primrosella | Quest 105

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Quest 105

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Nightmares are nightmares because they show us what might've been, or what might be, or what could be, if we made the wrong choices. Isn't that so? To be a nightmare, something must go wrong, otherwise it wouldn't be a nightmare at all--just another dream. And dreams are only dreams are only dreams. But do dreams mean something? Is that the reason behind a dream, to show us something we need to know or see or learn?

The City feels like a dream sometimes. That's how Cain described it, too, when he said he'd forgotten about it--like a strange, fanciful dream. And maybe it is, in its own way. There are certainly things here that would've been beyond my wildest dreams, had I never come here at all. Who could ever dream some of the things I've seen and done here? And yet I've done them.

And that's what I've always believed, too: that we come here for a reason, that there's a meaning behind it. There must be a meaning, because without a meaning behind it, then there's really no point to any of this. Cain forgot everything when he went home, but Rue says she remembered everything. So there is still hope after all, faint though it may be. And a faint hope is better than no hope. But I suppose it's easy to lose sight of that hope, too, when it's so terribly small and people you care for, people you trust, tell you things that contradict everything you've been believing in and clinging to for so long.

I told Todd, when we were talking about his poetry, that even the bad ones are important, even when they're not masterpieces. It's really rather odd, looking back on some of the things I said when I was so sleepy, now that I'm rested again. A lot of it was nonsense, but some was really rather insightful, too. Ruined poems are a bit like ruined spells, but perhaps rather less dangerous; I remember, after the incident with my sleeping powder, how dejected I was and how convinced that I'd ruin any spell I set out to try, and Sam--oh, Sam, how is it you always know the right thing to say?--made me realize that even those failures...they were still important. And that's not to say that one shouldn't learn from her failures; that's the whole point, that a failure is just...another way of showing one how to succeed, really, because it shows you what not to do, and forces you to learn how to avoid it again in the future. And I did, I learned--and I know better, now, than to rush a spell or to cast it without telling someone, and I'm much safer for it now, I know--and the third spell I tried, I managed it. I really, truly managed it.

And a failure, really, is what drove me to learn how in the first place; it was that vision, all those months ago, of Alexander in the hand of that wizard, just inches away from the claws of the cat...

I hate it, when I can't save everyone. I hate it, I just hate it.

But to save everyone...

Of course, it's what a ruler is supposed to do. Mother and Daddy always taught me that. Hard choices are hard for a reason, and it's the right thing to do that matters most, no matter the cost. But sometimes...sometimes the choice isn't yours to make at all, is it? I hate that I couldn't save Neil, and couldn't stop Todd from giving up his life, even temporarily, for him...but that wasn't my choice, and really, it's not a choice I can fault Todd for, can I? I wish I could find a way to take away all of Blue's pain and heartache, or to give Neil and Rue and Cain a father like mine, or to give Todd all the confidence in the world, or to give Sam his life back and protect him from everything else that might try to take it away again. But to mend those ills for them...that's not my choice to make, is it? And none of them can save my family from Mordack for me; that's my choice, and I'm the only one that can make it.

And yet, if Lolotte should ever make good on that promise and turn up here...dealing with her may be my choice to make, and my burden to bear, but that doesn't mean I'll have to bear it alone, either. I should listen to Kurama more often. That day a few months ago when I was lost in the dark, and scared, and he came all the way to find me...and if he hadn't, Cain was ready to set out with a ball of yarn to find me, and when I tied myself up Rue came for me, and when Billy was cursed and kidnapping me Blue leapt to my rescue, and Sam...any time I get in trouble, Sam is there, he's always there. It's funny how easy all that is to overlook.

I trust them. I'd trust them with my life...so I suppose, really, I ought to trust them with their own, too, shouldn't I? Do they worry about me, as much as I worry about all of them?

But I do worry. And I can't help but worry, and I do wish I could find a way to save them all. And if there's a way, I'll find it, I won't stop trying until I do. But...as Grandfather would say, "when in doubt or in trouble, pick up anything that is not nailed down, and if it is, check for loose nails or boards". If you can't move the board...perhaps you can move the nail. If you can't do everything, maybe just doing what you can...maybe it's enough.

It's good advice, Grandfather.

