The Mistborn and the Coin: A Princess and the Pea Parody

[Borio Singaldi]

I wrote this for a writing class when we were assigned to write a "fractured fairy tale", so I chose to write a story based off Hans Christian Anderson's "The Princess and the Pea". It's not that great, but I felt like sharing it on here since it's Mistborn-related.

 

The Mistborn and the Coin

Once upon a time, there lived in the Final Empire a young nobleman of great renown and influence. He was the heir to his noble house and when the time came, he sought a wife. But he wouldn't just marry any noblewoman or worthy rank or age. He wanted to be wed to what he considered the only true noblewoman and the only one worthy of marrying him… an Allomancer. But the nobleman’s ambition didn't stop there. Instead of a simple Misting, he sought the hand of a Mistborn, the most powerful type of Allomancer, to be his wife.

Nothing would dissuade the stubborn noble from pursuing that goal, especially since his mother encouraged it, and he sought out all across the Eastern Dominance where he lived. He found many young noble ladies worthy of affection, but only a few of them were Allomancers and none of them seemed to be Mistborn. If they were, they wouldn't say.

Unable to be satisfied, the noble returned to his home and demanded that any young lady in his city who was a Mistborn come forth and make herself known unto him. Many ladies came to him, claiming to be such, so the nobleman’s mother devised a way in which she could discern who the fakes were, who the Mistings were and who the full Mistborn were.

Night after night, the ladies would be invited one by one to have dinner and spend the night at the nobleman's home. Their food would be laced with a few different types of metals to test on the noblewomen. Then the mother ordered for a most peculiar bed for the ladies to sleep upon, one which comprised of twenty mattresses laid under twenty down beds. Beneath all of that was placed a single, solitary coin. If the lady who slept on the bed could sense that small source of metal beneath her, then her claim of being an Allomancer would have to be true. But that wasn’t a guarantee she was a Mistborn. What if she sensed the metal because she could only Ironpull or Steelpush?

So because of this, a brass Misting was discreetly hidden in the lady’s room to Soothe her emotions away. If she could burn copper and prevent her emotions from being touched, then she would be an Allomancer. But that again did not guarantee she would be a Mistborn. Another test was put into place, where a minstrel would play a rousing song in a nearby room. If the lady could burn tin, she would be unable to sleep because of how loud the song would seem to her.

As a last resort, traces of atium, the rarest and most powerful Allomantic metal, would be slipped in their food as well. a steel Misting in the room below where the lady slept would Push up on the coin at a random point in the night, letting it tear through the mattresses and down beds right to the lady and kill her. If she could anticipate the danger and move aside in time, then that meant she could burn atium, a metal that only a Mistborn could burn. All of this would be done without the nobleman knowing the results until morning.

As time passed, each young noblewoman of the city would come in to have dinner and sleep at the nobleman’s manner, being asked to burn any metal reserves they had all night without question or complaint. Many of them were confirmed to be pretenders, having no Allomantic abilities at all. A few of them only knew the coin was beneath their beds, meaning they were iron or steel Mistings. A few of them reported keeping their emotions from being affected, meaning they were copper Mistings. A few of them reported being kept awake by the music, meaning they were tin Mistings. But none of them reported more than one of those events happening to them.

Except one. There was one lady who came to them looking very ragged, homely, and poor, so much so that she could have been outed as a skaa beggar. But she claimed to be a noblewoman, as well as a Mistborn. Just a very poor one. The nobleman’s mother doubted this, but was curious, so she let the young lady proceed rather than execute her, as one could easily do to a simple skaa.

After a eating plentiful dinner with all the metals unknowingly laced within it, the lady laid to rest on the highly unusual bed, following the same instructions as those who came before her. The mother was given input on the state of the lady throughout the night and eventually the mother became bored and decided to commence with the last resort of attempting to kill the girl. But as the Misting in the room below Pushed the coin up through the mattresses and beds, the lady, who was still fully awake, threw herself out of the way of the impending danger a second before the coin would have pierced her. She then took the coin and Pushed it into the ground below her bed.

That morning, when asked how she slept, she explained how it was the worst night sleep she had ever known. She said that she had scarcely closed her eyes once and slept very badly, due to the stress of knowing a source of metal was right underneath her bed, the loudness of the music playing nearby, and the fact that she was too stressed throughout the night, meaning the Misting who had been trying to Soothe her had not affected her.

She was able to burn iron, steel, tin, copper, and atium, which meant she could burn all the other metals, which meant she had to be a Mistborn. Because of this, she was married to the young nobleman and they were both finally able to enjoy the prospect of a happily ever after.

Of course, that didn’t mean it would actually happen…

Edited October 19, 2017 by Firerust
Grammar Errors

[ryshadium90]

Wow. That's really good!

Edited October 17, 2017 by ryshadium90

[Borio Singaldi]

On 10/16/2017 at 8:34 PM, ryshadium90 said:

Wow. That's really good!

Thank you! Thank you very much!