faun

[shesepankh]

Saturday morning sees Bella with her notebooks about magic all in her knapsack, her medallion safety-pinned by its chain to her bra just in case she trips the wrong way, waiting with Charlie for pickup for the Avalon trip.

Comments

[shesepankh]

"Aieeeeee. Help. Stop. Police and/or Dad."

[castmyown]

"There is no escape. You can't drive somewhere else, you must go to the seafood restaurant. It is the only option."

[shesepankh]

"I can feel the evil random magic compelling me! Noooooo!"

[castmyown]

"Yeees. Even evil random magic can be used to my advantage. At the cost of my soul."

[shesepankh]

"But what will you do without your soul, Darren? Hasn't it been restraining you from mutilating cattle, stranding small children on desert islands, and destroying marriages with the slow advance of corrupting liberal values?"

[castmyown]

"I will do all of those things now. And then I will steal all of the toilet paper from the school, too."

[shesepankh]

"Oh no! Not the toilet paper! Many people would be inconvenienced and embarrassed!"

[castmyown]

"Bwuahahaha. Yes. All part of my randomly evil plan!"

[shesepankh]

"Curses and damnation rain down upon the random evil magic and those who wrought it."

Here is the seafood place. Bella parks neatly.

[castmyown]

Seafood place! Hurray!

"Yup. Don't take the refund, either, it'll come from a charity."

[shesepankh]

"Maybe I could give it to an even better charity." Inside. "Two, please."

Here is their table for two! Here are menus with food originating from the sea described on them!

[castmyown]

"Maybe, but what if the charity had already invested the money and its loss hurts more than never having money in the first place would have?"

Table for two! Darren finds something that seems delicious on the menu to order, and then moves on to looking at Bella with a slightly sappy look on his face.

[shesepankh]

"Then I'll have to hope it's some silly charity that was, I don't know, having inner city schoolchildren read to cats." Bella orders rainbow trout and then looks back at him happily.

[castmyown]

Darren snickers. "I guarantee that it won't be. Evil random magic, remember."

[shesepankh]

"It's still a little evil to deprive the schoolchildren of the chance to read to cats, just not as evil as taking it from an antimalarial charity or something."

[castmyown]

"No, it's a service. Have you met any cats? They fall asleep on people and then don't move," he teases. "Better off not reading to them at all."

[shesepankh]

Bella will not stop laughing for a while.

[castmyown]

Darren giggles a little, himself, happy to have made her laugh. She has a lovely laugh.

[shesepankh]

"But," she replies when she's caught her breath, "the idea of the reading-to-cats type initiatives, as I understand it, is that the cats are nonjudgmental and helps the kids build confidence in their skills. Cats falling asleep isn't necessarily counterproductive to that."

[castmyown]

"But what if they fall asleep on the children and the kids can never move again? It's not worth the risk, Bella!"

[shesepankh]

"I imagine the cats will get hungry or thirsty eventually."

[castmyown]

"How long will that take, Bella? How long must the children suffer under the wrath of the dozing cats?"

[shesepankh]

"Possibly hours. It will teach them patience as well as reading skills! Everybody wins!"

[castmyown]

"Except the children, what if their parents show up and they can't go with them because they're trapped?"

[shesepankh]

"The parents are adults and should have already learned patience, you see." Then she snaps her fingers in sudden remembrance - "Oh, and Charlie didn't turn up anything about weird fires in the region, make of that what you will I suppose."