Brenda is a sensible person. Margaret doesn't pet the dog either, to avoid rubbing it in. More window shopping?

Yup!

Street with nice sidewalk mosaics! High-end clothing store with mannequins wearing utterly ridiculous outfits! Toy store with a Lego Rube Goldberg machine and posters advertising glittery slime!

When there's no one by: "Sometimes in school we'd have nearly that many Legos all in one place and make huge things with them."

Massive grin. Very quiet "Nice."

"It was good, yeah."

Probably not much novelty value in the bakery, the hair salon, or the dentist's office, though it's quiet enough that Margaret could probably score Brenda a cupcake if they were a little more audacious. Maybe she'll like the pretty church with the stained glass window, or this street with lots of big trees on it. Unfortunately the woman who feeds the pigeons has gone home already, so she can't show off the legendary pigeon cloud.

Brenda enjoys everything they see, though it's quite dark and hard to make out some of the sights as well as she'd be able to in the daytime.

Yeah, it's getting on time to head back to the Avalon. Maybe they can do this again sometime when they have the light for longer.

Brenda doesn't complain when they circle back to her home.

If the guard asks why she's coming back again, she forgot her notebook. But he probably won't ask.

It's a different guard now anyway. She doesn't ask.

Then once they're back down into the Avalon proper she can turn towards the sound of Brenda's slithering and say "That was fun!"

"Cesser," says Brenda. "It was! It was kind of overwhelming but it was so great!"

"I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Did you have a favorite thing?"

"Art shop, definitely. But the toy store was pretty neat too - like, we have a toy store, but it's tiny and mostly does individual orders."

"The art shop is pretty nice, yeah. I should go home, it's really late. Maybe we should do this again on a weekend when the sun is up."

"I'd like that. Maybe after a few more times I'll be up for going alone, or just with someone to open the door the once, depending on guard policy."

"That would be good. I'll get the website hosting set up, and I guess I'll see you at game!"

"See you! Thank you so much!" And Brenda hugs her, grinning ear to ear.

Margaret grins and hugs her right back! "You're super welcome! Bye!"

She wonders the whole way home how Brenda would react to hearing that she was a dragon. She kind of expects to lie awake in bed pondering the question, but it's late enough that she passes out immediately.

Brenda, having heard no such fact, cannot help her with this curiosity should it reassert itself in the morning.

The next day she gets her seventh period homework done by the end of third period, and sets up web hosting in the evening. She's still wondering about Brenda, but at least now she can also wonder how long until someone finds her page and buys a Something of Gyges.

She has nine orders by the end of the day. Maybe Brenda's advertising.

Oh yikes. Maybe Brenda had better stop advertising if she ever wants to do anything other than make jewelry. She sends her the order information, plus "if you're swamped I can raise prices going forward, I don't know how much time you have."