Alice Sophie is growing up a bit, because adorable toddler is adorable.
I am not Marvel. Just playing around in their metaphorical sandbox.
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Elice was reading at the kitchen table. She was progressing impressively as a healer - mixing magic and science to achieve the best results - and she was no longer considered a novice. By anybody. As for her residency, she was a resident and not an intern any longer.
Out in the main living room, Crimson the cloak was playing with dominoes along with Alice, who was just about to turn three. Christine was on shift at the hospital, but Wong was arriving via Istanbul with their favourite local takeaway and Bruce had just left.
Wrinkling her nose and making her father - who was pretending like he wasn't watching them - smile softly over his scroll where he was seated on the couch nearby, little Alice settled the last piece of what she herself considered an advanced build, even if it looked a little abstract to the casual observer.
The cloak understood the logic, clearly, so what did it matter if grownups could or couldn't spot what was important. In Alice's experience, grownups could be a little lost with the truly important things. She probably had much more of a point with that than she could possibly appreciate at the time.
Finished with the game, the child - trailed lazily by the cloak - entered the kitchen and climbed onto a chair to look at whatever Aunty Elice was doing. Usually, she knew, it was either something interesting or else something completely impossible to understand. She would have suspected Aunty Elice was perhaps a little odd, but a lot of grownups were like that. Even her friend Maria Stark, who was a big girl but definitely didn't count as a grownup, did strange things sometimes.
"What are you doing?" Tilting her head, Alice tried to make anything out in the book Aunty Elice had. There were no pictures, but there were a lot of strange little symbols which were somehow different from the strange symbols grownups used to read aloud for storytime.
Keeping en eye on the child as she climbed up the stairs by pure reflex, Elice kept reading until she was asked a question. "I'm studying magic, little one," she explained, looking up from the book and giving Alice her attention instead.
"What sort of magic?" the girl asked seriously, and the sorceress had to smile.
"Well, I am working on a spell to help someone who has gotten a very bad boo-boo," she replied, equally seriously. Wong, who had just entered the kitchen with the food, successfully held back a smile, though it showed in his eyes. Stephen, who was eavesdropping from his spot in the other room, didn't even try.
"Can I try?" Alice looked at the book as if she understood it, making Elice bite back a laugh. Instead, the older woman nodded seriously, and held up a hand, palm up. Wong did smile, when the child copied her, focused and still supremely serious.
Next Elice shifted her fingers, doing the simplest motion she could think of as slowly as she could, showing how it was done. The little girl didn't exactly copy it, although she tried, but all three adults in the kitchen - including Stephen who was watching from the doorway now - gasped as there was a glitter of gold between Alice's thumb, pointer and middle fingers.
"I did it!" The little girl exclaimed delighted, the gold fading, and an equally delighted Elice confirmed that she indeed had.
"Our little magician," she acknowledged, bowing her head, before she lost the girl's attention in favour of Stephen, who promptly lifted her up and showered her in praise.
They were all proud. Including the cloak, who swooped down exuberantly over the head of father and daughter, covering them completely for just a moment and making them all laugh.