The Pea

cw: contains scenes of sexual nature, explicit anatomical references

I had potential, Your Magesty. Just imagine. Split pea soup. A pan-seared side dish tossed in butter. I would’ve paired wonderfully with juicy roasted chicken or a classic Fettuccine Alfredo, given the privilege of being masticated between your majestic molars, not crushed under the weight of, what, ten, fifteen horsehair-stuffed mattresses?

You place five more on me for good measure, then layer after layer of your finest comforters, the ones you brag are eider down, filled to the seam with the cozy, lightweight feathers of those highly coveted Arctic ducks.

Why you plucked little old me and not one of my kin from the pod, I’ll never know. Did I appear the least bothersome of the bunch? The pea most cut out for the job of authenticating the royal status of whoever sleeps upon me?

As for you, princess, or should I say pending princess, as that status has yet to be determined by how poorly you sleep upon me tonight, I have to say, I’m quite impressed with you. As soon as the queen tucks you in for the night, closing the door behind her, you wait patiently under the weight of a thousand feathers until it is just you and, unbeknownst to you, me underneath you.

In that sweet moment of solitude, you release a sound this palace nor I have ever heard before. A deafening vibration emerging from the underbelly of your soul. For a moment, I kid you not, I mistake your flatulence for the violent, tree-splitting thunderstorm brewing outside.

Somehow, your frequencies manage to reach me through the depth of twenty mattresses, plus another twenty quilts. I vibrate under the layers of down, just like I did once upon a time as a little seedling, germinating and vibrating my way through layer after layer of earthworm-ridden soil. Only I may never see the light of day again — experience the pleasure of bursting through the fragrant earth as a fully formed pod. Rather, I lay stuck here, a single lonely pea, stripped from the cocoon I once shared with my brethren, under this quilted purgatory.

You giggle quietly to yourself as you rip another even more thunderous than the ones before. Tee-hee-hee, you laugh, just like a little princess would, and I imagine a lace-gloved hand posed daintily over your mouth, though the sounds coming from the other end of your digestive tract sound anything but princess-like. Because of your warm, cacophonous . . . exorcisms I’ll call them to preserve your dignity . . . it’s become quite humid down here, and not to sound like a princess myself, but my breed of legume do not do well in humid climates, you know.

If I may ask, what ever did the queen feed you? Did she give you a dish made from the fibrous flesh of my kin before bed? It’s the perfect rainy night for a warm bowl of stew, after all. Roughly five grams of both soluble and insoluble fiber, if my theory is correct.

Whether you turn out to be what the royal family calls a true princess, or just an ordinary member of the common folk, the soft part of my green inner membrane hopes it’s the latter.

Though I should resent you after the odorous, humid biome you’ve created for me, I am not so cruel as to wish princesshood upon you. For if the queen deems you a princess, she will wed you to her son, the Duke of Periwinkle.

Trust me on this one, pending princess. After eavesdropping on their conversations at supper, as I sat patiently in the frigid cellar waiting for my turn to become part of some elaborate dish, I know for a fact that you would not want to become involved with the Duke of Periwinkle.

First and foremost, he is unjustifiably picky, not just with women but with his fruits and vegetables too. He refuses to eat most of us, calling us yucky at his ripe age of thirty-eight years old, ordering the palace chef to serve him a colorless diet of meat, cheese, and bread. I suspect the reason he hasn’t yet found a princess is because, after all these years, he’s been searching for her in all the wrong places. All he had to do was look within or in a mirror to find her, the most princessy princess of them all.

When the Duke of Periwinkle looks in the mirror, I suspect he sees dehydrated, lackluster skin and brittle hair as a result of these self-inflicted nutritional deficiencies. Not exactly the shiny, heartthrob of a prince you had in mind. Perhaps her son’s distaste for nature’s bounty is the reason the queen has made me part of this elaborate sleep study instead of using me for my intended purpose.

