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I got this idea playing the Sims the other day. o__O I downloaded some Disney skins and put a bunch of the Disney princesses in a house together and made it the Wayward Home for Princesses. So I decided to make a fic based on the same general idea. This gets cruddy down towards the end. When the men have the conversation. I stayed up all night. Wrote part of it, played the Sims some more, got on the internet then by the time I got back to it I was really sleepy. So excuse the abrupt and cruddy ending as well as the one non-existant word I used and don't feel like thinking of a synonm for. XP More to come very soon.

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It was nearing sunset in a small French village when a strange woman rode through town in a small cart. Her head hung low with a strange hat pulled down to hide her eyes. Her long black hair spilled out from under it and when she looked up the few times she had to a pair of dark, slanted eyes stared out at passersby sadly from the shadow caused by the brim of her hat. A few people stopped in the middle of the road to gawk at the utter sorrow on her face but she paid them no mind. Her attire made it apparent that the young foreigner was Chinese which would make her the first traveler from so far away in decades. She drew many, many stares that day but continued onward with drooped shoulders and a bowed head. She searched the town with her weary eyes for any sign of a tavern or inn where she might stay the night. She saw one but did not stop. It was growing ever darker as they rode on. She passed another inn but still did not stop.

"Girl, we gotta stop somewhere." a voice grumbled from her shoulder. "I don't know about you but I'm gettin' splinters in my butt from sleeping in this rollin' coffin."

Mulan looked out of the corner of her eye slowly to see the small dragon that hid in her robes glaring at her angrily. Her expression brightened very slightly. The creases between her eyebrows smoothed out and the corners of her mouth twitched into a small smile. However her eyes still retained a melancholy light. Mushu smiled anyways. He knew it was the best he would get from the inconsolable young woman after what had happened. He was ashamed to admit he was somewhat glad for the tragic event though. Without Shang around he and his war hero spent much more time together.

"Alright. I'll stop at the next inn." she whispered in Chinese.

Mulan had learned several new languages as she traveled the world. She wasn't fluent in them all but she had gotten the hang of English and French rather quickly. She had come to find that she was very adaptable. She sometimes dressed as a man when traveling at night to keep robbers from attacking her. She also used the old guise to do business when she needed money. It was somewhat harder to do here but she managed to pass herself off as a male nearly as well as she had so many years ago. She sometimes lost herself in the charade to keep her mind off Shang. Mushu would always call it to her attention if she remained a man for too long. She was glad he had come along. Glad he had suggested leaving China even.

She continued on until she found another small inn. It was probably cheaper than the bigger ones anyways. She dismounted and tied Con to a post next to several other horses. She didn't like leaving him alone for fear he would be stolen but she couldn't very well bring him into the room with her. She patted his face softly and whispered a few words of comfort to him before they entered the brightly lit inn. Mushu hid himself more carefully as Mulan approached the woman at the counter. She was an older woman with long, greying hair. She smiled politely at the young foreigner.

"Hello. Would you like a room?" she asked with a hopeful look in her eyes and a glance at the bar.

"Yes." Mulan muttered. "Small room, please? No window if possible."

"We have a small room with a view of the alley. That stays pretty dark. Would that be fine?"

"Yes. How much?"

The woman looked at Mulan for a few moments that seemed to stretch on forever. Mulan could see the calculating look in the woman's eyes. She was wondering how much she could get from her but after taking a closer look at her bedraggled appearance she looked away. She couldn't take even the normal price from such a sad creature as this. She lowered the price considerable for Mulan and beckoned her to follow once the few coins touched her palm. She would make the difference up when a lesser or cheaper nobleman passed through. When she doubled or even tripled a price on some of them they came back because of the inexpense. She could afford the charity for if she couldn't such a pitiful yet beautiful expression would surely haunt her dreams for the rest of her natural life.

Mulan followed the woman up a flight of stairs with slow, heavy feet. When the woman looked back to check on her it seemed to take the young stranger a full five minutes to lift her foot. She should have given her a room downstairs. She waited for Mulan at the top of the stairs and Mulan stopped before her. The inn keeper thought it was strange that the woman didn't look up at her when she did so. A normal person would have looked up to see what she was doing or how she was reacting so far. She felt her heart cry out for the stranger and took her hand softly.

Mulan looked up at last at the sudden touch. The woman turned her hand over and placed the coins back into her palm. The inn keeper closed her fingers around the coins gently and Mulan could see tears in her eyes. Mulan looked away at the sight and felt Mushu shift uncomfortably in her robes. She knew he was anxious to get some fresh air so she didn't argue as the woman released her hand.

"You can have this room, dear." the inn keeper said, opening a door to the right. "It's bigger than the other and the window's smaller."

"Thank you very much." Mulan whispered, bowing as low as she dared for fear Mushu would slip out of her robes. "You are so kind."

