Great Beginnings

Mom has always said that I write great beginnings of stories. Maybe someday I'll actually finish one of them. Just to temp you all, here is one of my 'great beginnings.'

As Rosalee placed the frog gently back at the banks of the stream, she couldn't help but wonder what number he represented. She had lost count long ago. When she was just sixteen, she was told that a great prince would come and take her away from her life of drudgery and harshness. The prince would be disguised as a frog whom she must kiss before he would reveal his true self. She had also been told that the frog would seek her out in some way. And so, each morning Rosalee would go to the stream and wait for her special frog to present himself. Today's frog had landed on her leathery gnarled toes as she sat on the log resting her aching old bones.

At the close of market day, Rosalee packed up her wares and began to carefully pick her way through the cobbled streets back to her ramshackle home by the stream. Avoiding heaps of rotting vegetables, carts, bustling salesmen, and other perils, she failed to notice the tiny frog which had jumped in her path. A sickening crunch alerted her and she quickly stepped back. What had she done? Surely this had been the frog prince seeking her out. Now he was dead. People began to stop what they were doing to watch the old woman who had suddenly knelt in the middle of the marketplace wailing. Rosalee now held the limp and lifeless frog in her hand.

Well, dear readers, will she kiss the dead frog? Will he come back to life? Will he change her life? Perhaps someday Rosalee's story will be told . . .