[Let's do it,] he says happily.

His exact words to his mother are, "I'm gonna fuck off for a while, dunno when I'll be back, see you," while standing in the foyer with a backpack containing his favourite book and not much else. Since he never announces absences as short as a weekend, his mother correctly interprets this as meaning he will be gone at least several weeks, and hugs him. He hugs her back, walks out, and takes off as soon as he is out of sight.

Ultimately, Europe is reached! Bella flies around Ireland, doing touristy things and admiring scenery and puzzling out the accent.

Alice tags along, sometimes visibly and sometimes not, getting in manageable amounts of trouble and admiring scenery and enjoying the proximity of Bella being Bella.

Bella hits every country in Europe - why not? She can fly fast enough - and picks up languages as she goes. ("I was never anything special in Spanish class really, good but not great," she imagines saying, "but for some reason, put me in a country with native speakers and I can pick up anything...") She takes up a habit of sitting on top of high things. Like the Eiffel Tower. Or Mount Everest.

Alice takes up a habit of sitting on top of high things with her, just below her if he can get away with it, right beside her if he can't.

It's possible that Alice should be thinking about whether or not this means she is redefining their relationship somehow, and it's possible that if he were anyone else, he would be. But he is Alice, so he is thinking pretty much entirely about mountaintop makeouts and how much he loves Bella.

That is not really a big surprise.

Some time - some considerable amount of time - later, Bella breaks off, grins brilliantly, and shoots up into the sky. [Race you to Karachi!]

Laughing, Alice chases after her. With his person-compass trained on Bella, he can follow her by feel and watch the landscape sliding away underneath them while he does it.

Alice touches down on the same roof and curls up invisibly beside her conjured bed.

Is there room for Alice on the floor by her bed? He likes it best when that happens.

There is room for him under the bed. He'll get tripped on anywhere else.

Works for him!

Bella travels around Greece for three days, using a fair amount of standard transportation to do it. Then she takes a boat to Italy.

[Huh. I could wish it fixed but I don't know who's looking at the broken part, if anyone - could be obvious - I'll wait for the announcement, I guess, I'm sure there'll be one.]

The announcement, when it comes, cites engine failure of unknown cause, promises the attention of onboard mechanics to the problem, and apologizes most sincerely for the inconvenience to travelers. Alice isn't sure he believes it, at least not about the last part.

Bella starts wondering how long the wait is going to be. She consults her map; if they're within vaguely plausible hiking distance of a town she might just ask to get off here.

Barely plausible, yes.

Eenh. She'll wait for four hours and then seek someone to ask for disembarkment permission.

[Sweet dreams,] says Alice.

Bella goes to sleep, and manages to stay that way for about five hours, and then wakes up and looks out the window to see if they are moving.

[Do you have a reason to be in Florida?] Bella asks.

[To meet your mom?] he suggests. It's not like anyone other than Bella has a clue where he's been for three months. Might as well be Florida as anywhere.

[I suppose. I'll call her when we layover in Baltimore, but I don't imagine it'll bother her.]

[Awesome,] says Alice.

[Awesome!] says Alice.

[Holy shit, your mother is adorable.]

[Sure!] he says cheerfully. [Just tell me where to 'meet' you.]

[Okay,] says Alice. [Should I go find the place, or follow you there and be fake-late?]

[Pyrokinesis. I don't think I approve of it, if that's what you're asking.]

[I suppose if you're only going to set yourself on fire it's not a big deal. Just mind you aren't breathing normally at the time if it's more than a little burn - you don't want to pass out from smoke inhalation and catch on something and torch everything around you.]

[Well, of course,] Bella remarks dryly.

At a quarter past six, Bella and Renée pile in the car and drive to the seafood shack. It's a divey little place on the beach.

"Giant shrimp basket it is," he says, grinning.

"What do you do with your time?" Renée asks Alice. "You look a little older than Bella. Are you going to college in the fall too?"

