"Should we plan a trip to Colorado? It's a long bus ride, but getting on an airplane without a legal identity for you would be harder."

Maybe? She's not sure how big of a deal that is.

"It takes a couple of days on the bus to get to Colorado. Flying is faster, in my work gear I can accelerate people besides myself in the air, but I don't think we can carry you. Unless you want to shrink."

She's never been on a bus but she can put up with a lot of things for just a couple days.

"All right," says Winona. "I'll go with you on the bus and Julie can fly ahead and set up the house." Julie nods.

Okay.

Julie starts looking for bus tickets on her phone. Winona says, "I'll call my sister and let her know we're borrowing the house," and then does that.

She appreciates it.

Winona's sister picks up. Winona tells her that they're coming over, "us and a teenage runaway we're going to pretend we found in Colorado, all right? Wherever she came from was bad news. Mm-hm. No - no, I'm going to take a bus, Julie'll get there first. Couple weeks. Oh, yeah, of course. Yikes, really? Well, there's the other bathroom, we'll be fine. Mm-hm. We'd love to see you but she's - Janet. She's shy. So maybe time it for just a little overlap at the end."

"Thanks, Irene. See you then. Buh-bye."

The Glories are back the next day to pick Denice up for the bus trip. "It's tonight, all day tomorrow, and the next night, with a stop in the morning and again in the evening to change drivers," Winona says. "It lets off a ways from the house but Julie can pick us up in a rental car. I got you my old MP3 player in case you get carsick and want to listen to music instead of doing anything you have to look at, but I also brought a Kindle and a Nintendo with a couple games and some drawing stuff."

Wow. Thanks.

Julie kisses her wife goodbye and takes off. Winona and Denice board the bus, which has some seats that can be converted for wings; the bus driver grumbles about having to do this, but does it. Since they are magical girls their luggage needs are very limited; everything Winona is bringing, including the entertainment for Denice and her laptop, fits in a backpack. She reaches past her toiletry bag for the things she mentioned and hands them over.

It'll be pretty obvious if Winona is paying attention that Denice has never used a kindle before in her life, but she gamely pokes at it until she figures out how to bring up a book, and then snuggles up to Winona to read.

Aww, snuggly kid! Winona puts a wing around her and gets out her laptop to do some work.

Gosh.

If she gets carsick she doesn't bother complaining about it. She shows no inclination to go to bed at any sort of reasonable time, either.

Winona falls asleep at around ten p.m., leaning on her coat wadded up on the window. The bus stops at seven in the morning for one hour, long enough for people to stretch their legs and get breakfast in the little town they've reached. If Denice is asleep then, Winona jostles her awake.

She is asleep, and jolts pretty badly on being jostled, but doesn't seem grumpy about it or anything, just takes a moment to get her bearings.

"Hey you," smiles Winona. "We're stopped for a bit to walk around and get breakfast. Looks like our choices are diner food, McDonald's, and Cinnabon, and since all I brought is brownies and raisins and peanuts we should probably pick one and get food."

She doesn't care, whatever Winona wants is fine.

Winona gets some diner food to-go - tuna melt, chicken fingers, slice of pecan pie - and splits them all with Denice, eye on the clock.

She eats without comment on the food; if Winona doesn't seem chatty she'll read, doing her best not to get grease on the kindle. (Her best is pretty good, actually.)

Winona's getting work done, though occasionally she glances over and comments on whatever Denice is reading ("oh, we had that poem read at our wedding").

She continues to be quiet, and snuggly when the opportunity presents itself, and content to entertain herself; she does take a look at the game system near the end of the second day but otherwise just reads. She'll pick foods, if Winona pushes her to; it won't be obvious yet that her choices are based on the items' positions on the menus rather than anything about them as food.

Winona's happy to pick foods - for dinner she sheepishly remembers that you're supposed to get kids to eat vegetables, and gets veggie fried rice and garlic eggplant for dinner, and then remembers that Denice doesn't do so well with utensils and buys a couple of rolls to hollow out. She feeds the pigeons the middles of the rolls and fills them with Chinese food for Denice and eats the rest herself with chopsticks.

The next morning at half past eight they appear at the bus stop; Julie is there with a car with wing-friendly seats.