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]

"Yes. And they can't get into people's houses to eat their children, either. In fact, I only think I've ever heard of one bear so much as entering a village at all, and it didn't eat any children. An incredible amount of fruitcake, I'm told, but no children."

[powershines]

"Huh."

[hisowninvention]

"They were having a fair," he adds, "which is why there was so much fruitcake to be had in the first place."

[powershines]

"Did they have to run away from the bear to let it have the fruitcake so it wouldn't hurt them?"

[hisowninvention]

"Well, they kept out of its way, but I gather it didn't seem aggressive so much as hungry and confused. It had its fruitcake, took a nap, and then wandered back into the forest. Not that exciting, all in all."

[powershines]

"I don't think wolves are as omnivorous as bears though."

[hisowninvention]

"True. Like I said, they can be pests when it comes to sheep. But they don't even try to eat people unless they're already starving, and that's rare."

[powershines]

"Okay."

She's not sure she believes him, but she doesn't have the material to construct another probing argument.

[hisowninvention]

"I used to be pretty scared of the world, myself," he remarks. "But once I really got out there, I found out that even the scariest things weren't as scary as they used to seem. Maybe it's different for you, though. You don't seem like you'd enjoy living the way I do. I don't get to bake nearly as many muffins as I might if I settled down in one place with a reasonably honest job."

[powershines]

"I'm disinclined to spend my time stealing teacups, there is that. Even if it is socially acceptable to complain about it."

[hisowninvention]

"There's other things you could do. But I don't know if you'd like them more than you like staying in your tower designing berry bags for owls."

[powershines]

"I don't - accessorize owls."

[hisowninvention]

"I figured. But it's fun to imagine you do."

[powershines]

"Why are you imagining anything about what I do?"

She's still afraid - although less like she thinks he's going to physically attack her.

[hisowninvention]

He shrugs. "Well, you won't tell me what you do do, and I don't want to pry. So I think up something that I know isn't true, but that sounds funny, and then you aren't giving anything away if you disagree."

[powershines]

"Oh."

[hisowninvention]

"So that's why you're a flying forest hermit who talks to squirrels and accessorizes owls." He pauses consideringly, then adds, "That and also I'm very silly."

[powershines]

"I can see that."

[hisowninvention]

[powershines]

"Are you about ready to go? You really can't be here."

[hisowninvention]

"You keep saying that," he says. "I suppose there's no point asking why, hmm? All right."

He gets up and goes over to the window and leans out and looks down.

"...Are you sure you don't want a crown? Well, no, maybe I'll come up with some scheme or other to get it back where it came from."

[powershines]

"I couldn't explain where I got it. Leave it with someone honest who ever leaves their house, I guess."

[hisowninvention]

He flashes a smile at her over his shoulder. "Okay."

[powershines]

Rapunzel waves awkwardly.

[hisowninvention]

He waves back, quite cheerfully, and climbs out the window.

If she cares to, she can watch him climb down. It'll take a while. He's being very careful.