Storytime
Daphne, age nine, flopped onto Ezri’s bed.
Ezri, age eleven, asked, “Can I help you?”
“Tell me a story.”
“I don’t know any stories,” said Ezri, like any other time she mostly wanted Daphne to leave her alone to do homework.
“Ezzeee,” Daphne whined, “you know lots of stories.”
Ezri gave her the over the top of the glasses Look she had all but trademarked since she got the glasses that summer. “I’ve never even heard of stories. What’s a story?”
“Like, about pirates and wizards and aliens and adventures~!”
“Pirates and wizards and aliens? Sounds exciting.”
Daphne pouted. She didn’t like when her brother—sister?—played stupid. Everyone knew Ezri was the smartest, even though Joseph was the oldest. But Daphne made the best drawings of the three siblings.
“Well,” Ezri relented slowly, “I don’t know much about wizards or aliens, but I’ll tell you something about pirates, and where this ‘story’ thing came from.”
Daphne sat up as Ezri wove her a tale about the origins of storytelling, bored pirates below deck in a storm, with a flair for the theatric.
Daphne grinned. If she flopped on her middle brother’s—sister’s—bed, and asked, she always got a story in the end.