> Uh, Marimeia -- you might want to get Wufei or Anne or somebody
> to explain the meaning of the word "ravished."

    To ravish somebody is to carry them off, right? By force if necessary? It's sort of like the word "rape," except that while you can rape a piece of hair like in this really long poem in Anne's big book of poems of all kinds, if you say it about a person it means... you know what it means, and of course I wouldn't use it because Relena-nee and Hiiro would never ever do that to you and if anyone did try to do that to you you'd kick him into next Tuesday and when he came down Hiiro really would shoot him in all his arms and legs and gametes and intestines and lungs and Mr. Chang would slice him up into stir-fry strips and then you'd yell at Hiiro and Mr. Chang because you hadn't been finished with him yet and Relena-nee would ask how you expected her to send hamburger to prison for a million billion years. And of course, before it was Tuesday we'd all have had a slumber party and made sure you were all right and watched something nice and cheerful like the movie about Ferris Buller (sp?) that Relena-nee and I watched last Friday. Relena-nee thought he was a little like you, only different.

    And anyway if I ever wanted to do that to somebody, which I wouldn't, Anne would lock me in my bedroom and throw away the key. But "ravished" shouldn't mean anything really bad like that, and one of the people whom Anne was talking to in her office when they'd forgotten I was there was saying it in a way that it sounded like the person who got ravished wasn't really angry or sad or anything, the way someone would be if they were hurt like that, so... I forget the point I was going to make. What was it?

    Anyway, the weekend was really neat. Relena-nee came over after work on Friday, and we watched the movie about Ferris whatever-it-was, and then we watched episodes of the Muppet show -- the first one, because it's better than all the others -- until I fell asleep on the couch, and Relena-nee had my bed.

    Then Anne and Relena-nee were going to a party on Saturday, but it wasn't an Important important party and some other people were going to bring their children and anyway I still don't have a nanny, so they brought me. But all the children at the party were very boring so I talked to the grown-ups instead.

    Are all children that boring? The ones at school are mostly boring too, unless they're saying nasty things about me. Anne wouldn't like it if I hit them with my backpack, so mostly I ignore them, except when I dumped my pudding on Ricky's head because he was saying nasty things to Erzebet and making her cry. It wasn't the good kind of pudding anyway.

    One of the grown-ups at the party told me a story about Otousama. Her corner of the Earth had been rebelling or something. I didn't quite get that part. Anyway, so Otousama and his soldiers came to chasticize the rebels, and they came and talked to her when she was surrendering. She wanted to show how very sorry she was, so she flopped on her stomach in front of the tall impressive-looking man. Then her two-eye-cee elbowed her and hissed that it was the wrong guy, because it was Col. Marquise, only he wasn't a col. then yet. She was really embarassed (sp?) and wanted to melt into the floor, only Otousama picked her up and said that it was all right, because he, that being Col. Marquise, was Khushrenada too.

    I thought that was very cool, so I told Relena-nee, because I think that makes us related somehow, or something, and I wanted to know if that meant he would send me a birthday present. Relena-nee said that she and Anne and Miss Noin, whose title I keep not knowing because nobody calls her by it, would talk to him and he would send me one, Or Else.

    Then somebody else bet Relena-nee fifty hundcredits that she couldn't filk Weirdal. I think Weirdal is the one who sang the song about things living in the fridge and the one about Harvey the Wonderhamster that you were listening to, so I thought you should have been there, but you weren't.

    Relena-nee thought for a moment, and stood on a chair, which I didn't know you could do at an important party, even if it isn't an Important important party, and put her hands behind her back, and smiled in a way that made her look very silly, and sang this song.

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

He fell out of the sky in a mecha built by a mad scientist.
I saw him washed up lying facedown in the sand.
I knew he had to be the boy for me, and to think I probably never would have found him,
If I hadn't gone down to the strand.

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

I just can't understand it. Why won't you return my phone calls?
Are you still mad that I stopped you from falling splat?
If you'd just say the word, I'm certain that our love would last forever, and ever,
Or are you too dumb to realize that?

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

How can you ignore me, when you know that I can't live without you?
I have to go through your garbage just to learn more about you!
Hiiro....

Oh.... ooh....

Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

You weren't impressed when I embroidered your name on my bra straps.
You wouldn't listen when I promised to be true.
I couldn't stand it, so I jumped out the thirtieth story window, right above you.
Now I may be dead, but I still love you!

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

I'm singing Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

I'm singing Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
Why won't you go out with me?

