It's not precisely accurate to say that Rosella is having a bad day--after all, she's had a wealth of bad days during her stay in the City, and a day of fidgeting and loneliness hardly comes close to, say, a day when a villain jumps out at one and attempts to tie one to a set of railroad tracks--but she's certainly having a lamentable one. It's silly, she knows, because she knows she's cursed and she has a sneaking suspicion why. But she also knows that some curses can't be helped, and that's what makes this one in particular so frustrating.
It's cruel of the City to take her lingering feelings of sadness at the departure of her friends and amplify them this way, but the City has always been cruel, and it does like to set one back when it can. And that's how it's been--as though every time she begins to recover from one loss, another one occurs. And today she can't get them out of her head. It's terrible, and nothing short of mortifying, but it can't be helped. Like so many other curses, all she can do is bear it as long as she can and keep hoping for midnight to come.
So she busies herself with boiling water for tea and turning out another pan of double-chocolate brownies, forcing herself to keep her eyes on the mixing bowl and only allowing herself a glance toward her phone and Network device every twenty-five stirs of the batter. It's not so hard to focus, she tells herself. It's not so long to wait. It's not so bad, the curse doesn't have that much of a hold over her.
But she still jumps a mile when she hears Nigel call her name, and relief hits her like a flood; the sound of a voice on a phone had been a brief respite, but having someone else around feels like a long drink of cool water after a forced march in the blazing sun.
"Nigel!" she calls back, a smile appearing on her face almost of its own accord. "I'm so glad to see you! Did you have a nice time?"
on the night i die, i swear i'll sleep outside your window;
It's cruel of the City to take her lingering feelings of sadness at the departure of her friends and amplify them this way, but the City has always been cruel, and it does like to set one back when it can. And that's how it's been--as though every time she begins to recover from one loss, another one occurs. And today she can't get them out of her head. It's terrible, and nothing short of mortifying, but it can't be helped. Like so many other curses, all she can do is bear it as long as she can and keep hoping for midnight to come.
So she busies herself with boiling water for tea and turning out another pan of double-chocolate brownies, forcing herself to keep her eyes on the mixing bowl and only allowing herself a glance toward her phone and Network device every twenty-five stirs of the batter. It's not so hard to focus, she tells herself. It's not so long to wait. It's not so bad, the curse doesn't have that much of a hold over her.
But she still jumps a mile when she hears Nigel call her name, and relief hits her like a flood; the sound of a voice on a phone had been a brief respite, but having someone else around feels like a long drink of cool water after a forced march in the blazing sun.
"Nigel!" she calls back, a smile appearing on her face almost of its own accord. "I'm so glad to see you! Did you have a nice time?"