I Will Finish My Story On My Day Off (In the meantime...)

The Curious Case of Cardalia Codlings......(I wrote this for Lit. a few years ago)

I shall start with the events of my earliest recall.  My name:  Cardalia Codlings.  I know no more on that subject.  Long ago, my parents discovered their only child to be me.  It wouldn’t have been such a vile occurrence, had I not been who I was. You can imagine that it is not a pleasant event, when you see a baby as unattractive and revolting as I was.  For I had hair of horse, great mounds of coarse purple matter that stuck out from my tiny head in every possible direction (and even some that weren’t possible).  I dearly loved my purple hair; no one else could claim to have purple hair, and it was truly me. Perhaps my parents would have kept me, had I not looked like some terrifying professor or chemist? 
            Do you think that if I had kept friends when I was young, they would have kept me?  I never kept friends for they held no interest for me then.  Instead, I played with dolls, only not in the normal eight year old sense of the words.  I toyed with their heads and hair.  This involved elderly bath water and purple gel.
            Away I went, with a great ape of a nursemaid to an old country estate.  To be rid of me?  I still remember that day, when I was dropped off at the manor.  I stood with my nanny, looking up at the great house.  It was old and surrounded by cabbage roses (infested with purple wombats).  I liked that manor house, ever so much.  The entire outside was painted black with purple polka dots.  Oh, how I loved it.  My days at this country manor involved my sleeping, and painting, or reading from the great library inside the manor house.  I also enjoyed a wombat for breakfast on occasion.
            As soon as eight years of service, my nursemaid, who was then eighty years of age, disappeared; I think she went off on safari.  That would have suited her just fine.  Finally, I could be free, have the manor to myself.  I was alone in the house day and night. 
            The day was luminous, absolutely brilliant.  Perfect for hanging out of windows; the tall ones are best.  Ah, dangling in the sunlight, not letting toes touch earth for at least a good half hour.  This day when I was hanging, I saw a crow flying out of a little cove on the floor above, and I noticed something I had never seen before.  On the floor above, there was an unaccounted window.  Oh, the wondrousness of hidden windows, do you know that feeling?
            I scampered inside; I knew that the window had to either be on the eighth floor or on the next, or maybe the one below.  Oh, dear, I had forgotten.  Never can I recall which floor is which.
             The search took eighteen and a half minutes.  The door (to the room) was hidden by a giant tapestry with eighteen mirrors embroidered on to it.  The room (the one with the window I was searching for) was behind the tapestry.  The room was well lit; the cracks made sure of that.  My! - how this room was covered in dust.  Every inch was like a snow drift, only this was a dust drift.  My bare feet left prints.
            The room was at hand.  It was decorated with dust, lots and lots of dust.  I like dust, do you?  I saw what fun my feet were having making prints. The rest of me joined in.  Quite pleasurable, as I’m sure you can imagine. I saw the mirror, for I was lying on the flat of my back, an angle that meant staring straight at the ceiling.  The mirror was up there, you see.  Funny thing the shape of this mirror; it was in the shape of a person.  Arms, legs, even a head, framed in purple, the insides all glass. 
             For eight months I lay below that mirror.  Do you say that I had gone balmy?  On the eighth second, of the eighth minute, of the eighth hour, of the eighth day, I made a discovery.  I was not alone in that room.  Do you believe me? This person was trapped in the mirror.  This person was a boy.  Not so much boy, but more like young man.  I preferred to call him boy person; it was so fitting.
             He had hair so purple, and it was curly.  Oh, a purple-haired person?  Like me!  I fell into something that is next to impossible to climb out of:  love.  Yes, full of blueberries and butterbeans was I.  I knew, even though he couldn’t speak, that the boy person with the purple hair felt the same about me. 
              So, I set about to release him.  Not a difficult chore with a library such as mine.  I never did explain, did I?  This library was odd.  The books were all bound with purple leather and they smelled of lavender.  Every time I visited, every book I wished for appeared in this library.  Then, as soon as I was done, it vanished.  I set about finding some volumes pertaining to rescuing people from enchanted mirrors.  The fantastic library gave them to me.  Three volumes:  one was written by a lady, one by a man, and the third was written by a young witch who had no ears.  I chose the witch’s book (for her book was the only one that had pictures).  All the spells and spooky whatnot in the book were much older than I.  No, I will not tell you my age.  Oh, if only you could see your eyes.  I can tell; you want to know.  Oh, how much fun.

            I set about the tasks that the witch said would release my boy.  The spell involved gathering purple hairs of cats; I substituted wombat for cat.  All these witch spells are all the same.  I think those folks to be so unoriginal. Just as I was finishing, the moon burst out of a cloud.  What a horrid thing, if you understand anything about spells and moonlight bursting out of clouds.  I perceive that you do not.  The mirror caught an enormous ray of moonlight, and combined with the spell:  dispersed.  My boy person was gone! The event was monstrously terrible.  He, my purple-haired prince boy person was gone. 
            After I sat on the floor for a good long time, trying not to cry, I went to my eighth floor window.  The moon was beautiful.  Good for window hanging, thought I.  So that was what I did.  I hung from the window, allowing the mysterious mist and the purple moonlight kiss my skin. Then, being eight floors up, found that it might be nice to float for awhile.  I had never floated before.  I let my fingers (all eight of them) slip off the glass ledge.  A float clears the head, and after eight months of dust, and sitting in the most comfortable-turned uncomfortable position, a float was extremely agreeable.
(Where did I land? Into the arms of the most striking purple-haired boy person;