epilogue – take my waking slow

There had been an older boy Eudora had looked up to back at the orphanage.

Every night after dinner he would sit the younger kids down and read another chapter in 'The Tales of Flynnigan Rider'. When he was finished and everyone else was asleep, he'd take her up to the rooftop, and together they would pretend to steal the stars, closing their fists over the lights one by one.

He'd invent stories about how they would set out and hunt down the lost princess together. There'd be fanfare and festivals when they returned, and a mural of them would go up in the town square, because that's what they did with heroes. Then the king and queen would make her a lady and make him a lord, and they'd be rich, and he'd have the rights to the land out east of the kingdom, and that's where he'd build their castle. Yes, he'd get the land, because he was the lord and of course lords got the land, not ladies, so shut it, fatbottom, you'd probably spend all our coin on fruit tarts if we did things your way.

A year later he broke into the palace and stole a bag of jewels from the royal treasury, killing a guard on the way out. The rest of the royal guard caught him in a tavern twelve miles down the river and dragged him back to the dungeon, and, because he was of age by then, because that's what they did with murderers who stole the king's treasure, sentenced him to hang at dawn.

Eudora had hidden a poker from the hearth in her skirts and had gone to the hanging. She weaved her way into the crowd, pale and tense with the gravity of her plan. She'd wait until their backs were turned, and then she'd take out the poker and beat them over the heads, beat them all dead, and would cut him down with a sword taken from one of the guards. They'd steal a horse from a nearby stable and make their way to the coast.

Instead she pushed her way to the front and didn't go any further. The executioner was a behemoth and there were guards everywhereand the crowd was angry, angry because they loved the queen and hadn't enough already been stolen from her?

The platform had too many steps for her to be able to take them by surprise and she was just a girl, she was just a girl, and he was just a thief.

She stood, frozen to the spot, throat closing up, hands sweaty and white-knuckled around the poker, as the officials read off his crime and his sentence, and continued to do nothing when they placed the hood around his head and hit the mechanism and he dropped through the trapdoor and kicked and kicked until he soiled himself and he died, and they took him down and the crowd dispersed and he was gone and she was still there, she was still doing nothing.

She went back to the orphanage, climbed into bed with her clothes on, and was sick for a long time.

The next week, as soon as she got better, she tied back her hair and gave her dresses to Emila, then put on the clothes he'd left behind. She picked up reading The Tales of Flynnigan Rider to the kids, because she was good at imitating the voices he'd used. A few weeks later, when she stole a tray of pastries at market and saw the others pounce on them at the orphanage, she realized where she'd gone wrong. There were things women couldn't do, but there were also things men couldn't do. If Flynnigan Rider could do anything he wanted, it wasn't because he was a man – it was because he moved on before everyone could figure out how much he was really taking.

She cut her hair short anyway. When she left the orphanage, nobody batted an eyelash when she introduced herself as Flynn. After a few years on the road, the concept of 'Eudora' became something else, and the concept of 'Flynn' had become something else, and both of them were equally true and both of them were equally a lie. She never returned to the orphanage again.

"So now you understand," Flynn said from under three blankets on Rapunzel's bed, voice a tired rasp, "that if you call me Eudora one more time, I'm going to strip myself naked, rip out all my fingernails, boil my eyeballs in lye, and then hang myself with your dragon's tongue."

"Go to sleep, Flynn," Rapunzel said.

"I didn't steal you," Flynn said. "Right? I didn't steal you. Tell me I didn't steal you too."

"No, Flynn," she said, and wrapped her arms around herself, dry-eyed, as Flynn tossed and turned and talked in her sleep. She listened to the hands on the downstairs clock knock down the hours, one and two and three.

.

Maximus tried first to force himself up through the stairwell. Then he started to climb the side of the cliff to fling himself from a ledge and get in through the window.

Rapunzel stopped the attempt before he broke his legs. She fetched him some apples from the larder and buried her head in his mane while he ate them, feeling his broad sides expand with each breath. When he'd finished them, he snuffled her hair experimentally for nearly a minute, and, pronouncing himself disinterested with a stern whuff, proceeded to try to make his way up the stairs again. "No, Maximus," Rapunzel said. "It's okay now. I'm fine, and Flynn is fine."

He swung his head towards the cave leading out of the valley, and back to her.

