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

[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."

[self_composed]

"Well, first of all, does 'adorable' seem similar to 'hot', or are we dealing with different things here?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"It's... kinda similar?"

[self_composed]

"Similar in what ways, different in what ways?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"I think... it's not as hot because I don't see you really having fun with it," he muses, frowning at the page. "And it's cuter because, I mean, you can't even step really hard on a Lego? You really don't like pain, do ya?"

[self_composed]

"Really don't," Bella agrees.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Too bad for you," he remarks, drawing a line down from the original question and writing the word wuss and a heart. "If only you could make wishcoins out of—I dunno, what's something you do like?"

[self_composed]

"Is it cute or hot or what that I'm a wuss?" Bella asks, amused. "I like tasty food and interesting books and my own thoughts and sheets that have just come out of the dryer and, you know, nice things."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Pain is nice," he says, cheerfully. "It is cute that you're a wuss."

[self_composed]

"So if I wasn't a wuss and could cheerfully take a hammer to my own foot or stick my arm in a cage of rats, what would that be? Besides convenient."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Sexy as hell."

[self_composed]

"Rather literally, at that," Bella says, thinking of the theory Elias had that instead of selling one's entire soul to hell for power, wishcoin-makers served out their sentences piecemeal.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice laughs.

[self_composed]

"I'm getting the impression that at this point there is not a thing I could do or a way I could turn out to be that would make you lose interest in me. Short of killing you, and you'd probably find that fascinating on the way there too."

[edgeofyourseat]

"...Oh, honey," he sighs, hugging his armful of notebooks, "you say the sweetest things."

[self_composed]

"Did I approve 'honey'?" Bella asks, mock-stern. "I did not."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Sorry," he says with irrepressible cheer. "Do ya not like it?"

[self_composed]

"Makes it sound like we're a married couple. In the 1950's," Bella says.

[edgeofyourseat]

"And?"

[self_composed]

"And we are not that and it is not then and, no, we cannot be that for Halloween and start practicing ridiculously early."