if you are a frog. If we're supposed to treat you like a suitor, well, there's going to be a chaperone, that's only proper."
"Fine," said the frog, rolling his enormous round eyes.
"Right," Evan said. "Chuck, you do it."
*
At dawn the three men and John's damp suitor began the journey down the mountain again. The frog sometimes hopped alongside them, but he complained so much about bees and thorns and pebbles that the men were relieved when Rodney sprang up onto John's shoulder and let John bear him along.
They stopped at dusk to make camp and eat. As John settled down to his meal, the frog said, "Let me eat from your plate."
"You sure?" John asked. "It's hardtack and jerky. If I hadn't been on the road all day, I don't know if I could choke it down."
"You'd let a suitor eat from your plate," the frog insisted. "Anyway, as a matter of fact, I happen to enjoy hardtack."
"Knock yourself out, Rodney," said John, and put down his plate so that Rodney could swipe up broken bits of hardtack with his long and sticky tongue.
John looked at the food afterward, raised his eyebrows, and continued eating. Chuck and Evan gagged, and John waved them off with, "It doesn't taste any worse than it did before."
After dinner, John said, "I'm turning in. Anything else my suitor wants tonight?"
"Let me share your pillow," said the frog.
"Damn it," said Chuck, and went to bunk in with them again.
*
The next day, as they followed the path down the mountain, Evan waited until the frog nestled into John's water-vessel and dozed off, and then fell into step beside John.
"How can you stand to be near that thing?" he asked. "Isn't it clammy and moist and horrible?"
"Nah," said John.
"Doesn't it leave slime all over your hand? It has such thin-stretched skin, it's so ugly and bulbous-- it looks all veiny and wet. Aren't you repulsed by it?"
"Guess I just don't see it that way," John said.
*
Near the end of the day's light, the three men returned to the merchant's estate.
For Evan and Chuck, they arrived not a moment too soon, for the frog had awakened at noon quite well-rested and proceeded to talk in its gurgling, croaking voice, explaining what it assured them were many, many interesting and important things about the movements of water.
"No, no, not just water movement, fluid dynamics," the frog said, jumping in place in John's hand, its big webbed feet landing with wet little splats. "I realize the subject is no doubt entirely beyond you, but try to understand. Seemingly random motion is subject to physical laws and forces, so while it may appear stochastic, probable outcomes can be determined to a high degree of accuracy with enough information..."
"My head hurts," Chuck moaned.
At the house, the merchant and David and all the household greeted the three as returning heroes, for of course the swiftly flowing stream had brought evidence of their success long before they made it back.
The merchant asked, "Were you able to get around the--"
Evan made surreptitious shushing gestures, eyeing John's water-vessel significantly. Sure enough, the frog peeped out from the mouth of the jug, and stepped into John's proffered hand.
"Oh," said the merchant, deflating a little. "Well. Thank you for lifting the curse on our stream, o frog."
"Rodney," John corrected.
"...Rodney," his father repeated.
"I didn't curse anything," said Rodney. "I got enchanted and so did the stream. As long as John keeps meeting the conditions to, I guess you'd say, un-curse me... the water will be fine."
And so at the feast to celebrate the return of the spring, Rodney received a place at the table next to John, and during each course, John gave the frog sips from his own cup and let Rodney eat from John's own plate. John ate and drank along with his suitor, unperturbed.
The company were much disgusted at first, but by the dessert course, the shock had worn off, and most of them were simply amused when Rodney's long tongue lapped up a dollop of whipped cream from John's trifle, and left a frothy moustache on his wide green upper lip.
*
After the meal came pipes and brandy and tea, and John attended to conversations among the guests with Rodney perched on his shoulder or curled in the crook of his elbow, til John at length placed Rodney on the dining table to have a second go at the crumbs of dessert.
The night was yet young when John said, "It's been a long day, I'm hitting the sack. Is there anything else my suitor wants tonight?"
"Let me sleep in your bed," said Rodney.
"I would never allow a human suitor to take such a liberty," John's father reproached. "You may share John's room, with a chaperone," (at this, Chuck ran into the kitchen and hid,) "but you must have your own bed."
