Re-Imagining Rapunzel

Rhea woke up and cried to her partner Stella, “I want to have a baby. We have tried and tried to no avail. I need a baby, I want a baby. There is nothing else I crave!” Rhea’s partner Stella knew how hard they had tried to conceive, but it just wasn’t working. The nursery they had painted and prepared stayed empty. The toys they had bought were still in their pristine boxes stacked in the closet. She had to find something to occupy her partner’s thoughts. She couldn’t keep up with her constant and costly demands.

Stella did remember Rhea commenting on something peculiar she had seen and couldn’t get out of her thoughts. Rhea’s eyes lit up when she saw it and for an instance Stella thought she maybe able to get some rest. Their neighbor, John kept an immaculate tool shed. The shed contained wrenches, saws, hammers, and most of all an amazing drill bit. The drill bit was stainless steel and had a chrome handle. It glittered in the afternoon sun, when he was fixing the fence that provided a barrier between their two yards. If Stella could get that drill bit, then Rhea could begin a project and not lay in bed all day. Stella made a decision to steal the power tool.

She woke up, jumped the fence and ransacked the tool shed until she found the prize item she was looking for. Then she galloped back to Rhea, holding her prize high. Rhea was ecstatic, but in order to complete the chicken coup she had begun, she needed a screw driver. Stella knew where to find one and jumped back over the fence to grab it out of the tool shed. In mid flight, Stella realized she was plummeting right into John.

John was furious over his stolen goods and he demanded that Stella give John the first chick that their chickens produced. Well, Stella and Rhea produced a baby chick in the fall and were forced to hand it over immediately to John. They watched as John looked at the chick, named it “Yellow,” and locked it up in a high coup with no ladder. Each day the neighbors heard Yellow chirp and chirp, but only John was able to muster his way up to the coup and see Yellow.

After some time, the neighbors saw Yellow, who had blossomed from a fuzzy chick into a matured hen, standing on the ledge of her coup. She was staring at a crow that had landed on a nearby branch. They saw Yellow spread her wings, leap, and fly to the ground. Once she had dismounted, Yellow scurried into the brush, not to be seen or heard from again.