The One Notebook Principle

Author’s Note: This is something I wrote when I was having trouble sleeping for several nights in a row. In my head there’s either a curse on her marriage bed or a blessing on her childhood bed. Either way it’s a fairy tale kind of story idea.

Princess Soandso wanted it to be known that, despite opinions to the contrary, she had never really gotten all that much sleep.  Yes, she spent an almost inordinate amount of time in bed but a good portion of that had little to do with sleep.  There were cats to pet, sunlight to lounge in, books to be read, and a quiet place where no one was loud or bothersome to enjoy.

She knew that she had never needed all that much sleep, but this was ridiculous.  No one could survive on the amount of sleep she had been getting and not be yawning during morning council.  Admittedly it was her tenth yawn in the last fifteen minutes but did they really need to look so disapproving?  She was trying to stay awake as best she could but three hours of sleep almost eight hours ago was simply not enough.

It wasn’t as though she had trouble falling asleep; she just couldn’t stay asleep and couldn’t manage to fall back asleep either.  Her new husband, Prince Notsohelpful, assured her it was from a new bed, a new mattress, and having someone sleep next to her for the first time.  She just had to give herself time to get used to it, he told her.  It wasn’t as though she didn’t know all of that but it wasn’t exactly helpful coming from someone who managed to sleep straight through the night without any perceivable issues.   

Thankfully he also didn’t seem to have any issues with her sleeping in her old childhood bed, now in the connected would-be nursery.  She knew she had an attachment to the bed, but really it had been her salvation these last few nights.  She really could not have gone another week of not sleeping more