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]

He checks.

"Yeah, looks about right."

[self_composed]

"I wonder how far we've come. I should have checked the time when we started out from the car. Does fifteen minutes sound right to you?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Just about, yeah. So, any bright ideas for how to find this thing once we're in the right square mile of forest?"

[self_composed]

"Well, if we're lucky, then to me it'll look like it's got a great big neon sign on it. If we're not lucky, I start chucking squares at the problem."

[edgeofyourseat]

"And I sit down and hope you don't fall down any holes," he says. "Okay."

[self_composed]

"Well, if there's no neon sign, then you can help, you just look for - markers, or anything that resembles some odd word choice from the cipher, or something out of place that most likely got there by magic."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Okay," he repeats, a little more brightly.

[self_composed]

Walk-walk-walk. "Does your map have any useful landmarks?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yeah, actually. See any fuck-off huge rocks?"

[self_composed]

"I don't. Are we meant to be approaching one about now?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Soonish," he says.

[self_composed]

"All right."

Walk and walk and -

"Is that one sufficiently immense?" Bella asks, pointing.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Definitely."

[self_composed]

"Well," she says. "If the stash doesn't have any hexes, on the way back I will consider trying to climb it."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You know, it seems kind of backwards that you'd rather fall off something than ask somebody to break your leg for you, since you're so keen on personal safety and all."

[self_composed]

"It's the fear thing," Bella says. "I have a reasonable intellectual expectation of falling off that enormous rock if I try to climb it. But I'm not actually afraid of heights. I am scared of somebody literally torturing me. And again, people don't usually die from short falls. I'd have to land very unusually wrong."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Isn't landing wrong kind of a thing you're famous for, though?"

[self_composed]

"I am still alive," Bella says. "In this context, 'wrong' means 'I break my neck' or 'I squish my head'. If I break seventeen other bones but do not suffer those highly specific injuries, that's not so bad at all."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, okay." He shrugs. "It's just, you know, I don't want you to squish your head."

[self_composed]

"I don't want me to squish my head either. I consider this only as a possibility if there are no hexes in the stash, and I'll probably decide against it anyway."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Okay."

[self_composed]

Walk-walk-walk. Past the rock. Down into a little ravine and up out of the little ravine. Trees, trees, trees. One extremely terrified deer charging away when Bella steps on a twig. Walk-walk-walk.

"Do you like cleaning ovens, or just like Hilary, or what?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Both of those!"

[self_composed]

"Okay, I'm stumped. What's to like about cleaning ovens?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"I think it's just one'a those things."