"Am I invited too?" inquires Rolan.

Rolan comes along. He's certainly getting to know the place.

"I think you'll like the food," guesses Cearl, serving himself a fried egg.

"Good morning," says Rolan. He sits; he forages.

Rapunzel watches everyone take food and imitates them tentatively. She takes an egg and some bread and some fruit and a sausage and then proceeds to be very self-conscious about her table manners until she has watched her mother eat some of all of those things.

"It's good," agrees Rapunzel.

"Torea's a treasure."

"I'm seeing that. I should make friends," he says.

"Rapunzel, anything you want and don't have besides the things that are in the tower?"

"Oh, uh." She squints at her notes. "I might like - proper music lessons? I have my piccolo with me and my voice obviously, even if guitar and xylophone would have to wait. And - my hair does the - healing thing. If there's some kind of hospital I could go to - with guards, as many as you want to send, I'm nervous too it's only - it could be really useful."

"We'll get you a music teacher. I'll want to talk to the captain of the guard about security logistics sending you to a hospital. Well thought of, though."

Rolan smiles The Smile.

"Okay. Torea gave me notebooks and pens last night and there were candles and blankets and things already in my guest room. Um, the tower should have the rest of my clothes in it, but if they aren't going to be sufficiently princessy I guess I should have princessy ones. I remember there was a library in the tour yesterday, can I read things in it?"

"Oh, sweetheart, of course you can. And I'll send a seamstress by to get your measurements later today."

Rolan considers announcing his intention to make clothes for Rapunzel, and then decides against it.

"Okay. I'll probably be in the library most of today, I think."

"All right. Lunch is around half past noon, same place. Dinner at seven. We're holding off the various nobility who want to meet you, take your time settling in."

"Thanks."

Rolan smiles another smile, this one of appreciation for Rapunzel's family.

"Are they very impatient? Why do they want to meet me, do they want to - ask me questions or just get a closer look or what?"

"Some of both, and some of them just don't like that they aren't allowed to bother you whenever they like. It will do them some good to have to wait."

"Okay. Well, none of the things I've said about where I was and what I was doing are secrets, if they're curious. But - thank you."

"You're welcome."

Nibble nibble.

Nom nom. The food is really good.

Eventually Rapunzel's all done. And she sits, looking around.

"You're thinking of staying a while, aren't you? Need anything fetched from anywhere?"

"Nah," he says, smiling wryly. "I'm good with what I came with. Thank you, though."

"If you're not going to go follow her right away - I would like more of the story of how you found her and brought her here," says Ranae.

"How much of the story would you like?" he inquires - of Cearl, who was there when he produced the crown, and certainly seems to have caught the subtext.

"Sooner have more details than fewer, I think."

"In that case," he says, "it all started when I stole the princess's crown."

"Why'd you do that?" sighs the king.

"Pure impulse. The jeweler just happened to leave his window open while he stepped out, I just happened to see it, and judged I could make it from mine to his and back. So I did. I wasn't thinking about what I'd do with it, or what it would mean to you two - I really am sorry about that part. And then I fell in with those two brothers I left in the woods for you - did your guards manage to pick them up yet?"

"Got back early this morning, yep."

"Oh good. Okay. Originally I just wanted to pass through their room on my way out of town, but they convinced me to stick around, which made me pretty sure they were planning something. And then I found out they actually were planning something - betraying me to the authorities and making off with the crown themselves, to be specific - so I preemptively dumped them in a mud puddle and bolted, and then led both them and the Royal Guard on a merry chase through the woods in two different directions, which was excitingly hard to pull off. And at the end of it when I was just getting to be very firmly sure I'd lost them all, I stumbled on this tower, which seemed like a much better place to stay the night than under a tree or in a ravine. And it couldn't possibly be occupied, because there was no door in the bottom. Silly me, in retrospect." He shrugs and nibbles on the last of his bread.

"So you climbed it."

"So I climbed it. And there was this terrified blonde girl with seventy feet of hair. And I stuck around just long enough to have one of her excellent muffins and get my wind back, because she was very very insistent that I should climb back down as soon as possible - did that, fell off the tower from halfway up, broke both my legs when I hit the ground. She dropped her hair on me and un-broke my legs. And, well... it was golden, and it glowed. And she was about the right age. I yelled up and asked if she happened to be a missing princess, and she yelled down that of course she wasn't, and we shouted back and forth for a while and then she let me come up again by her hair to talk about it, and I convinced her that the only way she could really know was to stop taking anybody's word for it and go see for herself. So she packed up some things and we left the tower and came here, and you know the rest."

"Mm-hm."

"If she hadn't gone with you what would you've done?"

"I really have no idea. Although it was starting to look like bringing the crown back would've featured."

Cearl nods once.

The queen finishes her bread and kisses her husband and leaves the table.

Rolan... waits to see if the king has anything else to say to him.

"You going to want to be along if she leaves the palace grounds? For the hospital visit or anything else."

"Maybe, probably. If she wants me there, there I'll be."

"Half-wondering if I should give you a guards' uniform. Probably not."

"The irony might kill me. And then Rapunzel would be sad."

"Mm-hm. You do seem maybe more competent at looking out for her than anybody who was on duty eighteen years ago, is all."

"I do guard pretty effectively, when it comes to it." He smiles briefly, then shakes his head. "I like it best of all when I don't need to, though."

"'Course."

"I - really, really don't like to hurt people."

"Good at it, though."

"Very," he agrees with a sigh.

"Wanna tell me how?"

"Natural talent. And more practice than I ever wanted. I strongly prefer running away, but... sometimes you don't get the chance."

"Mm."

"Mm?"

"Nothing."

"Okay."

Cearl gets up from the breakfast table, looking pensive.