Singing Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui,
What can the problem be?
Oh, Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiro Yui.....

    It was a very funny song and I laughed very hard and Anne laughed even harder, and my cousin Dorothy turned out to be there, only I hadn't noticed her, and had videotaped it. So Relena-nee won the fifty hundcredits, and the lady who knew Otousama asked how she got that look on her face, and Relena-nee said she, that being Relena-nee, had thought of being just like she was when she was young and stupid, only much worse.

    Then Cousin Dorothy asked if Relena-nee really had Hiiro's name embroidered on her bra straps, and Relena-nee said that the people she bought them from had "Lalinda" embroidered on all of them, which was where she got the idea, and personally she thought it was strange to have some company's name on her underwear.

    So Relena-nee took us all out to ice cream after the party with the money she had won, even including Cousin Dorothy, and she, that being Cousin Dorothy, talked about Utena with Relena-nee for a whole bit, so I told them your story, and included the bit about the car, and Cousin Dorothy said that you were right about it having been nice if Miss Schbeiker had been on the car with Utena and the purple-haired girl, whose name I think was Anthea, unless it wasn't, and I don't see why anyone would be on top of a car when they could be inside it instead, but Cousin Dorothy is going to paint a picture of it anyway, and take a photograph of her picture and send it to you, that being Duo, and Miss Schbeiker, so you can hang it in the living room or something.

    Then on Sunday, that being yesterday, we went to go see the circus, but not Cousin Dorothy, who was not invited. I had never been to see the circus before. We had cheaper tickets because of knowing ojiniisan, and it is very nice of Japanese to have a nice word like that for him. Oji because of having my uncle's name, and nii because that is how old he is, like Relena-nee, so he is ojiniisan, and once yesterday I wasn't thinking and called him Noin-ojiniisan, because of the hair. Anne sort of coughed funny and Relena-nee and Miss Bloom laughed.

    A circus is very very very neat. There are wild animals, only they're tame, and people who go on trapezes and people who stand on top of each other and do tumbling and people who walk on tightropes and this guy who did amazing things with an umbrella -- he said that they were the Secret Hiten Mitsurugi-ryuu Umbrella Techniques, and Relena-nee laughed so hard she slid right off the bleacher seat, and even Anne laughed. What was so funny?

    And then they had this girl who got shot right out of a cannon, and she couldn't possibly have been more than four years older than me. She got shot out of it and did flips and landed standing up and bowed. When I'm that old, I'm going to be shot out of a cannon and do backflips and have everyone watch me. I told Anne, and Anne said "We'll see," so I have to get all the physical therapy done and practice running around and do somor... euh... forward rolls and backward rolls and cartwheels and think of a way to talk her into it then. But she got shot out of a cannon (not Anne, this girl), and it was spiffy and cool, and I am going to do that.

    Then Miss Bloom and ojiniisan came out. Ojiniisan stood up against a wall, and Miss Bloom threw knives. I was worried for a moment, but Anne and Relena-nee were not, so I figured that they must not be real knives. It went on for a while, and I told Anne that Miss Bloom wasn't very good.

    "Why not?" said Anne.

    "She hasn't hit him once," I said.

    Anne started laughing and said that Miss Bloom was trying NOT to hit him.

    I thought about that for a while and worked it out and then I said "She isn't very good, is she?" again.

    "Why not?" said Anne.

    I pointed out that Miss Bloom kept nearly hitting him, and that anyone who was good at throwing something could be sure and throw it where it couldn't possibly hit ojiniisan, even if he was doing the Chickendance at the time.

    Anne laughed really hard. Why did she laugh? I don't get it.

    Then there were clowns who ran around and did silly things, and then they finished with half the circus jumping between trapezes and tightropes way way up in the air, including Miss Bloom and ojiniisan, who had taken his shirt off and was wearing these funny leather straps.

    "He really should put more on," Anne said, looking at ojiniisan. It was warm enough that I had taken off my sweater, but I wasn't hot in my shirt or anything.

    "He really should take it all off," Relena-nee said. Then she turned bright red. I suppose ojiniisan's big baggy pants might have gotten in the way when he was jumping around, but like I said, I don't think it was quite hot enough for him to be standing around in his bathing trunks, or even jumping around in them. But why did she turn all red like that?

    Anyway, so that was the end, and afterwards we went around back to where Miss Bloom and ojiniisan live in trailers, one for each of them, and Miss Bloom invited us all in to her trailer for powdered juice drink and goldfish.

