A Fairy Tale.

Once upon a time, there was a Princess who lived in an old castle, in the middle of a meadow, in the master bedroom downstairs, with a bathroom/shower directly adjacent. After two Princess Years of living in that room, the Princess grew tired of dirty peasants tromping in and out of her bedroom to use that shower. And also coming in 'to chat,' but really just wandering off and leaving their things on her floor and the door wide open. So the Princess decided to take action and move to an attic room upstairs. She was confident that the relationship between Princesses Who Live in Attic Bedrooms and Princesses Who Are Virtually Enslaved by Fairy Tale Antagonists was correlational and not causal, and, with just a little trepidation, she moved all her furniture up there.
This move resulted in a few changes in the Princess's life. For one thing, she loved having a room that was really and truly her own. She loved that it was a little less accessible to the General Populace (her loyal subjects loved to seek her wise advice), and she loved that her little room had a lock on the door. But, rather unexpectedly, she found herself having to ratchet up her levels of efficiency, because climbing rickety stairs that are slanted and not in the way they're supposed to be (that way too, but also to the side) and aren't big enough for an adult foot to step on unless it's sideways is not something Princesses like to do that often. For another thing, she had to be a lot more conscientious about turning the fan off when she exited the shower, because when the Princess got up to her attic room, the fan sounded like a helicopter beneath her bed. She also learned how other Princesses came to befriend local birds when she discovered the nest in her wall. It didn't come into her room, because this isn't the Dark Ages, for heaven's sake, it's the Twenty-first Century, but those birds sure did wake that Princess up in the morning with their twittering in the nest and scrabbling around. The Princess assured herself (with some difficulty, and a teensy bit darkly) that the birds weren't intentionally waking her two full hours before she was due to get out of bed. And on particularly difficult mornings, she wondered, a little belligerently, to herself, what kinds of girls these other Princesses were, making friends with such noisy and obnoxious animals. But, she inevitably concluded, you really couldn't expect anything else from girls so desperate for a little attention that they'd kiss a frog or move in with a house full of unsavory miners. So, to make a long story short, there were some adjustments to be made.

One day, the Princess had places to be, countries to rule and lives to save, and she had to take a shower before any of that could happen. She had grown pretty used to her little attic room, and normally she brought her clean clothes down to the bathroom and changed into them there. On this occasion, however, the Princess was in a hurry and didn't worry too much about the idea of running back upstairs in her towel. But as she opened the bathroom door after her shower, she suddenly remembered that the Court Music Tutor was teaching a beginners' class for some of the toddler nobility of the surrounding country. 'Oh, well,' thought the Princess, 'the Queens and Nurses might be in the castle, but I don't mind MUCH if they see me in my towel, and after all I haven't much choice at this point.' She stepped out of the bathroom, looked to her left, and saw, to her surprise, the door open and her own former Music Tutor and the father of one of the pupils, Bruce Hamilton, sitting in a wicker chair in the throne room. He smiled a little awkwardly and the Princess stared for a second, looked down, then around, then up, then gave up. She shrugged and trudged upstairs. When she got up to her own little attic bedroom, she realized she was clutching her magenta bra as if presenting it to an award-winner. She sighed, and decided to forget her evening's obligations. The Princess got back in bed.

THE END.