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Time goes by. Trouble keeps right on bringing desserts (and once a quiche and once a loaf of bread with nuts in it). The Swans are uncomplaining. On Christmas Eve he brings two kinds of cookies and an astonishingly edible fruitcake and stays overnight on the couch. (Andi, self-servingly, got him a little box of assorted Genuine Maple Products. Bella got him an inexpensive yet adorable miniature sewing machine.) Robin comes over too, Christmas day (Andi gives her a packet of guitar strings and sheet music for assorted Green Day songs. Bella gets her a tiny tape recorder.)
School is back in session in January, after New Year's. (The twins set off small fireworks in the driveway - well, Andi does. Robin is invited to this event; Trouble is not, it somehow does not seem wise.)
Now it is the first weekend after the resumption of school.
Robin's supposed to be over any minute for practice for Nameless Band Which Kind Of Needs A Third Person But Bella Doesn't Want To. Andi taps out beats on her drums. Taptaptap. Taptaptap-kish. Taptaptap. Taptaptapkish.
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"Hi guys! You are here just in time, Bella is saucing the pasta. Come on in."
Bella is indeed saucing the pasta. She serves herself a plateful and passes the utensil to Trouble next. "So, Ethan, will the fascinating thing make sense to Trouble without context, or should I go get my notes and start from the beginning?"
Bella goes and gets her notes.
"Robin," she says, "while not sleep-deprived, high, recently thwacked upside the head, or otherwise obviously compromised in her ability to make cogent observations, saw what we think is an alien -" She flips through the stack of obfuscating doodles, produces the alien - "artist's rendering, police sketch style - chase after and vaporize a guy after the guy and then the alien exited said used bookstore. Which is apparently operated by a member of the Sharing, fuck that's creepy."
"Robin," she says, "while not sleep-deprived, high, recently thwacked upside the head, or otherwise obviously compromised in her ability to make cogent observations, saw what we think is an alien -" She flips through the stack of obfuscating doodles, produces the alien - "artist's rendering, police sketch style - chase after and vaporize a guy after the guy and then the alien exited said used bookstore. Which is apparently operated by a member of the Sharing, fuck that's creepy."
"Yes." Bella lets him have a good long stare at the alien, then tucks it between the eight-legged bird and the fairy. "Do you want me to reconstruct the reasoning that led to 'aliens' and whatnot?"
Bella reconstructs said reasoning. "Other options," she concludes, "are not off the table, but alien seems most likely."
"So this could be a coincidence, but does this look to the rest of you like the Sharing might be alien-oriented in some way?"
"Not necessarily. Especially if you mean that as a specific guess and not a class of hypotheses."