    Ojiniisan asked how I was, so I told him about the party, and physical therapy, and you telling me stories, but of course not about you-know-what. He said he thought you, that being Duo again, sounded like a very entertaining person. I thought you guys all knew each other, but he didn't sound as if he really knew you very well. What is going on with that?

    So then the four of them all talked about what their jobs were doing these days. This wasn't very interesting, and I had just gotten my goldfish lined up into a neat MC Echer kind of pattern and was working out whether I was going to eat the top one on the right or the one second from the bottom on the left next when Miss Bloom said that they were getting lots of visitors these days. First there was somebody who used to be with the circus, but she left to get married to somebody who lives in one place in a house. She came around to say hello.

    Then Mr. Winner came for a visit with several of the Ma... howdoyouspellthat... you know, the RedHat people. Anyway, he came with some of the younger ones, and they, that being Mr. Winner's men, spent most of their time flirting with Miss Bloom and the lady who does the snake dance with the boa constrictors. That wasn't in the circus tent, it was in the part outside, and I didn't actually see her do the snake dance because we were visiting ojiniisan and Miss Bloom instead.

    Also they got in an argument with the two ladies who do exotic dances. (I wonder if they, that being the dancers, know the Russian one where you kick your legs straight out when you're squatting? Or maybe the Chickendance. The Chickendance is pretty exotic-looking, especially the part where you're flapping your wings with your hands in your armpits.) See, the dancers were doing a dance that they and Miss Bloom called belly dancing. This is not dancing while lying on your tummy. Ojiniisan explained that Mr. Winner had told him that it is actually called be-lady dancing in Arabic, only it got squoggled when they borrowed the word into English, like the way that banquet and bouquet don't rhyme anymore unless you're speaking French like we can. (Euh, you *do* speak French too, n'est-ce pas?) But they were doing it all wrong. So the dancers asked the RedHat men what they thought they knew about dancing, and one of the young men, being named Badar Basim, hopped up on the stage in his baggy pants and blousy shirt and vest and everything and did a be-lady dance.

    When Miss Bloom got to this point, ojiniisan said "I thought *I'd* gotten limbur (sp?), but I swear, each of his hips was gyrating (sp?) at a different speed!" and Miss Bloom said that what was going on inside Badar Basim's clothes looked like two cats fighting in a bag. I wonder where she saw two cats fighting in a bag.

    Anyway, she finished up that Mr. Winner was visiting an awful lot these days, like once a month and twice in March, and said "He practically lives here." ^_^ So of course I said "So, when do you think they're getting married?"

    Everyone went very quiet. Ojiniisan put his cup down very quietly and said "You're talking about Quatre." He sounded awful. He looked AWFUL. Not the sort of awful where you stay home because you're sick. He looked like somebody had shot him and he hadn't quite got that he was supposed to fall down yet. Well, I think that is how he looked, but I wasn't looking in a mirror when I got shot, and when Ivan shot Dekim he fell down where I couldn't see him, even though I was sort of paying attention and I made sense of it all later. So maybe when you get shot you just look surprised, which is how I felt. But ojiniisan looked like somebody OUGHT to look when somebody shoots them and they haven't quite got that they were supposed to fall down yet.

    "Of course I'm talking about Mr. Winner," I said. "Because of the pool," I said.

    "What pool?" Relena-nee said.

    "In the office," I said.

    "You have a POOL in the office?" Miss Bloom said.

    "No," Anne said.

    "It's not a pool for *swimming* in," I said. "It's what you run when you have everyone betting together and one person in charge," I said. "They are having a pool at the office about when ojiniisan and Mr. Winner will get married already," I said, "so if I have a good idea when it will be I can make a bet and win money," I told her.

    Relena-nee made the sort of noise you make when you're about to sneeze or laugh or yawn or something but you can't because it would be Embarrassing, and ojiniisan blushed and sort of slumped as if he was trying to look as if he wasn't there, and Miss Bloom stared at ojiniisan and at me with her mouth open, and Anne said "Marimeia... " and stopped and started again and said "First, it is not fair to bet on a sure thing."

    So I told her that I wasn't, because I didn't ask ojiniisan, I asked Miss Bloom, and if she had known known she probably would have told me, and then I wouldn't have bet, because Keturi says that the whole point of making a bet is to guess and see if you got it right, and you can't be proud of how good you are at guessing if you didn't guess, and Anne said that was all very well, but second, I was not allowed to bet money on anything until I was fifteen.

