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Bella bikes to the airport on Friday. She gets a little reading done on her flight, then sleeps-on-purpose through the remainder of the trip, waking up precisely when the plane touches down. One nice bonus that she didn't even explicitly build into the power is that she can sleep at will in virtually any position; she doesn't have to get comfy if that's not convenient.
She steps off the plane, backpack full of her things over her shoulders, and stalks into the halls of LaGuardia, eyes peeled for Libby.
self_composed
prima-sequentem
"My previous reason for spying on you was to determine how dangerous you are," she says. "I don't have a new one."
self_composed
"See, that's even better than just telling me 'no'," Bella says. "Especially since you conspicuously didn't mention whether you have a reason to spy on my friend."
self_composed
"Only if you believe me, and I'm not sure you do. You've expressed a lack of confidence in my skill as a judge of character."
self_composed
"I get along with my friend swimmingly. I would not be friends with anyone who I expected to blow up the world," Bella reiterates.
self_composed
"Let's give my friend a code name and flip a coin to pick a gender, as this is tedious," Bella suggests. "How about Whistle. Bells and whistles, yes?" She digs a dime out of her purse. "Heads, Whistle is a guy - tails - All right then. Whistle's apparently a girl for this purpose. And she does have other characteristics besides being practically unlikely to blow up the world, you understand."
self_composed
"Her aversion to blowing up the world is not intrinsic," Bella says. "And I have reasons you don't, to trust it to stay put anyway. And it is out of the question to duplicate those reasons for you."
[I got tired of referring to you as a genderless nameless "my friend" to Libby, so I flipped a coin in front of her to pick an uninformative gender - you're a girl for this purpose - and named you "Whistle", as in "bells and whistles",] Bella informs Alice.
[I got tired of referring to you as a genderless nameless "my friend" to Libby, so I flipped a coin in front of her to pick an uninformative gender - you're a girl for this purpose - and named you "Whistle", as in "bells and whistles",] Bella informs Alice.
prima-sequentem
"I see. Those reasons being, what, the closeness of your friendship? Or some personal judgment of character that you don't think I'll trust? Because you don't think I'd understand it, or because it's flimsy?"
self_composed
[I thought you'd like that.]
"Trade you for how you came to believe stars dangerous," Bella suggests.
"Trade you for how you came to believe stars dangerous," Bella suggests.
prima-sequentem
"I trusted the person who told me so. Both to be telling the truth and to know what they were doing. Your turn."
self_composed
"That's not what I meant and you know it. But as a gesture of good faith: your guesses are wrong," Bella says testily.
self_composed
"I'm aware. I'll tell you what you missed - or at least, the accurate thing you missed - if you answer the question I actually want answered."
self_composed
"I don't necessarily need their identity, unless that's the only reason you believe them. I want your evidence. If I told you that you oughtn't use hexes on the nights of the full moon, because doing so would have unspecified bad consequences, you would want to know why I thought that."