The Day After...the Ball

The clock struck the first toll of twelve, and Cinderella ran.  The second toll of twelve, Cinderella was at the door to the castle.  She dashed down the stairs, stumbling as she lost one of her glass slippers.  At the third toll of twelve, Cinderella glanced backwards at the stairs, only to see one of her shoes laying on its side halfway up the second flight of steps.  But she was losing time.  By the sixth toll of twelve she was inside the pumpkin carriage and on her way home.

In the morning, Cinderella found a pumpkin on her doorstep and a single glass slipper at the foot of her bed.

"Cinderella!"  The shrieking, grating voice of Cinderella's stepmother reached her ears from the farthest end of the house.  Swaying as she sat up, Cinderella swung her legs over the edge of her bed and stood.  "Cinderella!"

Cinderella trod on her bare feet down the infinity of stairs, all the way down to the kitchen where her stepmother sat at the table, reading the morning's newspaper where there would be written up an account of the previous evening's ball at the castle.  The newspaper featured a long-winded critique of one particular princess' pearly white gown and her interesting choice of footwear.  But Cinderella had no way of knowing this, of course.

"Good morning, stepmother," Cinderella greeted cheerily, only to receive a responding grunt from her stepmother as the two stepsisters tripped down the stairs and into their customary places at either side of their mother at the table.  "Good morning, stepsisters."

The stepsisters were still talking about the ball.  It seemed as if they had stayed up all night, their hair was disheveled but held onto the massive amounts of hairspray they had worn to the ball.

"And I couldn't believe what Margie wore to the ball, magenta is so not her color," commented Stepsister 1.

"And did you see Edith's shoes?  Emerald green, of course, but the collage on their soles was so last season," critiqued Stepsister 2.

"So the ball was enjoyable?" Cinderella asked, already bored by her stepsisters' prattle.

Here she was, morning after the best night of her life and nothing had changed at her home.  Shoeless, in possession of a pumpkin, and unimpressed by her stepsisters' account of the ball, Cinderella was back to the drudgery of everyday life with no hope of being rescued by her Prince Charming.

"Would you look at that, the prince posted an ad in the morning's paper," Stepmother commented, displaying the ad for her daughters and even Cinderella to see.  "FOUND: 1 glass slipper, seeking beautiful princess to marry the prince.  Prince Charming will visit the homes of every eligible young lady in the kingdom."  "He must really love her or something."

Maybe Prince Charming would rescue her after all.

"You say good-bye,

away you fly,

but on your lips you'll keep a kiss,

all your life you'll dream of this, 

lovely, lovely night."

- Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella