Quoted By:
Yes, you have been grounded for four entire months. Four! A cruel and unusual punishment, completely out of proportion to anything you actually did. (Typical for members of the ignorant herd.) But at last, your sentence has been lightened, and you have been granted permission to attend the boring old ICEOVER... under the stipulation that you remain under your darling daddy's watchful eye the whole time.
Well, joke's on him! You have slipped free of your bonds, have worn your brightest red lipstick, and are jaunting along all by yourself. What's Daddy going to do, call Security on you— a legal adult, as of three weeks ago? "Officer! Officer! Claudia's going to throw a snowball at some ugly kid and make him cry!" See? It doesn't work. You're not worried in the slightest.
What you *are* is torn. Iceover is more tolerable than Godsday by a fair margin, given there's far less in the way of inappropriately candied foods, small children (who would freeze to death out here), people in swimsuits they have no business wearing, and seagulls. Still, you are a sworn [red]Wyrm-daughter,[/red] and although your precious booklet has been confiscated by the parental units, you are somewhere in the realm of 99% sure that the Wyrm does not approve of general merriment. Plus, they all look like idiots, doing all this silly singing and skating when the world's gearing up to end. Ha! They should be crying with their loved ones, but they waste it buying fatty, overpriced smoked meats!
It may be that you are gnawing unhappily at a leg of fatty, overpriced grebe. It may be that your strategic pocket fireworks and pointy rocks (for concealing inside snowballs) have so far gone unused. But it's not because you're cowed! Your faith is not shaken! You need only to wait for the correct—
CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP
—time? What is *that*? It's coming from your very own pocket. No. No, it couldn't be. Did Daddy have you *bugged*?
CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP
It's coming from your very own pocket, which you can't unpack without losing all of your important supplies. Gods! You are drawing looks! You tear off your mitten and feel blindly around inside your jacket, closing in on and drawing out a thing. A wind-up bird. You have never seen it before in your life.
CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP
There is no obvious way to shut it off except to stamp it to bits, and you make to do so. Except you don't. You can't. You have never seen the bird before, but you have seen it before. It seems extraordinarily important to you, the bird. Was it in your pocket for some reason?
CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP
...Did you put it in your pocket?
...For what purpose? It's right on the cusp of your understanding. You attempt several more times to toss it down, but your arm won't move. What an evil little device your daddy snuck into your— your— your daddy—
Your father is dead.
(3/4)