"Ooh!" says Alice, perking up. "Is it fun?"

"It's very fiddly work!" laughs Renée. "But I'm enjoying it, yes, and my sewing machine got a nice dusting-off, and the quilt will be warm even if it isn't terribly pretty."

"Yeah, it takes a while to get to where it's actually any good. But you do get there!" [Can I brag about our dresses?]

"I know the feeling," Alice assures her. "But it pays off, I swear. You wouldn't believe the dresses I made us for the end-of-year dance."

"I really, really am," he says happily. "I just love making pretty things, you know?"

"Wonderland Designs," says Bella, gesturing and starting on her own food.

Alice giggles and starts devouring shrimp.

Dinner concludes pleasantly, and Renée asks Alice if he has somewhere else to be or if he'd like to come see the house.

"Nah, I'd love to!"

So they all go to Renée's house. "Are you from Forks originally, Alice?" Renée wants to know.

"Nope," he says. "I grew up in New York."

"Ooh, New York. I've been there just a couple of times, but isn't it a lovely city?"

"It's pretty great," he acknowledges, although the highlights he thinks of are probably not things he should tell Renée.

[Lying's unnecessary - just omit. "My parents were looking for someplace quiet and out of the way", like that. She won't pry, she'll move on.]

[Well, why did they pick Forks and not Kalamazoo?] Bella asks. [That reason, whatever it is, will be satisfactory, even if I didn't guess it right.]

He doesn't know that reason. And even just saying 'my parents' sounds like a fundamental misrepresentation of his life, to a degree that makes him uncomfortable.

[Then say you don't know; that's fine too,] soothes Bella.

He shrugs, which is probably close enough.

Renée, as promised, doesn't pry. "It's a dreary little town," she remarks. "Safe for children, it has that virtue - but I'm glad Bella's going off to school somewhere more interesting, even if going to Forks was up to her to begin with."

"It's so little and cute!" he says, laughing.

"It's just perfect for me and Phil," says Renée. "Even if he's out of it most of every year."

"It's adorable," says Alice. "I love it."

"I'm so glad," enthuses Renée. "Now, I was thinking I would try to talk Bella into playing checkers or something, but I bet we have a game for three in the closet if you'd like to pick something out." She gestures at the closet that contains the board games.

There are various standards - Monopoly and Connect Four and a few decks of cards and checkers and chess and parcheesi and Apples to Apples. "Hmm," Renée says, peering around him. "Perhaps we don't have anything good for three after all. Unless you know a good card game for that many."

"I don't know that many card games," says Alice. "What the hell is that one?" He points at Apples to Apples.

"That's also a card game, but not with normal cards," Renée says. "I suppose it could work with three, but it's really better with more... there are adjectives and nouns, and one person draws an adjective and the others play appropriate nouns and the person who played the adjective awards that card to whoever played the best noun."

"Ooh. Sounds fun," says Alice.

"Well, we can see if three can work," says Renée, fetching the box from the shelf and carrying it to the table. She deals out cards.

Alice takes a seat and a pile of nouns.

After considering the selection for a moment, Alice plays "Jodie Foster".

Alice offers "Plane Crashes". (His other cards were worse. At least this one's sort of horrifyingly funny.)

Bella blinks at these cards, and slowly picks up The Midwest. Renée claims her prize. Alice's turn!

His adjective is "Heartless".

Bella plays "Los Angeles", and Renée chooses "Deer Hunting".

Renée again! Hers is "Cute". Bella plays "A Tree House" out of her limited hand.

From the available options, Alice goes with "Boy Scouts".

Renée picks her daughter's card again, and then it's Bella's turn and she gets "Insulting". Renée doesn't have anything good and uses the turn to throw away "Black Velvet".

This is the perfect place to put "Cabbage".

How about "Al Pacino"?

"Funerals".

Alice wins again!

He cracks up and selects "My Body" as the winner.

Renée draws "Unforgettable", and Bella gives her "My Bank Account", laughing.

