a rainy day in prambanan, central java
there was once a beautiful princess who turned down all her suitors. she didn't find any of them to her liking. one day, a prince saw her and immediately fell in love with her but the princess was cold and turned him down, too. she knew the prince was bad and didn't want for her husband. yet the prince was insistent. he asked her again and again and again to marry him until one day, just to stop him from asking her again, and because she was bored, she agreed to marry him in one condition. the condition was that he must build a thousand statues/temples before the sun rises.
with this challenge, the prince agreed and started to meditate. he was a powerful prince and soon after, he conjured the demons and asked them to help him build the thousand temples for his future bride, just until the sun rises. the demons agreed and they started working on it, carrying stones from far across the land, carving it and building it from ground.
the princess saw this and feared that the prince will finish the thousand temples in one night so she too, meditated. when the gods appeared, she asked that the prince be stopped from finishing the job. when asked why she didn't want to marry the prince, she said that he was bad and she didn't like him. the princess was persistent and the gods gave in, in one condition. she must, during the night, take all the hay from her village and before the sunrise, she must burn it all. so then, while the prince was working hard to create the temples, the princess started collecting hay and before the sunrise, set it to flame.
the flame grew big that at once, the demons saw this. they thought it was the sunrise and started going back to where they came from. the prince tried to stop them because he saw that it was only a fire but the demons cannot be stopped. they went and he was left alone. the sun rose and the prince had created nine hundred ninety nine statues.
the prince asked the princess why she did it and she told him because she didn't want to marry him. but the prince was so in love with the princess and didn't care for anyone to claim her. for him, she was his forever and to make that come true, he turned her to stone, his last, his thousandth statue. now then, princess, he said. you are truly mine. no one will own you except for me. and then he thought, but still, she is beautiful. one can come in the night and steal her from me. so the prince decided to cut her nose to make her ugly. that way, no one would want to claim her, either in flesh or in stone.
yet that was not the end of the story....
the prince told his father what he did. the king became angry and turned him into a water buffalo. his son wanted to be with the princess forever so he placed the princess' statue over the prince/animal's back and put them in one room. that way, they were together forever but forever they are alone for they were never married...
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