"Oh, all right," Rodney said, dejected. "I suppose that's still enough to keep me un-cursed."
"Aw, cheer up," said John. "You said I snore anyway."
"It's not that loud," Rodney muttered. "Kind of. Cute."
John smiled. "Good night, Rodney," he said, petting the frog gently with his thumb against Rodney's dewy green brow, and he bent and touched his lips to Rodney's in a kiss.
The air rippled strangely around the frog, distorting in waves like a cascade of clear water. Larger and larger it gushed, an effluence in the air, til it expanded into a human shape. In a burst and a shower of droplets, the ripples vanished, leaving a wet and naked man sitting wide-eyed on the dining table.
"Okay, that happened a lot faster than I expected," said the man, hastily pulling a drape of the tablecloth over his lap to cover himself.
"Yeah. Wow," said John. "Uh... Rodney?"
"Yes, obviously," said Rodney.
"Guys, Evan, Chuck-- where's Chuck? Get Rodney some clothes," said John, and then went with Evan himself to find them. Other servants surrounded Rodney with linens and spirited him to an anteroom to dry and change.
The Rodney who returned to the gathering was a fine figure of a man whose wide shoulders stretched his borrowed shirt. He had strong hands, fine fair hair, large blue eyes and an air of restive cleverness.
"Who are you?" asked John's father.
"I'm Prince Rodney, from the distant north," said Rodney grandly. "I was traveling when I heard about your famous stream, and I decided to follow it to its source. Apparently I offended a sorcerer along the way, though I can't imagine how--"
"I can," muttered Evan.
"Anyway," Rodney continued with a glare, "when I reached the well, I bedded down as myself and woke up a frog. Of course my traveling companions didn't believe it was me, and they tore off to visit revenge on the sorcerer. And good luck to them if they found him, but I doubt it. They probably just got drunk and went home."
"I've never heard of a Prince Rodney in my travels," said John's father, looking uncertainly at his guests.
One fellow said, "I've heard tell of a Prince Ronon in the north. You know how stories change from tongue to tongue. They might have meant this Prince Rodney."
"So the circumstances of your curse demanded that you ply your suit to a gentleman..." said John's father, much puzzled.
"Yyyes. Maybe the sorcerer thought a woman would be more likely to take pity on an enchanted beast," said Rodney. "He obviously never met the women of my family."
"And now that you are restored?"
"Yes. Umm." Rodney shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sure you've heard stories of enchantments like these. It's only, well, true love that can break it; and if I ever lose my beau's favor, I stand to turn back into a frog."
"Can't have that," said John, and stood by him, placing his hand in Rodney's.
A murmur passed through the assembled, but David said, "If the spell was broken, then the bond between them must be true."
Evan said, "And trifling with true love never brought anyone anything but grief."
John's father said, "And after all, he is a prince; when he returns to his own land, who's to gainsay him if he takes a husband instead of a wife?"
John said, "I've always wanted to travel."
And so the gathering became John's farewell party, and it lasted deep into the night.
The next few days were taken up with preparations. Soon enough, at dawn on a beautiful day, John and Rodney set out for the north, hand in hand and blessed with true love's kiss.
*
In the north they tell another story, passing similar to this. In that tale, a scholar in the court of Prince Ronon sought His Majesty's leave to visit a faraway stream, said to have magical healing properties.
Upon arriving the scholar was disappointed to find that the stream was merely water, uncommonly pure but decidedly unmagical. Yet he lingered, finding magic of a sort in the company of a young man selling water-vessels by the water's edge.
To the scholar's dismay, the people of this distant land scorned the pairing of a man with a man, a foreign and forbidden notion among them. There could be no life for them together in that place.
His love asked leave to make his own way in the world, intending to join the scholar in the north, but his father withheld permission.
Reluctantly, the scholar left his love and returned to Prince Ronon's court. But the sovereign, though gruff and taciturn, saw his friend's woe and sent the wisest woman he knew to find its cause. Empress Teyla learned of the scholar's plight (really, it hardly took wisdom to discover; he complained of his misfortune to anyone who showed the slightest glimmer of inquiry) and delivered this news back to the Prince.
