Well, she can wait, it's okay.

"Yup, no rush, you have lots of time to get around to seeing Fireplace."

Yeah. Yeah, she does.

They do the hot air balloon thing back to the house. The house contains a selection of board games, does Denice want to play one?

Ooh. Yeah, definitely.

There's chess, Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Trivial Pursuit Junior, Pictionary, and Connect Four.

She's played Connect Four before, and it's okay; she's seen chess on TV, but she's otherwise unfamiliar with the rest. Someone else should probably pick.

"Probably not Pictionary," says Winona.

"Right," says Julie. "Man, why do all these games involve picking up little pieces and moving them around? I guess some of 'em we could move your pieces for you. Let's play Clue, I think sometimes you have to look at stuff we can't see but we can hold it up facing you if we have to."

Okay.

It takes her a bit to get the idea of Clue, but once she does she's very good at it.

She wins!

"Congrats," says Julie, lightly applauding.

Ee.

Do they want to play again?

"Sure, one more and then we're gonna go to bed," says Julie.

Sure.

She plays a little less aggressively, this time, now that she has the trick of it.

This time Winona winds up winning, and then Glories kiss her on the head and go upstairs for the night.

She finds the kindle again and reads for a while, and then goes out for a walk.

The neighborhood is quiet and hilly. Nobody else is out.

It's nice. She's careful not to get lost, which means she can't go too far, but even just being outside at all hasn't lost its novelty value yet.

The sky is just starting to lighten in the east when she heads home to bed.

By the time she wakes up lunch is ready; hers is half a turkey sandwich with lots of lettuce and tomato.

Om nom.

What's the plan for today?

"Open ended," says Julie. "Got anything in mind?"

She'd kind of like to learn more about being a magical girl?

"Sure! What about it?"

Well, she really doesn't know very much to start with. But, like - how it works, what magical girls do, that kind of thing.

"A lot of magical girls use their powers for their jobs, especially in emergency services - showing up when a swarm appears, usually - or medicine. Winona doesn't use hers to do her job, but if she wanted to, she could be a firefighter, or a Coast Paladin like me - she'd be really effective over the ocean. Some magical girls barely use magic at all, if they don't like their powers that much or can't think of anything good to do with them."

She's not sure what she could do with her powers, like that - probably something. The cartoons are okay against a little swarm and she could maybe figure something out for a bigger one, maybe a cartoon ray gun or something.