mother knows best

[powershines]

Rapunzel doesn't sleep well, and she does wind up wrapped up in her hair overnight like a golden-cocooned butterfly. She's still dozing fitfully when the sun comes up.

Comments

[hisowninvention]

"You decided to go to the city," says Rolan. "And you think things through. We can just go."

[powershines]

"How did you know I just met him? How do you know he hasn't been visiting me while you're gone for months?"

[onerequest]

"Oh, darling, I think I would have noticed -"

[powershines]

"But maybe you wouldn't. How do you know? What makes you think his friends are dangerous? I slept in an inn where there were a lot of them all last night and nothing happened."

[onerequest]

"Darling, we've talked about what people are like, and the sort of bandit who'll climb up a tower in the middle of the woods to hide is mixed up with some people even worse than the norm -"

[powershines]

"But for all you knew he got lost looking for medicinal herbs the way you do and rock-climbs in his spare time, you don't know - everything you're saying is about what I know, and not about what you know -"

[onerequest]

"I'm making reasonable suppositions! Who's going to be out wandering through the woods going to tremendous effort to enter abandoned-looking buildings - or to meet shy girls who are leaning out the window, I suppose -"

[powershines]

"You read my -"

[onerequest]

"Rapunzel, I would never."

[powershines]

"Wouldn't you? Not even if you came home early and I was missing, you wouldn't? Not ever, even if you had no idea where I was and thought I'd been legitimately kidnapped, it wouldn't cross your mind to check."

[hisowninvention]

[powershines]

"If you thought someone might have literally bundled me up, dropped me out the window, and made off with me because they had no regard for my well-being, you wouldn't check?"

[onerequest]

"...All right, this once, I did peek just to make sure you thought you knew what you were doing -"

[powershines]

"Then drop the pretense, Mother."

[hisowninvention]

[onerequest]

"Fine. I was hoping to address this part in more congenial circumstances, but you are aware that 'you're a missing princess and one day you'll rule the whole country, come be welcomed as such, I'll help you escape from the evils of food and shelter and a loving mother because I think the royal family is so terribly nice even though I have literally just stolen a priceless sentimental object from them' is the most transparent foolishness of all time? You weren't convinced yourself. You were half-hoping I'd catch up and rescue you."

[hisowninvention]

[powershines]

Rapunzel looks at Rolan, suddenly smaller.

[hisowninvention]

"Everything I told you is still true," he says. "And you've learned plenty more since you left the tower. You said yourself, I couldn't have faked what I got from Vlad."

[onerequest]

"Convenient opportunism. Nothing more," sneers Gothel.

[powershines]

"So I just happen to look more like the queen than like you and he was taking advantage well in advance of having a way to prove that?"

[onerequest]

"Darling, I've never pretended we have a strong resemblance. You look like your father."

[powershines]

"Of whom there are no pictures."

[hisowninvention]

"All we have to do is go to the city, talk to some people or go straight to the king and queen, and you don't have to take my word or hers," says Rolan. "That's why you came in the first place, isn't it? To find out for sure, for yourself?"

[onerequest]

"Darling, the risk, the danger -"