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This is a short story I'm thinking about submitting to a few fantasy magazines to see if I can make any money by my pen. If anyone has comments or criticism, I'd appreciate hearing them. Also, I don't like my title. Any suggestions?

The Prince of Boredom

Gareth Stuart Alexander Charlton Percival Hercule of the house White Thorn and Daxembury, Prince of the Golden Spire, Chevalier of the First Degree, and only son of the Most High King of All the Aigles was distinctly unhappy.

Gary (as he shall henceforth be known in the interest of brevity) was in possession of no fewer than three magic swords, one of which assured its bearer of impeccable grooming even in the midst of battle; his horse, Cadwalader the Magnificent, was inferior only to the Most High King's own mount; and he was the guest of honor of at least three fancy balls every year, one each in honor of his birthday, his name day, and his graduation from Sir Egwold Duckett's Princely Preparation Academy. In general, he could be assured of having his every whim fulfilled by his adoring valets, who were so enamored of his princely perfection that they flattered him by emulating him in everything they did.

And yet, as we have already noted, Gary did not live the carefree and contented life that his parents surely wished for him. He spent the majority of his time sitting at his bedroom window (which was cut from crystal so thin and fine that birds occasionally flew right into it), sighing into the rose-scented breeze that came from his mother's garden.

"It simply isn't fair," Gary complained to no one in particular. Immediately, each of the six servants who heard him vehemently expressed their disgust at the unfairness of it all. Gary tried to ignore them.

It was not long before the new fashion among servants of throwing down their caps in disgust and declaring the universe nothing more than a cruel parody of justice came to the attention of the Most High King and his wife, Queen of All She Surveys, Lady Eleanor.

"But what troubles the boy?" the king demanded one evening, picking peevishly at his pear compote. "He is the Crown Prince of All the Aigles! He has three magic swords, and that's one more than I ever had at his age; he rides the most splendid of the Royal Pegasi, after my own, of course; we throw another ball for him at the drop of a hat; and his countless servants positively adore him! How can he be unhappy?"

The king let his fork plop into his pastry with a petulant pout. "It isn't fair."

Queen Eleanor likewise abandoned her dessert in spite of the delicious cinnamony aroma rising from the plate. She, too, had sensed her son's malaise without understanding its source, and she was beginning to notice that his manly melancholy was having a distinctly morose effect on the general mood.

"I'll talk to him later," she said.

Just off the Royal Dining Room, a kitchen page could be heard explosively decrying the fickle nature of life's rewards. Queen Eleanor rose from the table to find Gary and talk to him now.

She found him still esconced in his bedroom window with his back turned on an elegant dinner tray. He dismissed his servants when she arrived, who roundly denounced Gary's manifestly unsportsmanlike manner, and returned to the process of leaving a permanent red welt on his chin from perpetually resting it on the heel of his hand.

"Gary," Queen Eleanor ventured gently (for his parents also preferred the abbreviation for casual conversation), "Tell me what is so unfair."

Gary's lower lip gained in prominence, but he made no reply.

The queen persevered. "Your father and I are worried about you," she said, echoing those hallowed words of parents of teenagers. Gary grimaced. "You have everything fitting for a prince of your station. You have three magic swords; you ride the second-finest pegasus anywhere…"

Queen Eleanor proceeded to enumerate the many advantages with which Gary's high birth and loving parents had contrived to provide him, but to no avail. She pressed on, appending to this list the myriad names of noble daughters who blushed and giggled when he rode past; a description of the fine meals he stubbornly refused to enjoy; and finally wound up by praising the splendor of the flowers he had cultivated for her garden, and which had nearly won him first prize in the Royal Gardening Society's Third Annual Horticultural Competition.

At this, Gary finally roused with a very slight shift in his slouching posture. His mouth still hidden against the side of his hand, he let fly a familiar barrage: "I'm bored."

"Gareth Stuart Alexander Charlton Percival Hercule," came the rapid retort," You should be ashamed of yourself!"

By the following morning, Gary found himself in quite a different situation. His enchanted swords had been relocated to the Royal Armoury ("Until you can be grateful for them, young man!"); his winged stallion was granted its first-ever vacation; and the upcoming party in honor of his taking second prize in the R.G.S. competition was canceled abruptly.

