THE STORY OF CATHERINE AND HER SISTER, AS TOLD BY CATHERINE

Once upon a time, there was a king named Aniause, who ruled a whole valley.  And he married my older sister Minnie-May, despite me being single and much hotter.  I mean, I live in the Tower Of The Hot Chick; come on!

Anyway, Minnie-May, oy, is she ever wicked!  Aniause gave her control of his kingdom, and she amused herself by having random peasants and knights and Aniause’s relatives all executed, just for funsies!

So naturally after a few years of this, Aniause wised up and kicked Minnie-May out of his kingdom.  He annulled her queen status, and he gave these lands to me, and that was great.  

And then he died, which was sad.  But then worse than that, Minnie-May came back and was all, I’m taking these lands over again, and I was all, no you aren’t, and then she went to my knights, and was all, how much is my sister paying you? And they were all, not enough, and she was all, I’ll double that, and what with one thing and another I ended up bereft of knights and stuck out here on my lonesome in the Tower Of The Hot Chick.

And I’m even going to lose this place, my home, if I can’t come up with a champion to beat her champion, Minnie-May told me.  Her champion is Pridam le Noire, Pridam the Black Knight.  He’s a terrible guy.  I don’t know what I’m going to do.

“Never fear,” says Bors.  “I will fight this Pridam jerk for you.  Send a courier to Minnie-May, have her send her man over tomorrow morning.”

Catherine is very happy to hear that.  She suggests that she and Bors celebrate this new development by sleeping together, but Bors turns her down (despite her hotness!).  He sleeps on the floor, instead of in her bed, because he’s on the Grail Quest and so it’s a bad time to start up a new love affair.

As he lay on the floor of Catherine’s boudoir, with her in her skimpy lingerie just a few feet away in her nice big bed, Bors has a mystic vision.  He dreams that he meets two birds, a white swan and a black raven.  The swan tells him “give me meat and serve me, and I will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, and also you will be white like me.”  Then the raven tells him “that swan is a jerk; you should serve me instead, and don’t worry about me being black, because it’s not anything to fret about at all.”

Then Bors finds himself in a chapel.  On the left side of the chapel there’s a worm-eaten chair, and on the right side of the chapel there are two giant lilies, held apart by Nacien.  If the flowers touched each other, Bors somehow knows, one of them would suck all the whiteness out of the other, but Nacien keeps them apart.  Instead, both of the flowers spew forth more flowers, and fruit, and all kinds of nice things.

“Would it be stupid to let these flowers touch that chair?” Nacien asks Bors.

Bors figures this is a trick question, probably.  “It would probably just collapse the chair, what with that chair being so decrepit.”

“Correct!” Nacien is very pleased with this response.  “Remember this bizarrely distorted allegory!”