They kept asking for it

Over and over

My stupid phone

Which is mine, by the way,

And I was so nearly fatally horrifically close to snapping

In half

That I decided we should play a game.

But not one they’d played before.

No

I deal out imagination

Like decks of cards.

I took them both on a quest

My cousins, the elf and the fairy

Through deep wooded living rooms and

Boggy rocky bedrooms and

Soaring fortressed kitchens.

I taught them World Saving 101 and they aced the course.

And I realized

And I realized

And I realized

That it had been years since I had saved the world like this.

I’d been busy saving myself.

And the little fairy told me

With wisdom much larger than her diminutive size

That saving myself from dragons is just as important as saving the magical pendant that would devastate destroy and decimate all evil in the universe.

And I agreed.