we will seek my buried inheritance

[self_composed]

Bella fixes French toast for breakfast to salvage stale bread, and, having seen Charlie off to work, hops in her own car and makes for Alice's house. She arrives at nine-thirty, and goes up to the doorbell and rings it.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

"It got a little caramel'd."

[self_composed]

Bella chuckles and hops in the car. "Here," she says, handing over the notebook with the map in it as well as a local roadmap. "You're the navigator."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You got it," he says, sliding into the passenger seat and buckling his seatbelt unprompted.

[self_composed]

Bella pulls out of the driveway and makes the first turn according to the general direction they're headed, then awaits instructions.

"Use any more coins so far?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Nope," he says, and also, "Thataway."

[self_composed]

"Me either, but I made some more. Turns out stepping on a Lego is good for a square about two thirds of the time, but the ratio was deteriorating after a while - I guess I started stepping more gingerly or something - so I stopped when I had ten squares, seven triangles."

[edgeofyourseat]

"That is a weird and kind of adorable mental image," Alice comments.

[self_composed]

"What's adorable about me stepping on a Lego seventeen times and swearing under my breath?" laughs Bella.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I dunno," he says. "And I can't write it out and navigate at the same time. Pretty sure you wanna turn up there, by the way."

[self_composed]

"Turn which way?" Bella asks patiently.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Left."

[self_composed]

So it goes.

Eventually they're driving over gravel, and the road comes to a stop. "Are we close, or are we in for a serious hike?" Bella asks, halting at the end of the gravel where it turns into a narrow dirt path.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I dunno, is a mile and a half serious?"

[self_composed]

"It's a little serious. If the terrain's not very friendly I might be looking at yet another pentagon or three by the time we arrive," Bella says with bright trepidation. She parks and gets out of the car.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Hot," says Alice, following.

[self_composed]

Bella makes a laughing noise that sounds vaguely like "sporfle".

"You're still the navigator," she says. "Does this path look good or do we need to veer off it soon?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"We're good for now."

[self_composed]

Walk-walk-walk.

"Since we're moving at like two miles per hour now, I bet you can write too, if you set your mind to it."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You know what, I bet I could," he agrees, and drags his notebook out of the pocket of his jeans. It takes some juggling to manage both notebooks at once, but he gets it settled after a minute.

"Now, what the hell were we talking about, again?"

[self_composed]

"What makes it adorable for me to stomp on Legos."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Right."

He draws a Lego at the top of the page, writes a question mark beside it, and gazes contemplatively at the result.

[self_composed]

Bella giggles.

The path is thinning out pretty rapidly; apparently if hikers come this way, they don't strongly agree on which way to continue. A branch hits Bella in the face, but if she makes a coin from it, it appears on her invisible necklace and Alice can't see.

[edgeofyourseat]

This is why words were invented!

"Get anything out of that one?" he asks, amused. Meanwhile, he is making no progress on the mystery of the adorable Lego.

[self_composed]

"Yeah," Bella says. "Just a triangle, though."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Huh."

He shuffles the notebooks around to check the map, then swaps back to his profound and difficult question.

"Okay, help me out here," he says, "'cause I have no idea where to start."