the circle

[instar]

Trouble and Charlie fly to Las Vegas to get their collections of drunks. Ax, newly empigeoned, and Ethan loosely follow Renée's car back to Phoenix, so that Ax will not be stranded in an unfamiliar city obliged to demorph into Andalite form with no garage to hide in.

Renée makes a very large grocery trip. Ax deems alfalfa hay intended for consumption by guinea pigs and rabbits to be the hoof-eating equivalent of palatable; it also turns out he can eat a few other things, like carrot tops and turnip greens. He still doesn't like living in the garage, even though it's a different one. Andi finds him a little planetarium gadget that throws star-patterns onto the ceiling.

Renée installs a cot in the basement for Charlie. (His generic human morph is a man about ten years younger than him, plausibly Latino but just as plausibly not, plain and unremarkable. He also picks up a Renée morph. He will be able to drive the girls places, publicly know their names. They can tell he appreciates the opportunity, however weird it is.) Trouble is allowed to sleep on the couch, when Renée learns that he would prefer not to share the basement with Charlie.

Bella sews weights onto all the curtain hems so they won't be easily nudged aside.

The twins also collect generic-human-morphs. Both of theirs are college-age women, samples collected from going on premature college tours and shaking a lot of hands - Bella's looks maybe half Asian when she's done tweaking it, Andi winds up with a complexion much like her usual one but a surprisingly Hawaiian set of features.

Renée never asks to be enabled to morph. Bella eventually offers, "for emergencies", and Renée aggregates a number of her co-workers into the most stereotypical teacher-lady it is possible to Frolis into without requiring vision correction.

Renée makes the arrangements well in advance to homeschool the twins.

Bella quizzes Ax about all sorts of things, for large parts of each day.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

He waits for a a while, to make sure, and then tucks himself into a corner of the roof for the night.

[megale]

If she sneaks out of the apartment building to disgorge a brainslug during the night, she does not do so in a way that disturbs Trouble!

[aeskhyne]

There is no good reason for her to do it in the middle of the night.

(Which doesn't mean he doesn't wake up three or four times to check that she's still sleeping.)

[megale]

She is still sleeping.

[aeskhyne]

Yeah, he figured.

[megale]

The next day, should he watch her consistently enough to find out, Rhea:

- Talks on the phone some more.
- Goes to the pool (the regular, chlorinated, swimming pool) with two of her friends. Looks very nice in a bikini.
- Buys a new (to her) pair of jeans at the thrift store; dithers over but does not get the cute shoes.
- Gets about a third of the way through her second summer reading book ("The Great Gatsby").
- Appears for her brief shift at the paintball place, renting out equipment.
- Goes out with her parents to dinner at Burger King, where they eat burgers and fries and she is able to wheedle them into getting her a milkshake.

[aeskhyne]

He watches her extremely consistently. If he didn't he'd just have to do this all over again.

[megale]

And in the evening she goes to bed. Well, to hammock.

[aeskhyne]

He owls his way to the Swans' place to leave Bella a note explaining that he was out all day, because otherwise she'll worry. It's nothing he hasn't done before.

Then he returns to watching Rhea.

[megale]

Rhea sleeps. In the morning, after seeing her parents off to work and adding an empty bowl of cornflakes to her dish graveyard, she, er. Might want some privacy, which she thinks she has.

[aeskhyne]

He doesn't watch her do that, either.

[megale]

Later, she meets friends at the movie theater. They see Pirates of the Caribbean and come out arguing about whether Will Turner or Jack Sparrow is cuter. (Rhea's on the latter team.)

They get lunch, then split up, and Rhea takes the remaining free tortilla chips and goes to the park.

[aeskhyne]

Her chatty pigeon buddy is there! Coo coo.

[megale]

Rhea feeds him and all the other pigeons, who have mostly forgiven her for the earlier lunge-and-capture.

[aeskhyne]

Her tortilla chips are tasty. She is very forgiven.

[megale]

She talks about the movie (she liked it) and about how she would like more shifts at the paintball place for the extra cash but she likes having free time too and about how her parents aren't that bad really but she cannot keep track of Mom's work schedule and about how they are out of Fudgesicles.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble coos a lot.

[megale]

She runs out of chips. She goes home. She reads three pages and then dances to her music instead.

[aeskhyne]

She is really great. And totally not a Controller. But he's going to check anyway.

[megale]

That evening she has a paintball game. Her team wins! She gets paint on her anyway and has to take a shower.

[aeskhyne]

Showering is among the things Trouble does not watch her do.

[megale]

Perhaps she would appreciate that if she had any idea she was being followed.

Next up: dinner. The family gets pizza. She apparently likes Hawaiian.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble feels unreasonably affectionate about her inconsequential preferences!

Awww, he liiiiiikes her. He's so pleased. He will be her talking pigeon friend and she will probably freak out and hide and then he'll be sad! But maybe not.

[megale]

Who knows?

Not Rhea. She does not even know that talking pigeon friends are a possibility.

She watches TV with her parents for half an hour after pizza, and then she plays video games until her desk lamp burns out, and then she changes the lightbulb and goes to hammock.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble leaves another note on Bella's couch, assuring her that he has survived another day, and then he goes to sleep on Rhea's roof and checks once or twice in the night to make sure she is still in hammock.