There were two beautiful princesses living on a distant island with beautiful lands. When they were still small, they were kidnapped by a king hostile to their parents. This king arranged to transfer them to a lake where they were abandoned on that small island. Thus they had to remain forever under the guard of the terrifying lake monster.
When the evil king was overthrown and tried by sorceresses and fortune-tellers, it became known that the brave prince had decided to free the princesses from their captivity. When the winds brought these news to the island, the lives of the princesses were filled with hope. The younger princess was more beautiful than her sister.
She began waiting for her love and her prince to rescue her. She would make small ornaments from flowers and clay and sing love songs. But the older princess didn’t enjoy waiting like her sister. She would say every day: “I will do something to help the prince rescue me, or at least until he knows where I am or knows about the existence of this monster in the lake, and how to face it.”
The princess was determined to help the prince. She worked on this every day, lighting signal fires, building towers, digging tunnels, and a thousand other things to help the prince. Yet the terrifying lake monster exerted his utmost effort to ruin her daily plans.
With the passage of time, the older sister felt increasingly uncomfortable. She knew the prince would choose the younger sister. So she felt there was no great meaning in waiting anymore. From that point, she focused on trying to escape from the island and from the lake monster. She no longer worried more about the prince or whether he would rescue them or not.
Every morning she would prepare a different escape plan, but the monster would succeed in destroying it. The escape attempts continued and increased day by day, but they always ended with her being captured by the monster. She became like someone playing cat and mouse with the guard.
Each escape attempt of hers was more innovative and creative than the previous one, and each form of discovery was more cunning and surprising. Both the princess and the monster placed much effort and imagination in their plans at the end of each day. Strangely, the princess and the monster would spend long hours chatting like friends about how each prepared their strategy.
When the moon departed, they would say goodbye until tomorrow, and the monster would dive again into the water depths. One day, the monster said goodbye to the princess as usual, but he said to her: “Tomorrow I will allow you to leave. You are a young, intelligent, and brave girl. You don’t deserve to remain a prisoner like this.”
But the next morning, the princess didn’t try to escape. She only sat beside the water and waited until the monster appeared. The monster was surprised and asked her: “Why didn’t you leave?” The older princess answered: “I didn’t want to leave you here alone. It’s true you’re scary and big and huge, but you’re also intelligent. You deserve better than just guarding princesses. Why don’t you come with me?”
The monster answered: “Unfortunately, I cannot leave the island. I am bound to it through a long chain. You will have to leave alone.” The princess approached the terrifying monster and embraced him with all her strength. After she hugged the monster intensely, he suddenly separated into a thousand pieces. From among those pieces emerged a smiling thin young man with the same intelligent expression the lake monster carried.
Thus the princesses discovered that in rescuing the prince, he was with them all along, and they didn’t know that to rescue them, they first had to rescue him. This wasn’t possible except through the spirit and positive attitude of the older sister. Therefore, the prince chose the older sister for marriage, leaving the younger sister to her songs, beauty, and sweetness, to wait for the stupid prince who would love a very small and beautiful girl only.