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Tanith had been reading.

She had found, somewhere in the back of the living room bookshelf, a thin and battered book with a shirtless human man on it. Tanith supposed he was pretty good looking. For, you know, a giant.

There was also a woman in his arms. She was wearing a red evening gown, but it was so low cut that Tanith could practically see boobies. Which apparently, she dimly realised, was a big deal with humans, since Sunny and Bronnie always went around with shirts on.

Also, they got upset if she came into the room when they didn't have a shirt on.

She had learned this several times.

Anyway. The book. No one really seemed interested in the book. The pages were yellowed but it didn't look like it had been read more than once. It was, as they said, collecting dust.

In a surprising fit of productiveness, Tanith had managed to knock the book down onto the floor, and then, very slowly, move it across the floor to behind the sofa.

And then she had tried to read it.

This was difficult for several reasons. First, the book was significantly larger than her. Reading the book meant sitting in it and propping it open in between page turns, which inevitably meant she ended up with newsprint letters imprinted into her butt. Tanith thought this was wonderful, but Sunny was not so pleased when she proceeded to spread black smudges around the house.

Second, the book was nearly a centimetre thick, and while that was pretty thin compared to most of the books on the shelf, and that was the only reason she'd been able to move it at all, it seemed pretty long to Tanith, who'd never managed to read anything longer or more involved than the back of cereal boxes.

She rarely read more than a page or two in a sitting before getting distracted.

It had taken her a long time. Ages and ages and ages. It was, without a doubt, the most amazing thing she had ever done. Tanith was quite proud at her accomplishment.

The book was very confusing, though. It had contained a lot of things like "heaving bosoms" and "powerful manhoods" and other things she hadn't a clue as to the proper meaning. It did, however, introduce to her a powerful new idea.

Which was why she was now standing outside Tanith's dishcloth tent with three or four buttercups in her fist. She tried to knock, then remembered that it was a tent and that didn't work very well, so she settled for chirping out, "Knock knock knock knock knock--"

"Yes, what is it?" Zelda peered out the tent flap, looking annoyed.

Tanith beamed brightly. "I picked you some flowers." She handed them over.

Zelda peered at the buttercups, clearly confused. "Uh. Thank you. What are these for?"

"I," Tanith said proudly, "am being romantic."

Zelda blinked. Tanith fairly glowed with pride at her accomplishment. "You're... being... romantic."

"Yes!"

"...why?"

"Because I love you!" Tanith clasped her hands to her chest, like the women in the book had done. "I love you and your heaving bosom and your powerful manhood and your--"

"My WHAT?!" Zelda dropped the flowers in alarm. Tanith picked them up and handed them to her again. "Tanith. Do you even know what that stuff means?"

"No," Tanith admitted without missing a beat, "but it's romantic."

"It's disturbing and you don't love me. Go away."

"But--"

"GO."

Tanith kissed Zelda on the cheek and skipped away. Zelda stared and retreated into her tent.

"She's very odd." Pomegrenate paused in grooming herself. The pixacat yawned and shifted herself on Zelda's bed.

"Odd isn't the half of it. I've been putting up with her for ages." Zelda sighed.

((Point total=114))

Zelda, meanwhile, had been reading up on home security.

Unfortunately, her options were rather limited. Barbed wire was an interesting option, except for the fact that (a) she didn't have any, (b) it would have been too big, and (c) Tanith could fly right over it. Electronics were rather out of her league. Her best option was a guard-animal, and since she still firmly believed that most of the pixapets around were not to be trusted (other than dear Pomegrenate, who was a cat, and had flat-out refused to do any such thing as become a guard-cat), that was out of the question, too.

Everything was going badly. As usual.

Zelda tapped her length of pencil lead on her scrap of paper. The graphite had rubbed off, leaving her hand, from finger to thumb, an oily grey colour. She scowled. Just her luck.

The important thing, it seemed to her, was to seem as though there were no security measures in place. This was easy right now, since there weren't any. In which case, it would be better to make it clear that there was security.

If only there was some way to distract Tanith from her.

Pomegrenate yawned and rolled over, pawing at the tent fabric. "Are you still at those plans, Zelda?"

"Of course I am."

"Any luck?"

"I don't know yet."

The cat snorted and went back to sleep. Zelda pursed her lips.

Back to the security. Since she didn't have any, she should definitely get Tanith thinking there was some...

Zelda began to sketch out the plans in earnest.

((Point total=120))