"Go back to town." She could hardly look at the Corona insignia on the saddlebag. Based on how many times she'd found it in her tower in the past few days alone, even in her oldest designs, she was doomed to be sick of it soon. She was already sick of what it meant. "I'll be okay. She can't travel yet. I'll come later, okay?"

He fixed an enormous dark eye on her. "Thank you," she said, and pressed her nose against his for a while.

She didn't look towards the empty cloak on the ground, even when her bandaged feet became coated with chalky residue. After Maximus left, she peeled off the bandages by the stream and scrubbed her feet, over every cut and inside every crease and under every toenail, until every trace of it was gone.

.

If she'd entertained any thoughts whatsoever of keeping her hair long, her mind had changed after it became apparent that the magic in it had been the only thing keeping it manageable. She and Flynn had cut unevenly, blindly, grasping at any piece they could find, so it was at some points thirty feet and at others no more than six.

Without her magic, even at less than half its original length, Rapunzel's hair was a crippling weight on her neck and scalp. Where it had seemed to avoid obstacles before it suddenly was catching on everything – rough spots on the floor, ledges, under chair legs. Every time she moved strands would get into her mouth.

She'd intended in the beginning to reach up and hack it off, just be done with it and good riddance, but a blind panic at hit her the instant her fingers had touched the scissors. It didn't matter that her hair lay heavy and brown and useless around her, or that she herself had helped cut it only days before. Eighteen years of reverence had instilled habits unbreakable as a promise. Without the impetus – without the danger – she couldn't even get close.

Unable to look at it, she bundled it blindly up into clumsy braids and loops with whatever she could find – yarn and wilted vine and twine taken from Flynn's satchel – and tucked it all into a sash around her waist to help reduce the weight on her neck, and tended to Flynn instead.

.

There had been no visible damage to her body – the stab wound itself had healed without a scar – but Flynn was weak, able to go to the latrine and back to bed and not much else. Being yanked back from death'll do that, Flynn said. Also, get me some more hazelnut soup, that stuff is great.

Rapunzel fell into routine, surrounded by the comfort of the tower. Breakfast. Cleaning, because the tower was always dusty. Polishing, because silver got tarnished and who else would take care of the tower now that Mother was gone.

All the same, Rapunzel knew there'd never be any sliding around on soapy floors again. No singing or painting or playing chess with Pascal, wiling away the hours before her mother yelled up at her to let down her hair, because the fact was, no one was ever coming home again. Her mother wouldn't praise her artwork or critique her cleaning, saying excellent job on the banisters, now if you could start on the cupboards tomorrow, hm? That's my darling flower.

What would happen was eventually, Flynn would take her away from this place, and she'd most likely live at the palace. Without the hearth lit in the winter, the drastic internal changes in temperature season after season would begin to crack the walls of the tower. The dust would settle on the silver and over her books and onto the carpets. Spiders would begin to spin their webs across doorways and inside cabinets and between bedposts. Animals would find their way inside the secret passage, and then, as the cracks continued to grow, moisture would get in and rust the rest of the metal. Her paintings would fade, then fall into ruin.

When Flynn's fever broke, Rapunzel turned back to cleaning in earnest. She swept up the glass from the shattered mirror. She made the beds, including Gothel's, changed into her work dress, then scrubbed out the brass tub until it gleamed like a cat's eye.

Then she cleaned out the dirt from between the floorboards and organized her books. She went as high as she could go without the help of her hair and dusted from top to bottom, every surface she could get her rag on, then tied her skirts up over her knees and polished every bit of wood she could find, from the doors to the floor to the windowsills to the drawers to the empty mirror frame.

Irrationally she thought that if she cleaned everything better than she ever had before, it'd stay that way until she came back for it. If the king and queen didn't accept her, she and Flynn could always move back in. She knew without asking that Flynn had nowhere to stay. Now that Rapunzel could come and go as she pleased, it wouldn't be a prison anymore.

They could clean out the secret passage, make it the main way up to the tower – maybe even make a pulley system later on. Together they could redecorate. Flynn could build the furniture, and Rapunzel could paint the pieces with flower and sun motifs, and it would be like the castle had come to them. It would be fine. It would be fine.

.

"They're going to want proof, you know," Flynn said. "And those pretty green eyes won't cut it, Blondie. How are you planning to convince them?"

"I know I'm the lost princess," Rapunzel said. She swung her legs, making the chair legs creak underneath her. "And you do too."

