Two Pink Lips

Birdsong.

The princess paused to hear it for a while.

"What do you think?" she said to her new companion.

By her side was her rescuer—brave and heroic. Also small, and slender, and delicate, and pink. Because her rescuer was an abomination of dark magic made by her own fingers.

The finger minion said nothing.

She cheerily looked at it and waited anyway. It was only polite.

After an unaccountably long time (Months? Years? She lost track) in the dragon's captivity, it took several hours for the splendor of her new-found freedom to drift away.

She squinted and scowled at an innocent-looking mushroom growing on a log. “Mushrooms,” she muttered. “I am never eating another mushroom again.” she said with conviction. “Too many days I've had to scrounge them off dead bats, and dung, and cave walls, and....” and the rotting bones of ex-knights, she thought. She pinched at the dirty, smelly, threadbare hem of her robe. “My clothes don't even fit me quite right anymore. The tailor is going to be upset.”

The finger minion said nothing.

“I'm going to need to wash this...if it doesn't fall apart entirely. I mean, there has to be a stream somewhere.”

Her expression brightened. She looked down at the minion and ordered: “Finger minion, find me somewhere to clean this.”

The finger minion, with a quick bow, scurried off. It didn't try to crudely imitate the shape of a man, instead scuffling like a shrew among the leaf litter. She quickly lost track of it.

On the ground glinted a bloodstained shard of metal, the size of a small knitting needle. She picked it up. "Hey! You dropped your—"

The finger minion scurried back, paused, then scurried away again. Eventually, the princess figured out it wanted her to follow it, so she did. Soon, she had found a small, brownish stream, with leaves floating on its surface and pond skaters drifting upon it. It wasn't a proper bucket with a scullery maid, but, at this point, anything would help. She started to pull off her dress (not difficult, it had grown so much looser), but stopped.

“Like you're going to see me without my clothes, rescuer,” she said lightly.

The finger minion said nothing.

It also did not have eyes.

---

“Finger minion. Find me food.”

The minion, sword in hand, ran to the stream. Within a few minutes, it returned with a few impaled minnows, still gasping and flopping in the air.

She looked at the tiny, harmless minnows. Their eyes. Their lips. Their...scales.

Hickory-smoked fish. Long teeth, teeth impaling her leg. Pain. Pain. Pain.

“...No.” she said flatly. “Find me something else to eat.”

The minion discarded the minnows from its sword and scurried away. The princess pinched a minnow between her fingers, glared at it, and chucked it like a shot put.

----

With some more commands to the minion, she had a skinned squirrel (innards removed) roasting on a crude spit over a fire.

“Do you want some, finger minion?”

The finger minion said nothing.

It also had no mouth or digestive system.

Only after she had eaten the whole squirrel did she realize it could have used some seasoning.

---

Having been delivered by the talons of a dragon, the princess had no clue just how big the forest actually was. She wandered along the stream for a while as the sky darkened.

After some time wandering, she found herself in a clearing of enormous, but long-dead trees. At the roots of one was a mini, man-sized tree, to which the name “mani” was appropriate.

“This place looks trustworthy,” the princess remarked.

The finger minion said nothing.

She took that as a sign of agreement.

She sat on a rather uncomfortable root, which she quickly sought to make more comfortable with an obvious command: “Finger minion, make this more comfortable.”

The creature scurried madly, bringing back leaf after leaf and rearranging them into a tiny pile of leaves. She decided to follow along, gathering up heaps of leaves in her arms. At least it wasn’t bare dirt.

---

The princess breathed in. The trees, the laves, the fresh air, the birdsong she couldn't hear because it was nighttime.

“Finger minion.”

The finger minion perked up.

“I've read the stories. I've always known a knight would rescue me." She looked down, tucking her knees to her body. "But with all that time in captivity....it made me grow hopeless. I....I don't think I was myself there.”

She broke her distant stare to smile at the minion. “I never knew a knight of my own flesh would come to rescue me.”

At this, the finger minion said nothing: it was very stone-faced.

It also did not have a face.

“You rescued me when no one else could. My rescuer,” She paused. “My love.”

The finger minion said nothing.

“Oh, you necromantic abomination, you," she whispered to the sides of the fingers as it stood impassively on a root. “You smell so nice—like death. Of my enemies.”

She kissed the finger minion. Unsurprisingly, it was like kissing somebody's fingers.

“Finger minion,” she commanded. “Kiss me.”

The finger minion spasmed then. But it was not a normal uncontrollable full-body spasm of the sort she would probably invoke in anyone she had commanded to kiss her.

It was, indeed, a very ominous flailing sort of spasm.

“Finger minion?”

It kept spasming.

It was then she came to a terrible, terrible conclusion: this abomination of her own fingers...had no lips.

“I....I....” It flailed in the leaves. “I rescind my command.”

Abruptly the minion stopped spasming. After a pause, it stood on its finger-legs and faced her, palm forward. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” The princess leaned over and caressed the detached, glued-together fingers of her left hand with her un-detached right hand.

“This uncomfortable root. This big leaf stuck to my dress. This freezing night air. Everything. It’s all because of you, my dear minion.” she said softly as the trees rustled. She caressed the fingers some more, saying similar sweet nothings. Then, finally, she started kissing her own fingers once again.

“I am sick of all this canoodling!”

“What? Who said that?” the princess sat up in shock. But no one answered. She then turned to the minion and resumed her previous activity.

“Stop that!” A sudden wooden cracking noise split the air, very close by. Fissures ran along the bark of the spooky mini-tree near her. The tips of its outer branches cracked, and curled inward.

Uneven cracks split up the tree's body like the joints of a puppet. With a massive snap, the tree lunged forward. She leaped out of the way.

She heard a heaving, gasping noise from the tree as it hunched over. Then the tree rose to sit, and an old creaky voice said: “I suppose I should thank you, canoodling teenage girl. Your rampant...affection disgusted me so much it broke me free from my own coffin.”

“...what?” the princess said.

“So.... where is your target of affection?” The old man who was formerly a tree spoke groggily as he looked around. “Is he...a short fellow?”

The princess raised her right hand, palm upward. “Here,” she said proudly, “is my rescuer.”

The old fellow tilted his head and peered at her hand.

“It this some kind of...rhetorical thing?”

“No,” she said cheerily. “I chopped off my own fingers as part of a dark spell, to create a minion that would do my bidding.”

He practically jumped back. “Oh. Oh—” with a vigorous shaking noise like wind-tossed branches, he expelled a great volume of dusty dried leaves from his mouth. The princess blinked. “Just...just a....”

He spewed dead leaves at her face.

“You, you know what—” a few oak leaves fell from his mouth. “You are sick. Sick. Just messed up! Your own minion?”

His eyes were wild. He raised his arms up, tree-like, with a sudden crack. “I am out of here!”

“What an awful man.” the princess muttered, as she proceeded to passionately kiss her near-undead minion once more.

“And the real sequel better be an improvement over this!”