man_of_all_work | (no subject)

"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."

"He really is ever so terribly dignified, you know," she says.

"But I'm quite sure that we'll be able to handle the squirrels. Unless they get hopelessly underfoot. In which case, well, I guess we'll trip."

"It's a good thing that there is plenty of snow to break our likely falls, then," Perry says, sensibly.

"Yes," says Amy. "And that we'll be there to help each other back up, because it can be hard to get up out of snow."

"Too true," Perry replies.

"Especially when there are terrorizing squirrels bent on getting you covered with snow."

"They really are quite incorrigible," says Amy, with a sigh.

Not that she's ever made much of an effort to, er, corrige, them.

"They tend to knock over teacups, too, I'm afraid."

Horrors!

"Now that," Perry says, after making sure no squirrels are around his teacup, "is a definite problem. We can't have that, can we?"

"They don't mean to," she says. "At least, I don't think they do. It just seems to happen."

She brightens.

"When I had tea with Ingress, Tom had put a charm on the teacups to keep them from spilling. Even Mr. Pemberthy didn't manage it."

And if ever tea were going to get spilled, it was at that one.

"I suppose if it become too much of a problem, I can ask him about it."

"he sounds a terribly useful fellow," Perry says, laughing.

"Well, there's one of the problems solved, there."

"Very useful," says Amy, quite serious for a moment, "and a good man."

She's not talking about teacups.

And then laughs, because Perry is laughing.

"Indeed. And are there other problems you think we should solve, Your Majesty? I'm sure between the two of us we could come up with some terribly creative solultions."

Reasonable, practical, or remotely feasible? Maybe, maybe not. But creative? Oh, yes.