"Hot Lava", after some perusal of his hand.

...Man, Alice has no good cards for this one. He puts down "Surfing the Net" just to get it out of his hand.

Wine Tasting wins, then.

"I win," Bella says merrily, and she reads off all her cards, ascribing them to herself in turn. Renée applauds softly and starts putting away the game.

"That was awesome," Alice enthuses.

"It really does work better with more people," says Renée, "but yes, that was fun. Oh, it's late, I'm sure you want to go back to wherever you're staying, Alice. Do you want a ride?"

"Nah," he says, "thanks, I'm good." (And grins at Bella. He can't help it.)

The next day is beastly hot - Bella isn't bothered, but she can sure tell - and so Renée takes her bathing suit shopping, buys her a red and blue flowered bikini, and drags her along to the beach! They set up a big beach towel to sit on and a big beach umbrella to sit under and apply sunscreen.

Alice approves of this outing, although he does independently wonder whether invisibly flying to invisibly hover over the beach qualifies as creepy. It's not like he's watching anyone who doesn't know he's there.

[You're really pretty,] Alice asserts.

Alice wonders if his invisible self will remain really-invisible underwater, or if there will be an obvious Alice-shaped absence of water zooming around. Perhaps he should test it!

[If you copied mine, you won't show up in water,] Bella says. [But you can still make visible splashes and stuff.]

Bella meanwhile floats on the surface, letting waves bear her up and down. [I haven't been to many beaches before. I mean, besides freezing Pacific beaches near Forks.]

[I haven't been to any,] he says, grinning up at her. [This one's fun!]

Alice waves. It is somewhat easier to see things that are between you and the surface; Bella is a blurry silhouette. Also, he's using his compass again.

She waves back, and swims around pretty aimlessly. She pokes her head up periodically; she doesn't want a lifeguard trying to save her.

Alice pokes playfully at the ends of her hair floating in the water.

Bella's hair is braided; it'd only take a triangle to untangle it, but her mom would wonder. [That's not a bellpull,] she informs him, diving back down for more kisses.

Underwater snuggles: also pretty good!

Bella and Renée spend all day at the beach, in and out of the water, and eat boardwalk food for lunch. Then they head home. [Mom wants to know if you want to join us for dinner again. She's cooking; she's doing risotto. She's better at food than my dad but not as good as me.]

[Love to!] he says, predictably.

Renée is a little more thrown by the skirt than by the name, but she doesn't say anything about it and welcomes him into the house. Bella waves from the dinner table, with the hand that isn't spooning mushrooms and rice onto her plate.

"Hi," he says cheerfully when Renée lets him in; and, "Hi, Bella," when he comes to sit down at the table.

"Went to the beach, swam around," Bella says. "You?"

"Nope," says Alice. "I don't have family much of anywhere, actually. Ooh, this looks tasty!"

"No?" Renée asks, tilting her head, deerlike in puzzlement. "Oh, thank you, risotto's one of a handful of things that I can sometimes turn out nicely..."

[Nostalgic how?]

[It's not really the same thing - spontaneous generation supposes that maggots just happen by themselves when meat is left around, and so on. People didn't catch flies laying eggs until later. Still, my curiosity has to have come from some combination of genetic and environmental factors - it's not like I have an immaterial soul or something.] Pause. [You don't believe in immaterial souls or anything, do you?]

[I don't not believe in them,] he says.

[What's that supposed to mean?]

[It means how the fuck should I know?]

[Right, but I mean, you have no personal interactions with the surface of Pluto either. Do you think it has pandas on it?]

[You have no idea how tempted I am to wish for pandas on Pluto right now,] he says, although it wouldn't exactly be hard for her to find out.

[The pandas would die, Alice. But you still think you'd have to wish for it, right? They are not there yet.]

