Tara Brooks woke up to an uncharacteristically quiet house. Normally she’d be expecting sounds from the kitchen, her brothers going at each other, or just any other indication that somebody lived in the house.

She yawned, wondering if it was still early and checked her alarm. It ticked to five past ten exactly when she looked.

Then it clicked. She was home alone. For the first time in her thirteen years, she was left without a babysitter. She had turned old enough to be left alone according to her parents, which meant she had to house to herself and could whatever she wanted. After stretching, she sat up, tossed the pink blankets aside and lazily got out of bed.

She considered making it, shook her head to herself, then grabbed the bathrobe she had casually draped over her desk chair. As she did, she knocked a book that had been left open, face down on her desk. There was a brief moment of annoyance when it fell shut. Sighing, she picked up the battered copy of a choose your own adventure book and flicked through it, trying to remember where she had left off the night before. When she found the most familiar looking picture, she put the book down again and pulled on her bathrobe.

The word ‘adventure’ had planted an idea in her head. It wasn’t very adventurous to begin with, but it was the first chance she ever had for it. She rushed to the window and opened the curtains, finding, much to her delight, that it was raining. She skipped for joy a few times, balling her fists in a strange sense of victory, then sprinted out of her room, almost tripping over the sword her father still had to mount on the wall

As she headed to the bathroom, she narrated to herself…

“With her trusty sidekick, Zarko, taken by the wi...no not witch… enchantress, from the east. A’rat found herself trapped, no… roaming around Brookmoor Castle. … She could leave whenever she wanted to, but wanted for naught…”

Tara took a moment for a self-satisfied smile at finding a use for the word ‘naught’, before continuing her story.

“And with the sorcerer Swile’s acid rain spell cover the immediate area, A’rat found the best course of action was to….”

Tara stomped her foot in annoyance, trying to find the right word and then simply shrugged.

“Retreat to her bathroom, where her three handmaidens already waited to assist her with bathing. A’rat, raised as a barbarian, had thought of it as decadent when she first entered the service of the lord of Brookmoor, but now…”

Continuing to mumble to herself, Tara closed the door to the bathroom.

Tara had quickly gotten through her bathroom routine, saving a lot of time by not teasing her hair out like she normally would if she was planning to go outside. With her bathrobe barely over her pajamas, she rushed down the stairs, said good morning to an empty house and waited for response. … Nothing.

There was another gleeful set of bounces and in a whirlwind of bathrobe, Tara bounced through the kitchen to get her cereal. When she poured it into a bowl, a white plastic seal fell out, promising her the ‘radical princess toy’ that was included with the sugar-heavy breakfast product.

She tore it open with her teeth and her eyes widened. It was the toy she’d been wanting. Even though it wasn’t much to look at, little more than a cheaply cast piece of rubber, vaguely in the form of a cartoon princess, Tara was beside herself with joy. It was the one she needed to complete her collection. The see-through, with a few sparkles in the rubber. Tara placed it in the center of the table like a trophy, then went to inspect the fridge. With both her parents and brothers out of the house, she took her chance. She took the chocolate milk and added it to her sugar bombs. She made sure to return it to the fridge and briefly considered putting a little of the regular milk in, to make sure her mother wouldn’t notice. She came to the conclusion that there was no way that her mother payed that much attention to the chocolate milk, as only Tara and one of her brothers had a taste for the stuff.

She forgot about it and shuffled to the living room, bowl in hand, finding a spot in the middle of the massive eight-seater couch that filled most of the living room. Taking the remote, she turned on the TV and...was rapidly disappointed in the Monday morning selection.

In the end, all she had to watch was a rerun of Wonder Woman that A, was already half over and B, she had seen three times already. She wasn’t fussed though, she liked it well enough and calmly ate her cereal as she watched, very briefly paying extra attention to her favorite scene of a bathing suit clad Diana Prince fighting off two men on the beach. She sank back into the couch when the fight was over.

She finished her cereal, had the presence of mind to return her bowl the kitchen, then almost ran back to the living room.

She dropped to her knees in front of the television, opened a drawer from under the appliance to reveal a pile of videos and, more importantly, the Nintendo.

Five minutes of putting plugs in ports later and Tara was lost in the pixel kingdom of Hyrule...

“I’m home,” Mrs Brooks voice rang from the kitchen door. Tara didn’t notice.

“Hi, honey,” she greeted her daughter right behind her, startling the girl so bad she almost dropped her controller.

“Don’t tell me this is all you’ve done today? Go play outside.”

“...Can I save the game first?”

“Sure, whatever that means, just do it quick,” Mrs. Brooks said, then returned to the kitchen though not before saying over her shoulder, “The weather’s too nice to stare at a screen all day.”

Disappointed that the rain had let up, Tara played for five more minutes, despite knowing full well she could save the game at any moment she chose. When she was done, she carefully stored the Nintendo back among the tapes.

“And don’t go read a book!” Mrs. Brooks called from the kitchen, “You need to exercise to get all that sugar out of your system.”

“Yes, mom…”

Tara hurriedly got dressed, slightly upset that the gray woolen sweater she often wore to simulate chain mail was in the laundry. She shrugged it off, there were worse things, then ran down the stairs again, finding her mom blocking the door to the scullery.

“Mind explaining this?” she said, holding a dirty cereal bowl in front of Tara’s face, “Chocolate milk on cereal, really?”

Tara remained silent.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t see it this time, but if it happens again, Mrs. McGillicuddy is coming to babysit.”

Tara nodded, the reality of this threat sinking in quickly. Mrs. McGillicuddy treated Tara like she was five.

“Understood, mom…”

“Good, now go work off that sugar and be back by dinner.”

“Yes, mom,” Tara said and slipped her shoes on, then went to find her bicycle and rode off.

It didn’t take her long to get in mindset that the bike was a horse and she was a brave hero out on a quest… the contents of which she made up as she went along.