The Empress offered her wisdom, suggesting that if the scholar could pass himself off as an enchanted prince, cursed to wear the shape of a beast until he could find love with the right man, then the oddness of the courtship might overshadow the disparaged union of two men with one another.
Amused, Prince Ronon gave leave for the scholar to use his name and kingdom if he liked, only fetch his love back and stop moping, for the love of little green apples.
(Prince Ronon was very fond of green apples.)
And so the scholar drew on all his learning to create an enchantment, and mustered all his courage to return to that far-off land with the unmagical stream and cast his spell upon himself.
For all his fear that his love had found another, or would shy away from him in his bestial form, the scholar knew delight when his love accepted him at once no matter his phylum, and soon bestowed the kiss to break the spell.
The two journeyed to rejoin Prince Ronon's court; they pledged their fealty to him and their troth to one another, and lived happily ever after.
True enough, tales change from tongue to tongue. But this, of course, is an entirely different story, for the scholar's given name was not Rodney, but Meredith-- and that would be a very silly name for a frog.
Author: Cesare (almostnever)
Word count: ~3100
Ratings/Warnings: G. This story should be safe for people with triggers.
Summary: The one with the frog. A fairy tale AU.
Once upon a time there was a wealthy merchant who had a hand in every sort of business. He dealt in spices and he dealt in silk, in seeds and livestock, rope and iron, leather and honey. He lived in a marvelous estate at the foot of the mountains, and there, through a gully of rocks, coursed the cleanest, clearest stream of cool and wholesome water in all the land.
Once the merchant made his fortune, he left all his business matters to his partners. He settled his family in the estate and kept them in style thanks to the stream.
Anyone could come to take water from the stream, and the merchant sold them water-vessels so fine and so light and yet so sturdy that none would ever wish to carry water in anything else.
Word spread that the water from the stream was healthful, and stayed fresh and pure when carried off in the merchant's fine vessels, which sealed so neatly that never a drop of the precious water spilled no matter how long the journey. People came from miles around, and the merchant's family prospered.
Their only grief was the passing of the merchant's wife, much loved and much mourned.
Time passed as time will do, soothing their sorrow, and the merchant's two sons grew tall and strong. The younger son, David, was square-jawed, stalwart and handsome, eager to renew the family's business ties and build their wealth still greater.
The elder son, John, was thinner, taller, and sharper than his brother, with leaf-green eyes and a coxcomb of dark hair. He chafed to set out and seek his own fortune in the world, but his father would not give him leave to go. So John spent his time by the stream, talking with travelers from far and wide, steeped in dreams.
*
One day, a servant of the family came running to the house with a cup full of cloudy water, saying, "Master, the stream no longer runs clear."
Alarmed, the merchant sent his most trusted servant to learn what he could. This doughty fellow set out near dawn and only returned after sunset.
"Sir," said he, "I followed the stream as far as I could, and for leagues upon leagues, the water is clouded and brackish."
The merchant's younger son stood hard by waiting for news, and on hearing this, David said, "Father, let me go. I'll follow the stream to its source and find the cause of the impurity."
So the merchant provisioned his younger son and sent him with two servants to find the source of the stream.
Up into the mountains, David traversed a hard path alongside the rocky gully, til after two long days, he found the stream's beginning in a spring that bubbled up from a deep brimming well of stone.
Though they looked and looked, David and Evan and Chuck could find no reason for the water's stale and cloudy state. It seemed to gout from the very source already tainted.
Discouraged, they were making camp when a frog as big as a cabbage appeared among the stones of the well. It croaked twice and then said, plain as anything, "If you want the water to run clear again, you'll have to accept me as your suitor."
The three men were much surprised, not only because they had never heard of a talking frog outside of a storybook, but also, "I'm afraid," David explained, "we are three men; no woman travels among us, let alone a woman apt to take a frog for a suitor."
