Once magic was real everything else just seemed so unreal. - Lev Grossman

I admit that you might possibly not be deluding yourself about that.

Could the man really not have explained? Did his daughter really not understand what had happened? It didn’t add up. If they’d talked about it and figured things out it could have been a happy ending. People in fairy tales never just figured things out.

Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.