"What kind of cake do you want?"

Phone pressed to her ear, Adrienne frowned down at her borrowed laptop. "What?"

"What kind of cake do you want," Starhawk's voice repeated patiently. "I'm writing a story."

"Umm..." She would have elected to phone a friend, but experience had demonstrated how little that helped. "Help me out here."

"It doesn't have to be a cake. It could be a pie. Or a fruit platter."

Surprisingly, increasing the available options did little to improve the situation. In self-defense, Adrienne resorted to choosing at random. "Chocolate cake."

Starhawk was not appeased. "What kind of frosting?"

"Banana," she said, again picking the first thing that sprang to mind. The strategy was rarely as successful the second time, especially when the second reply was supposed to relate to the first in some way.

There was a moment of silence from the other end of the phone. "That's unusual," Starhawk's voice said at last. "I like it."

Those two sentences, expressed one right after the other, revealed in its entirety the life philosophy of both conversational participants. This philosophy did, in all honesty, account for a good half of the reasons they got along at all. The rest of the reasons could mostly be explained by large amounts of caffeine and little sleep.

"Okay, thanks," Starhawk said abruptly. "See you later."

No sooner had the cell phone chimed its "call ended" warning than the doorbell rang. It was possible that it was someone who required a formal greeting. It wasn't particularly likely, however. Adrienne hit "call back" without moving from the futon.

"Yo," Starhawk's voice said.

"Is that you at the door?" Adrienne wanted to know.

"Yup."

"You can come in. The front door's unlocked."

Adrienne tried to remember how to "save"... was it ctrl-s or s-ctrl? Were you supposed to do it every other day or every other sentence? The questions were usually so tiresome that she didn't bother to save documents at all, but for some reason that upset Starhawk. So she made an effort before putting her laptop down and pretending not to notice that Bailey was about to jump on the keyboard and potentially erase about 41,000 words.

"Fastest way to know you're in quote reality," Starhawk announced from the foyer. A banging sound indicated that she had kicked the door shut again. She and the front door didn't get along very well. "Adri doesn't bother to lock her door."

"There aren't any kids in quote reality," Adrienne called, loud enough to be heard out front.

A white blur preceded Starhawk into the living room, a blur that stopped only long enough to register a second, very startled, fluffier white blur as it shot out through the kitchen door. The first white blur was hot on its heels. Ferocious barking of the kind that might emanate from a well-muscled rottweiler tore through the house, almost drowning out the scrabbling of multiple sets of claws on the tile floor and a crash from the stairs.

"Whinnie, stop that," Starhawk told the now-deserted living room as she set a box down on the coffee table. "How's the wordcount?"

Adrienne glanced at her laptop as though she hadn't memorized every statistic on her NaNoWriMo report card while she was supposed to be writing. "Eighty-two percent," she reported, cleverly dodging the question. Her novel's current status and today's progress were two very different things.

"Write on," Starhawk declared, claiming Bailey's former place in the recliner. "Want some cake? I brought strawberry with vanilla icing."

"You--" Adrienne reviewed their previous conversation, trying to figure out where that combination had come from. "What?"

Starhawk shrugged. "That's what I wanted. I figure, when it's your birthday, you can have whatever kind you want." Then she paused, giving Adrienne a speculative look. "Oh, wait..."

"It is my birthday," Adrienne finished.

Starhawk considered that for a moment. "Well," she decided. "That'll teach you to ask for chocolate and banana."

Another crash and the sound of more scrabbling announced another lap of The Great White Thing Chase. "Bailey, come here," Adrienne called soothingly and--predictably--in vain. Starhawk reached for Whinnie's tail as the little dog shot through the room and missed completely.

"So where's Traveler?" Adrienne asked, as the commotion receded again.

"Back at your house," Starhawk said nonchalantly. "Your real house, I mean. I was telling her stories about the kids... I would have just stolen their toys, but she's a little less tolerant about that sort of thing. I think she's going to give them a demonstration."

Adrienne pondered possible definitions of "demonstration." "You know," she said at last, "I have to live on the same street as these people."

"She won't hurt them," Starhawk assured her. "Her dojo would kick her out for fighting. She's pretty good at that intimidating thing, though."

Just then there was a banging on the front door, followed by a belated doorbell chime. "Come in," Adrienne and Starhawk called at the same time.

The door opened, shut, shut again, and then slammed shut with a muttered imprecation before Traveler strolled into the room. "Adri, I hope I didn't break your door," she declared. "It has some issues."