"It's fine sweetie." she replied, smiling. "Come down for breakfast before you leave tomorrow."

Mulan bowed again as the woman left. She watched her go with sad eyes but she was very grateful for her kindness. She had so little money left as it was. She would have to search the town for a job tomorrow before she moved on. To what, she still didn't know. She had been traveling for years and she still had no real destination. She would decide to head for the next country once she reached the end of one but other than that her only plan was to survive from day to day. She sighed as she entered the room and closed the door behind her. She lit a candle on the side table and sat upon the soft bed limply.

"Cheer up, girl." Mushu chirped, slipping off her shoulder and onto the night stand. "Hey, look how far we've come. You never woulda had so much fun if you'd stayed in China."

"I'm tired, Mushu." she replied quietly, falling to her side.

Mushu looked slightly hurt as she turned her back to him and pulled her legs up to her chest. He wasn't as hurt as he was sympathetic. She was still having a hard time getting over the loss of Shang. He couldn't blame her but he found himself missing her old attitude more and more as time went by. This sorrow thing really didn't suit her personality. He knew she could move on emotionally if she would stop moving physically but she wouldn't settle down. He wished he'd never suggested leaving China at all. They could have gone back to the Fa family home and she would have gotten over it in no time. But, no, Mushu had to come up with the brilliant idea of moving somewhere new to get her mind off of him.

He hopped onto the bed beside her and placed a claw on her head softly. She didn't respond though he knew she hadn't fallen asleep yet. He stroked her long black hair in a fatherly way and stared down at the back of her head sadly. He wanted her to be as she once was not for him but for herself. He curled up beside her on the pillow after he was sure she had fallen asleep but could not enjoy the rare comfort as well as he would have liked, knowing Mulan was probably having nightmares as she slept stiffly beside him.

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In the morning the small window proved to be little hindrance to the sun's warm rays. They filtered through from the alley beyond and hit Mulan full in the face. She pulled the pillow over her head in an attempt to find sleep once more. This quick motion sent Mushu tumbling off the side of the bed and he let out a curse as he landed on his butt. He stood, rubbing his lower back, and grumbled to himself all the way back up to the top of the bed. He pulled himself up with a particularly loud grumble and shook his fists in front of his chest a few times before crawling over the lump under the pillow that was Mulan's head. He wormed his way beneath the tightly held bag of feathers and knocked on Mulan's forehead a little.

"Hello! Mystical dragon trying to sleep out here!" he shouted. "Stop hogging the pillow!"

"Go away." Mulan mumbled sleepily, pushing Mushu away from her face.

He smiled as he fell to his butt outside her dark haven. He liked Mulan best in the mornings now because she still acted like herself just before she gained full consciousness. He charged back in and tugged on the strand of hair that usually fell over her face when the rest behaved. She didn't pay him any attention but he saw her face screw up in agitation. The only thing he could really do was tug harder until she woke up.

"Mushuuuu." she groaned, pushing him away once again.

"Come on, girl. We gotta get some breakfast before it gets cold."

Mulan sighed and pulled the pillow from her head as she sat up. She held it in her lap and stared out of the window for a moment, sleepy eyes watching the movement of shadows intently. For a moment she seemed to be entranced by those shadows as they moved across the alley walls. The shadows of people passing her by just like her life. Mushu was surprised when she suddenly began to cry. For all the sorrowful expressions she'd made along this journey she had not cried in years. Not since the year Shang had died. Her sobs were filled with lonely sighs and haunting moans.

Mushu approached her slowly and put a claw to her arm. He didn't know what else he could do. She had caught him off guard after all. He rubbed her arm silently until she was finished. Maybe she just needed to have a good, long cry. If she had been holding back her tears this long letting her get them all out was probably the best thing he could do for her. She cried this way for almost an hour before her sobs began to quiet. She rubbed her tear-stained face against the tightly clutched pillow and hid her sadness there for a moment.

"Hey now, it's gonna be just fine. We've been doin' good lately. Got to sleep in a nice bed last night. Gettin' a free breakfast." he added, raising his eyebrows a few times. "Maybe we could stay here. Play the sympathy card until we get on our feet. That inn keeper's a su-"

"No, Mushu." Mulan mumbled from her feathery-soft fortress. "We can't stay here."

"Sure we can." he assured, patting her arm. "We could stay here at night and look for a house in the day. We don't need to settle for nothn' cheap neither, girl. We gonna save up. Get a house with ten rooms, three bathrooms - one for you, one for me and one for company, flowers in the winda, nice yard ornaments, some fancy paintin's, a few -"

"Mushu." Mulan whispered, lifting her face from the pillow. "I don't want to stay here. And I don't want to take advantage of that woman."

