As the years went by, Maddie and Loki noticed that their daughter possessed talents other than mischief. Like her mother, she had the ability to communicate with the animals and had a decent singing voice. They discovered another gift of hers one evening.
"Mom? Dad?"
"Yes, dear?" Maddie replied.
"Where do babies come from?"
Her parents both dropped their forks. Loki nearly choked on his cotton candy.
"W-w-why do you ask, dear?" he stammered.
"Since Aunt Tatum had her baby, I want to know."
The couple looked at each other nervously.
"Well, sweetie," Loki said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Babies come from...um..."
"The stork!" Maddie intervened.
"Yea—what?"
"The stork left you on our doorstep!"
"Yeah! The stork!"
Belle blinked at them. "No, he didn't."
"Of course, he did!" Loki insisted.
She narrowed her eyes. "You're lying to me."
"No, I'm not!"
"Stop it, Daddy!"
"Hold on a second!" Maddie interrupted. "How do you know we're lying, sweetie?"
She shrugged. "I just feel it."
From then on, they knew not to lie in front of Belle, though her question was not answered until many years later.
Josh Shady and his friend Killian Jones continued to pick on her and Chara, but she kept herself composed, most of the time. There were a couple incidents involving wedgies (she gave them underpants first) and whoopee cushions, but she had not gone as far as the piano accident in a while.
The laugh was on them when she was the first in her class to get her cutie mark. The Newark Wildcats and the ZanesVille Blue Devils were playing at White Field and Belle begged her father to take her. Maddie could not join them because she was at the spa with her friends.
Loki yawned during the first 2 quarters, because they were filled with timeouts and penalties and humans barely even got a touchdown. Belle, however, was enticed in the entire spectacle and bounced in her seat, cheering and waving a foam finger. It got boring for her by the 3rd quarter, as the football had only been in the in-zone twice . Both teams were equally horrible.
She glanced at her father, who was on the verge of falling asleep. Her mother was not here and she knew she would get angry if she found out, but this game needed more excitement.
The Blue Devils had the ball now. Their team was leading fifteen to thirteen. The quarterback was looking very tired and nervous. There's no harm in helping him a little.
As soon as the ball left the quarterback's hand, the audience gasped as it moved in a corkscrew motion. When it hit the field, the referee cried out: "2nd down!"
"What?!" the quarterback protested. "No fair! It was a foul!"
"It hit the field!" the referee argued.
Loki woke from his near slumber, his attention finally caught.
"There was no way I could have caught that!"
Shut up, Belle thought. With that, the quarterback's mouth was zipped closed. Belle gasped at her mistake and instantly made the zipper vanish, but her dad and most of the humans had already seen it.
