Mibbet was getting nervous, she had been called into a room with several others Rosalind told her were very important to the day to day running of the kingdom. Including the man who was her current bodies father. There was Chancellor Porque (Chris to his friends), The Treasurer Counta (Dean), Prime Minister Stryke (We could tell you what his friends called him, but frankly he considered that level of socialisation to be frivolous, and a waste of time he had no desire to partake in.) Sir Humphrey in his capacity as a royal guard, and a dizzying array of other individuals Rosalind insisted she didn’t have to memorise, Mibbet did try, but honestly there were just so many of them, and everybody seemed to say “The Honourable Lady, or The Right Honourable Gentleman anyway.) To her surprise before the meeting even started her Father pulled her aside for a brief conversation. “Now Rosalind, it seems that since your disappearance you have matured somewhat, and one day all this will be yours. Mibbet peered around the room sceptically, it looked a bit dingy. “Not the room you hopless idiot, Rosalind snapped. (Mibbet was willing to swear she picked up more froggy insults by the day, but she could never figure out where she got them all from.) “He meant the kingdom.” It took a few minutes for understanding to dawn on Mibbet, and her brain promptly did the maths (unlike her). That was a lot of ponds, and lakes, rivers, streams, bogs, and assorted other bodies of water. Each with many frogs, so many frogs, and she would be responsible for them all. (Oh the humans too she supposed.) Her mind quickly processed all this new data, rebelled, packed it’s bags, and noped the hell out. Mibbet tried to speak, but all that came out was “meep.” “Finally sinking in is it?” The king chuckled completely misunderstanding the situation, he offered a companionable arm around her shoulder, drawing her into what should have been a reassuring hug. But given the whole body swap situation, frog cultures distinct lack of hugging on a whole, and the new data she was processing was just additional nope in the nope, nope, and hell no sandwich her day was becoming. “Since this is such a grave responsibility, we agreed that it was time you learned first hand what is involved in governing a country. So welcome Rosalind, to your first emergency parliament. If it was possible to flee at this point Mibbet would currently be sprinting for the exit fast enough to leave a royal shaped hole through the door. But clearly that wasn’t an option, so she eyed the window for a few moments, before realising this room was on the third floor. Rendering self defenestration highly inadvisable. So Mibbet did the most unwise move possible in the circumstances, and rather than a swift exit she stepped up, and took a seat. Three mind numbing hours later Mibbet was desperately pondering if her defenestration would have been the preferable option. Chancellor Porque had been talking for over 2 and a half hours, all by himself, and showed no signs of stopping, or even slowing. Please she begged, make it stop. But it showed no signs of stopping, and none of the others gathered in the room seemed to be making the attempt either. It made her wonder, these people did this every day? Why did they seem to enjoy suffering so much. “Obscenely large paychecks, and the ability to weasel more money out of the system mostly” Rosalind commented drily. The world around her seemed to have slowed as if flowing through molasses, and she could have sworn she saw the hands on the clock in the corner moving backwards one second in every two. (She had taken to watching it as its movement seemed to be the most action going on in the room. She was so bored she had actually had Rosalind explain what it was, how it worked, and teach her to use it, and after all that he was still bloody talking.) Mibbet’s brain having returned from its brief break from reality, had stepped back in about halfway through said verbal onslaught, and had promptly been caught up in the verbose mess, and beaten to putty by a stray gang of weasel words. If it had known the words it would have been flabberghasted, at the scale of the filibuster. “He does go on a it doesn’t he?” came a whispered voice from behind her, she turned to see Sir Humphrey with an affable smile. “how does he use so many words to say nothing” Mibbet asked back aghast, taking great pains to ignore the shushing from the next seat over. “Oh he’s not saying nothing, he’s saying exactly what he wants to and wrapping it in a whole mess of nothing to hide it, would you like the translation?” Mibbet nodded. “Hmm let’s see, the gist of today seems to be “there’s a drought in the south of the kingdom, and that will cost me a lot of money, and since I’m such a greedy piggy that my name suits perfectly I want to use the money on tax breaks for my friends. mmm money, I like the sound of that almost as much as the sound of my own voice, money, money, money.” Mibbet pondered this translation for a moment, then a moment longer, while she refreshed her memory, and realisation hit, drought meant water shortage. Ponds and lakes and rivers were drying up, and this HOPLESS PUDDLESPAWNING SCUMSUCKER WAS TALKING ABOUT MONEY?” “It can’t be helped” Rosalind replied. “These meetings have very strict rules. Nobody can talk until he’s done, and there’s a limited time to discuss these things, so if he stalls long enough there’s nothing we can do about it.” “That only applies to official members of the meeting right? How about inexperienced young Princesses who have just had to put up with this guy waffling on for the last 3 hours?” “You know what? said Rosalind with a grin, I’m pretty sure they never wrote rules for that.”