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

[This pause may or may not be slightly amused.]

How's your head?

The princess was surprised and pleased to see that Dr. Chase had messaged her, and thought it was very kind of him to ask about the condition of her head, following the incident with the peas, and a bit dismayed to discover that the narration was not merely confined to the things she wrote down, but the things she said aloud as well. In fact, she imagined she looked quite ridiculous, walking down the street with her bag of groceries in her hand and her Network device in the other, narrating every action she did as she did it.

Finsh biiun uh ib idn oo any good to keep from narrating everything she said, and really in fact only hurt her lip from trying to talk while biting it, she gave up on that idea and decided that perhaps it would be best if she directed her attention to answering Dr. Chase's question, instead.

"It's all right," she answered, though it still ached a little. "No real harm done, I'm sure."

I don't know, you seem to be having a few problems with your speech.

[Finsh biiun uh id idn oo indeed.]

Give me a call if you start feeling dizzy later.

"Well, that's what happens when a person tries to speak a narration and bite her lip at the same time," the princess retorted with more than a little amusement. She was well aware of how silly it was, trying something like that to keep from saying all this out loud, but she supposed it was at least worth a try, anyway, and there was really no harm done by it, other than her lip stinging a little from the biting.

It took her a moment to realize what the good doctor meant when he said she might feel dizzy, though, and so she decided to be certain of his intent by asking about it, as well. "You mean because of the peas?" she inquired.

I mean because of the peas. Were they frozen?

It really was fortunate, the more the princess thought it over, that the peas hadn't been frozen. That would've made them cold and damp when they struck her head, and she imagined it would've been a much less pleasant experience all around--not that it had been very pleasant at all to begin with, mind--to be cold and damp along with having a headache.

Fortunately, though, the peas had been both dry and dried, and so that solved at least two of the problems she'd previously been considering, though it didn't address the matter of the headache, but of course she assumed that would go away on its own soon enough, and so that would be no trouble at all, either. Still, she knew she ought to answer herself, rather than just narrating, and so she said, "No, they weren't frozen, fortunately. Just regular old dried peas."

Quest 138

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