tuesday afternoon

[deepest_magic]

Elizabeth's house is within walking distance. Bella goes over to it the following day, after lunch, carrying two extra clumsily-frosted but perfectly baked cupcakes in her hands and notebooks in her backpack.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

"The thing I look at most is me. I wouldn't want to be wrong about me. Then I wouldn't even know who was driving." Bella taps her head to indicate what is being driven.

[neverbeatme]

"If I ever catch you being wrong about you, I'll let you know."

[deepest_magic]

"Will you sing me a little song?"

[neverbeatme]

"I don't actually know if I can sing."

[deepest_magic]

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream," begins Bella, in a voice that is well within human average.

[neverbeatme]

Elizabeth giggles.

[deepest_magic]

"Gently down the - You're not gonna sing? It's a round."

[neverbeatme]

"I don't sing. Which is why I don't know if I'm any good at it, and also probably why I don't know what a round is."

[deepest_magic]

"You don't wanna find out, either?" asks Bella, puzzled but not pushy. "A round is when everybody sings the same thing but offset - if you were going to sing you would have started with the rowing line when I started the gently line."

[neverbeatme]

"Well, now I know what a round is."

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah. Most of them are nursery rhyme type things like Row Row Row Your Boat."

[neverbeatme]

"Aha."

[deepest_magic]

"You can stack them up a few people deep depending on the song, but if there are more people than lines then they start to group, obviously."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah, I can see that."

[deepest_magic]

"If you had a country to run," says Bella, circling back, "what would you do with it?"

[neverbeatme]

"Depends on the country, of course. And what the rest of the world's doing. I mean, I'd run it well, obviously, but there are a lot of different ways 'well' can go. And a lot of different ways to be able to run a country. The President of the United States has a very different job from the Queen of Fairyland."

[deepest_magic]

"I would rather be the Queen of Fairyland, I think," says Bella. "The Queen of Fairyland probably gets to learn fairy magic."

[neverbeatme]

"Not necessarily a plus. Some of those fairies are pretty nasty, I mean, in the pre-Disney versions."

[deepest_magic]

"I read old books sometimes but not usually old fairytales," muses Bella, "what d'you mean?"

[neverbeatme]

"I don't know, I can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head except Hansel and Gretel and there weren't actually any fairies in that one, just lots of cannibalism."

[deepest_magic]

"There's still that in the kids' versions I've seen," muses Bella. "Or at least threats of cannibalism."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah. But I mean... 'fairy' used to mean 'terrifying otherworldly creature who will steal your baby and replace it with an enchanted log'."

[deepest_magic]

"What is the log enchanted to do?"

[neverbeatme]

"Act like a baby for a week until the magic wears off."

[deepest_magic]

"Why bother?"