The princess received the message from her friend--acquaintance?--friend, Princess Rue, with a mixture of hopefulness and uncertainty. She had been hoping to hear word from Rue for quite some time now, but had been hesitant to seek her out herself, for fear that she might intrude on her friend's solitude--or that it would only upset Rue more to see her, perhaps, and she didn't want that at all. But here was Rue now, and so the princess resolved to tread carefully, glad to hear from her friend once again.

"I did, yes," she wrote back, though she did have to admit that "vow" was a very formal way of putting it. It was really more that she'd just promised herself not to let anything about October break her down, and that she had been relying on her own stubbornness and competitiveness to get her through the month by turning it into a challenge--because she did hate to lose at challenges, after all. But in a sense, it was a vow, and so that was what she called it. "I vowed that I wouldn't let October make me miserable, no matter what."