Unicorn Farm - Susan at Home

In May 2019 Margaret Adamson, and her friend Sue Fulcher are providing the prompts. They will be published by Elephant's Child. This week's prompts are: 

Rampant
Solicitude
Toes
Form
Knocking
Pin cushion

And / or

Reel
Grappled
Perfume
Courtroom
Squad
General

Now my tales of Susan is going back in time. We're back to Susan's first year at Unicorn Farm, but also back in Susan's coastal home town. This is a "filler" or background chapter once again.

"Moses supposes his toeses are roses,
but Moses supposes erroneously.
For Moses he knowses his toeses aren't roses
as Moses supposes his toeses to be."

"Toeses!" Linda said "What nonsense. Why don't they speak like grown-ups?"
"Well I like the song," Susan answered. "It sounds as if they're having fun, I suppose that's the general  idea."
Linda was in bad temper today, and Susan tried to avoid her, but she liked those old, American musicals too much to get out of the living room just to get out of Linda's way. She really liked their songs and dance. Her big idol was Fred Astaire and his tap dancing, but Gene Kelly was no mean dancer either. Susan rested her chin on her knees, sitting in a heap, trying to not attract Linda's attention.
During a long, winding dialogue - is it still called a dialogue when more than two are involved, Susan wondered - her thoughts slipped back to early spring and her dreams of being a dancer. The mini series "Ballet Shoes" had run on  TV, and she had dreamed of becoming a famous ballet dancer just like Posy Fossil. She even persuaded Mum and Dad to buy her a pair of pink pointe shoes. They hung on her wall now, tied up by their pink satin bands. After buying a book on ballet and doing plies and limbering exercises for months, she realized that she was much more a kindred spirit of Petrova, who went off exploring with Gum in the end.
Her Mum's solicitude for her feet, when she and Linda grappled with the basics of standing on their toes of course made Susan's stubborn streak become rampant and made her continue her exercises and reading for over a a month more before giving in. But in the end she found the perfect excuse for quitting. She found out that female ballet dancers was limited to a height of 165 cm - even if the bar was up from 156, she was still going to be too tall within a year, and furthermore at 13 she was far too old.  At least she now had a very good understanding of how a classical ballet was choreographed, and it helped her enjoy the dancing scenes in the musicals even more.
Linda left the living room in search of more fun than Susan's absorption in Gene Kelly's and Debbbie Reynold's problems and steps in the musical, and Susan let herself be carried away by music and words.

When the musical had reached it's happy ending, Mum came in and asked her to lay the table for dinner. Susan got up, she felt cold ans stiff from sitting for so long on the floor, but the thoughts of coming adventure made her get up and do her chores without complaining. Mum's perfume smelled flowery and made Susan's nose tickle. She sneezed a couple of times and Mum looked questioning at her. "It's only the perfume Mum, it makes my nose itch. But I still like the smell."
While Linda and Susan ate their early dinner, Mum and Dad sat at the table with them. Mum told them, for the 3rd or 4th time, that she and dad would be away for the night and most of Sunday too. "I've hung the contact form on the fridge," Mum said. "You can 'phone Dana and Louis if you get into trouble, but try and use your common sense first. We're having a party tonight, to celebrate Dana's admission to courtroom duty. Tomorrow Dad has promised to show a reel or two of the films he took of her back when she was studying to became a lawyer. He'll have a squad of spectators there."
Dad loaded screen, movie projector and other equipment in the car, while Mum helped the girls clear the table. "You're big girls now," Mum said, "you do not need a baby sitter for one night any more." 
"No, Mum we don't" Susan and Linda agreed."We'd rather like the money for candy," Susan added. The girls had bought a big bag of candy for tonight for at least some of the babysitting money.
"Now it is six o'clock," Mum said. "We'll be home at the very latest this time tomorrow." Susan and Linda hugged Mum and told her not to worry.
"Now what," Linda asked, when the lights from the car could no longer be seen. "Now we eat our candy," Susan said. They turned on the TV again, and sat looking at the kid's hour and the a natural history program on zebras, all the while eating their candy and drinking milk. When the zebra program ended, they were tired and ready for bed.

***

Next morning Susan jumped out of bed. Today they were all alone. Hopefully Linda would go visit her classmate Karin as she had spoken of earlier. Susan put the kettle on for tea. Linda came into the kitchen as well and placed bread, butter and honey  on the table. For a time they just ate, then they heard somebody knocking on the door. Linda went and opened. Susan could hear her greet Karin through the open door. "Hello Karin," Linda said. "Am I late or what has happened?"
"I just woke up very early, Karin said. "And I wanted to come over and fetch you, my parents are still asleep."
"Do you want a cup of tea?" Linda asked.
"Oh, yes please. I'm hungry," Karin answered. "Yesterday we had guests, and they danced, and had a lot of loud music, candles and strange smoke, but no dinner." Susan brought a mug and a plate for Karin and cut her some generous slices of bread. Karin ate four slices of bread and drank a lot of tea.
"Linda," Susan said, "can I leave the dishes for you? I want to go for a ride on my bike before it gets too cold. Today might be my last chance to visit the woods before winter comes. I promise to be home before Mum and Dad returns."
"Yes," Linda said. "We might go to Karin's place later. We'll clear the table, no worries."  Their heads bowed over some new magazine of Linda's, giggling.

Susan grasped her blue bag, now once again containing books and wand, and set out. She was not going to the woods, at least not to the woods Linda thought of. She was off to Unicorn Farm for some extra time with Heidi. They were going to practice transforming. Heidi was adept at this. She could make a pin cushion turn into a hedgehog, while Susan's spells so far had only had the pin cushion wiggle the needles and pins and spout an occasional leg. Susan found it a bit unfair that all apprentices were supposed to be good at transformations. It was only the purple team, Heidi's lot, who were really good at it. Susan would rather make real hedgehogs come to her, than transforming them. Maybe when they'd have to practice calling animals to them she could teach Heidi something.