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Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison—er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.
And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and—
"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.
"I don't actually care if Armsmaster knows what I get up to, but I suppose that's not the whole of the problem. Oh well. I guess we should get back to lewdness."
And Bella shimmies out of her armor and is wearing the bracelet, which Renée thinks is beautiful; and there is chili and cornbread and chocolate raspberry cake with candles on it.
And Sadde is happy more people think it's beautiful! And chili and cornbread are tasty and cake is great and they sing 'Happy Birthday.'
And then cake is eaten! And Bella receives books from her dad and one book and some clothes from her mom.
And Sadde looks at the books to see if they can give him ideas for the next gift-giving occasion (i.e. Christmas).
Bella has received a kind of eclectic selection: a book on Eastern religions, something by Malcolm Gladwell, a Gilgamesh translation, and a sci-fi series four books long.
House Rules Risk. Apparently this is a family tradition. Considerable addenda have been made to standard Risk to account for management methods of held territories and the effects on your war effort. Bella explains this to Sadde while Charlie addresses dishes and Renée sets up the game.
Ooh! That sounds fun. Sadde has not actually ever played non-House Rules Risk before, so the whole thing will need to be explained, really.
Cool! So Sadde will learn and they'll play and it's terribly unlikely Sadde will win but he'll have fun anyway.
"Well, I'm sure I'd be terrible at regular Risk, too. Haven't had a whole lot of boardgame-playing in my life."
"Some people are really into board games, we're pretty low key, but House Rules Risk has been a my birthday thing for a few years now." She flops back in her chair. "Woo, only a year and a half till I'm an ex-Ward."
"At most! They might release you in a year to let someone else be Captain, you'll have been Captain for almost that long by then, it's a long time."