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It's always a complicated process, trying to jibe the various timelines he has to deal with, but Charlie's determined. This is his third Milliways-based Lent, and he's not going to let it slide just because it's summer in San Diego. Sometimes a bloke needs a time of contemplation and discipline. Even this bloke.

So. Doorway in from California early this morning, out to Las Vegas for Mass, and back to the Bar again.

For a guy with ashes on his forehead, he looks pretty peaceful.

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She tilts her head curiously. "What's Lent?"

Easter she knows. They go to church on Easter.

"Well," Charlie says in the tone of someone used to explaining things to the small and adorable, "it's forty days to thinjk about God and all the things you need to do to be a better person. And a lot of people stop eating meat, or they give up something they like--that's called fasting.

"So I'm meatless until April."

April ponders this for a moment.

"I don't believe in God," she says finally.

"I stopped for a while," Charlie confides. "But then I met an angel."

That gets a gasp.

"A real angel?"

"Oh, yes. Wings and everything."

"So they're really real? Daddy says angels aren't real."

Not that she really cares what Daddy thinks.

"They are very real. I'll let you know a secret." He leans close. "Daddies don't know everything."

"That's not a secret." she rolls her eyes a little. "'Cause I'm not stupid, but Daddy says I am. So that makes him stupid."

"It does indeed," Charlie says with a slight frown. It sounds a little too familiar.

It's a fact of life for her - she's not quite old enough to realize that parents aren't supposed to tell their kids that they're stupid, or a mistake. That'll change soon enough... but not yet.

"But I'm really smart, I read lots of books."

"Oh, that's very good. What's your favorite?"

"I like A Little Princess and Rilla of Ingleside and the Narnia books."

And yes, she's read all of them.

Ah . . . girl books.

"I look after a little girl whose favorite book is The Giving Tree. It reminds her of her papa."

"I've never read that, who's her papa?"

"Her papa's name is Jack and he really likes trees."

Also a god, but she's young and just learned about angels. It would be confusing.

"It's about a boy and the tree who loves him."

"Is it a picture book? I don't like picture books, they're too short."

"It has words and pictures. Do you know who Shel Silverstein is? He wrote it."

She shakes her head. "I know who Louisa May Alcott is! She wrote a book called Little Women, but Miranda took it with her to school, so I haven't gotten past the first chapter."

"Well, sometime, read Shel Silverstein. He writes poems, too--about picking your nose and taking the garbage out."

She wrinkles her nose. "That sounds like boy poems."

Boys still have cooties.

"Some of them are very boy poems. And some of them very girl poems."

He adds, since he's the Adult here, "I'm Charlie, by the way."

"I'm Rilla. Mommy named me Sasha, but I don't like that name."

Apparently she's not Princess Sarah Marilla Lucy Pevensie Blythe at the moment.

"Rilla is very pretty. The little girl I look after is named Georgia, and she's got a brother called Keiran. And there's another little boy I take care of sometimes named Aaron."

"It's short for Marilla but I don't like that name as much, but Rilla Blythe is my favorite character in my new book that I found under Miranda's bed when Mommy made me help her clean it out."

All in one sentence.