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I almost wonder if it's really a coincidence, that one recurring aspect in all of my nightmares was the loss of all of my friends...and now today I've found myself in an entirely empty City. It does seem like the sort of thing that the City would do, wouldn't it? Taking someone's worst nightmares and making them come true? I almost wonder if that's the curse today; after two days of making us dream all our worst nightmares, now the curse is to make us live through them in the waking hours, rather than only in our dreams. And yet somehow...somehow it's because all this is the stuff of nightmares that I'm not afraid of it.

The City has taken plenty of people I care about away from me already. Sometimes they come back; many times, they don't. But it's that small, singular loss that makes everything else so painful, because the ache is felt so strongly when one thing changes and everything else stays the same. It's like having a hole inside you, and everything else is fine, but you know you're incomplete without that part and you can't help but feel it because it's different and awful and wrong.

But this? To take everyone away, and leave me alone without any of them?

No. Pandora didn't let hope get away, and neither will I. Nightmares aren't so fearsome when one knows they're nightmares, and nothing I did made this happen. This is a curse and I'm in the middle of it, and while I can't stop it, I won't give in to it, either. My friends are not dead. And even if they are gone, for however long this lasts, they're not gone from my memories. They're still with me, and they'll always be with me, that way.

What would they want, if they knew I'd found myself alone today?

I never knew my grandfather; his name was Sir Hereward, and he died many years before I was born. But his advice has been a part of our family for as long as I can remember, passed down from him to my father to me:

"If I have learned anything in my life, I have learned this: when in doubt or when in trouble, pick up anything that is not nailed down, and if it is, look for loose nails or boards. Check carefully into, under, above, below, and behind things. Read everything; you might learn something. Wear clean undergarments, brush after meals, and always remember, nothing is as it appears. Nothing."

Nothing is as it appears, and this emptiness is no exception.

On the bright side of things, it's rather pleasant, in its own way, to spend a day in a perfectly quiet City. It's a bit unnatural, not having any noise from birds or bustle or anything like that, but it's not the first time I've been alone in the near-silent wilderness. Tamir was rather this way, too. And I don't lack for noise, anyway, since the stillness of this curse seems to have rekindled my bad habit of talking aloud to myself, and goodness knows I talk enough for two people at times.

How long will it last, I wonder? It's a Friday today, which means there's a reasonable chance it might go the whole weekend--long curses seem to favor the weekends, don't they? And that's the ridiculous part about asking questions when one is on one's own; who do I expect to answer any of these questions? Perhaps I ought to start answering them myself, but then I'd feel doubly ridiculous about talking to myself, so I think I'll leave them be for now.

And Valor's disappeared with the rest of them, too, so I'm without a horse today. I do hope he's all right, wherever he is. But for right now, I won't let this bother me. If there's no one around, then there's no one to bother by jumping and running and yelling all I want, and Mother and Daddy always did stress the importance of making the best of a bad situation. And when I'm thoroughly tired of that, I think I'll go to the beach for a while. The beach is a lonely enough place already, under normal circumstances, when it's just yourself and the sand and the waves. I doubt it'll seem any different today, after all.

[OOC: A little rest, a little time, and Rosella's optimism is now beginning to return to its usual ridiculously high levels, so she's determined not to let this curse get her down. Also, while she's figured out that it is a curse, she hasn't realized yet that people can still reach her through the Network, so expect surprise for a bit on that one.]

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Yes, precisely, but since we were inverted by the Mirrored City and thought nothing was wrong with how we behaved, it was more difficult than one might imagine to change things back to the way they were.

All right. I'll be listening for you, too.

That is a puzzle. So for example, if I were to go to this Mirror City, I might...oh, I don't know...lose all my manners and stop caring about anyone else's feelings. And then to come back again, I'd have to learn to care again, in order to set myself free?

Something like that, yes. Or it could have been something still more subtle. You might have only lost your manners at the table, and you wouldn't have realised at first what might set you free. It was a difficult trap to escape. It almost required the Network so those who weren't in the Mirrored City could tell those who were there what needed to be done.

I should say so! It'd be like trying to spot a single difference in two near-identical pictures. How could you ever hope to pick it out without help? It'd either have to be a change so dramatic that there'd be no missing it, or you'd have to hold the two side-by-side to find the flaw.

It was, needless to say, not at all easy. But I think this is far simpler than that, fortunately.

Did you find yourself in the middle of that Mirror City, then? I'm rather curious to know what inversion you might've undergone, if you don't mind my asking.