"Yeah, more now I bet," Starhawk added.

"It's fine," Traveler said defensively. "It closed!" She paused for dramatic emphasis, then admitted, "It might not open again, but it's closed now."

"Is that my real door," Adrienne wanted to know, "or my quote real door?"

Traveler gave her an odd look. "Why would I bother slamming your quote real door?" she wondered.

"Why would you be using her real door?" Starhawk countered.

Traveler considered that. "That's a good point," she conceded. "Hey, happy birthday, by the way."

"Yeah, that," Starhawk agreed. "Wanna go play frisbee?"

"I don't have a frisbee," Adrienne reminded them.

"A fact I still can't wrap my mind around," Starhawk remarked. "But never fear, we have about a thousand, give or take nine hundred eighty. More importantly, we have this wicked cool one we got at EMS today with our special discount stickers."

"Whenever you say EMS," Adrienne mused, "I always think you hurt yourself."

"No, that's you," Starhawk told her. "Just because Eastern Mountain Sports could cause you to need Emergency Medical Service doesn't mean they're the same thing."

"This is a soft frisbee," Traveler added, like it was relevant. "It's hard to hurt yourself with it. Believe me, we've tried."

"In the dark," Starhawk explained. "Well, in the woods under the full moon, which is basically the same thing with the way we aim. Some of our best throws involved getting hit in the face... it turns out catching is really hard when you can't see the frisbee. We should have gotten the glow in the dark one," she said, as an aside to Traveler.

"Except not, because this one is way cooler," Traveler replied.

"Yeah--the not getting hurt thing is really a point in its favor."

"What if we lose the frisbee over the fence?" Adrienne interjected, gazing toward the kitchen windows.

"Hello, it's quote reality." Traveler sounded impatient. "There's only a fence if you want there to be."

"Speaking of which," Starhawk said, following Adrienne's gaze. "I thought you said there weren't any kids."

"No real kids," Adrienne corrected. "Those are quote real kids. And I don't think they're all mine," she said, looking pointedly at Starhawk. "None of mine are alien."

Traveler wandered over to the kitchen door to see what they were looking at. "Hey, are those Ranger kids?"

Starhawk raised her hand guiltily. "Those would be mine."

"Which one's Jenni?" Traveler wanted to know.

"The one who's signing," Starhawk said helpfully.

"That only describes about six people," Traveler retorted.

"Mine are the normal ones," Adrienne offered innocently.

Without so much as a glance at one another, the sisters scoffed at the same time.

"Yeah, right," Traveler smirked.

Starhawk gave Adrienne a knowing look. "If there's anything even remotely normal about Ella, Seth makes up for it," she told her friend. "And obviously, Heather was doomed from the start."

"Because you named her?" Adrienne suggested.

"At least," Starhawk agreed.

"Maybe we should play frisbee in the front yard," Traveler commented.

"Maybe you should get your kids to come in here and write the rest of your novel for you," Starhawk told Adrienne.

Adrienne considered that. "I really like that idea," she said at last. "Can we do that?"

"They're 'ours'," Starhawk reminded her. "We can do anything we want."

Adrienne sighed. "Oh, I wish that was true."

"Come on," Traveler called from the foyer. She had worked her way all the way around the house by now, and apparently hadn't stumbled over any warring animals, white or otherwise. That was probably a bad sign. "Let's go outside."

"You can play with my new toy," Starhawk offered. She unclipped a small silver device from her pocket and held it up. "In forty-five minutes of playing frisbee, I took five thousand steps and burned a hundred forty calories."

She tossed it to Adrienne, who dropped it.

"It measures your pulse, too," Traveler chimed in, appearing in the doorway again. "There's a little picture of a heart and it flashes."

While not the most technical explanation ever, it was pretty much the same kind of description Adrienne would have given. So the pedometer went outside with the girls and the frisbee and one very wound-up little dog, who still hadn't slowed down long enough to be identifiable as any particular breed.

As Traveler jumped down off of the porch she predicted, "This is going to end up in a story, isn't it."

"Ooh..." Starhawk paused on the edge of the porch. "That's a really good idea."

"I thought there was already a story," Adrienne said, closing the sometimes working front door behind her. "I got cake, didn't I?"

"You got cake, and we got a frisbee," Starhawk agreed. "That's the story."

Traveler turned around as she reached the edge of the yard and Adrienne's torn up street. "Seems fair to me," she declared.