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

Honestly, the princess was quite used to people having never heard of Daventry, which was at least partially why she very rarely insisted that people address her by her proper titles. Had they met at home in her own kingdom, it might've been a bit different, but here in the City there was very little reason to stand on formality, since being royalty here didn't mean all that much, anyway. But of course, there was also a difference between standing on formality and just being polite, and she was pleased to see that even when relieved of the necessity of the former, Sir Flynn still subscribed to the latter.

"Yes, of course, if that's what you'd prefer," she answered amicably, smiling to herself even though she knew Sir Flynn couldn't see it, since she was only writing and not making a movie of herself to send over the Network. "And that's true, it's entirely possible we might never have met if not for this, so it's not all bad. We'll just have to be sure to speak again in the future, sometime when we're not both cursed this way, and make up for any ridiculousness that might come about from today's curse."

This is a reasonable suggestion, and though they are currently conversing through the communicators, Flynn nods in agreement.

"As soon as this situation settles, Miss Rosella, we'll speak again," he promises and idly wonders when this strange tendency to narrate every action he makes will end. Being that this is the first curse to affect him direction in his short stay, Flynn truly has no definite idea.

Upon receiving Sir Flynn's next message, two immediate thoughts occurred to the princess: the first, that she hoped she hadn't sounded like she was brushing off the kind Acting-Commandant of the Imperial Knights in saying she wished to speak again after the curse, because really she wasn't and hadn't intended it to sound that way, and really it was only that she hoped their encounter today would not be the only chance they ever had to talk to each other; the second, that he was new to the City, poor sir, but while this was a very tedious curse indeed, there were far worse ones he might've been struck with for his very first curse. But she was always eager to help those in need, and particularly with helping new arrivals get adjusted to the City, so she quickly set about writing a reply to him.

"They generally end at midnight," she wrote, and then paused and clarified, "The curses, I mean. There are some that go longer, but I don't think this is one of them; the longer ones tend to be the really horrible ones, and there's nothing really horrible about this curse. It's annoying, to be sure, but it's not unbearable, having to narrate everything we say. So likely it'll come to an end at midnight, just like any other normal curse."

And no, the irony was not lost on her, to call something a "normal curse", but really, she hadn't come up with any better way of separating them out than that, so it would have to do for the time being.

The knight nods as he reads all of this and takes in the information provided within the message. He, of course, understands Lady Rosella's desire to speak at another time: the risk of divulging something private is simply too great in a situation such as this and he understands the general awkwardness of having such private knowledge shared to a stranger.

"Thank you for the information. That isn't too far from now, at least. I look forward to speaking with you normally Lady-- Miss Rosella."

Quest 138

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late tag is late because darn you prose