it's not that there's nothing to do, it's that all of those things are boring

self_composed

Bella looks at him.

She pulls out her notebook and writes down the deferred question.

"Sure," she says, putting the notebook away.

edgeofyourseat

Alice sits down at the piano.

He is not, actually, that bad. If you'd never heard the piece before, and had no idea what it was supposed to sound like, and ignored the way he hesitates so obviously or laughs at himself whenever he misses a note, he'd probably sound reasonably competent.

self_composed

Bella listens critically. "It's possible you'd be better suited to jazz piano," she opines. "You're allowed to pretend you missed notes on purpose there."

edgeofyourseat

"Now that sounds more my style," he says, cheerfully.

self_composed

Bella reaches over and picks her way choppily through "Chopsticks", making mistakes on half the notes and correcting by ear. "There," she says. "That's what I know."

edgeofyourseat

Laughing, Alice applauds.

self_composed

"What else is there in this house?" Bella inquires. "Rooms. I bet you have rooms here. And," she adds, "an underground lair, and secret passages."

edgeofyourseat

"We have tons of rooms!" he vouchsafes. "I'll show you all of 'em except, like, my parents' bedrooms. I'll even show you the underground lair."

self_composed

Bella is amused.

"Yes, do let's see the lair. I'm very behind in my lairing."

edgeofyourseat

"Cool," he says, hauls himself up off the piano bench, and beckons her away.

The route to the underground lair, if such a lair indeed exists, is apparently quite circuitous and takes them through a number of other unreasonably pretty rooms.

self_composed

Bella keeps to a leisurely pace, looking at pretty things. She likes pretty things. She also doesn't think there's really a lair. "Who does the decorating? Is that one of your parents or a staff thing?"

edgeofyourseat

"Mom's in charge," he says, "but she makes other people do the boring stuff. Ooh, here we go."

He leads her through another archway and down a short corridor to a door, which he opens with a flourish.

On the other side is a set of stairs, going down. The space into which they descend is just as unreasonably pretty as the rest of the house.

self_composed

"Hm, this is a basement. I don't yet know if it's a lair," Bella says, going down the stairs and trailing her fingertips over the pretty wall. "You know, if you asked the part of my brain that generates stereotypes where you ought to live, it would have proposed next door to a gang hideout and across the street from someplace severely rent-controlled, but in its own way this works too."

edgeofyourseat

"Yeah, I don't act rich-kid, I know," Alice agrees, following her down and shutting the door behind them. "But I am, in fact, a rich kid."

The space is also quite large, once they reach the bottom of the stairs and step out into it properly. The ceiling is supported by a network of pillars and arches, some of which may be decorative, many of which probably aren't; the room is ballroom height at least, and quite possibly ballroom length and width as well.

self_composed

"You don't have a key," murmurs Bella. "Are you a rich kid or the kid of rich parents?"

She looks around appreciatively at the lair. "If there were some indoor sport which involved the strategic use of pillars, this place would be perfect for it."

edgeofyourseat

"We could make one up," he suggests brightly, apparently deciding the question was rhetorical.

self_composed

"No. No we could not. I'm rightly banned from all forms of moving around short of walking, and only may walk because I'd probably do more damage in a wheelchair."

edgeofyourseat

"I didn't say we could play it," he points out. "—Do you swim?"

self_composed

"I can dog-paddle well enough to not drown while I wait to be rescued," Bella says. "It turns out you cannot breathe water safely. General human failing." She looks around at the pillars. "I don't think I've ever invented a sport before."

edgeofyourseat

"Neither have I," says Alice. "Betcha it won't be boring, though."

self_composed

"Alrighty." She looks around again. "Two teams is standard. Who wants to be standard, I ask you. Three? Four? Five's probably unwieldy."

edgeofyourseat

Somewhere around 'I ask you', Alice grins.

"I like the way you think," he says, sitting down on the floor and leaning back against the very attractively-papered wall. "Three. Let's go with three."

self_composed

"And we can make them all the same size. Or not, but let's anyway, as if we deviate from all the standards no one will ever play and I will lose my opportunity to make a million dollars in speaking engagements as the inventor. Five to a team should be manageable. And the object is to get a ball, or two or three, to make a specific number of bounces off of pillars? Like pinball."

edgeofyourseat

"Brilliant," Alice pronounces. "Three teams, three balls, have to use another team's ball to score? And maybe you only get points for the number of bounces past what your team's already got, so it starts out easy and gets ridiculous."

self_composed