"Please yourself," said the frog with an amphibious shrug. "Until a man comes to the well who accepts me for a suitor, the stream will never run clear."
For the rest of the night, the men could get no more from the frog, and it must be confessed that in frustration, Evan attempted to catch it-- and, failing that, to dash it with a stone. But the frog nimbly jumped from every clutch and each attack, and eventually it disappeared into the depths of the well.
*
Defeated, the trio descended the mountain and brought the story back to the merchant's estate.
The merchant chivvied every woman in the household to go up with another expedition and accept the frog as her sweetheart, but not a one was willing.
"It wouldn't work anyway," said John, the elder son. "The frog asked for a man in particular."
And so then the merchant harangued the men of the household, and though his face showed only misery, out of loyalty, Evan might almost have agreed.
"No," said John. "It's our family that depends on the stream, so it's on me to take care of this."
"It's your duty to make a good marriage one day," said the merchant.
"I'm not going to make much of a match if we're poor," John answered. "That stream brings most of the water for the fields and gardens of all the land we own, and all our neighbors' farms. If it's gone sour, we stand to lose everything," he said, and his father allowed that this was true.
John added, "Besides, what would a frog want with a human husband anyway? There's got to be more to this. I bet it'll all work out if I just go and say yes."
With no other plan in sight and only a heavy heart to dissuade him, his father reluctantly agreed.
*
And so Evan, Chuck and John made the trek to the fount of the stream, where the waters of the deep well glittered in the setting sun.
They were just starting the fire when the frog appeared again. It croaked twice and said, "If you want the water to run clear again, you'll have to accept me as your suitor."
Evan and Chuck shrank away in distress. John stepped forward and said, "Okay then, I accept you as my suitor."
The frog croaked again happily and made a mighty hop toward him. John scrambled to catch the creature in his hands while his companions scowled in distaste.
Still, when they lifted glasses of clear fresh water from the stream, they drank them down eagerly enough.
"Let me drink from your cup," the frog demanded.
"Seriously?" John asked.
"Yes! You'd let a suitor drink from your cup," sulked the frog.
"Okay, okay, whatever," said John. "I didn't know frogs could even drink, I thought they absorbed water through their skins or something. Do you want it poured on you, or what?"
"Hold it to my lips," said the frog, and opened its wide, wide mouth and took a sip when John obeyed.
John inspected the glass afterward and made a moue and kept drinking from it, though Evan and Chuck fell about with disgust.
"So," John said, "if you're my suitor, what's your name? I can't just keep calling you 'frog.' If you're suing for my hand we at least ought to be introduced."
"Rodney," said the frog.
"Rodney the frog!" Evan snorted.
"Just Rodney, thank you very much," the frog said stiffly.
"Okay, just Rodney," said John, "I'm hitting the hay. Unless there's anything else my suitor wants tonight?"
"Let me sleep beside you," said the frog.
"Not alone!" said Evan. "I don't care if you are a frog. If we're supposed to treat you like a suitor, well, there's going to be a chaperone, that's only proper."
"Fine," said the frog, rolling his enormous round eyes.
"Right," Evan said. "Chuck, you do it."
*
At dawn the three men and John's damp suitor began the journey down the mountain again. The frog sometimes hopped alongside them, but he complained so much about bees and thorns and pebbles that the men were relieved when Rodney sprang up onto John's shoulder and let John bear him along.
They stopped at dusk to make camp and eat. As John settled down to his meal, the frog said, "Let me eat from your plate."
"You sure?" John asked. "It's hardtack and jerky. If I hadn't been on the road all day, I don't know if I could choke it down."
"You'd let a suitor eat from your plate," the frog insisted. "Anyway, as a matter of fact, I happen to enjoy hardtack."
"Knock yourself out, Rodney," said John, and put down his plate so that Rodney could swipe up broken bits of hardtack with his long and sticky tongue.
John looked at the food afterward, raised his eyebrows, and continued eating. Chuck and Evan gagged, and John waved them off with, "It doesn't taste any worse than it did before."
After dinner, John said, "I'm turning in. Anything else my suitor wants tonight?"