[Not if they were magic pandas! But that's kind of my point,] he says. [I don't know that nobody else has wished for pandas on Pluto, and you don't either. The only way to actually find out would be to take a look at Pluto and check. If magic didn't exist I'd say there'd be no way a panda could've gotten to Pluto, but it does, so literally anything we can think of is possible because if we can think of it then so can somebody else and they might have a star.]

[...Are you saying the only reason you don't not believe in immortal souls is because it seems like the kind of thing somebody might have wished for?]

[Yeah, basically,] he agrees. [I mean, they might exist because of magic for some other reason I haven't thought of because I don't really care that much. Maybe they're what coins are made of.]

[Okay, fair enough. But why would coins be made of souls?]

No, Renée has been making intermittent remarks about a television show she picked up in the middle and does not understand. She expects no participation from either.

Okay, cool.

"Dunno," he says. "What kinds are there?"

"Let's see... lime, blue raspberry, cherry, orange, and lemon," Renée says. "And grape." She tosses Bella a wrapped purple popsicle and Bella unwraps it.

"Lime!" he decides.

He gets a green one. Renée takes a red one. Soon they are all enjoying some popsicles, which are pleasant in the heat.

Bella sighs, very quietly.

[...What? C'mon, like you've never thought that. Doesn't everybody?]

"Yeah," Alice agrees, and gives Bella that unrepentantly adoring grin of his.

"That sounds fun!" says Alice.

"Me too," says Alice.

And so: they go watch Johnny Depp be a chocolate-manufacturing manchild and various odious children meet cartoonishly grisly fates.

[Roald Dahl,] Bella supplies. [He wrote kids' books. Ostensibly. They're worth reading and my copies should be here, since I didn't bring them to Forks; wanna borrow some?]

[Love to!]

"If they're all like that movie, I am gonna fucking love 'em," he asserts.

"Of these, Danny is least similar," Bella shrugs. "But I liked it. I wasn't born reading Austen and Shakespeare and stuff."

"Weren't you?" he teases.

"Nope," Bella says. "Turns out they don't give newborn babies books no matter how pleadingly they ask."

...The mental image of tiny baby Bella waving her arms and imperiously babbling for books is just the cutest thing.

Bella laughs. "My mom's probably going to insinuate that you must be wanted wherever you're staying in a few minutes. Have fun with the books."

"I will," he says, hugging them.

Renée does shoo him, and Bella goes to bed.

[I just read Matilda and now I really really want a hug,] he says, hovering with his hand on the wall.

Bella opens the window, and steps back and holds out her arms, and reads for more detail.

Bella hugs his head, since that's what's near enough, and pets his hair. [Matilda's father doesn't die in the book. Why would yours have if you'd read it earlier?]

Bella goes on petting him. [You'd most likely have gotten caught. At thirteen, with no magic to cover anything up - you'd still be in juvie, maybe transferred to a regular prison by now.]

Pet, pet, pet.

[I love you,] he adds. He really really does. She doesn't have to do this; he could just go off and be sad and conflicted and generally emotional by himself. But she's helping, and he loves her.

Bella leans down to kiss the top of his head. [It's not like I've got anything to do in the morning.]

He presses his face into her stomach and loves her some more.

Bella stands there, petting and reading and waiting in silence.

Bella contemplates this - that would certainly be awkward to explain to Renée, who is as likely as not to poke her head into the room at seven in the morning and offer waffles. Finally Bella triangles the alarm clock into setting itself to go off quietly at six-thirty - she's too tired to figure out the controls - and pulls him into the guest bed with her. [You'll have to skedaddle first thing in the morning.]

Alice is still sleeping, curled up around her, dreaming about flying on silver wings.

She prods him in the ribs. [Alice, sorry to interrupt, but my mom will wake up any minute. She keeps school-ish hours even in summertime.]

[Maybe. Can Charlie come?]

[Are you planning to actually call us?] Bella asks archly. [We don't want to be known to be telepathic.]

Bella picks up her cell, in full view of Charlie. "Alice! Hi. What's up?"

"Pie," says Alice. "Pie is up. Wanna come have some? Your dad's invited too."

