in a forest of legs

[she_sells_seashells]

The second time ever Bell finds to Milliways, she is better prepared. She has a bigger bag of shells with her, and she knows that she'll need to pace herself with the food to stay as long as she can.

She is still six. As far as she can tell, she is the only child in the place - everyone else is an adult or at least in their mid to late teens.

Except - oh, there is a girl her age, over there. (Only maybe not. Last time she was warned that appearances can be deceiving.) But she's certainly worth investigating.

Bell drags her shells over in that direction.

Comments

[she_sells_seashells]

"Five seconds," Bell repeats. "Maybe it doesn't matter how big the thing is, maybe you could move a whole whale from here to there in five seconds!"

[missnicegirl]

Matilda giggles.

"I don't know if I can move a whale!" she says. "I've never tried!"

Ball number three: zoom!

[she_sells_seashells]

"Four seconds! That's even faster! Maybe this is more like rolling stuff down a hill than like picking it up. Can you move stuff that's alive? Can you move me? Can you move you?"

[missnicegirl]

"I wouldn't know how to move me," she says. "It'd be like the Lorax picking himself up by the seat of his pants and flying away. But I can move people all I want! I made a bunch of kids in my class fly!"

[she_sells_seashells]

"What's a Lorax?" Bell asks.

[missnicegirl]

"He's from a kids' book! He's fuzzy and yellow and he speaks for the trees and at the end of the book he picks himself up by the seat of his pants and flies away and nobody ever sees him again."

[she_sells_seashells]

"So he's not real," Bell clarifies.

[missnicegirl]

"I'm pretty sure he isn't."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Okay." Bell picks up another stick and scratches 5, 5, 4 in the dirt to record the results so far.

[missnicegirl]

Ball number four: zoom!

Four seconds again.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Four," Bell calls, as she adds the numeral to the list.

[missnicegirl]

Number five also takes four seconds.

Number six takes three.

"I think I'm just getting faster," she says.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Really?" Bell says, adding the numbers. "I'll start a new row, try the first one again?"

[missnicegirl]

First ball, second try: two seconds.

Second ball, second try: two seconds.

Third ball, second try: two.

Two.

Two.

One.

[she_sells_seashells]

"If you get any faster than this I won't even be able to tell the difference," Bell says. "I can't push the button that fast, and you have to be able to see it so we can't just move the stick farther away..."

[missnicegirl]

"Time me there-and-back," Matilda suggests.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Okay. We can just add laps, unless you get too fast for me to even see what's going on," Bell agrees. She draws a line under the new row.

[missnicegirl]

First ball, round trip: two seconds.

Second ball: one second.

One, one, one, and one.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Let's do ten round trips," laughs Bell. "You're getting really fast and maybe this way it'll take a few rows before you get down to one second again."

[missnicegirl]

"Okay," she says, giggling.

The first ball does its ten round trips in six seconds.

The second ball does them in five.

The third, in three.

The fourth, in two.

The fifth, in one.

Just for completeness' sake, she does the sixth. It takes one second.

[she_sells_seashells]

"I'm not gonna be able to count how many times you take it past the far stick if it goes any faster," Bell says frankly. "So I think the experiment just says you can move stuff fast and you can get faster."

[missnicegirl]

"Yep," Matilda agrees. "—Oh, hey, I have a really silly idea!"

She finds a nice tall rock close by and climbs up to stand on top of it, looking at the lake.

[she_sells_seashells]

"What?" Bell asks. She goes over to the rock, but doesn't try to climb it - she'd fall.

[missnicegirl]

"I wanna see how much I can lift," she explains, and stares intently at the surface of the water.

It begins to bulge upward in the middle.

"C'mon, lake," she mutters under her breath. "Up. Go up."

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell watches in fascination. "Does talking to it help?" she whispers.