"Let me share your pillow," said the frog.
"Damn it," said Chuck, and went to bunk in with them again.
*
The next day, as they followed the path down the mountain, Evan waited until the frog nestled into John's water-vessel and dozed off, and then fell into step beside John.
"How can you stand to be near that thing?" he asked. "Isn't it clammy and moist and horrible?"
"Nah," said John.
"Doesn't it leave slime all over your hand? It has such thin-stretched skin, it's so ugly and bulbous-- it looks all veiny and wet. Aren't you repulsed by it?"
"Guess I just don't see it that way," John said.
*
Near the end of the day's light, the three men returned to the merchant's estate.
For Evan and Chuck, they arrived not a moment too soon, for the frog had awakened at noon quite well-rested and proceeded to talk in its gurgling, croaking voice, explaining what it assured them were many, many interesting and important things about the movements of water.
"No, no, not just water movement, fluid dynamics," the frog said, jumping in place in John's hand, its big webbed feet landing with wet little splats. "I realize the subject is no doubt entirely beyond you, but try to understand. Seemingly random motion is subject to physical laws and forces, so while it may appear stochastic, probable outcomes can be determined to a high degree of accuracy with enough information..."
"My head hurts," Chuck moaned.
At the house, the merchant and David and all the household greeted the three as returning heroes, for of course the swiftly flowing stream had brought evidence of their success long before they made it back.
The merchant asked, "Were you able to get around the--"
Evan made surreptitious shushing gestures, eyeing John's water-vessel significantly. Sure enough, the frog peeped out from the mouth of the jug, and stepped into John's proffered hand.
"Oh," said the merchant, deflating a little. "Well. Thank you for lifting the curse on our stream, o frog."
"Rodney," John corrected.
"...Rodney," his father repeated.
"I didn't curse anything," said Rodney. "I got enchanted and so did the stream. As long as John keeps meeting the conditions to, I guess you'd say, un-curse me... the water will be fine."
And so at the feast to celebrate the return of the spring, Rodney received a place at the table next to John, and during each course, John gave the frog sips from his own cup and let Rodney eat from John's own plate. John ate and drank along with his suitor, unperturbed.
The company were much disgusted at first, but by the dessert course, the shock had worn off, and most of them were simply amused when Rodney's long tongue lapped up a dollop of whipped cream from John's trifle, and left a frothy moustache on his wide green upper lip.
*
After the meal came pipes and brandy and tea, and John attended to conversations among the guests with Rodney perched on his shoulder or curled in the crook of his elbow, til John at length placed Rodney on the dining table to have a second go at the crumbs of dessert.
The night was yet young when John said, "It's been a long day, I'm hitting the sack. Is there anything else my suitor wants tonight?"
"Let me sleep in your bed," said Rodney.
"I would never allow a human suitor to take such a liberty," John's father reproached. "You may share John's room, with a chaperone," (at this, Chuck ran into the kitchen and hid,) "but you must have your own bed."
"Oh, all right," Rodney said, dejected. "I suppose that's still enough to keep me un-cursed."
"Aw, cheer up," said John. "You said I snore anyway."
"It's not that loud," Rodney muttered. "Kind of. Cute."
John smiled. "Good night, Rodney," he said, petting the frog gently with his thumb against Rodney's dewy green brow, and he bent and touched his lips to Rodney's in a kiss.
The air rippled strangely around the frog, distorting in waves like a cascade of clear water. Larger and larger it gushed, an effluence in the air, til it expanded into a human shape. In a burst and a shower of droplets, the ripples vanished, leaving a wet and naked man sitting wide-eyed on the dining table.
"Okay, that happened a lot faster than I expected," said the man, hastily pulling a drape of the tablecloth over his lap to cover himself.
"Yeah. Wow," said John. "Uh... Rodney?"
"Yes, obviously," said Rodney.
"Guys, Evan, Chuck-- where's Chuck? Get Rodney some clothes," said John, and then went with Evan himself to find them. Other servants surrounded Rodney with linens and spirited him to an anteroom to dry and change.