In a matter of hours, Gary was left standing, dumbfounded, next to a mud puddle at the crossroads between Dipthiddle and Whinging-Upon-Devonshire, dressed as a commoner, and gaping at his parents with mingled horror and disbelief.

Lying in the dirt at his feet was a small sack containing a change of clothes and a plain meal of bread and cheese. Truth be told, Queen Eleanor had intended a much finer repast to see him on his way, but it had recently come into fashion among the servants to abruptly stop one's cooking, cleaning, wagon-driving, etc.; throw up one's hands; and declare inability to proceed due to crippling boredom.

Gary pouted sullenly as he looked up at his parents.

Queen Eleanor's mouth softened as she regarded her son, but her will was resolute. "Now, now, Gary," she said. "I'm sure you'll find something to do."

The king shifted uncomfortably astride his steed, Raphthaninon, the finest pegasus in the Royal Stable. "I'm bored," he said. "Can we go?"

The king and queen road off into the distance. Gary simply stood there for a moment, half believing that one of his valets would soon appear with a horse and carriage. When none such materialized, he sighed dejectedly, and, muttering to himself, trudged off toward Dipthiddle. Gary had never been to Dipthiddle, and he chose it only because he happened to turn left instead of right when he started walking. It was a long way over a road bumpy with wagon ruts and pot holes, but he set his jaw and strode on.

Gary was far from familiar with life outside the palace, but he knew that the bread and cheese in his sack would have to be supplemented at some future point, and that he would need money in order to purchase more food. That, logically, led to a realization that he ought to seek employment, but he spent the rest of his stubborn march completely at a loss. Would anyone pay him to attend fancy parties or enter exclusive gardening contests? Gary was afraid that he was about to find himself sorely unprepared for what his mother had termed the Real World.

As Dipthiddle itself came into view beyond a fringe of pine trees, the traffic on the road increased and Gary found himself being jostled about quite rudely. He wasn't watching where he was going; as Crown Prince of All the Aigles, he was accustomed to other people getting out of his way. Unheeding of the driver's cry of warning, Gary inadvertently stepped out in front of a wagon.

When he came to, the first thing Gary noticed was a profound headache. Second, he realized that he was neither walking toward Dipthiddle nor back home in Aigles; and, third, his nose detected an incredible and overwhelming stench.

Gary jerked awake and sat up quickly, the better to escape from the awful foetor. He had been lying on a dirt floor inside a canvas tent, and behind him was the largest pile of manure he had ever smelt.

Someone chuckled; Gary finally noticed a drab little man, so brown and grimy that he might have been covered with the offal, squatting in a corner. "Awake, are you?" When Gary didn't answer, still in shock of his mean surroundings, the dwarf grunted. "Deaf, then? Thought as much when you jumped in front of my cart."

Gary rose indignantly and drew himself up to his full height. "I am Gareth Stuart Alexander Charlton Percival Hercule of the house White Thorn and Daxembury, Prince of the Golden Spire, Chevalier of the First Degree, and only son of the Most High King of All the Aigles," he said with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances. "And I have been sent into the world on a quest to relieve my boredom."

The brown man grunted again.

Gary's stomach chose this moment to announce its continued existence with a loud and unseemly gurgle.

"I don't know how they did things in Aigles, my lord prince," the dwarf said with a smirk, "But here in Dipthiddle, we work for our supper. Oh, buck up! I'm the Chief Gardener for the King of Dipthiddle, and I need an assistant. With any luck, we'll cure your boredom and your hunger."

The gardener's name was Argot, and it took Gary several days to realize that he didn't entirely believe Gary's claims of noble birth, and thought of the whole story as something of a joke. Gary had never been forced to suffer ridicule or scorn, and therefore had very little idea of how to proceed, but, fortunately, his natural reaction of sulking quietly passed for an ability to take a good-natured ribbing, and Argot grew rather fond of him.

For Gary's part, he proved to be a surprise for his new employer. Argot had never dreamed that a soft-handed, pasty-faced boy would know aught of gardening, and had been looking forward to watching him shovel manure. But Gary's second place trophy in the Royal Gardening Society's Third Annual Horticultural Competition had been fairly won, and he knew a thing or two about plants. Before long, he had been promoted from weeding the kitchen garden to tending shrubs and flowers on the palace grounds.

