primrosella | Quest 138

Entry the One Hundred and Thirty-Eighth
In which Her Royal Highness Princess Rosella finds herself in distress, which is normal, and shortly thereafter drops a bag of peas on her head, which is not.
Once upon a time, in a rather strange land known as the City, there lived a princess with quite a bit on her mind--which was only to be expected, really, from living in a place like the City for so very long. She had made plenty of friends in her time spent there, and she had been through many curses, and that made for a great number of things to think about, especially for someone who, to be perfectly honest, often thinks about things too much, anyway.

As she made her way through the aisles of the little grocery shop, listening to the pleasant click of her shoes on the floor and scouring the shelves for the items she wanted, the princess let herself drift into thought. She'd had a lovely evening the night before, attending a surprise party for the eighteenth birthday of one of her dearest friends, and soon there would be another birthday to celebrate, for another dear friend. And of course, Giving Thanks--or rather, Thanksgiving, she quickly amended with a touch of embarrassment--would be coming up soon, as well. Yes, there were plenty of good things to look forward to, she mused, and placed a bag of flour into her basket.

But alas, her thoughts soon turned to other considerations, and these were ones of the not-so-pleasant variety. Many of the people she cared about had seen friends sent home lately, and while she knew all too well that there was really nothing she could do to fix it, she still felt guilty and worried for them. And then there were her own worries--ones that had been piling up, bit by bit, over the course of a few months now, that she had been trying to ignore and determined to overcome. So many calamities had occurred, arriving every few weeks, and while she always did her best to recover from the horrors of those calamities, she was also aware that she hadn't shaken those horrors completely.

As she added a bag of apples to her basket and then went in search of the yeast, she let her mind drift over the memories of the prison, of the loss of her heart, of the cannibals and monsters that October had brought about, and finally to the horror of her encounter with Lolotte in the pumpkin patch. The joy of seeing her family the previous weekend had helped to counter a great deal of the sadness and uncertainty these events had brought about in her, but unfortunately, countering sadness did not necessarily mean eliminating it entirely, and the princess knew all too well how the City seemed to thrive on misery. She had vowed that it would not extract any out of her in the month of October, and she took a measure of rebellious pride in the fact that she had succeeded in keeping her vow.

However, this was now November, and she had no such vow for this month to help get her through.

(And, of course, had she known there was a curse on this particular day, she might've chosen to put these thoughts off for a later time, so as not to broadcast them all over the Network. But alas, it was not to be.)

Perhaps it was just that the coming of winter made it harder to keep her mind on light and cheerful things, she mused, dropping two packets of yeast into her basket. It was difficult to be anything but cheerful in the spring, when the days grew warm and the flowers came out and the whole world seemed to come back to life again. Now was the time for bundling up against the cold and building fires to keep warm--the normal fires, preferably, ones kept to the hearth and not to couches or straw dolls--and with the evenings coming sooner and sooner, perhaps it was only natural to be a bit gloomy. And at that thought, her optimistic spirit briefly surfaced, and she thought that perhaps she'd just have to hang on that much more tightly to the things that did make her cheerful, to combat the gloominess. It may not be easy, she mused, but she had never let things being difficult stop her before.

All these things she considered as she absently reached for a bag of peas, straining on her tiptoes to pull it down with the use of two fingers, and it was then that the princess learned her lesson about why one should always pay careful attention when retrieving heavy bags of peas from very high shelves.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was only to be expected, of course, that once her rather embarrassing predicament was made public on the Network, her friends would begin contacting her in response to it. Unfortunately, that didn't make things any less embarrassing.

Nor did it help that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't seem to stop narrating all of her actions like a storybook, rather than just speaking normally.

"I'm afraid so," she answered, using the hand that wasn't writing these very words to cover her face in a mixture of annoyance and resigned embarrassment. "Really."

Would you prefer if I didn't talk to you today?

It was, perhaps, a very good thing that the princess was not reaching for any other bags of heavy produce items at the time, because she surely would've dropped those on her head, too, just as she had the peas, when she saw the words on her Network device.

