Once upon a time there was a dear sweet princess who made friends wherever she went. And on a day, as one does, she set out on a pilgrimage to the Heavenly City. There were monsters and bandits and worse along the way, who had no interest at all in becoming friends with the dear sweet princess, and she had no training in fighting or weaponry, but she made friends wherever she went and found true and loyal companions who could fight the monsters and the bandits and the worse for her, and they stood by her side and counted themselves lucky to be friends with such a dear sweet princess and with each other.
And then, on a day, she and her true and loyal companions arrived at the gates of the Heavenly City. “Welcome, princess,” said the gate-guard of the Heavenly City. “You may enter, but your companions must stay outside, for their hands are stained with the blood of the fallen.”
“They’re coming in with me, or I’m not going in at all,” said the princess. “What they did, they did for me and in my name, and the blood is on my hands as well.”
“That is not the way things are,” said the gate-guard of the Heavenly City.
“Then the way things are is BULLSHIT,” said the princess, who had learned that word from some of her companions, “and I’m not going in until the way things are changes.”
“Very well,” said the gate-guard of the Heavenly City, and turned away.
So the dear sweet princess and her companions set up camp outside the gates of the Heavenly City, and now and then a few of them would hike the weeks and miles to another city to work and buy food, and the ones who stayed made things and cooked things and did what they could to make the camp a nice place to live and give the ones who went to cities something to sell when they were there. And as the years passed and the way things were in the Heavenly City did not change, their camp grew to a village, and a town, and a city, as the ones who stayed had children and the ones who went brought back new friends, and merchants and traders came.
And eventually the dear sweet princess and her true and loyal companions grew old, and one by one they made themselves little houses of grey stone with no windows, and went in, and blocked up the doorways behind themselves. And the city they had built continued to grow, and continued to thrive, and some people say they are waiting still for the way things are in the Heavenly City to change so that they can all enter together, but others say they have no need to wait, because they had reached it already by building it for themselves.
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