Gary was still known, from time to time, to complain about the tiresome perpetuity of his interminable existence, but his belly was full and his hands busy. Furthermore, it was with refreshing freedom that he could now stub his toe without starting a fad for clumsiness among the servants, and he would not have exchanged Argot's sardonic leer for any amount of fawning adoration.

As time passed and Argot trusted him with greater reponsibility, Gary found more creative outlets in his work. He was only three-quarters bored while mowing the springy lawn in a spiral pattern; he suffered through mere half-boredom while trimming bushes into topiaries of rabbits and deer; and choosing when and how to prune the flowering bushes left him as little as one-quarter bored.

Alas, this was not enough to satisfy Gary. His true talent lay not in animal-shaped bushes or shrubby little shrubs. The R.G.S. had awarded him their prize for his unique hybrid tea roses. He still felt unfulfilled.

One day, as Gary sought to alleviate his ennui by shaping one of the topiaries into a fat cow, complete with udder—a creature not prescribed for decoration on the Royal Grounds, but which Gary's imagination could practically hear mooing for freedom from being the prickly leaves—he spied a chunk in the garden wall behind the bushes. One of the bricks had chipped away, and he could see another garden through the small opening. This garden, which he had never seen before, was abloom with a rainbow of roses—hybrid tea roses, to be exact.

He pressed his face to the hole to get a better look at the flowers. He recognized the creamy blend of cerise and gold called Peace; the delicate lavender Moon Shadow; the deep scarlet Sanguinea… and yet, as he studied them, he saw that several varieties were lacking, and that many of the plants had no blooms to grace the ends of their long, thorny stems.

Without further thought, Gary abandoned the waiting cow and scrambled up over the wall; these delicate blossoms were in greater need of his help.

Examining the plants for spent flowering stems and the first signs of disease, Gary was less than one-quarter, even one-eighth, bored. In fact, our hero had forgotten to be bored at all, and was so engrossed in his work that he did not hear the nearby window slide up and then down again, nor the door around the corner as it creaked open and then slammed shut, nor the rustling of brocade slippers on the manicured lawn. He did not realize that he was not alone until she spoke.

"You there!" The voice was sweet and girlish, fashionably timid but with an imperious inflection that put Gary in mind of his mother. "What are you doing, gardener?"

Startled, Gary released the branch he'd pulled back for inspection, and the entire bush shook with the reverberation. He turned to behold a young woman of about his own age, with similar golden ringlets (though hers were much longer and bedecked with ribbons), luminous blue eyes, and skin whiter than the palest petal. She was, of course, a princess, and she was probably just now getting around to noticing Gary's own royal blood; those of noble birth have a knack for sniffing each other out, even when wicked fairies or adoptive wood cutters are factored in, and Gary's shabby appearance was a run-of-the-mill deception as such things go.

Sir Egwold Duckett's Princely Preparation kicked in, and Gary swept off his straw hat with a flourish and a low bow. "I am Gareth Stuart Alexander.." He took a deep breath. "Just Gary will do. And you, my lady, are the fairest flower in this garden."

Sir Egwold had not specialized in appropriate lines with which to woo noble ladies, and even Gary realized that his improvisation had been dismal indeed. But the princess seemed to eat it up, blushing faintly and twirling a golden lock about her bejeweled finger.

"And I," she replied in dulcet tones, "Am Marianna Susanna Johanna Diana, Princess of Dipthiddle."

Gary was less speechless by this astonishing appellation, and, it must be admitted, gaped rather like a fish in his struggle to refrain from adding one more rhyme to the chain. Suddenly, he realized that her name was of greater significance than its possession by so lovely a lady or even its adventurous assonance.

"You're the one who took first place in the Royal Gardening Society's Third Annual Horticultural Competition!" he stammered at last.

Princess Marianna (or just Marianna, as we will find to be more convenient) was temporarily stunned; her sweet rosebud lips fell open in a perfect 'o', and her azure eyes widened most becomingly. Then, just as Gary was about to settle in and enjoy the view, she burst into tears.

"Oh!" Marianna sobbed, "Oh! I am truly wretched and unworthy of your company!"

Gary froze, utterly at a loss; he'd never paid much attention to girls before, especially the ones whom his mother took care to point out to him, and he had no experience whatsoever in dealing with flights of feminine freakishness. Fortunately for him, Marianna took no notice of his lack of participation, and continued on her own after a few tortured sobs. "I didn't really grow these flowers! My fairy godmother did, but father's made her leave now that I'm too old to have a nana, and now everyone will find out that I'm a ch-cheat, and a f-fraud, and… and… bad at gardening!"

