The Apartment Above Luke's, Saturday

[spin_kick_snap]

After a big day outside - playgrounds! puppies! snow! - Katherine had come back to the place where she'd woken up and had promptly fallen asleep, all tuckered out by her adventures. Now she was awake again and hungry. The only cereal in the house was a sugar cereal, which she wasn't supposed to have and she wasn't allowed to use the stove without adult supervision.

But there didn't seem to be an adult in the whole house! Just her. That was funny. Who had a house with nobody in it?

She took a shower in the pretty bathroom and got dressed, figuring maybe she could find somewhere to eat. And another funny thing - she found a twenty dollar bill tucked away in the exact place she hid money back home: hidden in a pencil box in the top drawer of the desk. She painstakingly wrote out an IOU and put it there, and then sat down to plan her day.

First, breakfast. Then...puppies again, maybe?

[Open! Dante's thread chronologically last]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

"Ummm..." Katherine was stymied. It was just the thing that had always been said. "Because..."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot waited patiently, eyebrows raised, and held the door to the diner open for her.

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine wandered in, heading towards the counter and pulling herself up onto stools nearly as tall as she was.

"Umm...because grownups are tired a lot?" she finally suggested. "And they always have headaches. So we should be quiet so they can get some rest."

[vdistinctive]

"I can see where that might be true sometimes," Eliot said. "But if they always have a headache, that sounds like more of a problem for a doctor to fix than a kid."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm gonna be a doctor!" Katherine said, bouncing to that new topic in the way of small children. "And I'm gonna save hundreds of people."

[vdistinctive]

Oh honey.

"Yeah?" Eliot said, years of experience masking allowing him to sound casually interested even while inside he wanted to just gather her up in a big hug and never let go. "I bet you'll be a really good one, too."

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine nodded. "Once my little sister fell down cause she's not good at walking yet and I helped her up and kissed her knee and put anti- ante- antipepstic goo on it and gave her a band-aid."

So, clearly, she was about five steps away from neurosurgery already.

[vdistinctive]

"Wow." Eliot nodded, actually impressed. Most kids wouldn't think of antiseptics, after all. "All by yourself?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine nodded, smiling with shy pride. "I'm her big sister, so it's my job to take care of her," she said. "And keep her safe. Be a role-model."