"Yeah, but that's hardly the craziest thing that's happened to me this past week," Flynn said. "Sit still."

Rapunzel ignored her, rearing on her toes, tilting the chair back. Flynn gave an exasperated sigh but didn't pursue it. "Do you think I look like my mother?" Rapunzel asked. "I mean, my mother at the castle."

"Didn't you see the painting in the town square?"

"Yes, but that's a painting."

Flynn lifted a shoulder noncommittally. "You really don't know?" Rapunzel asked.

"I mean, you want an opinion based on a painting… sure, you look enough like her to be convincing. But a commoner like me actually getting that close to the queen to study her face?" Flynn shrugged again. "We'll just have to wing it and see."

Rapunzel frowned a moment, then tried to turn it into a pursed-lips, royal look. The woman in the mural had looked kind and all-knowing. Was that how Rapunzel was supposed to look, as the daughter of a queen?

Maybe not. The last week alone had taught her how little she really knew. On the other hand, she now knew that there were far-off cities beyond the sea and little pies that had vegetables in them and winds that traveled to the northeast and brought change with them. If even those tidbits of knowledge had been enough to change her life forever, who knew how her life would change with even just a few more.

Flynn picked up the brush and started going through the hair over Rapunzel's neck. Unexpectedly she said, "The queen is… special. Merciful, I guess is a good word. The prisons don't have very many people in them. No hanging offenses except murder and stealing from the royal treasury. The queen, she's… someone you want to love, I guess."

"Do you love her?"

"Everybody loves her, Rapunzel."

Rapunzel grew quiet. Flynn continued brushing her hair, dismantling the clumsy loops and working out the resulting tangles with methodical patience, apparently unaware of the gravity in the room. "Great," Flynn muttered after a minute. "Yarn. And… what the hell is this, clothesline? You actually put clothesline in your hair?"

Rapunzel closed her eyes and bunched the fabric of her dress into her fists gently, waiting for the lump in her throat to ease so she could speak again. "I want it short."

"Hm?" Flynn grunted. There was a wilted vine in her mouth, taken from one of Rapunzel's braids.

"I want my hair cut short."

Flynn spat it out and said, almost as an afterthought, "No."

"I'm serious, Flynn." She twisted her head to look back at her. "Really short. Like yours."

"And I said no."

"It's my hair."

"And it's my head, which you'll bash in with your skillet when you realize that you don't like it," Flynn said. "May I ask why you want to get rid of it so badly?"

"I don't know." Well. She did and she didn't. Even after everything that had happened, it was still hard for her to articulate what she wanted. Gothel had never tolerated foolishness, and for the most part, neither did Flynn. "So I'll be exciting and dangerous," she decided firmly. "Like you."

"I think we've already established that you're dangerous, Blondie," Flynn said dryly, ignoring the brown hair right under her nose as she had for the last several days, and probably would continue to do forever. "You don't need a fast and loose haircut to prove it. You don't need to be like me."

"Maybe I want to. Maybe I'll become a thief."

Flynn laughed in her face. Rapunzel faced back forward and crossed her arms. "Oh, come on, it was funny," Flynn said. "You're a princess. The only things you're going to be stealing are hearts."

"What about you?"

"I'll be stealing kisses from you," Flynn said off-handedly, as if it weren't the corniest thing to come out of her mouth since 'observe my smolder'. "Let's just start out slow, all right? There's no need to rush. Let's say calf length. You want it shorter after a few weeks, you can tell me, and off it goes, no arguments."

Rapunzel said nothing. "Come on, don't start," Flynn said. "If you want it cut that badly, cut it yourself. And find your own scissors to do it. I don't want any part in it."

Rapunzel twisted around in her seat again to look at her. "But why?"

"Because I happen to think that's not what you really want, is why. Hold still."

"Not what I really…" Rapunzel could hardly believe her ears. "It's my hair, Flynn!"

"Yeah, I know that, and you know that. I just think you're confused about the other thing."

"I've really thought about this and—"

"You've really thought about it for twelve seconds. Take two more weeks and then see how you feel."

"Don't patronize me," Rapunzel bristled.

"I'm not." Flynn yanked another piece of twine out of Rapunzel's hair, making her flinch. "Now hold still, damn it, this is hard enough without you squirming around."

