Apparently it's nostalgia week
Yesterday evening I programmed a new version of the character questions game, which I haven't played in forever (and wasn't actually all that interested in playing, once I had the program running. But the programming was fun). And I wrote this:
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They made it through the ice cream shop without running into Chessie and Adrian, which was a hazard Lucian hadn't thought of until they were in line, waiting for a rainbow bubblegum cone and a dish of plain vanilla. Shirly wrote on a napkin, sideways, holding her multicolored ice cream in her other hand and pausing for occasional licks.
You'll leave þe necklace somewhere so we can talk later, right?
Lucian sighed. He wasn't exactly thrilled about the idea of abandoning the Professor's protection charm, even if Charles found it worthy of mockery. It was something. "I don't know." There wasn't any good place to talk -- he wasn't about to introduce Shirly to any of his friends, and it wasn't as if he'd checked their places for electronic bugs. So take off the necklace for an hour and tell the girl why everything she wants to do is a bad idea. Not that she'd showed any sign of listening to him so far. "Will you pay any attention to me if I do?"
"Of course!" she said, sounding wounded. "I always pay attention to my sources." She licked a long drip of deep blue ice cream off the back of her hand, up to the top of the cone. Lucian tried not to notice.
"And will you leave afterwards?" Throwing this child back into the world was like asking for her to get in more trouble -- but his position with the government was precarious enough without a underage conspiracy theorist sleeping on his couch. "Will you go home?"
"I can't go home," she said. "You're the one who's going on about how dangerous the vampires are. I'm not exposing my parents to that."
Lucian closed his eyes. "I did not say they're exactly dangerous. I said they want to be left alone."
"You did so say they're dangerous."
"Would you kick a hornet's nest?"
"No, I'm not stupid."
"They're like hornets. If you bother them, they will hurt you."
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Perhaps I'll actually get around to finishing this thing one of these days.
In other things, I have math to do, the weather is lovely when it's not being weirdly too hot, et cetera.
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They made it through the ice cream shop without running into Chessie and Adrian, which was a hazard Lucian hadn't thought of until they were in line, waiting for a rainbow bubblegum cone and a dish of plain vanilla. Shirly wrote on a napkin, sideways, holding her multicolored ice cream in her other hand and pausing for occasional licks.
You'll leave þe necklace somewhere so we can talk later, right?
Lucian sighed. He wasn't exactly thrilled about the idea of abandoning the Professor's protection charm, even if Charles found it worthy of mockery. It was something. "I don't know." There wasn't any good place to talk -- he wasn't about to introduce Shirly to any of his friends, and it wasn't as if he'd checked their places for electronic bugs. So take off the necklace for an hour and tell the girl why everything she wants to do is a bad idea. Not that she'd showed any sign of listening to him so far. "Will you pay any attention to me if I do?"
"Of course!" she said, sounding wounded. "I always pay attention to my sources." She licked a long drip of deep blue ice cream off the back of her hand, up to the top of the cone. Lucian tried not to notice.
"And will you leave afterwards?" Throwing this child back into the world was like asking for her to get in more trouble -- but his position with the government was precarious enough without a underage conspiracy theorist sleeping on his couch. "Will you go home?"
"I can't go home," she said. "You're the one who's going on about how dangerous the vampires are. I'm not exposing my parents to that."
Lucian closed his eyes. "I did not say they're exactly dangerous. I said they want to be left alone."
"You did so say they're dangerous."
"Would you kick a hornet's nest?"
"No, I'm not stupid."
"They're like hornets. If you bother them, they will hurt you."
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Perhaps I'll actually get around to finishing this thing one of these days.
In other things, I have math to do, the weather is lovely when it's not being weirdly too hot, et cetera.