"No, no, it's quite all right, really," she wrote back quickly. "I'm just fine, honest, just a bit...silly." She paused, then added, "Really, it's no different than if I were cursed to speak in poetry all day, I suppose."

Don't drop anything, Rosella!

Blue had offered very good advice, and the princess vowed to take it to heart. No more would she reach for heavy bags on high shelves--or at least, not while she was doing other things at the same time. And yes, thinking and pondering did fall under "other things", she reminded herself.

"I won't," she responded. "I'm just about done with my shopping, anyway."

Better go home?

"I think so, yes," she agreed, and retrieved her basket to do exactly that.

Once she had left the store, and had the chance to take a minute and finish her message, the princess realized that she really ought to inquire as to how Blue was feeling lately. It had been a little while since she'd last heard from him, and he was one of the people that had lost a friend recently.

"And how are you today, Blue?" she added, and then sent him her message.

Oh, well.

I suppose I'm all right. I'm sorry I haven't been about recently.

The truly frustrating part about this curse, the princess mused, was the way it caused her to write down everything that she was thinking in the form of a narrative, rather than letting her keep her thoughts to herself. Which, interestingly enough, rather made it the exact opposite of the last curse, where she'd worn a mask all day and been entirely anonymous, but now she was getting off onto a silly tangent and still writing everything she thought and she decided to quickly bring that train of thought to a halt, lest she go on for paragraphs and paragraphs. Still, she hoped Blue wasn't upset by these rather unfortunate circumstances she happened to be suffering from.

"It's quite all right," she answered honestly, hoping that he was being equally honest with her. "Miss Alice has been enjoying herself with us, I think, and so long as it's what's best for you, I don't mind at all."

I think this week, I should be ready to have her come home.

"Will you?" the princess asked, her heart seeming to give a leap of surprise. It was certainly good news, if Blue was feeling better enough to want to have Miss Alice come home. Aside from the obvious reason of wanting to be by himself to remember Fly, the princess also suspected that Blue had asked her to look after Miss Alice because he didn't want the young girl to see him when he was melancholy, and so if he was feeling up to seeing her again, then surely that must be a good sign.

"Of course, whenever works best for you," she agreed. "She's been a perfectly lovely houseguest, you know."

She does have very good manners.

"Certainly better than mine, when I was her age," the princess teased. She was well aware that she wasn't quite so horrible as a child as she sometimes made herself out to be, but she was equally aware that she was far from a properly well-behaved young lady, either--to her mother's sometime annoyance.

She quickly turned her thoughts away from her mother, though, lest she begin to miss her family. It was hard to believe that it had already been a week since she'd seen them all. So she quickly added, "And I'm sure you set a very good example for her, too."

Oh, I probably let her get away with everything.

"Likely you do," she answered playfully, though she honestly suspected otherwise. Still, she was used to such modest comments from Blue, and gladly played along with them. "You have a bad habit of spoiling people rotten, you know!"

Well I've never really had a lot of women in my life!

Surely they both knew that that was hardly an excuse, and so the princess took a moment to point it out in dialogue, rather than simply in narration, to further stress the point: "Oh, that's hardly an excuse!"

Of course it is! I'm still learning how to resist it when you smile at me!

When she smiled at him? My, now this was an interesting revelation for the princess. She wasn't aware that her smiles were so overwhelmingly compelling. And she couldn't deny the warm, fond feeling that washed over her when he said so, either; teasing or not, it was a terribly sweet thing to say.

"And how has that been working out for you?" the princess asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep a silly grin off her face.

I don't think I should say.

Reading that response made her suspect that it wasn't working out nearly as well as Blue might've liked, actually, and she found herself biting her lip to try to keep from smiling. It was just so very sweet!

"You might be better off if you didn't," the princess agreed, feeling the corners of her mouth twitching as another smile threatened to appear. "But I'm flattered either way, you know."

Quest 138

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