"You're acting just like my mother," Rapunzel snapped, reaching up to soothe her sore scalp. "You're not even listening to me. You don't know what I want."

"Neither do you."

Flynn's implacable tone nearly drove her wild. "I said I want my hair short!"

"And I say you're being rash and stupid. What's wrong with waiting? What's the big hurry?"

"Because I…" Her eyes were stinging again, this time from frustration. She balled up her fists and gritted, "It's none of your business, Flynn."

"You know what? Fine. It isn't. You're right." Unexpectedly, Flynn swept into action. She grabbed the scissors from the table, yanked the blades apart, and gathered up a chunk of the hair over Rapunzel's neck. "You're right. Never mind combing it out. We'll chop it right off, just like mine, nice and close to the scalp so you never have to—"

Panic hit her. Without thinking, Rapunzel twisted further, so sharply her back cricked in protest, and snatched Flynn's wrist before the scissors could descend. They glinted in the light from the window.

Flynn's eyebrows were raised expectantly.

Flushing, Rapunzel let her go. She slowly turned around in her chair, folding her arms across her chest tightly. "Fine," she said. Her voice was dull. "Do what you want. I don't care."

Flynn was silent. Rapunzel kept her gaze on the wall. She felt cold and shaky, a little ill.

She felt a sigh stir the hair by her ear. Then Flynn came around the chair and, unexpectedly, squatted in front of her. She looked tired. "It's my hair," Rapunzel whispered, still humiliatingly close to tears.

"I'm well aware of that," Flynn said. "But before I go chomping away like a beaver in a woodpile, I need to know why. That's not too much to ask."

"I…" Flynn's unwavering, serious attention was hard to avoid. Rapunzel let her gaze drift over the walls, at once achingly familiar and totally, brutally alien. Same images, fresh eyes. "I need a change."

"Seventy feet down to five feet is a change. It's enough change for ten people."

Rapunzel shook her head slowly, mindlessly, eyes firmly on the wall.

Out of her peripheral vision, she saw Flynn slide a hand down over her face. After a minute Flynn said, much quieter, "Slicing your hair down to the nub won't make anything go away, Blondie. It'll still hurt."

She barely felt her lips move. "You don't know that for sure."

"Trust me, it won't matter how much you chop away. It won't matter what clothes you wear or where you go. Bad memories, they stay on you like stink. The more you let the past influence your decisions, the longer that stink'll stay on you."

After a long moment, Rapunzel slowly shifted her gaze. Flynn wasn't even looking at her anymore. Something past her. Probably something not even in the room. "Did it help you?" Rapunzel asked. "Cutting off your hair?"

"For a while," Flynn said. "But you're not me. At the end of the day, you're nobody but you. That's all I'm saying. If you're going to make this call… just make sure you're making it for the right reasons. Make sure you're making it for you."

For me. Rapunzel turned her head, looking towards the window. She'd stared out of it her entire life, watching her mother leave in the morning and planning her entire day around the time that her mother would get back. Breakfasts, lunches, dinners, chores, hobbies. Spending hours and hours brushing out her hair until it gleamed, even when it didn't need it, just to see her mother beam at her when she climbed back in the tower for the night.

She thought of the queen's eyes as they looked down at her from the mural, and wondered what it would take to get her to smile. What would make her happy. How hard Rapunzel would have to work in this new place to make sure that…

No, she realized slowly. No. It would be a good thing if she made the queen happy. But it was no longer her duty. Not just as far as the queen was concerned, but as far as anybody was concerned. From now on she could choose who and what was important to her. Flynn, Pascal, Maximus. Painting. The men who sang about their dreams in the tavern. The lake where she and Flynn had kissed. The girl who had braided flowers into her hair. People, things, places she chose to care about.

My choice, she thought, and uncurled her fists from her dress. My life.

"Seen the light, haven't you," Flynn said.

Rapunzel took a slow, deep breath, and let it out. Again, and again, until the roiling anxiety in her stomach gradually eased. "Flynn," she said.

"Yeah."

She blinked rapidly, then said, "I don't want my hair cut short."

"I figured as much."

"Not right now." Rapunzel waited until Flynn's gaze found hers again. "Someday. When I'm ready. When it doesn't hurt so much. I want you to be there to do it for me. Okay?"

Flynn cocked her head. She opened her mouth to reply, then shut it suddenly, gaze hardening.

