viridiplantae

[katrea]

Katie goes on a strawberry kick for an entire week.

Her hair turns dark pink.

If it is cloudy for several days in a row, or if Katie doesn't go outside, she drags herself around the house like there are weights attached to her and is more likely to fall over.

On the other hand, after the pink hair incident (of which she aesthetically disapproves) she stops eating for three sunny days and nothing happens except a gradual lightening to blonde. She does drink plenty of water.

Katie decides she wants to be ginger and starts eating a lot of papaya and sweet potatoes and pumpkin and mango and carrots and tangerines and orange bell peppers and cantaloupe and peaches and kumquats and vegan caramels and, of course, oranges. Sometimes she eats red and yellow things, too, but she is careful to balance them out; if she feels like eating something green she covers it in turmeric. The limited variety doesn't seem to do her any more harm than the dearth of two major macronutrients ever did. (She will eat, if encouraged, avocados or tofu, whole peanuts and quinoa - she is not completely void of potential sources of fat and protein - it's just that they seem irrelevant.)

She trips often enough that going around in optimal sun-absorption outfits is kind of a problem: if she scrapes her knee in front of a witness, someone might notice the distinctly unbloody fluid - sap? - that she contains. The compromise is long pants, sleeveless shirts, and light cardigans thrown on if they're going to walk somewhere which she can omit for just lounging on the front steps in the sunshine.

She reads a book about plants. She holds her breath for fifteen minutes before getting distracted and absently starting again. She wonders where she came from and who put her in a basket on Chris's doorstep and why.

She learns to tell people clearly and firmly that she is a "strict vegan". If questioned about her reasons she tells them that she loves animals. Nobody wants her carted off to be researched.

(She is not such a strict vegan as to eschew honey. Honey is fine by her.)

Mercifully, she looks five by the time she is officially five - actually, she looks more appropriate for five than she did for three; she's still slender and oddly-proportioned, but that adds up better for a kindergartener's height than for a toddler's.

She is nervous about going to school and is holding Chris's hand very hard.

Comments

[katrea]

"Hi Lizbeth! How is second grade?"

[pythbox]

"It's a lot like first grade," she says. "The math is still too easy."

[katrea]

"When do you think you will get hard enough math?"

[pythbox]

"Probably not for a while," she says. "Maybe not for years."

[katrea]

"Chris says you have a thing where you read faster than everybody, too. We got read a story today and I could have read it much faster."

[pythbox]

"Yeah, I read fast. Sometimes it gets boring."

[katrea]

"What do you do about it?"

[pythbox]

Lizbeth shrugs. "It's not that bad. And I can always just daydream if I'm finished everything else."

[katrea]

"S'pose. What are you learning besides easy math?"

[pythbox]

"Facts about things," she says. "Mostly not interesting ones. And spelling words I can already spell."

[katrea]

"I don't think whoever invented school was very smart."

[pythbox]

"I'm not sure someone invented it," says Lizbeth. "At least not all at once."

[katrea]

"What would a partly invented school look like?"

[pythbox]

"It might look like a bunch of people all coming to learn something from the same person at the same time because more people can learn it that way than if they did it one by one," she says consideringly.

[katrea]

"I didn't even learn anything today. Except things like where my class is. Maybe there should be a partly-invented school and we should go to that."

[pythbox]

"There might not be any," says Lizbeth.

[katrea]

"Oh. I guess. Why are so many things done badly?"

[pythbox]

"I think," says Lizbeth, "that fixing things is hard sometimes and people don't like doing hard things. And sometimes they don't notice if things are being done badly because they're used to it being that way."

[katrea]

"I guess." Katie peers down at her notebook, then looks up. "Lizbeth?"

[pythbox]

"Yes?"

[katrea]

"You wouldn't ever read my notebooks without asking, right?"

[pythbox]

Lizbeth considers this.

"If it's important not to then I won't unless it's for a more important reason," she says.

[katrea]

"What would be a more important reason?"

[pythbox]

"I don't know," she says. "I can't think of one. But it would have to be something that was urgent and while you weren't around, because if you were around I could just ask you and if it wasn't urgent I could just wait and then ask you."

[katrea]

"I can't think of a good reason for you to read them even if there was some kind of emergency. What would - the house being on fire or whatever have to do with the notebooks?"