"Ben! Ben, look over here! Can you say Narnia?" Jane hopefully showed the little boy the front of the book she'd been reading with Batty.
"Don't say Narnia, that's stupid. Ben, my man, say astrophysics!" Skye said, watching Ben's gaze switch from her to Jane and back again.
Rosalind, exasperated, began to reprimand Skye from where she was measuring flour carefully into a bowl. "He knows four words, Skye, I'm not sure he can manage to say-"
"Narnia!" Jane instructed loudly, pushing the book closer to Ben. "Nar-ni-a!"
Skye drummed her fingers on the table impatiently. "If he turns into you I swear I'm disowning you both."
"Be-en, just say Narnia! It's only three syllables, I know you can say harder stuff than that."
"Jane!" Rosalind cut in again. "You're making him feel stupid. You have to build his self esteem and confidence. Ben, can you say duck?"
"Duck!" Ben yelled cheerfully.
"Good job, Ben," Rosalind said, glancing sternly at Jane. "Very good listening."
"Nobody ever told me I was smart, and my self esteem is-" Jane began, sounding pouty.
"Oh, please, people complimented you so much your ego is the size of Texas," Skye said, trying to sneak over to where Rosalind stood, adding chocolate chips to her dough. "Don't even try and invite me to your pity party."
"No," Rosalind said, hitting Skye with her spoon when she got too close. "Jane, you're great. Skye, quite correct, Jane's self esteem needs no help whatsoever."
"I'm very unsure of myself," Jane said, sounding hurt. "A good hero always has flaws, and I admit to mine. I'm currently working to be more involved in the community, bettering myself and-"
"Oh, God, here we go again with the self-improvement plans," Skye groaned. "She reads one book about a girl working at a soup kitchen and suddenly she's Miss Community Service."
"Well I think it's great that you're planning on doing service, Jane," Rosalind began. "That still doesn't make me want to compare your ego to Rhode Island, though."
Rosalind and Skye laughed helplessly as Jane, highly offended, turned back to her original task. "Narnia, Ben! Nar-ni-a!"
"Hey, Ben," Skye said, tossing Cheerios in front of the grinning toddler. "Astrophysics. Say it."
Ben reached for the Cheerios, grabbed some in his little fist, and managed to say something that slightly resembled the word astrophysics in between chews. Skye and Rosalind sang praises while Jane kept up her futile efforts.
"Ben, can you say Narnia? Pevensie? Aslan?"
"ROAR!" Ben yelled, pulling his hands up into a poor imitation of claws. "Rooooooar!"
"Close enough!" Jane crowed, giving Ben a sticky high five and turning around dramatically to look at her sisters. "I'm off to improve myself. Don't miss me too much." She breezed past Iantha on her way out of the kitchen, managing to look both haughty and aloof the whole way up the stairs to her bedroom.
"Hello, girls. Something smells nice in here, Rosy," Iantha said kindly. "And I see you're feeding the beast."
"Bribes," Skye explained as Iantha cleaned up the forgotten and/or rejected Cheerios. "We managed to get him to roar and say astrophysics."
"We'll have him saying deoxyribonucleic acid soon," Rosalind said, propping her biology book open using the sugar bowl. "Of course, we'll have run out of cookies, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
"I'm sure he'll be rolling to his classroom on the first day of kindergarten, what with all the words we'll teach him to say," Skye said, sneaking Ben one more Cheerio. "Now say, calculus!"
so yeah. i've been writing just to get better lately, and this was one of the things that sort of flowed out of my pen. it's not really too edited. i haven't read it once over fully, i just kind of thought it was cute. anyways, there's a serious lack of ben and the sisters together, so i thought i'd post one for the gardam street fans.
hope you enjoyed. also i love mr pen. just sayin.