Startled by the abrupt shift, Rapunzel blurted, "What?"

Without answering, Flynn rocked to her feet. Rapunzel held still as Flynn picked up the brush and ran it through the hair over Rapunzel's ear, gentle but businesslike, then threaded her fingers through it briskly. "What's wrong?" Rapunzel said tentatively, after a minute.

Rather than answering, Flynn shifted the bulk of the hair over Rapunzel's left shoulder, leaving only the locks over her right ear. Working intently, she began pulling strands away from one other, smoothing locks of hair between her thumb and forefinger until they separated, before carefully working a number of them free. They pricked at Rapunzel's scalp, but didn't yield. When she was done, Flynn pulled them off to the side, over Rapunzel's shoulder so that she could see them.

In the shaft of sunlight from the window, twelve gold hairs total gleamed in her palm.

.

"I'm sorry," Rapunzel said, scrubbing roughly at her eyes with a handkerchief. "I didn't mean… I was trying all week not to…"

"S'all right," Flynn said. "I think you needed it. Here."

Rapunzel took the fresh handkerchief from her, thanked her, and blew her nose. "Better now?" Flynn said.

She had half-convinced herself she no longer cared. At the sight of the hair, everything that was raw in her reopened.

She meant to mimic Flynn's bravado, say 'why wouldn't I be', but what came out instead was a tremulous, "I miss my mother."

Flynn's response was predictable. "She wasn't your mother."

"No, you don't understand. She…" Rapunzel closed her eyes and then wished she hadn't. The sight of the skin on her mother's face bubbling off like a melting candle – the agonized screams in the voice that used to sing her to sleep at night, tell her she was being so silly, Rapunzel, I told you cooking takes practice, didn't I? – would stay with her for the rest of her life. The stink of the past, Flynn had said, except it hadn't all been bad. It would have been easier if it had been. "It just doesn't make sense," Rapunzel said. "I… if I had these, then how… then why…"

"You mean, why didn't I heal? Why did she die?"

"Yes."

Flynn shrugged with one shoulder, but it looked like she already knew the answer. "Try the song," she said instead. "See what happens."

Rapunzel did, and didn't tell her that she'd already tried it, tried it again and again and again, placing Flynn's rapidly cooling hand on her brown hair, singing herself hoarse as she pleaded with every scrap of power in her body to bring her back to life.

Just like before, she felt the barest of sparks halfway through the incantation – a fleeting buzz of hummingbird wings, the slightest hint of a summer breeze – and then it was gone, the only sign of activity a faint, almost imperceptible glow from the strands, and then that too was gone. "Not that I'm well-versed in ancient sun-magic or anything," Flynn said, "but I'd say there wasn't enough juice. Pretty straightforward."

"I didn't even finish the song," Rapunzel said, barely audible. "I thought I was still singing it, but she was coming towards me so fast that I… just forgot. Everything. I'd been singing that song my whole life and somehow, when it mattered most, I… lost it. And then I lost you."

"I dunno, seems to me everything turned out all right."

"No, it didn't." Exasperated, Rapunzel turned a frown on her. "You died, Flynn."

"Yeah, but it only tickled."

"You were bleeding everywhere!"

"Like I said," Flynn said. "It tickled."

"If it hadn't have been for that tear, I… I don't know what I…" Rapunzel lost track of what she was planning to say, because Flynn was grinning and this made her inexplicably flustered. "Stop it! I'm serious, Flynn!"

"You're always serious, which is your biggest problem." Flynn nabbed the scissors. "Probably because ten generations of hair are still anchoring you to the ground. Let's see if we can get you back up into the clouds where you belong."

The gold hairs were still in her hand. Her tears were gone. She still felt shaky, but the last few minutes had whittled her down somehow, pared off the layers of guilt and fear and left her with something that made her heart pound with anticipation. The dust motes in the shaft of sunlight danced with the slightest shift in the breeze, making the air itself come alive around them.

Rapunzel squeezed the gold hairs once, then held out her hand so that Flynn could take them. "I'm ready," she said.

"I know," Flynn said, pushing it back towards her. "Hold on to them anyway."

.

When Rapunzel's head felt substantially lighter and the excess twenty-five feet of hair or so was coiled on the floor, Flynn blew out a sigh and sat back on her heels, muttering, "Lord. Think there's still a deer or two wrapped up in all that."

