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

[neverbeatme]

"Probably."

[deepest_magic]

"I wonder what that is like. I wonder if it is so much like not being wrong that I couldn't even tell. Maybe I am wrong a lot about a lot of things and I can't notice no matter how hard I look."

[neverbeatme]

"It's possible," she agrees. "But mostly, if you're trying, you can eventually tell. People who are like that are trying really hard not to tell, because it's more important to them to feel like they're right, or have everybody agree that they're right, than to actually be right. Or because they're just so sure about something that they can't face being proved wrong."

[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'."