I did find myself there, yes. My inversion was somewhat complex.

Too complex to explain?

I'm nearing the Opera House, by the way.

It was a strange state of affairs at the time, and I think that played into the things that happened to me.

I suppose the simplest way to explain it is that I found myself hating those I cared for.

Are you? I don't see you, but that isn't so surprising. I'm standing at the front doors at the moment.

I'm sorry, that must've been miserable to go through. I'm glad you were able to get out of it, though.

No, I don't see you, either. There's no one there at all. Do you suppose I could walk right through you? Goodness, wouldn't that be strange!

It was miserable. It took a little while to get out of, too, which was perhaps more miserable.

I suppose you could--Merry and I succeeded in standing in the same place when she was in the Mirrored City and I was in the real City.

And of course, that was likely the whole point of it. Winding up the clock, indeed.

I don't know if I want to try. It'd be strange, but rather unsettling, too, I think. Now, will you yell something, or should I?

Precisely.

If you'd rather not, then. It is unsettling, I'll admit. But it proved that she and I were in different places, as we are today, I think.

If you'd prefer to yell, please, by all means.

Well, it's that, but it's also the fact that I don't think I want to try the steps with wheels on my feet, and I'd rather not go traipsing around with nothing on my feet if I can help it, either.

All right, let me just make sure that the voice setting on this device is firmly turned off, and...all right, here I go.

...Did you hear it?

Are you rolling about the City again? And here I am, walking about on foot.

No, I didn't hear a thing I'm afraid.

I'd rather be riding, honestly. But my horse is gone, just like everything else, so I've had to resort to my skates today. It's terribly fun, once you get the hang of it.

Well, rats. And here I was hoping you just didn't know the answer.

I'll leave you to it, then. I don't think I could get the hang of it, though I've seen some people who are quite adept at gliding around on them.

For all that it looks like we're in the City, we're still separated. It's a curse, and we've fairly proved it now.

Well, I've had almost a year of practice with them. Sam got them for me not long after I arrived, to make getting around easier. And they're not so different from ice skates, just...without any ice.

How very strange. I wonder how many different Cities there must be, then, if everyone that's cursed has one and we're not sharing anyone else's, either.

...And you're not the least bit curious to know what it was I yelled at you?

There was a curse once that put those skates on everyone's feet--well, I was missed by that one, but my sister was struck by it. I have to wonder how you'd fare if that one struck again.

I wonder if we're not simply deluded into thinking we're not in the same City. We might very well be standing near to each other, but we don't realize it. We've been blinded and deafened to one another. It might be possible for that to happen here.

Now that you've asked that I'm curious about it.

I suppose I'd manage all right, really. But as curses go, that one doesn't sound very bad at all. Ridiculous, perhaps, but hardly bad.

But we'd still be able to touch each other, wouldn't we? ...Unless we're both still in the City somewhere, and all of this is just in our minds. But I don't think that's so, since we seem to be missing from the regular City, as well...

Oh, it was just an old riddle. Nothing important.

It was more ridiculous than anything, really. A little exhausting, and I think a few people took some hard falls, but nothing more than that.

We should be able to touch one another, yes. We could all be asleep and dreaming our way through this, I suppose. The only way to be certain of that is to check the Network tomorrow and see if these entries are still there.

Perhaps you should tell it to me and I'll shout the answer. Then you can try to hear me. Perhaps you have better ears than I do.

Oooh, I certainly wouldn't want to trip and fall while skating around, no. It hurts something awful, particularly if you're going too fast.

Then it seems I'll be coming up the steps after all. If you're there and I just can't see you, I certainly want to know about it.

I borrowed it from an old story, I'm afraid, but it goes like this: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening?"

I imagine that it must hurt quite a bit.

I'll stand still. I'm very near to the door, so search for me there. Perhaps we can still find one another, even if we can't see or hear one another.

Very well, then. I know the answer to that one, so I'll shout it out, and you see if you can hear me.

All right, it'll just take me a minute to get these off my feet and make my way up. Stairs. And I apologize in advance if I bump into you by mistake.

Oh, you've heard it before? I'm listening whenever you're ready.

I think it might be a relief if you do bump into me. I'll almost be glad of it.

I have, yes, but it's still a good riddle. I've shouted it now. Did you hear me?

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