"It's Not A Sex Thing": The Chaste 'n' Plucky Heroine, Thwarted Again

YOU ARE A PLUCKY TOMBOYISH HEROINE RECENTLY COME OF AGE! ARE YOUR LEGS:

1. Ungainly;

2. Coltish;

3. Sunburnt;

4. Carrying you across the southeastern border of the hayfield as fast as lightning

YOUR SCALLAWAGGERY HAS GOTTEN YOU IN TROUBLE MANY A TIME AND OFT WITH YOUR SCHOOLMASTER/WITCH COUNCIL/THE MOON ELDERS:

1. They wish I were more like my sister Glytemnestrae;

2. How well-behaved and effortlessly feminine she is, never fidgeting at lessons;

3. Her legs are never sunburnt;

4. Perhaps…if I were to bind my breasts and disguise myself as a Boy….I could teach them all a lesson?

FATHER IS ILL:

1. I shall bind my breasts and disguise myself as a Boy Doctor….I will prescribe powerful medicines and prove once and for all that girls with sunburnt legs can be trusted with prescription pads

2. I shall bind my breasts and disguise myself as a Boy pedlar, smuggling myself Offworld on a caravan of thieves, in order to maintain the family fortune

3. I shall bind my breasts and disguise myself as a Boy so that,

4. I should really just bind my breasts over this, see if that helps bring Father’s fever down

5. I mean it can’t hurt

6. Don’t you want Father to get better, Glytemnestrae?

7. Look, just as a general policy, you can assume that if anyone in the family gets sick, just to be on the safe side, I’m going to bind my breasts

8. And get one of those great kind of flow-y tunic-y shirts that sometimes men wear, that are loose-ish but also practical and really highlight the manifold charms of the masculine torso

9. And I’ll have a sick-as-fuck scar under my right eye and call myself Ranulph

10. I mean…if it’ll help Father

11. Did you know sometimes guys kiss other guys

12. Listen, before you say anything, hear me out: First I bind my breasts so everyone thinks I’m a boy

13. I’ll have a silky, streamlined chest, with rosy, masculine nipples the size of chestnuts

THE HARVEST IS AT RISK OF FAILING:

1. Okay, well, I think we can all agree that what needs to happen is for me to bind my breasts

2. To SAVE the FAMILY, of course

3. You think I want to bind my breasts??

4. Because this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what I want, Lalainne

5. I’m just SPIRITED

6. This is about proving how great girls are

7. You have to call me Ranulph to prove that girls are just terrific

8. How is anyone ever going to realize how great girls are unless I’m allowed to live on a ship with a man with a seasoned eye and a ruddy beard and I’m his cabin boy and my muscles grow hard from sea-work and he gruffly says “Ae ‘n work, lad” to me each night

9. His arms are like barrel-staves

10. Or maybe I’ll have to flee to Court, where I will be besieged by worldly-wise older women with impeccable personal style and beautifully fragrant arms

11. And they’ll all flirt wildly with me according to an incredibly severe and minutely-watched code of conduct, such that every single word or act, no matter how small, is fiercely imbued with meaning and possibility

12. The stakes will be impossibly high – my jawline impossibly sharp – my chivalry impeccable, my regard for the niceties faultless, my dress immaculate

13. These women will be just unbelievably sexually experienced

14. It’s not a sex thing

SOMETHING HAPPENED WITH THE KING OR SOMETHING OR A TREE FELL OVER MAYBE:

1. Thank goodness I already had all of my breast-binding kit with me, otherwise who knows how long it would have taken me to jury-rig something out of a corset

2. It’s only to further the causes of adventuring!

3. I have to do it because of Society

4. What I’m doing is actually VERY GOOD because it’s about keeping our nuclear family together and safe and definitely doesn’t have a sexual component to it

5. Use your elaborate knowledge of Cosmeticks to fashion me a light beard, Marguerite

6. Maybe someone will want to lick it later

THIS MATH PROBLEM IS HARD:

1. Carry the 9….hang on, let me bind my breasts real quick, see if that helps

2. I gotta run back to the house real fast, see if Father is ill…maybe Father is ill, or maybe he’ll be ill later….or maybe he’ll be asleep later…sleeping is kind of like being ill…if I go back to the house at midnight and Father is asleep, then I’ll know it’s time to run away to the capital city disguised as a boy so I can learn to become a card shark

3. I wish I lived at the lighthouse with the Lighthouse-Master and that he shaved my throat suspiciously with a leather strop every morning, inspecting me scrupulously

4. Which way to the lighthouse? I already bound my breasts this morning, can I be excused?