a book or maybe two or three

[powershines]

Mother is out getting Rapunzel more paper and ink, among other errands. Rapunzel is taking advantage of the privacy to do some indexing. Notebooks per se are usually hard to come by, so Rapunzel drills little holes in stacks of loose leaf, ties them together with twine, and rearranges pages as it suits her to do so every now and again. She has already done the day's chores and has dinner slow-roasting in the oven; she'll make the sauce when Mother's back with the herbs she wants for it.

She finishes rearranging last summer's leaves of paper by topic, ties them up, stacks them in her closet for reference, goes to lean on the windowsill, and contemplates what to do with the remaining hours before Mother returns.

The options - while the oven is spoken for, anyway - are mostly crafts (assorted) and music (her own voice, her guitar, her piccolo, and her xylophone). She has a lot of crafts, really. Mother understands that while Rapunzel doesn't mind being left alone she does mind being left with nothing to do. At this point Rapunzel is reasonably accomplished, at least according to her own aesthetics since she has no peers to compare against, at: rug-hooking and painting and interestingly layered-and-carved candles and embroidery and pottery and beading and knitting and sewing and other things she's come up with to do with the same materials. Half her books are patterns and recipes and sheet music. Most of the tower is space for her to work on projects, except for Mother's rooms and the family room and the kitchen on the bottom and Rapunzel's bedroom at the very top. She sits in a sling of her hair, hooks it at the ceiling over the empty center of the spiral staircase, and lowers herself down. She nearly enters the studio; contemplates the tub of clay and stops; reaches for her guitar where it's propped on the stairs within reach and stops. She does pick up a stray xylophone mallet and toss it towards the corresponding instrument, where it plunks out a middle C before clattering to the floor.

Maybe it's time to pick up another hobby. Mosaics? There's a collection of glazed, broken shards from past pottery projects and dishes that have fallen, maybe enough that she could chip them into smaller pieces and make something of them. She has plaster left. Or at least start an elaborate mixed-media - something.

That doesn't sound interesting either.

She winds up on the bottom floor in the family room where the stairs end. She sighs and picks up one of the ubiquitous combs and starts draping her hair over the furniture so she can get at it all. This is always something to do. It doesn't get remotely as tangled as it would if it weren't magic - it doesn't really tangle at all - but it still looks and behaves best when maintained, and there's a lot of it.

When she has brushed it all out, and gone back through her studios (via the stairs, since she pulled her hair down after her and can't climb it back up) to note what she's low on and should add to Mother's shopping list, and practiced the tricky part of that one sonatina on her piccolo until she manages it correctly all the way through one time, Mother comes home.

Rapunzel goes to the window, hooks her hair around the relevant protrusion, and heaves the rest of it over the edge. Mother hangs on, Rapunzel hauls her up. Regular hair would suffer some damage in the process - Rapunzel has looked at what Mother leaves on her own hairbrush, how easily it'll snap, how often it's split - but Rapunzel's is fine. Mother steps lightly into the room, Rapunzel gathers her hair in again. They hug. Mother sets down the day's shopping.

"I'll go make the sauce for the beef," says Rapunzel, when she identifies which bag has the herbs, and she slides to the ground floor on her hair again to get started.

And she serves dinner, and Mother tells her about her day, and wants to see what Rapunzel has been working on, and likes the piccolo piece but is less impressed by the morning's half-a-sampler. Mother sits down with some tea. Rapunzel hairs her way back upstairs to write, and is called down fifteen minutes later because Mother is feeling "run down".

Rapunzel gets her a comb and sits at her feet and sings. The whole tower brightens. Mother looks much better.

Rapunzel hugs her again, remembers to offer her the shopping list - she's low on white paint, which is a long trip to fetch, but she goes through a lot of it - and she goes upstairs again.

The next day Mother makes sure there's enough food in the house for Rapunzel for the next three days because she's going to get the paint. Rapunzel hugs her again, while they're on the by the window. "I love you very much, dear," Mother says.

"I love you more," recites Rapunzel, smiling a little.

"I love you most."

And off she goes, down to the lawn, letting go of Rapunzel's hair, saddling up the burro, riding into the forest that surrounds the tower.

Rapunzel hauls her hair back up and goes downstairs to make a batch of muffins or something and design a new pair of slippers for Mother, which she'll piece together later. Mother works very hard to keep her supplied and safe in their tower and Rapunzel appreciates it.

