Down in the darkness of the castle dungeon the pitiful wretch stirred as she felt the chitinous legs of a creature crawling over her bare thigh. Once she had been a princess with villas in many lands and betrothed to a powerful Viking warrior, but he had been unable to love her in the way she demanded and so had thrown her down into the dungeons. At first she might still catch glimpses of her warrior prince through the bars of her cell. Then one night she had heard sounds of a battle going on above her and after that her mighty Viking was never seen again. She had been alone for a very long time now.
She scooped up the invertebrate and pressed it to her lips for a gentle kiss like you might give to a lover.
"Oh Mr Millipede, your carapace is so smooth, so hard." she crooned "I thought that my Viking warrior would be hard, but he wasn't. He was never hard, but you will be my Mr Millipede. You will be hard all the time."
The arthropod's legs marched over her skin and sent shivers up her spine, but its primitive brain had sensed that there was no sustenance to be found here. The millipede crawled down across her grim smeared wedding dress and then disappeared into a crack in the wall of her cell.
"Don't leave me Mr Millipede. Please don't leave ..." she pleaded, but it was no use so Polly let her head fall back in despair and howled at the moon.