Just for a bit of fun: I wrote this four years ago for a competition. I didn't win, but how quickly can you work out what the main rule of the competition was?!

After Ball, Charming Depressed

After the ball, the only people left awake were the servants, sweeping away the smashed glasses and sticky pools of spilt champagne. Ballrooms always look larger after everybody has gone home; sad, empty, vacuous spaces with a chill in the air. Charming perched on top of a stack of chairs, glumly holding the glass slipper in his hand.

"Didn't she find me attractive?" he wondered with a sigh. "Evidently my conversation was too boring. Frogs get girls quicker than me around here." Groaning, he reached out and drained an abandoned half-glass of champagne.

His introspection was interrupted at this point by his page, Iago, who entered sleepily, having been waiting for hours to put his master to bed. "I've been looking for you everywhere!" the disgruntled boy yawned.

"Just go to bed, Iago," replied the prince grumpily, "I can put on my own pyjamas tonight."

"Keep on like this, and you'll be alone every night" grumbled the page good-naturedly. "Look, Charmers, if you liked her so much, why give up hope? Maybe she had a good reason to run off like that. Nice girls don't disappear without at least saying "Ta for the dance" unless they have a good reason. Obviously she was just in too much of a hurry to tell you what it was."

Prince Charming sighed and stretched, clambering down from his stack of chairs. "Quite so, Iago, quite so" he conceded wearily. "Right as usual. Still, what can I do?"

"Tomorrow's another day," said Iago cheerfully.

"Undoubtedly it is, my dear Iago, but what can I hope that tomorrow will bring? Voicemail? Without even knowing her name, I am helpless."

"'xept that, unless I'm very much mistaken, sir, you're currently holding her very unusual shoe, which is probably magic and certainly unique."

"Zounds!" cried the prince, "So I am!"