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

[onerequest]

"Come home, darling. We'll talk about this and come up with something safe to do instead of - this."

[powershines]

"I'm..."

[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."