you can throw me if you want

[truthwright]

It turns out that there was really not much point to making a schedule. Kas and Helen visit the witch clan whenever Helen feels like it, and stay as long as she wants, and go when she wants to be somewhere else, and it all adds up to plenty more time spent with the clan than away.

After the aquarium jaunt with Ranata, it's a little more than a month before they visit the clan again.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"Wow!" says Shura. "I guess there weren't witches around then, huh?"

[carillons]

"Nope!" says Helen. "But there were dinosaurs and stuff!"

[alicornucopia]

"I think lots of dinosaurs were too big."

[carillons]

"No way," says Helen. "The biggest ones are the most fun! I saw a T. Rex skeleton once that was so huge it could've eaten me up in one bite!" She giggles.

[alicornucopia]

"I don't think getting eaten up in one bite would be very nice!" protests Shura.

[carillons]

"Nooooo. But it was still really cool to look at, since it wasn't alive and wasn't going to eat me."

[alicornucopia]

"I guess," allows Shura.

[carillons]

"It was! I loved it," she beams.

[alicornucopia]

"I still think they're too big. Some of them were very very big."

[carillons]

"Big things are cool," says Helen.

Kalavar perches on her shoulder and turns into a velociraptor, chicken-sized and feathery.

[alicornucopia]

"I like big trees," says Shura.

[carillons]

"Me too! They're fun to look at."

[alicornucopia]

"When we get older we can go get cloud-pines off of really, really big trees," says Shura.

[carillons]

"That'll be fun!"

[alicornucopia]

"And then we can flyyyyy!"

[carillons]

Helen giggles happily.

Over the coming months, she does her very best to be a little prodigy. She studies hard at magic, and seems to pick up dagger skills almost effortlessly. She still goes off away with Kas - on a trip to three different amusement parks, where she discovers that rollercoasters are more fun than cake - but the lost time doesn't seem to slow her down much. Her seventh birthday comes and goes; she celebrates by baking a cake and sharing it with Charlie and Ranata and Kas and Shura and anyone else who wants some, and then she goes off away again.

[truthwright]

This time, they wander across Canada. Now that Helen is a little older, Kas is letting her be by herself more, as long as he's nearby; he takes hotel rooms near libraries so she can go down the block and have lots of books to keep her company, or sits in the outside sections of restaurants while she plays in the park across the street.

[carillons]

On one of the latter occasions, Helen gets bored with the park and goes back across the street to collect her spinach so he can find her more fun things to do.

He is not there.

She frowns at the empty tables.

[alicornucopia]

There is no spinach here, except in the salad, but there are some witches.

"Are you lost?" one of them asks Helen.

[carillons]

"Not exactly," says Helen. "I know where I am, I just don't know where my daddy is." (She has learned that the 'mommy' and 'spinach' parts are best left out when talking to strange grown-ups, because they get terribly confused and it's a bother to untangle them.)

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, goodness," says the witch.

"Hmm," says the other. "What about your mommy?"

[carillons]

"I don't have one," says Helen.

[alicornucopia]

"What a pity," says the second witch.

"We're just about done here," says the first witch. "Why don't you come with us and we'll look after you while we find your daddy?"

[carillons]

Helen peers at the witches.

"Maybe," she says. "Can you find him? He should be close by. Maybe I should look in the bathroom first."

[alicornucopia]

"But he'd be in the men's room," says the first witch. "We can find him for you, you needn't worry."