    Hidoi.

    "I can't wait to be fifteen," I said. "Then I can be in politics and get shot out of a cannon and fly planes and fight with a sword in a real fight and make bets and control dolls with a headset just like in Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer and get married and hack into public records and jump out of buildings with a parachute and everything."

    "Mar, married?" said Miss Bloom.

    I nodded.

    Relena-nee told Anne that her mother, that being Relena-nee's, used to ask if everyone jumped off a cliff, would you jump off one too? Since of course you wouldn't unless you all had parachutes or bouncy cords or something, I don't see what that had to do with anything. What did that have to do with anything?

    "Quatre?" said Miss Bloom.

    "Cinq?" said I.

    Then Relena-nee said that, from the way I asked the first question, it wasn't very clear who it was that I was asking when Mr. Winner was going to get married to. (That sentence looks wrong. I don't know how it should look, but not like that.) This was silly.

    "But whoever *else* would he get married to?" I said.

    "Um," said Miss Bloom.

    "Hmm," said Relena-nee.

    "Dorothy?" said Anne, in a I-don't-really-think-so-but-I-can't-think-of-anything-better voice.

    Relena-nee and I looked at each other and started laughing really really hard. I said that I didn't think Mr. Winner would marry somebody who was flashy and buckled swashes the way Cousin Dorothy does, and Relena-nee said that she loved Dorothy dearly but she, that being Cousin Dorothy, would eat Mr. Winner alive.

    "You sly dog," said Miss Bloom, who had just decided that she was pleased. "Why didn't you tell me? Huh?" said Miss Bloom.

    Ojiniisan looked as if he wanted to be somewhere else even more. His face was redder and everything.

    "I'm sorry!" said I. "I didn't know it was supposed to be a secret!" I said.

    "Some secret," said Miss Bloom, "if half Anne's office knows about it."

    "I didn't," said Anne, sounding annoyed.

    "I didn't," said ojiniisan, sounding annoyed-er.

    "I hope Quatre does," said Relena-nee, "because it would be bad if neither groom knew to show up for the wedding."

    "No, no, Hiiro and Mr. Chang would bring ojiniisan," I said.

    "At gunpoint," Relena-nee interrupted.

    "And then Duo and Cousin Dorothy would unroll Mr. Winner out of a carpet..."

    "And all his sisters and the Ma(whateveritwas) would stand with him..."

    "And Miss Bloom and I would stand with ojiniisan, and I suppose you two could too because you are my family, and anyone in the circus who wanted to..."

    "Which would be nearly all of them," Miss Bloom interrupted. "But, I'm sure they'd be happy to have you, but why would you be in the wedding party?"

    I didn't know a bunch of wedding people together was called a party, but I guess it isn't any stranger than geese being a gaggle, or ravens being an unkindness, or software programmers being a junk. "Because all of the Bartons aren't worth a cat's sneeze," I told her, "except for ojiniisan," I told her, "and he is the closest thing I have to a decent relation on the Barton side of the family," I told her, "and all of the ones who were born that way were just awful," I told her, "so why wouldn't I help the one I care about get married?"

    Relena-nee said that they couldn't *all* have been awful, and I said that they could, so, because the first Trowa wasn't very nice, and Quinze was perfectly horrible, and Dekim was worse.

    "But surely your mother -- " said Miss Bloom.

    I thought for a bit.

    "I don't think she was nasty, really," I said, "but she was weak and killed herself," I said, "and I'm sure she was very very sad about having me with no vouchers, like my uncle and Dekim told me, and especially because of having such a terrible family to be sad in," I said, "but she could have stayed and talked to me! Sylvia Noventa and ojiniisan would have stayed and talked to me. Relena-nee would definitely have stayed and talked to me. Mr. Chang *did* talk to me, and he told me about *his* family and why he flew a Gundam and everything. Duo would have stayed and blown something up and while everyone was standing around looking at the explosion he would have grabbed me and run off in a secret shuttle or something way away and we would have hidden where God Himself couldn't find us with a radiotelescope. Anne would have blown DEKIM up and *abducted* me to Earth and pounded on Otousama's door until he came and let us in, even if it was three o'clock in the morning, because Anne says if he knew I existed, he would have come and got me."