"Soonish? The pie'll be done in like half an hour."

Bella hugs him first. It is a friendly-hug, but still a hug. [Charlie now knows that we are maybe-sorta-dating-or-something-it's-complicated,] she tells Alice.

[Okay,] Alice says cheerfully, and idly wonders if this will result in Charlie threatening him with violence.

Well, it doesn't immediately, anyway. Charlie comes in and greets Hilary and sniffs the air. "What kind of pie?" Bella asks.

"That sounds divine," Bella sighs, and Charlie nods in agreement.

"Smells even better," Alice says happily, and indeed it does.

"So did you enjoy Europe, too?" Charlie asks Alice, slowly.

"I was happy to see him," Bella says contently.

"You do!" Hilary confirms.

After pie has been consumed, Charlie wishes to go put in a half-day at work. On his way out, he catches Alice's eye. Too quietly for anyone else to hear, he says, "As long as Bella's happy, so'm I. You make her unhappy, and you will be too. Clear?"

"Yep," says Alice. And does not point out that Bella being unhappy is itself worse than any threat Charlie could possibly make, except maybe breaking his dad out of prison.

[He doesn't know that you have magic powers - or at least has no details,] Bella says. [The fact that he can't really do anything to you isn't something that occurred to him. I think what you're supposed to do if you fall out of love with me - according to him - is let me down easy.]

[No, he wouldn't shoot you. More like watch you and be sure to catch you if you do something illegal. I know you don't drive, at the moment, but if a cop wants to pull a driver over, they have to follow the average person for two minutes before a genuine traffic violation will appear. There are probably similar things in other domains. He might look into the prostitution accusation,] she adds thoughtfully. [If he were really pissed off.]

Pause.

[I'm not going to tell you my plan for what happens if you go rogue.]

[You're gonna set off the smoke alarm,] Bella says faintly.

[Tomorrow morning,] Bella says. Still vaguely faint. [Mmm-hm.]

[You could wish those back too, if you want,] Bella points out.

[Interesting. Well, you can always change your mind, whatever you decide now - since magic is awesome.]

[It is,] he agrees, leaning against the shower wall and humming to himself.

[So you can make stars. Even without... help. I should start thinking of ways to learn about what the matter with them is supposed to be,] muses Bella.

[If there's a level of pain that makes you say you wouldn't wanna do it all the time, should I install a ceiling after all?] Bella asks. [I haven't wished up the power yet.]

[Nope,] he says happily. [It's like—you liked that maple-caramel-coconut-butter cake we made, but you wouldn't wanna live on it, right?]

[Fair enough, but if that's all you meant I'm not sure why you mentioned it. Seems to go without saying.]

[Oh. I wouldn't mind having desserts as nice as that cake on a daily basis.]

[So I guess it was a bad example,] he says, amused.

[You were looking,] he says. [How much did you get?]

[It was a very very large lightning-bolt symbol,] Bella says.

He laughs. [Yeah, I'll bet. But I mean—how much it hurt and what it was like to hurt that much are two different things.]

[What do you mean?]

[It was surrounded in its affect-gray, and there were some verbal tracks - mostly in my color or the magic's, not yours, so I guess you weren't really generating words - and there was the emotion-blob. I could open the emotion-blob,] she suggests.

[My name, a few times, tagged with footnotes I didn't open and surrounded in a very lovely pale affect-gray. Stuff about the quality and location of the pain - that it was fire or that the water was interacting with it in various ways, like that.]

[I think, like, enlightened Buddhist monks are supposed to be able to induce that state. Only that's about not-experiencing things more than it is about experiencing things. Also it takes them a long time to figure out how to do it.]

[Looks like I found a shortcut. Maybe not, though, 'cause that was definitely about experiencing things.]

[Yeah, I think you just did it backwards,] Bella says. [Dang. I might feedback-loop on that, tomorrow morning.]

[Oooh, fun,] Alice says happily, snuggling into a towel.