Once upon a time far far away, there was a Persian princess who was beautiful, pure and full of goodness. She was the apple of her father’s eye. The king was deeply troubled as he had inherited enormous debts and his kingdom was in terrible financial trouble. He couldn’t see a way helping his people to escape from the poverty and hardship that he had inherited.
One day a solution presented itself. A big elderly dragon with smelly, foul breath came to him and said he would take his daughter, the lovely Atoosa, to be his wife and in return he would settle the king’s debts. Now this was a perplexing decision for the king to make. He tossed and turned for several nights and then made his decision. The only choice he had was to give his permission to the dragon to marry his daughter.
When he told Atoosa…she was at first horrified and cried and wept. She loved her father dearly and didn’t want to cause him any more distress. Eventually she agreed and the wedding was planned. It was to be a big, grand affair. The people of the land were on the one hand mortified to see their adorable sweet-natured beautiful princess about to be married off to an old dragon with foul dragon’s breath. On the other hand they agreed it was to their benefit and would save them all.
The night before the wedding Atoosa went to visit the old wise woman who lived in a hovel on the edge of the woods. Atoosa explained her predicament, how scared she was, and that she would feel disloyal to her father if she didn’t go through with the marriage. The wise woman with her old gray eyes looked at the lovely bride to be and told her to put all her faith and trust in herself. She said “on the night of your wedding as you prepare for bed you must put 12 night gowns on.”
After the wedding the couple retired to their chambers and Atoosa prepared for bed. When the dragon knocked on her door and came in he was full of eager anticipation to have his lovely young bride to himself at last. He asked her to remove her nightgown to which Atoosa replied:
“I will if you remove yours first.”
The dragon obliged revealing his scaly, scarred, warty skin. She then removed her first layer. The dragon was flabbergasted to see Atoosa had another nightgown on. He asked her to remove the next layer at once to which she replied “I will if you remove your next layer first.”
Now the dragon was only wearing his scales and so one by one the couple removed layer after layer. She a nightgown and the dragon another layer of scales. As the last layer came off, to Atoosa’s astonishment, stood not a warty, smelly old dragon but a young handsome prince who many years ago had a spell cast upon him from the wicked sorcerer of the North.
The moral of this tale is that when we trust in ourselves and are prepared to shed our old unwanted skins our true inner selves are revealed.
