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]

There is a total stranger who has done her no harm yet has not even introduced himself (or if he did it was overwritten with nonsense about laughing squirrels and accessorized owls) telling her things that are very hard to believe - and very unpleasant to believe, which makes it harder.

Rapunzel wants:

- To know the truth.
- If a princess, to be a princess - if that's safely possible.
- To be useful to more than two people with her power. If that's safely possible.

She has:

- An at least apparently helpful stranger who did definitely break his legs before he knew what her hair did and probably didn't engineer the entire situation.
- Three days without her mother home.
- Possible princess status.
- Contradictory biographical information, and background knowledge from books about the major historical events of Corona that has been definitely curated and possibly doctored by her mo-

Gothel.

She didn't like it when Rapunzel called her that even though it was never intended originally to impugn her maternal status. She told her to stop. She's her mother and ought to be called that.

But she's got a name, and it's - more neutral. Considering. If little-girl-Rapunzel who never imagined that her mother would lie to her considered it a reasonable term of address then she can use it now without feeling too terribly disloyal.

She has three days before Gothel comes back.

She can get out of the tower, she knows, it shouldn't be harder than lowering herself to the ground floor. Getting back will be harder, especially if her helper is no help, but, well, if she's caught out of the tower she could claim to have overbalanced leaning out the window innocently. She's clumsy enough to do it even if that particular accident hasn't happened before. Certainly she's just seen that her hair suffices to cover for damage from serious falls.

And if her helper is no help, he already knows where she lives and she certainly can't fight him off and for the time being he's not doing anything frightening, so it's probably best to play along until she can find Gothel again.

So - she can best get what she wants - if she goes with him and finds out as much as she can. Maybe he's right and she shouldn't feel a second's guilt about disobeying Gothel. Maybe he's wrong but well-meaning and she'll be home safe before Gothel is. Maybe he's lying and ill-intentioned and her docility will at least postpone a more open show of aggression, which is all she can reasonably hope for alone.

Rapunzel puts the new stacks of paper where they go in her closet, and starts packing. Blank pages and pencils and her piccolo (it's portable, if she's abandoned somewhere she can try busking or selling it) and there's really no hiding her hair is there - she had a snood for it when she was a child because it became large enough to trip on but not long enough to drag out of the way of her feet, but it was last used when there was only ten feet of the stuff. The fabric surely won't stretch for seventy. She's not going to be able to tuck it into a hood; it's been too long to braid even with Gothel helping since she was nine.

She'll want to pack food, too.

She hooks her hair to the ceiling and rappels down.

[hisowninvention]

"That looks like a fun way to get around," says Rolan.

[powershines]

"It's not bad." She starts opening cupboards, looking for anything that seems like it would tolerate being carried around for a couple of days and eaten raw. Bread, apples, nuts, dried tomatoes. She eats a muffin while she's at it. They won't survive much maltreatment but they're fresh and she had been going to eat the one she gave him.

"I've forgotten your name if you ever said it."

[hisowninvention]

"Rolan," he supplies. "Rolan Quick."

[powershines]

"I did know the lanterns were for a missing princess's birthday. But I asked Gothel what the princess's name was once and I think all she said was that it started with a C."

[hisowninvention]

"Claribel. Daughter of Queen Ranae of Corona and King Cearl whose country of origin I don't remember off the top of my head. Might be here, might not. He married in, anyway. Or did you know that stuff already?"

[powershines]

"I didn't."

[hisowninvention]

"Well, now you do."

[powershines]

"Fill up on muffins, I don't think they'll travel well," sighs Rapunzel. She takes another herself.

[hisowninvention]

"You're right, they don't. But they don't get much less tasty until they're pretty beat up; we could take some along as long as we make sure to eat them first. If we get full before we finish them all here." Nom nom.

[powershines]

"I guess." She gets another sheet of paper and folds little origami holders for the extra muffins.

[hisowninvention]

"Nice," says Rolan.

[powershines]

"I've picked up kind of a lot of indoor hobbies."

Eventually the muffins are all eaten or packed and so is some more miscellaneous food.

[hisowninvention]

"I'll bet," he says.

"Ready to go?"

[powershines]

"As I'll ever be."

She left her hair looped up on the top hook. She hauls herself back up. He's going to have to take the stairs.

[hisowninvention]

He takes the stairs pretty quickly.

[powershines]

And then Rapunzel sets up her hair for him to go down to the base of the tower on the outside.

[hisowninvention]

Down he goes! Her hair is much easier than freeclimbing that wall.

[powershines]

She hesitates, then -

Down she goes, too, bag over her shoulder.

[hisowninvention]

"If I had hair like that, I'd like climbing around even more than I already do."

[powershines]

"It's very cooperative. I don't think even if you could get normal hair this long that it would be as good for hauling things."

She looks up at her hair where it's still over the hook.

She could still go back up and call it off and leave him down here.

But she decided that wasn't the best choice and she had reasons.

She tugs her hair down. It falls in a cascade of gold to the grass.

"Lead the way."

[hisowninvention]

"Yep!" He sets off into the forest.

[powershines]

Rapunzel follows him, marveling quietly at the unfamiliar view of the scenery.

[hisowninvention]

"Pretty, isn't it?"

[powershines]

"Yes. It really is. Although I'll be much less keen if a wolf attacks us."