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]

"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."

[self_composed]

Bella blinks.

"Is cleaning ovens a thing?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"...If by that you mean do I get off on it, yeah, kinda."

[self_composed]

"At some point I might need a complete list just so I do not have to be this stunned again," Bella informs him.

[edgeofyourseat]

"There is more stuff in the world that I could possibly do than I could ever actually do," he says, "and I don't know if most of it's gonna turn me on until I try it. I didn't know about cleaning ovens until this morning, by the way, I just thought it might be fun. And I was right! I was very right."

[self_composed]

"Ah-huh." Bella shakes her head slowly. "How about a list of things noted so far, and I can at least try to make some predictive models?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Sure. You want it right now?"

[self_composed]

"Write it down - and you could narrate it aloud as you go, too."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Okay," he says, and flips to a new page in his notebook. "Some of it's going to freak you out," he adds, although she probably knew that already.

[self_composed]

"Yes, I know, that's why I'd like to find out now instead of at some potentially inopportune moment."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Makes sense," he acknowledges. "Okay."