    Then I had to explain about vouchers to Miss Bloom and Relena-nee -- would you believe they didn't know what VOUCHERS were? I mean, I suppose there's so much water around here on earth that they can't put blues in all of it, so they don't even try, so you don't have to sign a voucher to get anti-blues when you want to try to have a baby, but you don't even have to fill out the form that shows that you can take care of a baby and get a voucher signed to show that there's enough air and food and everything to have another person using them! So of course everyone on earth, even Anne and Relena-nee, was born without any more paternal vouchers than I was, which is neat, although the laws are all tilted, so you can't get somebody pregnant and not pay for the baby of course, but it's perfectly legal to have someone get you pregnant without knowing he did, and you can't be tried for theft or illegal combining genes or anything, and you don't pay extra taxes for having twins or blues not working or anything you'd have had to get vouchers late for.

    Miss Bloom looked kind of disgusted at that and said "What are they going to tax next? Air?"

    So of course I explained how it was twelve percent for somebody my size and twenty percent for someone Miss Bloom or Relena-nee or Anne or Mr. Chang's size and thirty-five percent for someone Dekim's size and maybe for ojiniisan too, and Relena-nee said "WHAT?"

    Then I explained some more, and Relena-nee got more and more upset, and Anne got upset because she thought it was just the big things of emergency air from Earth for in case the breath gardens and grass and everything shrivel up and die that got taxed, instead of it being the air you breathe every day as well, and because even when she was up on the colonies doing things nobody mentioned it to her because they all thought she knew already, so Otousama didn't know either, although I'm not sure what it would done if he had known, any more than if he had known about how if you wear yellow on top of red it means that you think that squash is better than racketball, or that somebody who turned out to have been Hiiro once hacked into Dekim's internal pee-ay system and had it play a song about how you don't own me over and over for an entire week and got it stuck in my head right when he just went to Earth and blew stuff up instead of doing what Dekim wanted. (Hiiro sent Anne a bunch of useful-looking records about his old job a while back and disappeared again, and Anne wondered what the song was, so I sang it for her, and then I sang it for Mr. Chang, and then I sang it for Commander Sally, and then the chorus was so good that I sang it now and then for most of the rest of the day, and Anne said to remind her not to get Hiiro annoyed at her personally, which would probably be a bad thing, although I don't know why she thought of it then, but maybe it was because of his having been heard from just then.)

    Anyway, so we ended the visit early so Relena-nee and Anne could go back and Do Something about the air-tax -- I think maybe Relena-nee is going to see about it getting lower, like maybe half of what it is now, or maybe even a third -- can you imagine it? They were calling back and forth and talking about Important stuff last night, so I wrote more of my answer, and from some of the things Anne was saying it sounded like maybe she wanted Preventer to do something, when she wasn't wondering where the air-tax went -- don't taxes all go to a tax place or something? I don't get it. But anyway, I thought "Mr. Chang should hear about this too," especially as I think maybe the pool was supposed to be a secret from Anne, and if I had known it was I would have kept it, but I thought she knew because Anne knows everything, almost; anyway that is why I am sending it to both of you, which is a perfectly okay thing to do because this hour is Freestyle Computer Use, so I can use it to get an email from the draft box and fix it up and send it to somebody if that's my "style."

    And I'm sorry, because I meant this to be a short letter before my second story, but it has got so long somehow that it is almost a story itself, except for not having any sort of an ending. So I will send it by itself now, and I will see you later, Mr. Chang, and I will send you my story later, Duo.

De wa mata,
Anne's Bastard Redheaded Stepchild
Ladies' Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society no Minarai
   @-->---------
KERMIT: Now all we need is an exciting photo story.
GONZO: Kermit! I'll take a picture of this chicken!
      -- *The Great Muppet Caper*

    "Now that morning coffee's kicked in and I feel human, what have you been snickering over for the past few minutes?"

    "I do not snicker... woman."

    "My bad. Chuckling, then."

    "I am afraid that Marimeia has inadvertently brought your frivolous amusement to the Lady's attention..."

    "Well, office betting pools are a sign of a healthy culture. I think the one on Wind and Fire is now more than any two of the others put together..."

    "Do as you will. I do not make money out of my friends' personal lives."

    "Your decision."

    "By the way, do you know if there is anything odd about the nature of the air-tax?"

    "The what?"

<p>     "The tax on the air you breathe per day in the colonies -- don't you have to account for it on travel budgets?"

    "There's a TAX on air? Since when? I don't remember seeing it on the White Papers' Fiscal Report."

    Silence.

    "We'd better start researching it now, so we at least have something when Anne asks us where all that money's been going."

    "And just when I was looking forward to a slack week. Wufei... do you ever think Relena's right about Mondays?"