Gary frowned, a bit put-out by this revelation. The prize for second place had been a nice enough engraved plaque, but first place received a commemorative dish, not to mention that the champion's likeness and short biography were published in the Royal Gardening Society's quarterly.

But Marianna's tears were like crystal droplets flowing down her ivory cheeks, and her eyes were limpid pools through the gleam of tears. She was so beautiful in her misery that Gary's princely instincts took over, and he found himself kneeling at her feet and clasping her trembling hands in his own.

"Do not weep, gentle lady. These flowers require only your sweet presence to bloom!"

Even Sir Egwold would have winced.

Marianna allowed herself to be temporarily consoled; she stopped crying and gazed beseechingly down at Gary. "But I don't even like horticulture! Whatever shall I do?"

"I will care for your garden," Gary proclaimed valiantly. "Your roses will never fade or wither under my care!"

Marianna was good enough to overlook the fact that, as assistant gardener, Gary was making no great sacrifice in tending the dying flowers.

For months, Gary worked in the walled garden outside of Marianna's bedroom. Her roses thrived under his care, and he revived several of the more exotic hybrids in a veritable explosion of color. Marianna sat in her window seat as her swain toiled through every kind of weather. She was growing quite fond of him, as she had decided to at the moment of their first meeting, for when a royal princess meets a prince disguised as a common gardener, there is scant room for negotiation. Becoming increasingly enamored of his gentle touch and devotion to her happiness (and plants), she returned his loving glances with her own shy smiles.

The seasons passed, and the Royal Gardening Society's Fourth Annual Horticultural Competition was rapidly approaching. Without an unscrupulous fairy godmother to tip the odds, Gary knew that his tea roses were certain to take first place. A riot of reds and violets awaited the judges, from the brilliant carmine of the Angelique to the fuschia and violet he called Paradise.

When it came time to travel to the exposition grounds, Marianna contrived to include Gary in the party. This was not difficult, as Argot thought him to be the virtuous third son of a poor peasant farmer and fondly encouraged the romance, and Marianna's father, the King of Dipthiddle, was completely unaware of anything at all. And so Gary watched with pride as his blushing princess carried away honors with the flowers he had cultivated, and, when she smiled at him after accepting the little gilt dish and posing for an artist's sketch, he immediately resolved to ask for her hand in marriage at the earliest opportunity.

The Mistress of Ceremonies, a gaunt old dame in a pink crêpe shawl, was then in the process of bidding a fond farewell to the hopeful contestants and their supporters. Finally, she concluded with, "…and the Royal Gardening Society sincerely hopes to see you again next year."

The audience's collective sigh of relief—the speech had gone on rather too long—went unheard. At that exact moment, the force of a thunderclap shook the silk tent under which they were gathered. A plume of indigo smoke erupted between the Mistress of Ceremonies and poor Marianna, who was still smiling rather foolishly for the sketch artist, and a tall, black-clad woman—obviously a fairy, for she was coldly beautiful, not shriveled and ugly as a stepmother or witch would have been—emerged from within.

The wicked fairy—surely one can presume as much, after such an entrance—wielded a staff topped by a crystal globe of sickening green hue and a yellow-eyed raven perched on her shoulder. Her carriage was as elegant as her aquiline features; she surveyed the gathered crowd majestically, the ghost of a smile haunting her bloodless lips.

One of the onlookers, a dumpy woman with barely concealed wings behind whom sheltered a golden-tressed girl in a peasant blouse and thick woolen mittens, recovered first. "Begging your pardon, Your Wickedness, but you're two months early, and it was a spindle, not a thorn or any some such, besides."

The fairy silenced her with an imperious glance, paying no notice whatsoever to the extraordinarily beautiful but plainly dressed maiden behind her. Instead, to Gary's alarm, she turned slowly to face Marianna.

"So," the fairy said, her voice like a rustle of silken ribbons, "It is the Princess of Dipthiddle who again denies me my prize." She moved closer to Marianna, gliding over the platform on which the myriad horticultural wonders were displayed. Marianna squeaked, too terrified to reply, and stumbled back a step, but she might be forgiven her gracelessness under the circumstances.

