the graceless

[instar]

Bella sits out, this year as every year, from gym class. It's just asking for a lawsuit. She does stretches and crunches and push-ups in the corner.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

"Guess we'll find out," says Trouble.

[instar]

"You're gonna try and skip the salad, huh?"

[aeskhyne]

"Course I will."

[instar]

"Were you going to do that before we mentioned that it might be a dessert prerequisite?"

[aeskhyne]

"Who knows?" says Trouble.

[instar]

"You, I'd hope. That's why I'm asking."

[pandion]

"Come on, Bella, sometimes people just do stuff without X-raying their brains to find out why."

[aeskhyne]

He shrugs. "I didn't even know there was going to be salad before, how would I have known I was gonna skip it?"

[pandion]

"There's always salad," groans Andi.

[instar]

Bella reflects on the conversation. "But you didn't know that," she acknowledges.

[aeskhyne]

"Yep," says Trouble. "So who knows if I would've skipped it anyway? Not me."

[pandion]

"If it was her Bella would know. She knows what she'd do if she got three wishes and what she'd do if she could fly and what she'd do if she won the lottery even though she thinks buying tickets for it is stupid."

[aeskhyne]

"What would you do if you got three wishes?"

[instar]

"It depends on how the wishes work, obviously. Some genies are highly untrustworthy."

[aeskhyne]

Trouble giggles.

"Okay, what would you do with three nice wishes?"

[instar]

"Still depends on how much I can fit into a single wish. It probably can't be an arbitrary number of things connected by 'and', or I wouldn't need three."

[pandion]

"She has this all written down somewhere. I think there's a flowchart," says Andi in a stage whisper.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble cracks up.

[instar]

"But the short version is, insofar as I was able, I'd fix the world," says Bella, spreading her hands.

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah? Which parts?"

[instar]

"All of the parts."

[aeskhyne]

He rolls his eyes. "So what, you're gonna blow it up?"

[instar]

"That is not what the word fix means."

[pandion]

"Curing diseases, feeding starving children, she has this one really good rant about the educational system, stopping natural disasters, name any thing that is and she wants to replace it with a version that quote-actually-works-end-quote."

[aeskhyne]

"Cute," says Trouble. "So how do you know what actually works?"