The Rodney who returned to the gathering was a fine figure of a man whose wide shoulders stretched his borrowed shirt. He had strong hands, fine fair hair, large blue eyes and an air of restive cleverness.
"Who are you?" asked John's father.
"I'm Prince Rodney, from the distant north," said Rodney grandly. "I was traveling when I heard about your famous stream, and I decided to follow it to its source. Apparently I offended a sorcerer along the way, though I can't imagine how--"
"I can," muttered Evan.
"Anyway," Rodney continued with a glare, "when I reached the well, I bedded down as myself and woke up a frog. Of course my traveling companions didn't believe it was me, and they tore off to visit revenge on the sorcerer. And good luck to them if they found him, but I doubt it. They probably just got drunk and went home."
"I've never heard of a Prince Rodney in my travels," said John's father, looking uncertainly at his guests.
One fellow said, "I've heard tell of a Prince Ronon in the north. You know how stories change from tongue to tongue. They might have meant this Prince Rodney."
"So the circumstances of your curse demanded that you ply your suit to a gentleman..." said John's father, much puzzled.
"Yyyes. Maybe the sorcerer thought a woman would be more likely to take pity on an enchanted beast," said Rodney. "He obviously never met the women of my family."
"And now that you are restored?"
"Yes. Umm." Rodney shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sure you've heard stories of enchantments like these. It's only, well, true love that can break it; and if I ever lose my beau's favor, I stand to turn back into a frog."
"Can't have that," said John, and stood by him, placing his hand in Rodney's.
A murmur passed through the assembled, but David said, "If the spell was broken, then the bond between them must be true."
Evan said, "And trifling with true love never brought anyone anything but grief."
John's father said, "And after all, he is a prince; when he returns to his own land, who's to gainsay him if he takes a husband instead of a wife?"
John said, "I've always wanted to travel."
And so the gathering became John's farewell party, and it lasted deep into the night.
The next few days were taken up with preparations. Soon enough, at dawn on a beautiful day, John and Rodney set out for the north, hand in hand and blessed with true love's kiss.
*
In the north they tell another story, passing similar to this. In that tale, a scholar in the court of Prince Ronon sought His Majesty's leave to visit a faraway stream, said to have magical healing properties.
Upon arriving the scholar was disappointed to find that the stream was merely water, uncommonly pure but decidedly unmagical. Yet he lingered, finding magic of a sort in the company of a young man selling water-vessels by the water's edge.
To the scholar's dismay, the people of this distant land scorned the pairing of a man with a man, a foreign and forbidden notion among them. There could be no life for them together in that place.
His love asked leave to make his own way in the world, intending to join the scholar in the north, but his father withheld permission.
Reluctantly, the scholar left his love and returned to Prince Ronon's court. But the sovereign, though gruff and taciturn, saw his friend's woe and sent the wisest woman he knew to find its cause. Empress Teyla learned of the scholar's plight (really, it hardly took wisdom to discover; he complained of his misfortune to anyone who showed the slightest glimmer of inquiry) and delivered this news back to the Prince.
The Empress offered her wisdom, suggesting that if the scholar could pass himself off as an enchanted prince, cursed to wear the shape of a beast until he could find love with the right man, then the oddness of the courtship might overshadow the disparaged union of two men with one another.
Amused, Prince Ronon gave leave for the scholar to use his name and kingdom if he liked, only fetch his love back and stop moping, for the love of little green apples.
(Prince Ronon was very fond of green apples.)
And so the scholar drew on all his learning to create an enchantment, and mustered all his courage to return to that far-off land with the unmagical stream and cast his spell upon himself.
For all his fear that his love had found another, or would shy away from him in his bestial form, the scholar knew delight when his love accepted him at once no matter his phylum, and soon bestowed the kiss to break the spell.
The two journeyed to rejoin Prince Ronon's court; they pledged their fealty to him and their troth to one another, and lived happily ever after.
True enough, tales change from tongue to tongue. But this, of course, is an entirely different story, for the scholar's given name was not Rodney, but Meredith-- and that would be a very silly name for a frog.