Finished my chapter on time! And then I forgot it was Friday again
Eve found herself sulking in her room again.
She couldn't believe her plan had failed that awfully! She got nothing close to help, and she ended up having to get rescued. It wasn't even that bad of a plan!
...Well, that wasn't exactly true.
But that aside, now she was right back where she started. She'd have to come up with an entire new plan from scratch. At least, she supposed, feeling a little better now, she could cross one potential solution off the list now. That thought made her feel a lot better.
And Seth hadn't even asked why she was there, so she hadn't had to tell him what she was doing or come up with a lie! That was an upside too. It was almost absurdly strange for him not to have asked questions, knowing Seth was possibly the most question-prone person in existence, but it made sense with him having been distracted by her questions. He had been too busy trying not to answer her to ask any questions of his own.
Which brought her train of thought to the other big problem at hand: the newly-revealed fact that Seth Sorenson was the Underking now.
Eve could still barely believe it. She couldn't wrap her mind around how or why he would've gotten into that position. It was a ridiculous amount of responsibility to rule a whole kingdom, and this would also make her human friend one of the five monarchs of the magical world. She never would've expected Seth to be the type of person to want anything to do with the Under Realm at all, even with the type of powers he had. Either she'd misjudged him, he'd changed, or something about the situation was different than she thought. She had a suspicion that all three of those options were correct in some ways.
But now she wondered what the implications of this were. For her, for Seth, and for everyone else. Her friend, who everyone else thought was missing and/or dead and whose whereabouts she was keeping secret, was also now the whole entire Underking, and she didn't know what to do with that. It wasn't like she was going to tell anyone, and she wasn't sure if she even should either way.
And for Seth- that had to be a huge burden on him. Even if he chose that path on purpose and was enjoying his new position, being a king had a lot of work that came with it. Eve should know, being somewhat of a princess herself. The person she knew Seth to be was not someone Eve would think would handle that kind of pressure well, and that made her wonder who he was now. If he was still the same Seth she once knew, was he handling it okay? She hoped so. She would feel awful to know that he was feeling awful under an immense amount of pressure. And if he was someone different, someone who didn't mind?
Of course he was different. When they'd first met, they were kids, so they were bound to have changed since then, even without all that had happened. With the addition of Seth's lost memory, which meant he would've had to recreate himself and his whole identity from scratch, and the fact that he was living in the Under Realm as the Underking on top of the natural personality changes from childhood, it was a wonder he wasn't completely unrecognizable. But he wasn't. He often seemed quieter and more serious, but when he was comfortable, he went right back to confident smiles and jokes and laughing. Just like before.
Eve noticed the laundry basket on the floor by her closet and went to work on putting her clean clothes away. No use sitting around being unproductive.
On the same train of thought, Eve knew that she herself was not the same person she had been when she first met Seth. If the positions were switched and he only remembered her from then, he would not remember the girl she was now. And that was okay.
Eve hung up a couple shirts, then folded some matching socks. Tonight would serve as a break, one moment where she wasn't working. But she had made the firm decision to do everything in her power to get Seth's memories back now, and she wasn't going to back down.
She would take tonight off to rest, since she'd just tried out her first plan and failed, but she absolutely would not let the failure discourage her. Tomorrow, she'd get right back to trying again. And she wouldn't stop trying until she either succeeded or couldn't try anymore.
Eve finished her laundry, feeling rather cheered by the thought. She didn't have to let one failed attempt ruin anything, and she wouldn't. Circumstances out of her control would not control her life. And now, because she was legally an adult, she was already starting to get new freedoms and privileges to leave and go places and do things on her own schedule, without having to ask someone else if she could. That would only get easier as time went on, which would make her efforts easier as they continued, if they happened to last long enough that that was necessary.
She hoped they wouldn't have to.
Dinner was a welcome interruption, even though a somehow-normal-now tense silence blanketed the meal. Eve was quite hungry after her failed memory-rescue attempt of the day. She'd been gone over lunch, though she had brought a bit of food with her. The physical exhaustion from horse riding for hours and the emotional exhaustion of attempting such a dangerous feat and ultimately failing combined to produce an extra exhausted sort of exhaustion, and hunger came along with it. Eve scarfed down her dinner like she hadn't eaten in weeks.
She finished before anyone else did, so she quietly excused herself and put her plate in the kitchen. It seemed a better option than sitting in the awkward silence with an empty plate. No reason to stay if she didn't have any food and nobody was talking. But as she went back to her room to finally go to bed for the night, Eve wasn't upset about dinner like many days. She had barely focused on that at all, what with the day's events and all she had to think on. She was feeling good, actually excited to go to sleep and wake up in the morning and try again.
So Eve walked slowly going back to her room, already considering which books she'd start to look in tomorrow. Ideas for her new plan slipped through her mind quicker than she could process any individual one. She going herself yawning halfway to her room and sped up a little to hurry to get to bed. No, Eve thought sleepily, pushing away the planning and ideas. Leave that to tomorrow. She was supposed to be resting.
And rest she did. As soon as Eve got back to her room, she threw on a pair of pajamas, collapsed onto her bed, and fell asleep instantly.
i've been thinking about what it meant
you say that you never get used to it
