Till all the stars go blue [Chaennie]

Chapter 11

It took another 30 minutes or so of random giggling fits and at least one more chorus of Jennie's Gotta Gun, but Rosie finally got them re-focused on their task. She was now walking through the calf-high grass and setting up targets on makeshift platforms. She kept looking back at Jennie, mostly to make sure she was standing with her hands in her pockets like she was supposed to be doing.

"What's rule number one?" she called out.

"Don't shoot Rosie," Jennie replied.

"Excellent," Rosie said, cautiously weaving her way around rocks and brush piles.

"Are you touching anything you're not supposed to be touching?" She started smiling even before Jennie managed to say anything

"Unfortunately, no. But I'm still very hopeful about that," Jennie teased.

Rosie rolled her eyes.

Once she had all her targets placed where she wanted them, she pulled her flag out of her jean pocket and tied in onto a tall branch and wedged it firmly into the ground. She'd counted off her footsteps and had a rough idea of distance based on the flag marker. She jogged back over to Jennie who was now walking around in circles still singing show tunes to herself and flattening down the meadow grass.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Making a crop circle," she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. This was one of those moments where Rosie had learned it really was sometimes just better not to know.

"Okay, E.T,, come over here." she said, tugging on Jennie's belt loop.

"Can I...?"

"No," Rosie said instantly.

Rosie picked up the shotgun and held it out.

"What is this?" she asked Jennie.

"Something I'm not supposed to play with?" she said, a slight question in her voice.

Rosie smiled. "Besides that? What kind of a gun is this?" she asked again.

"A brown one?" Jennie said.

"Let's try this a different way." Rosie suggested. " Let's just say that there are three types of guns that exist in your world. A rifle, a shotgun and a handgun. A rifle shoots what you probably think of when you think of bullets and is good for shooting things far away with accuracy. A shotgun shoots shells filled with metal pellets or balls called shot and works better on things up close."

Rosie glanced over at Jennie who was purely focused, her eyebrows crinkled in concentration.

"This is a shotgun. More specifically, a 12-gauge shotgun. This will fire six shells without having to be reloaded. It has one shell here in the chamber ready to fire and the remaining shells here in the magazine. When the shells are used they come back down here again. Okay, now you can take your hands out of your pockets."

Jennie made a big production of pulling her hands out and wiggling her fingers.

"Here," Rosie said, and pulled two shells out of her shirt pocket. "These are what this gun shoots. This," she said placing two red plastic cylinders on Jennie's upturned palm, "is a shell."

Jennie looked up at Rosie and Rosie nodded. Jennie gingerly picked up one of them and turned it over in her hand.

"That one is packed with little metal balls and filler, " Rosie explained. She reached into her jean pocket and pulled out three little silver ball bearings. "This is double-aught buckshot and is what is inside that little plastic tube. When the gun fires, everything inside that tube flies out of the end of the gun barrel and scatters. Each one of those metal balls becomes like a bullet. They spread out and, hopefully, hit whatever you're shooting at."