man_of_all_work | (no subject)

He looks at it.

"Not really," he says, cheerfully.

"Well," she says, straight-faced, more or less, "I would never have been able to tell."

The proper end of that sentence is probably "that it's meant to be a squirrel."

And then she laughs. "Maybe you should go back to paper?"

"Undoubtedly," he laughs, and tosses the wood aside.

"I was just trying to pass the time, anyway. So tell me, your Highness, has this day treated you rather better than the last time I saw you?"

"Much better," she says, firmly.

There were days after that one that treated her rather worse, really. But they're over and done and not to be dwelt on.

"I might even go so far as to say that this day is treating me quite well."

"I'm terribly glad to hear that," he says, smiling.

"Join me for a cup of tea, then?"

"Yes, please," she says.

"And what have you been doing with yourself these past few days, Perry?"

He pours her a cup, and passes it over.

"Oh, not a whole lot, really," he says. "I found the library and was reading, for a while. Mostly I've just been poking around the place."

Amy takes her tea with a smile.

"It amazes me, sometimes, how much of this place there is. I mean, there always seems to be something else on the list of things I haven't found yet, or even heard of. Anne and Gilbert and I found an apple tree once, which was lovely. I wonder, sometimes, if this place actually has ends, or if it just keeps slowly expanding."

"Now there's a question worth looking into."

Perry sips at his own tea, and looks out the window.

"Maybe it only gets bigger when it needs to. Or when someone needs to find an apple tree."

"I think the stables work that way," says Amy. "Getting bigger as more horses arrive."

He gets a smile that wrinkles up her nose. "Finding that tree was very important. Anne taught me to make pie with those apples. And that was the day I met her friend Gilbert."

"Apple pie," Perry says, seriously, "is always important."

He smiles back. He can't help it. That smile is infectious.

"Lucky Gilbert."

"Very important," she agrees, equally seriously. "Have you met Gilbert? He and Anne have been away from a while. But I'm sure they'll be back."

Her smile may get a bit brighter in response to his. The smiling thing appears to be self-sustaining.

"You and I should go look for something wildly improbable and see if the bar or the lake or whatever produces one for us."

"A marvelous idea," he says, nodding.

"What shall we look for? Not dragons, obviously, and not a lemon tree, either. What is something that we could very easily do without?"

Amy thinks for a moment.

"Well, depending on exactly how improbable we want to be, I'm tempted to suggest something like . . . long lost pirate treasure."

"That would be useful," Perry reminds her. "As it could help with our tabs."

Not that either of them needs much help.

"Any other ideas?"

Not so much, no. Sometimes it's nice to have the resourses of an entire kingdom at your disposal.

"It has to be improbable and not useful?" says Amy. "Goodness."

She thinks.

"Is there anything you'd like to look for?"

'The most improbable things are completely useless," he says, matter-of-factly.

"Or at least the ones we should look for are. It's more fun to search for something you want, rather than something you need, isn't it?"

But he thinks.

"If we're going outside, we could search for a spring, or a cave, or some sort of unlikely creature, although there seem to be rather a lot of those already here."

"I don't think I should like to meet anything that qualifies as an unlikely creature by Milliways standards," she says. "I don't suppose anyone has told you about the demon rabbits."

After a moment, she says, "We could look for a berry bramble. It's odd to realize that the one in the forest at home is still covered in blackberries, isn't it?"

Someone has told him. The mun, however, cannot remember who.

Oh, well.

"Perfect," he says, firmly. "A berry bramble it is, then, since we cannot get to the one at home."

"Agreed," she says, offering him her hand very solemnly.

"But not right now, because I've only just gotten my toes warm again."

"Let it never be said that I would allwa harm to come to your toes, your Highness," he says, shaking her hand just as solemnly.

"So not right now. But soon?"

"Yes," she says, smile wrinkling up her nose again, "soon. And we can take the squirrels and Peter Aurelious. Peter Aurelious is very good at finding things. He found the Christmas tree for our party."

"It was a remarkable tree," Perry notes, remembering.

"All right. Peter Aurelious and the squirrels can came. Do you think they'll behave themselves?"

Amy looks at him, a little incredulous, and then begins to giggle.

"Well, Peter Aurelious probably will," she says. "But Mr. Pemberthy and Simon Perryvall . . . "

More giggles.

Perry grins at her.

"I suppose that was rather a useless thing to ask," he admits.

"And it would be against Peter Aurelious' sense of dignity to misbehave."