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

[powershines]

Rapunzel is alarmed - she could throw him her hair but it's mostly downstairs - she hauls on it but he's on the ground before she can even see the ends.

[hisowninvention]

The sound he makes when he hits the ground is audible all the way up in the tower, and it's not pleasant.

He doesn't scream or anything - he cries, but very quietly. She won't hear it and she might not even be able to tell by looking, from that high up. What is visually obvious is the fact that both his legs are bent in ways human limbs do not normally bend.

[powershines]

Rapunzel keeps hauling on her hair until she has it all.

She throws it onto him.

"Hold still," she hollers, and then she sings, very very quietly.

As soon as she's uttered the last note she starts hauling her hair up again.

[hisowninvention]

It takes him a minute to catch his breath.

Then he yells up to her, "...Thank you...???"

[powershines]

"You're welcome don't tell anyone please," she says, hair halfway up.

[hisowninvention]

"...Are you secretly a vanished princess??"

[powershines]

"What? No."

[hisowninvention]

It's kind of inconvenient to have this conversation by yelling up at the tower window, but it seems important, especially if she doesn't know - and that sounded like she didn't, not like she did and was hiding it.

"When she was pregnant! The queen got sick! And someone brought her a magic flower! A glowing! Golden! Magic flower! And she ate it and got better and had the princess! And the princess was born really blonde! And she'd be about your age!"

[powershines]

"My birthday is in the summer and my name is Rapunzel and I have a mom!"

[hisowninvention]

"People steal babies sometimes!"

[powershines]

[hisowninvention]

He pauses to catch his breath again, then adds, "King Cearl and Queen Ranae are really upset about losing their daughter! The queen still cries about it, it's really sad!"

[powershines]

"I'm a forest hermit because if I leave people are going to kidnap me and abuse my hair! You could be making this up!"

[hisowninvention]

"Does your mom use your hair? Do you have any way of telling if she's been making things up?"

[powershines]

"Of course she uses it! I use my hair when I get hurt too - I'd let everybody do it if I could trust anyone! She's raised me my entire life!"

[hisowninvention]

"Raising you your entire life doesn't mean someone's not lying to you! Believe me, I know!"

[powershines]

"It's better credentials than breaking into my bedroom half an hour ago with something you stole from the king and queen who you're so concerned about now!"

[hisowninvention]

He throws up his hands. "Fine! Stay in your tower, magic glowing flower girl! Just tell me, if you'd let everybody use your hair, what are you afraid of somebody doing—keeping it all to themselves?"

[powershines]

"I'm afraid of being tied up and force-fed so I don't escape while half-willing soldiers are marched past my hair twenty-four hours a day to keep wars going longer and cheaper and for less reason! I'm afraid of being a bargaining chip in international politics with no say in the matter! I'm afraid someone will chop it off my head and it will stop working and then no one will get to use it at all and one day I'll die! It doesn't sound from your description like the queen's really responsible with healing magic if she ate that flower instead of going to visit it!"

[hisowninvention]

"The queen was too sick to get out of bed! People went and got the flower for her because they like her and they didn't want her to die and leave the kingdom without an heir which by the way it has been for eighteen years anyway! Here's an idea, wait until she's about to die again and then come flouncing into the capital, no one's going to use you as a bargaining chip when they're busy making you fucking Queen! That was a sarcastic suggestion in case you can't tell with all the yelling! It'd work but it'd be a pretty awful thing to do to her!"

[powershines]

"Are you angry at me?" exclaims Rapunzel.

[hisowninvention]

"I'm frustrated because you won't see what's in front of you and you remind me of me when I was a little kid! I grew up in an orphanage! They were pretty awful! They told us we'd be worse off anywhere else and I believed them until I ran away and figured out it was much better out here! Maybe you'd think the same thing and maybe you wouldn't but you're never going to find out for sure from in there! And all this yelling is hard on my voice!" he yells.

[powershines]

"I'll haul you back up just to talk if you promise not to kidnap me or do anything to my hair or - anything! If you want!"

[hisowninvention]

"I promise not to kidnap you or do anything to your hair, and I'll come up if you promise to send me back down with it when we're done so I don't fall and break my legs again! Once was enough for the day!"

[powershines]

Rapunzel flings him her hair and wraps the high end around the hook so he doesn't overbalance her. "Hold on, you're heavier than Mother," she calls.