Besides, it’s not as if you came here clamoring on the palace doors in search of love. All you wanted was a warm bed, to be insulated against the treacherous outdoor conditions for the night. The last thing you expected was to have your fate determined by a vegetable, though some would consider me a fruit.

Even if you are a true princess worthy of his hand in marriage, I suspect it will be a loveless union. The women who auditioned for his love before you, all very lovely and decent in my opinion, failed miserably. Truly, his criteria for women perplexes me.

Adelaide, the kindhearted aristocrat who played piano by ear? Take her away, guards.

Or Thelma, the classically trained ballerina with vast geographical knowledge? Off with her heart.

But a self-proclaimed princess who loses sleep over a botanical legume? Yes. That is the one.

As I said before, he loves no one, except perhaps himself and his mommy.

But it seems you disagree. I hear you welcome him into bed eagerly when he sneaks into your room, wearing the blankie his mommy quilted him back when he was a little boy. He wears it like a cape and says the spooky thunderstorm has given him the frights. He requests that he take refuge with you for a bit, to which you happily agree.

The ecstatic sounds that shortly follow of what I’ll call your horizontal refreshment disturb me, but at least it’s given you an incentive to hold on to your flatulence while the prince grinds your corn. Then arrives the finale and your activities come to an end.

By some godly miracle, the prince tells you that, despite the category-three storm continuing to howl outside, he no longer feels the spooks and shall return to his bed. At this point, the true test begins.

Will you sleep despite my presence?

To my dismay, you do not. You toss and turn, and, to be forthright, I’m quite insulted that you find someone as tiny and quiet as me such a nuisance. You moan and you groan. You act as if there is a boulder under your sheets. As if the mattresses and duvets are filled with thorns and blades, not feathers.

While I find your dramatic display quite insulting, I do not find your theatrics in the least bit surprising. I’ve heard you hoot and holler over things much smaller.

*cough cough*

The Duke of Periwinkle.

That was quite the Shakespearian-grade performance you put on earlier. Quite charitable, too, if you ask me.

I suspect such a charitable heart could only belong to a princess, I fear. And so when you emerge from your room the following morning, and the queen asks you in her quizzical voice, how did thy sleep, I dread your fate.

You think for a moment and I can practically feel the queen’s sharp eyes piercing into you.

“I slept . . ." you say, pushing the queen’s eager bottom to the edge of her throne. “Absolutely terribly.”

“A true princess!” exclaims the queen. And although she is delighted, part of me now doubts whether you are actually a princess. A true princess would have lied out of politeness to the kindhearted stranger who lent her a warm place to sleep and say she slept just fine.

Yet here you are, going on and on about how you give her palace a one out of ten when it comes to comfortability, and that you regret not sleeping outside instead, drenched in dirty storm water, on the cold hard palace steps.

The queen calls on the king and the prince to join her in a celebratory toast.

“I’ve found our little king a true princess!” she informs them proudly.

Still carrying the weight of forty plush layers, I imagine the prince’s eyes lighting up. Finally, his mommy has found him a woman sensitive enough to the small things in life.

And so as the story goes, he takes her as his wife. The queen removes me from under the bed and, contrary to the widely circulated tale of me being placed in a museum, she throws me into a colorful stew, giving me, too, my happily ever after.

Except that night, when the royal family gathers around the table and the palace servants ladle me into each dish, I notice there are only three bowls instead of four.

I feel the prince's angry tears fall into the broth I’m floating in. “How was I not good enough for her, mommy?” he growls, scooping around the vegetables. “Shall I send a note to Adelaide and Thelma inquiring if they are still up for my love?”

The queen assures him that this so-called princess must have been a fraud. No true princess would reject a gentleman as fine and as dashing as her son.

So I suppose you were not a true princess, after all, but rather a queen by my books. One who, upon learning her fate as the next Princess of Periwinkle, bolted out the palace doors, meandering down the debris-strewn path of overturned carriages and shattered timbers left over from the storm, back into a world of possibility.

Ayeeee, queen.