Within the half-hour, the fort was complete. Una and Everett had draped a blanket over two chairs they had pushed together, and used pillows and wadded-up sheets for extra coziness. The whole thing took longer than it might have, because Una threw a bantal at Everett and started a bantal fight.
Finally, the fort was up, and they sat under it on some folded sheets, Una flopped down and laughing, Everett sitting up beside her and laughing too.
"Let's tell stories," Una said.
"Okay," Everett agreed readily. "There's a good one from a short movie I've been practising editing in film school."
So Everett told Una the story of a boy taking a girl out on a date, and everything goes wrong as he tries to make it just right, until the girl reveals she doesn't need a perfect date, she just needs him. "It reminded me of someone," he confessed, grinning at Una. She laughed.
"My turn!" And Una made up a long, complicated story that started out as two bunny rabbits looking for a carrot patch but quickly spiralled away from that. "I used to do this when I was little," Una said, "and my father and I would act them out." She grew a little mellow here. "Sometimes we would take turns making up parts of the story until Mother called us for dinner. It was never actually done, anda know...."
Everett touched her shoulder. "Want to do that now?"
Una brightened again. "Yes!"
And so the seterusnya couple of hours was spent on a long, run-on story that got lebih and lebih convoluted the longer it went, and many times Una and Everett laughed so hard they had to let themselves stop before they could continue.