Here's chapter three!
Chapter 1
mynameismel- Thank you!
Chapter 2
Alyssa Belle- Thank you! I'm really glad you like it. I saw your review as soon as you sent it, actually, and was going to respond, but then I realized that if I'm just going to PM everyone with an account back to their reviews, then this thing is useless, so I decided to just choose one. XD
Christian (guest)- I'm really glad that you like my story! And to your second review- oh my gosh! That's awesome that you're eight years cancer-free! I'm not sure how I didn't see your review sooner. If I had, I definitely would've made time to do this. It's Friday the twenty-third now- I've just now seen it and so I'm doing this now. I'm so sorry I didn't see that sooner!
Eve had made up her mind. Well, she had already made up her mind, but she was doing it again. Making up her mind multiple times. Great.
What she was deciding on was that she was going to do something to make a change. She felt like she'd been making up her mind to make a change for the past few days, but that was okay with her. It only made her more determined.
Today, though, today was different. She wasn't just making up her mind. Today, she was going to actually do something about the decision she had made. She was going to make a difference today.
She knew that it wouldn't be big- no way. She had only just entered the practice of difference-making, and she was going to start small.
She planned to start by making small changes- maybe talking to her parents, her brother, and her friends. Eventually, by starting small, she'd work her way up to making big changes.
A slightly devious thought entered Eve's mind. When she started talking to her friends, maybe she could get them to rethink the policy, too. Maybe they would start to question tradition, and maybe they could help her make a difference.
At the moment, Eve was sitting on her favorite bench at the park that was just down the street from her house. It wasn't early, but it was before her lunch time. She still had plenty of time left in the day to do something different.
She tilted her head back and stared at the clouds as she mused over her position. What could she do today to make a change?
Being twelve years old, she had already crossed off the idea of running around being a vigilante and joining battles like Lomo did. Her father's people would catch her before she got anywhere with that.
She did, however, plan to go visit Lomo. He was just in the dungeon, and there were no rules against visitors down there. Eve thought it would be a good idea to ask Lomo about where he got the courage to do what he did, and how he got the means.
Although, she supposed, it probably wasn't that hard for him. Technically, nothing was preventing any of the Fair Folk from leaving Terrabelle. The reason nobody left was because they all went along with the neutrality policy. Anyone could just walk out of the town and leave, if they wanted to.
That wasn't Eve's objective, though. She didn't need to leave Terrabelle to make a change. She could change things from her own house.
She imagined that a cloud was a dragon, and thought back to where she was now. She knew a few steps of what she could do, but was she going to do right now?
Well, first off- what were her objectives? Eve wanted to see dragons, but that wasn't the point of this quest to start some sort of change in her life. Most of all, she thought, she wanted to remove the stupid neutrality policy.
Obviously, her father wouldn't just agree to drop a thousands-of-years-old tradition. That was a big change, one that she'd need to work her way up to.
All of the sudden, an idea occurred to her. Maybe change wasn't only physical. Maybe she could start off with something so small it almost seemed ridiculous at first.
What if the first step to making a change could be something so small as being kind to others? Eve wasn't sure if that would help her at all with the neutrality thing, but she thought it was a good idea.
Maybe someday Seth and his sister would come back. They could bring their nipsie with them, too. They'd probably be able to help her get her father to remove the neutrality policy, because she knew they definitely didn't like that stupid thing.
She would have to work with the idea. She could probably soften her father to listening about that problem. That would take a while. It would be a work in progress. In the meantime, she could do small things, and being kind sounded to her like just the place to start.
Eve looked down from the clouds, down at the few children playing on the playground. She smiled. Now, she had a rough idea of her plans.
She would start off by making sure that she used a kind attitude toward everyone she talked to. She could smile at people who she didn't normally pay attention to at school. She would try to slip something about her negative feelings toward the neutrality policy into conversations with her dad. She'd go talk to Lomo. Those were all things that she could start doing today.
Eve jumped up from her bench and ran down the street back towards her house. Time to make a change.
While I was writing this, I listened to Be the Change by Britt Nicole, which I just thought of before I started. It's really good.
Thanks again to those who are reading! I really need to write more often!
*Update- I've decided to end the story here. This was originally intended to be a oneshot. I continued it because people asked me to, but it has no plot. I think this is a good ending place, though. But I will hopefully write more Fablehaven stuff soon! I decided that I'm going to write more this year (because honestly, I don't think I've written anything since like February when I last updated this story).