There's always something to do.

Comments

[hisowninvention]

"And I don't know where to start explaining, I've never had to before, everyone else either knows things already or doesn't want to talk about it. Usually both."

[powershines]

"And you're quite sure there aren't adequate books, so my options besides getting an explanation from you are waiting until I make female friends my own age, somehow, somewhere, or asking the king and queen."

[hisowninvention]

"If there are adequate books, I definitely don't know where to find them," he says. "Which means they're probably pretty hard to find. I don't know - I think some of the problem I am having coming up with an explanation is that I don't know how little you know and can't think of a way to find out that doesn't run a risk of you suddenly becoming extremely embarrassed or offended. And I don't even know how much of a risk, because I don't know what you know about what or how you feel about it if you do."

[powershines]

Rapunzel puts her hand on her face and sighs. "Okay, so now I'm aware that you are concerned about this and don't intend any ensuing embarrassment or offense, I'll let you know if you can skip something, does that give you enough leeway to start?"

[hisowninvention]

"...I can try, anyway. Okay... a lot of the reason why people who aren't married and might not even want children end up doing Things anyway is because they're really fun if everything's going right. The Things and most of the Related Activities involve parts of people that are, not coincidentally, supposed to be covered by clothing at all times in public. And most of them also need at least two people, but there are some Related Activities people can do by themselves."

[powershines]

At the last sentence Rapunzel goes bright pink.

"Okay," she manages.

[hisowninvention]

"See, I guessed that might happen," he says. "And now I think I can guess at one part of the explanation I can skip. Do you still want the rest? Do you know enough to start asking questions now?"

[powershines]

"I'm pretty sure I don't know anything you didn't tell me about - things and related activities - involving two or more are you serious - people except the thing where different genders are required for some reason."

[hisowninvention]

"'For some reason' is because men and women have different... relevant parts... and Things That Lead To Children are the two kinds of relevant parts interacting with each other. More than two people isn't usual, and it's not talked about much even compared to the rest of this subject, but it's possible."

[powershines]

...Rapunzel mostly looks puzzled.

[hisowninvention]

"...Women have a thing that things can go into, and men have a thing that can go into things, and when they go together in the obvious way, sometimes the woman gets pregnant. Is that a helpful elaboration?"

[powershines]

"...yes."

[hisowninvention]

"Okay. Anything left that you're confused about and want me to explain?"

[powershines]

"I suspect I can work out enough to be getting along with from yea much."

[hisowninvention]

"Okay."

[powershines]

"And for any given pair of a man and a woman people are going to expect that even if all you say is that I'm your 'friend'."

[hisowninvention]

"For any given pair of a man and a woman travelling together away from anyone else, or sharing a room at an inn - I can try to get us separate rooms if you prefer for that or any other reason, but the Duckling's small enough that they might not want to give us one each, in case someone else comes along and needs one - yeah, people will expect that. It'll be different when we get to Corona City; people might take 'friends' at face value, as long as we don't conspicuously mention travelling there alone together through the forest. But showing up at an out-of-the-way inn together just the two of us - they're going to make assumptions."

[powershines]

"Why are they going to do that? It doesn't seem obvious at all."

[hisowninvention]

"...It's... one of those socially complicated things. I suppose you don't have much experience with any socially complicated things that require a population of more than two. Hmm. I could say that it's - because people are supposed to only do Things with people they're married to, but they don't always follow the rules, people who are following the rules usually avoid doing anything that implies they might not be. Such as for example travelling alone together in the forest where no one else would be likely to see them if they did. So it's sort of assumed that if a man and a woman are obviously in a situation where they could be doing Things where no one would see them, they probably have, because otherwise they would have made sure not to look like they might be."

[powershines]

"That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to make sure you look like you're following rules on top of also actually following them."

[hisowninvention]

"I don't promise that it makes sense, but that's what happens. Silver teacup competitions don't make sense either, but they happen too, although not usually with exactly and only two people measuring their relative numbers of exactly and only silver teacups."

[powershines]

"I was assuming the teacups thing was an oversimplification of some kind."

[hisowninvention]

"Yeah."

[powershines]

"But nothing beyond some teasing and assuming we want to share a room will happen if they make this assumption at the inn."

[hisowninvention]

"Yeah."