twin-city-ankh-and-morpork: (x) Death and Susan by amianna on DA “He built me a swing, Susan remembe
twin-city-ankh-and-morpork: (x) Death and Susan by amianna on DA “He built me a swing, Susan remembered. She sat and stared at the thing. It was quite complicated. In so far as the thinking behind it could be inferred from the resulting construction, it had run like this: Clearly a swing should be hung from the stoutest branch. In fact - safety being paramount - it would be better to hang it from the two stoutest branches, one to each rope. They had turned out to be on opposite sides of the tree. Never go back. That was part of the logic. Always press on, step by logical step. So … he’d removed about six feet from the middle of the tree’s trunk, thus allowing the swing to, well, swing. The tree hadn’t died. It was still quite healthy. However, the lack of a major section of trunk had presented a fresh problem. This had been overcome by the addition of two large props under the branches, a little further out from the ropes of the swing, keeping the whole top of the tree at about the right height off the ground. She remembered how she’d laughed, even then. And he’d stood there, quite unable to see what was wrong.” - Terry Pratchett, “Soul Music” -- source link