Mushu would normally have argued with her. It was hard to save up for a house when you were renting a room at an inn. They might not find another sucker like this one to keep them up for free while Mulan worked. It was the first opportunity they had to settle down and he would have pressed the matter because of this fact. However Mulan's face had a way of speaking louder than her words, especially when the message was negative. Anger and sadness seemed to bring out every tiny, minute feature on that beautiful face. He sighed and dropped his head, raising his claws to the sky.

"Alright. You win. Just stop looking at me like that!" he demanded, pointing at her face. "Now let's go get some of that breakfast. I can already smell the bacon."

Mulan not only smiled as he hopped onto her shoulder and licked his lips but after staring at him for a moment she began to laugh. Mushu looked shocked at first but smiled at the unfamiliar sound. It wasn't as though she hadn't laughed here and there throughout the years but never so heartily. She always laughed as though she were ashamed she could still do so without Shang. Now they were making progress. He scurried into the back of her robe and curled around her neck gently in somewhat of a hug. Partially to keep his grip and avoid any awkward moments of a dragon falling out of Mulan's robes. If that happened they'd have the French believing all Asians kept lizards shoved down their drawers. He chuckled slightly at the thought but restrained himself as they left the room.

Mulan was greeted warmly by he inn keeper who sat them down at a table to wait for the breakfast to finish cooking. Mulan glanced over her shoulder as a few men took the table behind her. She didn't have much to do and though she wasn't really trying to be invasive she began to listen in on their conversation. At first she was only hearing it because she couldn't block it out. They talked about typical male, European things. Hunting, Sport, the sport of hunting, women, and their cumbersome children. As they began on the subject of nagging wives Mulan got an exasperated look on her face. However the conversation began to shift to something very interesting.

"Yeah, I hear if you're royalty they got a place you can dump your naggin' wife." one man belched to the other.

"Damn, rich bastards." the other scoffed. "They get everything easy, don't they?"

"Yeah, it ain't far from here either. Been thinkin' of takin' Amanda up there and leavin' her myself. Not that I could pass that old thing off as a princess." he laughed heartily.

"Where is it?" the other joked. "I'll bring Rochelle while you're goin'. We'll get the other men while we're at it. Dump 'em all off at once, Otherwise the ones left will nag their husbands about the ill treatment of women."

"Yeah it'd be nice." the first man joked. "But you don't wanna go up there."

"Just why not? No wild animal would keep me from taking the oppurtunity of dumping Rochelle off on someone else."

"T'ain't no animal up there." an old man at the bar piped in. "Use'ta be an animal. But he became a man and stole't away this right pretty young'ne from a respectable hunter from these parts. Name was Gaston I believe."

"The Gaston. Gaston the hunting legend." the first man gasped. "They still have a tribute set up for him in that expensive tavern uptown."

"Yeh. That's teh one boys. Stole't away his wife teh be way I heardt it. Threw 'im right off teh top o'that castle."

"That's how he died?" the second man whispered. "I thought he died in a fight against forty men."

"Hogswalla." the old man spat. "He was trying teh save the pretty maid he was. That beast threw him to his death."

"What did he want with the girl?" the second man asked. "Did he eat her?"

"No, no. That thing really loved that girl. So much so that he used a magic spell to turn 'imself into a man. They lived up in that castle for a few years but then these other young things - they were triplets I believe - lost their husbands to animals in the woods. Claimed 'twas that beast, returning to his true form to feast. So the villagers stormed teh castle one night. Took many lives. They slaughtered the servants who stood between them and the West Wing where teh beast laid with the maid ev'ry night. Not many o'them survived teh way I hear it."

"Did they find the beast?" the first man asked, looking at the old man like an eager child.

"No. They didn' find no beast. Only a man. And his wife. They killed that man and left his wife there to mourn. That's why she takes in those who have lost their beloved or those who have been abandoned by them."

Mulan stood suddenly and turned, knocking over her chair. The movement was so swift Mushu almost slipped down the back of her robes. He clawed at her skin to keep from doing so but she didn't seem to notice. She marched over to the old man and he looked up to see a determined face staring down at him. His eyes shifted to the sword hanging at her side anxiously but her hand wasn't reaching for it. Besides what could he have said to deserve death? He looked back up at the young woman as she spoke, her words falling out in disorder.

"Where this abandon princess castle?" she demanded. "Is only for princess or no?"

Mulan was slightly appalled at her own horrible speech - Mushu even winced in the darkness of her robes - but in her anxious haste she couldn't concentrate enough to speak well. The old man gave her vague directions so she would be on her way and leave him alone. She left before the inn keeper could come back with her breakfast and hopped onto Con, cutting away the wagon with her sword. She would need to be swift and agile if going through the forest. She had no doubt these woods were filled with wolves so she kept her sword at her side. The cape Shang had once worn was tied around her waist and she put a hand to the soft fabric to make sure it was there. There was nothing else in the wagon that was really important to her. She took off as fast as she could coax Con to go. Toward the dark castle in the woods where a beast had once dwellt.