"No matter." The fairy's smile was like starlight, cold and distant. "If I cannot claim the commemorative plate with my talents, perhaps I shall be content with another prize."

Gary alone seemed to register the import of these words. He started for the stage, but he had quite a crowd of slack-jawed gawkers to wade through, and the fairy's magic was like a flash of lightning, dazzling anyone unfortunate enough to have been looking her way, which is to say everyone, for there was very little else to pay attention to at that point. When Gary's vision returned, there were two black scorch marks on the wooden platform and Marianna was nowhere in sight.

There was quite an uproar; the King of Dipthiddle, once he understood what had transpired, immediately offered Princess Marianna's hand in marriage to the man brave enough to effect her rescue. He was slightly surprised by Gary's subsequent vow of success, but not terribly alarmed, as gardeners are expected to fall in love with princesses from time to time, and he even lent Gary his horse as a token of goodwill.

Gary climbed astride the horse, a great chestnut destrier called El Caballo, and began to sort out his options. El Caballo, though undoubtedly a very fine horse, was the ordinary sort with four legs and no wings, and the fairy was bound to have locked Marianna in a high tower, possibly on a moutaintop or cliff. Without further hesitation, Gary kicked the horse into a gallop and sped off toward Aigles.

Prince Gareth's return was so sudden that the remaining servants (upon later reflection, perhaps half of them had disappeared since Gary's departure) were taken so much by surprise that they could only stare as he dismounted and strode in the Royal Dining Hall where his parents were feasting on roast pheasant with port wine sauce.

"Mother, Father," he greeted them courteously. "I find myself in need of my sword and my mount, and I must fetch them now." Without further ado, he turned on his heel and headed straight for the Royal Armoury. The Most High King, terribly befuddled by his son's rapid return and departure, dropped a forkful of pheasant in his lap while Queen Eleanor rose and followed briskly.

Gary, having located his magic swords, paused in contemplation. He didn't need to take all three, but choosing just one would be difficult. The sword that supplied magically guarenteed protection against fashion faux pas and poor hygiene was always convenient but hardly necessary in the present situation. Of the others, one lent the bearer an intimidating aura of ghostly light, and the second provided a dramatic orchestral soundtrack to the wielder's heroic battles.

Gary sighed. He didn't want to attract the fairy's attention—heroes are necessarily brave, but not stupid—and a scintillating light display or epic overture would do just that. At least mystically mandated good grooming wouldn't detract from his goal, and, he noted as he grasped it by its gem-studded hilt, it did feel good to be clean again without taking the time for a proper bath.

Newly resplendent in a red velvet cape, his golden hair held in place by an elegant crown (the sword was of superior quality and had excellent taste), Gary made his way to the stable. He was in the process of saddling his mount, Cadwalader the Magnificent, when Queen Eleanor finally caught up to him.

"Gary, what's going on?" she said as he swung up into the tooled leather saddle and arranged himself between Cadwalader's snowy wings.

"Kidnapped princess!" Gary's quick reply was almost lost to the thunderous beating of the pegasus' wings, who, one may surmise, may have grown a tad bored with his year-long vacation.

Queen Eleanor sighed, tears of proud motherhood welling up in her eyes.

Once Gary had gained the advantage of height and taken a moment to survey the landscape, it was obvious where the fairy had taken Marianna. An obsidian spire pierced the gloomy clouds around a crumbling mountain edifice. As Cadwalader carried him closer, Gary could see some sort of small flying creatures circling the tower, perhaps vultures or winged monkeys.

As a princess, Marianna was entitled to a tower room, and Gary doubted that the fairy would break with that convention. He rose up through the clouds with trepidation, for they were darkly ominous and looked likely to spew forth lightning, but luck was on his side. He could see now that the flyers were abnormally large ravens, each with craven yellow eyes and the disconcerting habit of crying, "Caw! Caw!" as he approached, but they did not trouble him as he drew up to the tower window. Cadwalader hovered patiently while Gary climbed inside.

Gary let out a great sigh of relief, for Marianna was present and unharmed, sitting in the midst of thousands of skeins of golden thread in the center of the chamber. He was impressed by the absence of straw, but it must be admitted that Gary, in his excitement, had become terribly confused, for everybody knows that no princess is actually gifted with that ability.

"Princess!" he cried, for, even after a year of courtship, he must address her as such, especially while he still passed himself off as a humble gardener, "I've come to rescue you!"