Rapunzel twisted. "You're done already?"

"More or less. It'll do for now. I didn't figure you'd want hair in your face, so I left the front alone." Flynn worked a kink out of her shoulder and yawned hugely. "We can always change it later. Well? What do you think?"

Rapunzel faced back forward, rubbing her thumb over the gold hairs slowly, thinking. "Well," Flynn said. "Encouraging. You're awake, right?"

"I like it," she said belatedly. She wondered what her hair looked like. She was glad that the downstairs mirror was broken. As long as she couldn't see her reflection, the one she remembered from the last time she'd looked still made sense in her head.

She handed over the hairs for Flynn to finish cutting.

Once again, Flynn refused to take them. She tossed the scissors down onto the table, then crossed the room to get her satchel. After rummaging in it a moment, she returned with a chunky goose feather and a short length of twine. "The one piece you didn't steal," she said. "And now I'm giving it to you anyway. At this rate I'll be kicked out of the thieves' guild."

"What's a thieves' guild?" but Flynn only replied, "Hold still," so she did. Flynn found the slender lock again, traced the coil of it seventy feet along to its tip, then began winding it around the nub of the feather.

It took a while, and occasionally the coils slipped and Flynn had to retrace her steps. Rapunzel could have done it herself in much less time, accustomed to the tricks of her own hair, but she liked the sight of Flynn concentrating so intently, being exquisitely careful not to pull or tangle the hair as she worked. When about a half a foot was left, Rapunzel pinched the feather between her fingers as Flynn directed, and then Flynn tied the length of twine atop the hair to secure it. The feather tickled the top of Rapunzel's shoulder.

"There," Flynn said, stepping back to appraise her own work. "Now you look like any fashionable girl in town. Not the best looking feather in the world, but we can pick up a better one when we roll in there. Queen has a lake-full of swans. I know because the last time I fell in there, they came around to kill me."

She thought maybe she should be crying, but she wasn't. Instead she reached up and felt it again, running her fingertips over it and the rest of her hair. The soft part over her ears, the silky, darker part underneath the top layer, the sleek ends. Hair that would split, Flynn had told her, if she didn't take care of it. How do you take care of hair? What do I look like, Blondie, a barber?

"While it's encouraging you're not screaming, your dead silence is killing me." Flynn squatted down in front of her again. "Don't like it? I can always tinker with it a little more. After lunch, though, I'm hungry."

"You know, it would have been easier to cut it," Rapunzel said, but her fingers didn't stray from the feather, from the hair wrapped around it.

"Yeah, but I've got a thing for blondes," Flynn said.

"My hair is brown."

"Good," Flynn said. "I've also got a thing for brunettes. Do you like it or not?"

Rapunzel studied her. Flynn was pale as a ghost in one of Rapunzel's night dresses. But looking better. Stronger. As strong as Rapunzel no longer needed to be, but wanted to be all the same, now that it mattered less than ever before.

"I love you most," Rapunzel said.

"Thanks," Flynn said. "That's not a yes or a no."

Rapunzel thought, yes.

"Well, we've still got a while before we have to make our move," Flynn said, climbing to her feet. She then proceeded to give herself away by reaching out, tucking a brown lock of hair behind Rapunzel's ear, lingering maybe a bit too long for professional courtesy, maybe not, and then held out her hand. "You can decide between now and then. In the meantime, now that I'm off my deathbed and not drenched in your magical spirit tears, how about giving me a tour of your house? If I don't steal at least one thing while I'm here, I'll lose my credibility."

Rapunzel wondered if joy was supposed to be this painful. She took Flynn's hand and smiled anyway, because today wasn't any other day either and these, these were good hurts. Flynn would steal something and maybe she wouldn't. Either way, there was plenty of time to decide what she'd take.

.

"Wait a second," Flynn said. "You mean every time you've started bawling on me, they've been magic panacea tears? This whole time? And we haven't been bottling this up to sell it?"

"This is the kitchen," Rapunzel said, and distracted Flynn by shoving a roll in her mouth.

.

"You still haven't answered whether or not you ever ran naked around your tower."

"Stop talking," Rapunzel said, and shut her up for the second time that day, this time with her lips.

It seemed like a fairly reasonable way to end the conversation.

.

The End

Thanks to all of you who stuck with me and to all of those who reviewed! It's been a great ride!