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Fairy Tale

A Crown for a Mouse

Prince Ansel is due to be crowned at noon. At breakfast, the palace scullery finds him inside the sugar bowl, six inches tall, furred from nose to tail, and furious that nobody understands his squeaking. The crown has shrunk with him. The royal council will put his war-minded cousin on the throne if Ansel misses the ceremony, and the fairy who cursed him left only one clue: a silver thread leading into the walls. You have four hours to carry a mouse prince through a palace full of cats, courtiers, and locked doors, find the promise he broke, and decide whether changing him back is the same thing as making him fit to rule.

Inside this tale

Choose where the story begins

Each opening starts in the same world at a different moment. Pick the pressure point that interests you, then decide what your character does.

Opening 1

Coronation Breakfast

Coronation breakfast is meant to be twelve courses. It becomes one scream, a dropped tray, and a mouse standing in the sugar bowl with a gold crown around its middle. The mouse stamps one tiny foot and points at the royal portrait above the hearth. Same black eyes. Same white streak over the left brow, though it is fur now. When you say Prince Ansel's name, it nods so hard the crown slips over its ears. Boots sound in the corridor. The chamberlain is coming to ask why the prince has missed his dressing bell. On the kitchen step, the palace cat lifts its head and smells royalty.

Opening 2

The Mouse in the Crown

The crown is real. The ratcatcher bites it to be sure, then apologizes to the prince, who bites her back. Inside the gold band, words no royal jeweler put there have appeared in letters fine as whiskers: a promise made small is still a promise. Ansel stops squeaking when you read it aloud. He remembers a fairy at last winter's feast, and a bargain he dismissed because the woman asking it wore patched shoes. He promised to open the palace granary if the snow lasted past spring. The snow lasted. The doors stayed shut. A silver thread slips from beneath the crown and runs through a crack in the kitchen wall. Somewhere on the other side, something laughs.

Opening 3

Behind the Ballroom Wall

Behind the ballroom wall is a second palace built for mice. Candle stubs glow in bottle caps. Stolen teaspoons make bridges over the pipes. Hundreds of tiny doors line the skirting boards, and every one bears the mark of a grain stalk crossed out in red. The mouse court has been hungry all winter. So have the villages beyond the palace gates. They know exactly which prince promised to open the granary and exactly how much breakfast he ate while they waited. Ansel climbs onto an upturned thimble to speak. His first squeak earns silence. His second earns a thrown pea. If he wants help reaching the granary before noon, he will have to do something no portrait of him has ever shown: listen.

Opening 4

One Stroke of Noon

The coronation bell begins its first stroke as you reach the great hall. Courtiers fill the benches. Ansel's cousin waits beside the throne with one hand already resting on it. Between you and the dais sits the palace cat, tail flicking, while the mouse prince clings to your collar with the tiny crown under one arm. The silver thread ends at the locked granary key hanging from the chancellor's neck. Ansel can be restored if he keeps his promise before the twelfth stroke. He can also reach the throne now, hidden in your sleeve, and let the council crown him without knowing what he became. The bell strikes twice. The cat looks straight at you. Ansel lets go of your collar and makes his choice.

Playable roles

Whose choices will you make?

The role changes what you know, who trusts you, and what is at stake when the tale opens.

Mette Bell

she/her

Mette is the scullery apprentice who finds Ansel in the sugar and understands palace back passages better than its ministers do. Her family in the northern villages was denied grain under the prince's broken promise. She can save his crown, but only if she can make him face what that crown has cost people like her.

Appearance

Mette is 17, sturdy and quick, with warm brown skin, dark curls escaping a linen cap, and a flour streak across one cheek. She wears a plain blue work dress under a white scullery apron and carries the mouse prince in a padded wooden spoon case.

Ansel Wren

he/him

Ansel is the heir to the kingdom, cursed into a mouse on the morning of his coronation because he treated a promise to hungry villagers as a small thing. He still expects doors to open when he orders them, even when nobody can understand his squeaks. Crossing the palace at floor level may teach him more about his kingdom than twenty years above it.

Appearance

Ansel is a small black-and-white mouse with a pale streak over one brow, sharp dark eyes, and a plum velvet ribbon worn as a sash. He carries a thumb-sized gold crown and tries to stand with the posture of a much taller prince.

Ysra Coil

she/her

Ysra is the royal ratcatcher, though she has spent more years negotiating with the palace mice than catching them. She knows the hidden court behind the walls and the old laws that recognize any speaking creature as a royal subject. Helping Ansel could cost her comfortable post, while refusing him could put a far worse ruler on the throne.

Appearance

Ysra is 63, tall and bony, with deep umber skin, silver braids coiled under a battered green hat, and amused gray eyes. Her leather coat has dozens of tiny pockets for chalk, string, cheese, and humane wooden traps.

The rest is not prewritten

These openings establish the place, people, and immediate problem. Once you begin, the Storyteller responds to your choices and carries the consequences forward. There is no fixed menu of actions and no single correct ending.

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