Cuddle Application

11 - A Knight on a Shining Motorcycle

"I don't want to be a passenger on someone else's motorcycle.
I want to be the one riding that motherfucker."
-Lily Brooks-Dalton

➳♀♁➳

"But why can't the dragon just let him through?" Molly asks, pouting and snuggling in closer to my side.

I'm telling her a fairy tale, one of princes and princesses. We sat on the couch with a fuzzy blanket strewn over our legs, mine much longer than hers.

"Mol," I reply with a ghost of a smile, "If the dragon isn't in the story, then it would be too easy for the prince to get to the princess."

Molly doesn't like this. Her small, puckered mouth frowns and her nose scrunches up, like she's smelled something awful. "But if he was a nice dragon, he'd just let the princess have her prince."

I laugh. "Yes, but then it'd be too easy. The prince has to work to get his princess."

She crosses her arms and huffs, a four year old who hadn't gotten her wish. "What happened to happy endings?"

"I'm getting there, Silly Willy," I reply, poking her softly in her stomach with my finger.

She squeals and clings to the straps of her little, denim overalls. "Sky, you hit my bell!"

Her belly button.

I fake an evil laugh, and poke her in the same spot. Using a low monster voice, I say, "I am the tickle monster! I'm going to tickle you!"

She screams out a laugh, closing her eyes and balling herself up on the plush couch. "No!" I tickle her sides, and she flails wildly, trying to cover the tickle spots and giggling a loud, "No," when she fails. I'm laughing so hard that my own sides hurt.

Molly tries a different approach and attempts to jump off the couch, but she gets her foot caught in the blanket on our legs. I grab her around the waist. "No, Sky! Daddy! Help!" She's laughing as I bring her stomach up to my face and blow a raspberry on her soft baby skin.

Molly tries to get out of my clutches, but she's stuck, laughing so hard she can barely breath. "Not the raspberry!" she yells, but she says it like "rapsy."

I laugh and pull her into my lap, the tickle fight over, grumbling some more nonsense about the tickle monster. Molly snuggles into my chest, her heat adding to the warmth around my heart. She puts her hand on my chest and moves her fingers to the pulse of my heartbeats.

"Sky," Molly says softly. "Do the prince and princess end up together?"

I push a piece of her curly hair out of her face and nod. "Of course. The prince defeats the dragon and he and the princess live happily ever after."

She mulls this over, staring all the while at her fingers over my heart. "But that's just a fairy tale."

I smile. What goes on in this little girl's mind?

She keeps talking, "Do people actually get happily ever afters in real life?"

I pull my little sister even tighter to my chest. "I think so, sissy. Things don't work out all of the time, but, hey, you already got a happily ever after."