The Dale Decision

Bristle - Activity

Bristle was feeling much more awake after her rest... she was feeling quite game to go outside and bury the time capsule. Her siblings gave their own messages to Ma to include with everything else.

She hadn't any plans herself, so she wasn't about to refuse an invitation to do something. An invitation provided direction; occupation. In times where those things were scarce, refusing an invitation was actually painful.

She wished she had a kite to bring along to the burial of the time capsule. Not to bury it, but to fly it when they were doing the digging. Still, it wasn't a big hole they were digging in the ground, so there might not have been a lot of time to do so.

Ma knew she wasn't flying a kite because she thought it was boring or she was trying to be rude... it was a way of making herself less agitated and fidgety; they'd talked about this before. It was lot like the way Tis paced, come to think of it...

Drawing and embroidery could accomplish a similar end, which was good because there wasn't always wind for kites... embroidery was more of an indoor thing, and painting required her to change into her smock-frock, so those had caveats, too.

Before they went to attend to the burial of the time capsule, they had lunch. Just like the previous meals, there was a lot of fruit, like sliced apples and bananas. There were stews and salads, as well. Bristle and Tis had had an amusing argument about there being five vegetables or five kinds of vegetables in the stew. Wis of course wanted to know if there was anything with shallots and sweet potato, which there was.

As for the meal itself, Bristle ate quickly. She didn't want to eat so quickly that she gave herself hiccups – that happened to her and sometimes Tis quite a bit.

It wasn't exactly a serious moment, like a funeral... but hiccups would still be a distraction.

It didn't really matter how quickly she ate, because even if she finished early, then she'd still have to wait for all the others. She really should have thought of that before she wolfed down the meal.

She tried not to make a mess, either. It was easy enough to do that when she was eating sliced fruit, so nothing to complain about there. She just needed a few serviettes to hand. It didn't matter how they were folded.

She hoped the adults would talk about something more interesting. It concerned some kind of laws that were being introduced. Sounded like they were talking in circles about ethics and potential consequences and loopholes. There were a few mentions of cargo shipping, maybe that was would be interesting to Tis – but they weren't talking about boats and ships themselves, more about legal agreements and contracts. Honestly, breakfast had been better in terms of conversation. Probably the morning tea, too, though she'd slept through a decent part of that.

It was no surprise; adult conversations were regularly like this, though it felt worse than usual on this occasion. They did tell stories, and some of the adults laughed at them... but she couldn't follow them. Her siblings appeared to be having similar difficulties. The stories seemed to go in circles, too. Even though they used strange, fancy words, those held no appeal – she couldn't grasp their context or purpose, and the Dales weren't about to provide definitions – if she could even understand those.

It was like trying to walk into an extravagant building, where there was big important event happening, but being unable to find any doors. That was the image that kept coming back to her.

It was a pity... Bristle wanted to talk to the Dales, especially since she knew a bit more about from trawling through Wis' notes. She knew Brynn Dale hated gum, a story she had found highly entertaining. They couldn't really talk at length about that, though... she might be able to talk to Arden Dale, who provided the gum... he had watched them play the board game earlier today, hadn't he...?