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

[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?"

[instar]

[pandion]

"Bella?"

[instar]

"I'm not omniscient, and using my first wish to become omniscient would have its own problems, but I am not made of cardboard, and therefore I can tell a difference between things that do and do not work when I look at them, and if I had the leverage I could make things that do not work more similar to things that do work. I don't think wanting to improve things is cute and I don't want to go into any more detail with someone who holds that impulse in contempt."

[aeskhyne]

Trouble sighs.

"I'm sorry I called it cute," he says. "Wanting to fix things is good. But when I ask you how you're gonna get it right and instead of talking about who you'll ask for advice and how you'll find out what you need to know, you get your back up about how you can get it all done by yourself, I don't start wanting to hand you a genie in a bottle."

[instar]

"If only I had guessed that my prize was a genie when I had the opportunity to collect such a prize. In practice I'm thinking medical research."

[aeskhyne]

"Probably safe," says Trouble.