called_lioness | (no subject)

"Oh, no," Mary says, loftily. "If I ever take someone on a trip it shall be awfully efficient. Except I do not have a way to get about many places - so I think it shall be other people taking me on trips for a good long while."

"I'm sorry," she grins, "I shan't go on a trip of yours, then. I should like to see how efficient you could be."

She's sliced an apple and put it on her stick. "We'll hold it over the flame and dip it in the cinnamon and sugar, if we've some, afterward."

Mary eyes her, but follows suit, taking an apple slice and copying Lucy's method of stick-piercing as best she can.

"Do we have some?"

"I suspect so, yes."

She asked for it specifically.

"Well, then."

Mary watches the apple turn brown over the fire, rather dubiously. "Is it meant to do that?"

"Yes. Though you might like to hold the sick a bit higher."

Mary promptly lifts the stick.

"When is it done?"

Lucy is dignified, and thus does not need to choke down a laugh.

Really.

"Now's good, I suppose."

And look! There is a box with a mix of cinnamon and brown sugar in it!

"We can roll it in this."

"Do you want to go first?"

Mary would like to see a sample of proper sugar-coating procedure.

She laughs and carefully pushes the apple slice off her stick using fingertips, dropping it into the granules and flipping it after a moment before carefully picking it up again and offering it to Mary. "Bite?"

"I shall make my own," Mary says, with predictable dignity, and rolls her own slice in the brown sugar before taking a bite.

Beat.

Then, triumphantly: "It does taste like a turnover."

"Almost," Lucy says with Great Dignity.

"Of course almost," Mary agrees, tolerantly. "It has no pastry."

"Thus, different," Lucy maintains, as she bites her own apple slice.

Mmmmsugar.

Well-fed, and well-warmed by the fire, it's not long before Lucy and Mary finish setting up camp and go to bed in their respective bunkrolls - though Mary stays awake for a fair bit, staring up at the stars in some fascination.

(She's never slept beneath them before.)

And then it's morning, and they are suddenly surrounded by birds.

Very loud birds.

They are, in fact, quite loud.

Not as loud as Squirrels, though.

Lucy sighs in her sleep and rolls onto her back, cracking one eyelid open to look at the trees.

Bloody birds.

Mary, by contrast, tends to wake up early anyways.

"Oh - I have never heard them first singing from outside before!" she exclaims (loudly) and sits happily up in her bedroll.

Lucy does too, really.

Normally she is not up the night before wondering--well, wondering, though.

"Well," she laughs ruefully as she pushes herself up--a bit more slowly--"you can now."

"It is much better than when it is heard from indoors."

Mary would get out of her bedroll, but she doesn't want to fright the birds - so instead she stays, very still, listening.

"It is," Lucy admits softly, and smiles a bit more as she looks at the girl.

"Did you sleep well, Mary?"

"The ground was a bit hard," says Mary, scrupulously honest, "but once I was asleep I did not notice."

"I'm glad. What would you like for breakfast?" she adds as she shakes her blanket clean.

Practical: "What have we got?"

"We've apples, again, and some nuts and bread and cheese. If we want meet I'll have to shoot a bird, I think."