Marianna burst into tears.

"Oh, woe is me!" she ejaculated between sobs, "Woe! For I am yet a prisoner here, and no rescuer will remain when he sees how grotesque I've become under the wicked fairy's curse!" Gary stared, completely bewildered, until she grasped a handful of the golden thread and snapped, in a very unprincesslike manner, "This is my hair, you fool!"

Gary was taken aback, for what he had taken to be cleverly spun yarn was, indeed, a tangled and bushy (but exceedingly shiny) outgrowth from Marianna's head. Now that he looked, he could see that the entire room was overrun with the frizzy mess, covering the floor and all of the furnishings, and that Marianna could barely move under its great weight. He racked his brain for a relevant lessons from Sir Egwold, but no ideas were forthcoming.

"The fairy…grew your hair?" he stammered at last.

Marianna took up her weeping once more. "She means to adopt me as her daughter and keep me from the company of men! When she returns from playing bingo with her friends, she will braid my hair into two golden ropes, and none shall navigate to and from my lonely tower but by climbing them! I will remain here forever, for I may never leave!"

Gary was still confused. "But you only beat her at gardening. Why does she want to do all that?" His voiced died away under the intensity of Marianna's glare. Her teary face was as beautiful as ever, but the effect was spoiled by the mess of hair spilling over her shoulders to pile up on the floor. Hair of such extraordinary length was not only impractical, but quite unnattractive, as well. It was impossible to keep clean, let alone combed, and there was no telling what manner of small forest creatures might take to nesting in it before learning human speech and consoling her with their loving advice.

Suddenly, an idea struck, and Gary's face brightened. He crossed the room, slipping slightly on the carpet of hair, and drew his sword with a flourish. "Here! Take this!"

Marianna had no idea what her paramour intended her to do with his sword, but, being a princess, she was quite biddable, and she took the hilt into her hand without hesitation. Immediately, a golden whirlwind spun through the room, and all of the hair was lifted up and neatly curled in spiral ringlets falling just past her waist. Additionally, her tear-stained cheeks were scrubbed clean, and the shade of her periwinkle gown lightened just a tad to better match her eyes. She was stunned.

Gary crowed victory. "I knew it!" Seeing that his lady love was still in the dark, he explained. "The sword is magic, you see, and I knew it would sort you out."

This summary was hardly satisfactory to Marianna, but she got to her feet at once and handed back the blade. "Let's go," she said briskly. "Bingo is over at eight."

Marianna had never ridden a pegasus before, but she cooed very prettily over Cadwalader's great fluffy wings and called him the most handsome beast she had ever laid eyes upon, and the noble steed was more than happy to carry them both gently back to level ground.

They alighted at the crossroads between Dipthiddle and Whinging-Upon-Devonshire, and Gary gallantly helped her down from Cadwalader's back. Marianna smiled up at him sweetly, remaining in his arms a few moments longer than was necessary, but still within the proper bounds for ladylike behavior.

"Marianna," Gary said with great feeling, "Will you be my bride?"

Having by now surmised that the magic sword, crown, and winged stallion indicated that her swain was of higher station than he had let on, Marianna agreed immediately.

The pair journeyed back to Aigles, where Queen Eleanor had already arranged a suitable reception for the visiting princess, and proudly announced their intention to wed. A message was sent to Marianna's father to ask permission, but it was clear to all involved that this was a mere formality (the King of Dipthiddle not being the type to require the completion of impossible tasks in exchange for his daughter's hand) and Marianna wrote to her retired fairy godmother, who agreed at once to return and help supervise the preparations.

The gathered assembly cheered and applauded as the newly-wedded couple shared their first kiss, and Queen Eleanor smiled fondly at her only son. It must be admitted that, though most of this was maternal pride, a good portion of her satisfaction came from having secured the services of the Royal Gardening Society in decorating the chapel before the rush of impending nuptials between valets and chamber maids drove up the prices.

"They will live happily ever after," she commented to her husband.

The Most High King squeezed her hand tenderly. "I love you, dear."



This post has been edited by Flik on 12th July 2007 23:49

Good Story, but i wouldnt call it a short story.

It's about 5100 words, so that might not sound "short", but it falls into the definition of a short story, which I've heard as 1000 to 7000 words, or even anything under 10,000.