Sleeping beauty was laid to rest and around her they built a palace. A great wealth of treasures, servants and luxuries filled the palace. They waited on her and for the prince.

They grew old and weary, but the prince never came.The walls and gems had been ravaged by age and the servants were dead.

The kingdom fell without heirs and was invaded. Their language forgotten, their people scattered. Forests grew around the palace till it was history, then legend and finally myth. The world went on while beauty still slept.

One day when the finally cut down the forests to build a new new city they found the palace. The carried away the now crumbling walls and dusty loot but nothing was greater than the marvelous woman who never grew old or died.

She slept and slept, never eating, never aging, never awaking. A marvel unexplained by science. Still time passed and she was forgotten, just another museum piece after a thousand years of research had revealed nothing.

When she was eventually forgotten she was stolen. Again they tried to understand her. They dissected her, cut her into pieces and auctioned her off. A arm here, a finger there, a heart a continent away. The head was still mostly intact and studied by a scientist of poor fortune. Once while drunk the scientist couldn’t help but admire the face he held and kissed it.

The head awoke and screamed a terrible shriek. Her eyes went wild and her howl carried across the air, her blood flowed once again. And then she withered away and was dead.