Chapter 171 - So Much To Tell Him (1/2)

Springtime had done Abby a lot of good after suffering all winter. It felt like she had come alive again so she spent as much time as humanly possible outside.

A lot of that time was spent directing plays. Their dumb little recreation of Lord of the Rings that had been put on for a second time during the festival celebrating the mountain spirits' breathing life back into nature at the beginning of spring had been universally popular.

Even people from Raisha had been present because the festival was celebrated throughout the entire clan. Several children from the other village wanted to be a part of it too and put up quite a fuss.

It was decided that a different play would be put on that they could participate in. All they had to do was find a place to stay in Ilmir for about a week for rehearsals before the performance.

Abby settled on recreating Alice in Wonderland for that play and everyone loved it so much that people began demanding that plays continue running as long as the weather permitted. The children loved being a part of it and the a.d.u.l.ts enjoyed watching it so plays became the most popular form of entertainment, surpassing even Katie's homemade board games.

With people going back and forth so often between Ilmir and Raisha it became difficult to find enough places for everyone to stay. An inn was currently under construction to fix this problem. Because visitors to Ilmir were so infrequent, it hadn't been a problem before.

A woman from Raisha who was interested in the concept of performing arts decided that she would get a stage built in her village and managed to convince Abby to make copies of scripts for each of the plays she put on to bring back with her. She hoped to be able to have their own theater program running by next summer.

Right now they were in the middle of practicing a play based on the Harry Potter series. Lian, the boy she and Blaise met whose father led them to Ilmir in the first place, was playing Harry and was having a hard time getting the emotion right.

”No, no, you need to be angry! What makes you mad?” Abby prompted.

Lian scowled. ”When Nadiri eats all of the cheese buns before I get a chance to even have one.”

Nadiri, his younger sister who was playing the role of Hermione, was nearby and stuck her tongue out at him before returning to rehearsing her own lines with the boy playing Ron.

Well, it was unconventional but Abby could work with that. ”Okay then. When you say your lines, think about Nadiri stealing the cheese buns and how that makes you feel. Channel it into your acting.”

He nodded very seriously and turned to his friend, who was playing Dumbledore and had been listening in on the conversation. The two of them had been going over a rather emotional scene together but Lian had been reading his lines so flatly that Abby had to intervene.

This was only Lian's second time being in a play. In the first he had been a variety of background characters and had done a good job so she thought he was ready for this. It wasn't like anybody else was doing all that much better; these kids weren't used to theater.