Tea Parties in Boston

2 - Bedtime Stories

"'But... we've never had an elephant astronaut before,' said the man," Rory read out, trying to make a manly voice. "'I know,' said Stella. 'I would be the first,' " Rory said, shifting to her normal voice. "'I'm sorry,' said he, 'but I don't think we can let an elephant be an astronaut. Imagine what would happen...,'" Rory continued in a tone that barely could've portrayed a man.

"I want to read something else. We just read that yesterday," Em complained, despite having picked the book out herself.

"Yesterday we read 'Reach for the Stars', I thought you wanted this one," Rory replied, really not feeling like starting another book. It was late. Em should've been already asleep and she knew the morning was going to be a rough one with Rory needing to wake Em roughly an hour earlier than the girl would wake naturally.

"Can you just tell me a story instead?" the little girl requested, laying with her head on her pillow while her mother leaned back against her pink velvet headboard.

The girl's bedroom wasn't huge - just a simple 10 by 14, but it was cosy. It's walls were rather busy for Rory's taste - Love Mae's Playful Woods wallpaper covering them, that Em had picked out herself a year ago, having grown out of the nursery decor. One wall held all of her toys and books, and in another corner a hammock-nest hung from the ceiling. The girl had everything she needed - Barbies, Legos - even the fancy programmable ones, stuffed toys. Thankfully, there was a housekeeper that kept the resulting mess under control, Em's own room cleaning abilities coming and going depending on how much nagging Rory felt like doing.

"How about we just talk?" Rory suggested instead, her brain already feeling exhausted from her own work day. Her work wasn't prestigious, but it did put her mind into good use, and more often than not by the end of the day she felt like she'd just taken a mid-term. But it gave her a thrill, even if her job title didn't really reflect it.

"Fine," Em groaned, not really meaning it. She just impersonated adult's expressions and it was just the sound her grandfather tended to make when he had to do something he didn't want to do.

"Okay. Today I went to see this really smart woman talk. She writes books and she gave this really inspiring talk. It was really fun," Rory described. "What was the best thing you did today?" Rory inquired, putting the book aside.

"We painted with brushes today," Em said.

"What did you paint?" Rory asked.

"Fall - we had to use colors like brown and orange, I made a tree. Like the one we have in the yard," Em shared, gesturing to the back of the house where Rory's bedroom was.

"Did you do calculus again too?" Rory continued, feeling a bang of guilt for not having picked Em up herself that day, her work day having run late as it sometimes did. If she had, they would've covered this topics by the time they got home. But that was why they had the nanny, even if she liked to think she no longer needed her services, but even with Christopher eager to help in theory, it did come in handy.

"Yeah, but we're still doing additions," Em groaned, rolling her eyes.

"Were you warm enough for soccer? We should go buy you some leggings soon or it'll get too cold," Rory said, thinking forward.

Em shrugged her shoulders. "Grandpa said I was faster than Katie today," she declared instead, twisting her grandfather's words as it suited her, but that was rather age appropriate.

"He did? Then you must've been really fast," Rory emphasized, pushing her glasses that she sometimes wore when she had a lot of reading to do or when her eyes were tired on top of her head and rubbed her eye.

"Yeah. I was," Em replied, feeling proud of herself. "I did some passes too, right in the beginning, Lexi was just ahead of me but she was just showing off and I just kicked it to Amelia instead," Em described.