She was tired of the shallow people at the party. She was tired of her own shallowness. She was tired. It was early yet, not half past eleven, and she slipped away from the shallow people and their shallow noise to stroll the beach. The pristine sand felt so nice, so soft on her bare feet. The waves sounded reassuringly eternal. The moon, a slim bright crescent, distracted her, and she stepped on a piece of glass.

Her sharp mind instantly thought, I’ve been bitten by a stupid, fucking crab, or stung by one of the stupid fucking jellyfish which sometimes wash up on the beach. In fact it was a shard of shattered beer bottle tossed away by some rude and frustrated wannabe surfer but five hours ago. If only it had been discarded a few hundred years or centuries earlier, the churning water would have smoothed and polished it to gem perfection. Her cry was soft but sharp. It pierced the thick night air, the rolling sounds of surf.

The prince, on a stroll of his own, tired of the shallow, obsequious banter at his party, heard the cry, and at first he thought it was some distressed seabird. But there was something too plaintive in the tone. He listened, but heard only the sounds of the surf, and so he hurried forward, toward where that alluring noise had come from, and discovered Cinderella crouched on the sand.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’ve cut my foot.”

“Here, let me have a look.”

The prince crouched next to her. She sat back on the sand. He took her foot in hand. He surveyed it as best he could in the light of the thin moon, and then he brought it to his face. The prince, not having shaved for sixteen hours, had stubble upon his jaw, fierce eleven o’clock shadow, and Cinderella’s foot had never felt anything like it. For an instant it was annoying, but an instant later it was arousing. Cinderella hadn’t known her feet could be so sensitive. When the prince sucked her toes into his mouth, she had an orgasm.

By midnight she’d had half a dozen more, more conventional but no less exciting. Her cries in climax had the same allure as her first soft, sharp call of distress, and he couldn’t resist answering in that way most fitting. Again and again, he pierced the weeping eye of her secret pumpkin. Again and again he surrendered his royal seed to the gush and grip of her churning sex. By morning, she was spoiled for anyone else. The prince, too. But the tides of night had somehow separated them. He awoke tangled in seaweed, she hugging soggy driftwood many miles out to sea.

Now, nine months later at the party he’d organized to find her, they discovered each other easily. She’d know that eleven o’clock shadow even in the light of a million Chinese lanterns. He’d recognize her song amid the chants and shouts and rumbles of a world full of pretenders. She put her palms to his face, caressed his stern stubble, and sighed. He picked her up and carried her into the future.