Rolan declines to inquire. He stays put for a second or two, and then gets up himself.

"How can you tell he noticed if he didn't say anything?"

"He got a look when he saw me smile. It's hard to describe - I come by these things through experience; I don't usually think of them in words. But it was a noticey look. And it's a fairly obvious smile."

"It is that."

"Yep."

"There are so many books here."

"Yeah. Having fun?"

"It's kind of overwhelming, but it's also nice to have all these choices about what to read."

"Well, maybe the overwhelmingness will go away with time."

"Maybe."

"We can always hope. How'd your thinking go, last night? Is the code thing working?"

"The code's coming along. I came up with asking to go to a hospital, we'll see how that goes, I guess."

"Yeah." The Smile makes a reappearance, although an unusually pensive one.

"I like that you asked to go to a hospital. It's sweet. You're sweet. I love you. And - I'm trying to get my thoughts in order, about that. Wondering if I should talk to you more about it or leave it be." He quirks a faint smile. "What's your take?"

"I'm curious. But I mean - what else would I do, with healing hair, the hospital is where sick and hurt people go."

"Most people aren't nasty, but... most people aren't necessarily nice, either. Someone who wasn't you might not think, 'I have healing hair, what can I do to help people with it?' That's specifically you, to think that way. Some people would, but not everyone."

"Oh."

"So. I like it when you do things that are... you."

"Okay. What do I need to explain?"

"How can you tell what things are me-things? I mean - anything I did would be a thing I would do."

"Well... partly, I do just like it whenever you do things," he says wryly. "But there's also an aspect of - if it's something you would do that other people wouldn't or might not, or if it's something you choose to do out of some range of available options, on a level more significant than what you have for breakfast - those things are more you than, well. I was going to say 'brushing your hair', but, in fact, you brush your hair pretty uniquely. Eating breakfast, then."

"Oh, that makes mores sense, I guess."

"Yeah. So - there's that. And... I don't know, do you want to hear me extensively compare myself to social norms on the subject of being in love? I have the feeling you're going to say yes."

"Yes."

"How'd I guess," he says with a grin. "Okay."

"I do usually want to know things."

"Why do you disagree with everybody else about so much stuff?"

"I've never been sure of that. It just seems like... most people have something that makes them tend to think and act and feel in ways that are normal in the place where they live or the place where they grow up - not perfectly or completely, but a lot of the time about a lot of different things. And whatever that is, I don't have any, or so little it's barely made a difference. So I just end up being, well, me."

"If you just go around doing things with whoever couldn't you wind up having kids?"

"Well, not if it's only Related Activities."

"Yes, that's true."

"I mean - who would you be doing them with?"

"Just people I happen to meet. Usually it's been people I met the once and then never saw again, but if I'm going to be settling down here with you, I suppose I'll have more opportunity to get to know people."

"People just jump straight to that with people they don't even know?"

"Some people, some of the time. There are even people who do it for money with strangers, and, reciprocally, people who pay for it that way. I've been the first kind more often than the second, but that was all a while ago now. It's not a well-thought-of occupation and it's considered impolite to talk about it in most places."

"...Why do people pay money for it? I don't get it."

"Usually it's men who want something they can't get by themselves and either aren't married or don't want to go to their wives for it, for some reason or another. I guess that doesn't explain why there's so many of them, but the trade thrives regardless of how badly thought of it gets."

"I could guess that they might not think it was anyone's business but mine, except for making me seem vaguely disreputable, unless you were planning to marry me, in which case I could guess that they'd say it would be appropriate for me to stop beforehand and not start again. If you married me and it was generally known that I did that sort of thing - well, people would feel sorry for you, especially since I'm not any kind of nobility. People, your parents likely included, would think it meant that I didn't really love you. While we're on the subject of your parents' opinions on you and me and marriage, I think that from what Cearl said to me yesterday, if you do plan on marrying me he'd appreciate knowing about it well beforehand."

"I don't plan on anything, right now."

"I figured."

"But it sounds like you have plenty of room to stop-and-not-start-again if that seems best later even if you do things now?" she shrugs. "Without that making anything worse?"

"Yeah."

"Well, for now I don't mind," she shrugs. "I mean, for - reasons internal to me I don't mind. If there are awful social consequences of some kind I will probably mind."

"Okay. I'll do my best not to incur even mild to moderate social consequences," he says. "Which amounts to making sure that the people who know I'm doing that and the people who know I'm the princess's ambiguously close friend aren't the same people. - By 'ambiguously close friend' I mean that it will occur to pretty much anyone who knows how close we are as friends to think that maybe I want to marry you, even if they don't also think we're doing anything socially unapproved in the meantime. And the presence of your father's guards wherever you go is going to make it pretty easy to prove that we aren't."

"They're actually for guarding you, but Cearl made it pretty clear that they're also for - the word is 'chaperoning'. It means something like, 'watching to make sure no Things are going on where they shouldn't be'."

"There's a word for that. Wow."

He giggles.

"If people are this obsessed with Things aren't they going to think some happened before there were any guards watching us?"

"I told your father there weren't any. He seemed to believe me. I think that'll be enough for most people - even if they don't directly ask him, just the fact that he's still letting me stay under his roof is a strong sign of approval."

"This is really complicated."

"Yeah."

"It's probably premature for me to be judgmental about complicated social structures I don't understand but it seems like it may be stupidly complicated."

"I've spent some time thinking the same thing. Judgmental isn't a natural state for me, though. It is what it is."

"I guess I can imagine how it keeps being the way it is, but I'm having a hard time imagining how it would start being that way to begin with."

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that. There are some things even I don't know."

He's pretty sure it was a joke. Sure enough to giggle at it.