Re: 10th floor stairwell, 12:05 am
Part of her did wonder when she'd become this trusting, so willing to help a stranger and put their needs before her own. It felt right, though, despite the occasional lapses in which none of this made any sense. It was too difficult to think, and all it did was give her a headache and confuse her even further. "It is the least I can do after you offered to help me," Hannah said softly. The mice waited for them at the top of the stairwell, scurrying to the side as she gently eased the old woman into a sitting position.
It was a touch difficult to sit in her dress, but somehow she managed to keep the skirt from spreading out too much. Her feet did hurt, granted, but taking off the glass slippers never occurred to her. Hannah paused as she considered the woman's request, barely noticing how the mice huddled around her feet on the stair below. Why was she finding it so difficult to remember him? One minute there was a vague image in her mind of a well-dressed young man with whom she danced around a ballroom, but it seemed like a distant memory that stretched across an impossible amount of time. Then there was the memory of someone much more familiar and... recent, but he wasn't a prince so she must have been mistaken. "He's very kind," she began slowly, trying to sort out the true memories from the imagined. "Generous, intelligent, and handsome-- I think that's why so many women are desperate to marry him. They don't know him like I do, though." Her voice turned wistful. "I'm really very foolish. He could never love me, because--" She paused abruptly, frowning. "He thinks I'm someone that I'm not." It didn't feel quite right, but the words came on their own.