“I was beginning to think I’d starve to death before you got here,” Daniel said.
“It wasn’t that long,” Alexis protested. “Besides, wait till you see what —”
“First things first,” Daniel interrupted. “You can tell me all about it while we eat.”
Alexis scowled at being interrupted mid excitement. ‘I was going to tell you all about it, but now not so much,’ Alexis grumbled to herself. Wedging her abbreviated description between Daniel’s chewing and slurping was not the bubbly enthusiasm Alexis had anticipated, on top of which she doubted he was even fully paying attention.
“So you got conned into buying ugly black rings. Is that the gist of it?”
“He said the rings were magic and that the color wouldn’t matter because —”
“Right, right, ugly black invisible rings,” Daniel interrupted. “Okay, show me the rings, or are they already invisible?”
Alexis knew that Daniel got cranky when he was hungry and that he would be back to his normal friendly self in a few more minutes now that he’d eaten but she was still annoyed as she opened the ring box and carefully extracted the marked ring for herself and extended the box with the remaining ring across the table to Daniel.
Daniel took the ring box and extracted the remaining ring. “Babe; an ugly black ring that almost certainly is the wrong size. What were you thinking?” To drive his point home, Daniel took the obviously too small ring and tried to demonstrate it not fitting, but it did! It slid smoothly and snugly to the base of his ring finger. “Whoa, that shouldn’t have happened.” Hiding his small panic, Daniel grasped the ring and slid it back off his finger effortlessly leaving him holding an obviously too small ring in his hand.
“See, told you it was magic!”
“I admit, something really strange just happened but it didn’t become invisible,” Daniel said sliding the too small ring back onto his large ring finger. “See, it’s still black.”
Alexis waited until Daniel lifted his gaze from the ring and looked back at her. When she was sure she had his attention, she quickly slid her ring onto her own finger. “How about now?”
“What …,” Daniel started before he realized she was referring to the ring and looked at his own hand. The ring appeared to be gone! “It really did turn invisible,” he mumbled as he reached for the invisible ring. “What the hell, it’s gone! I can’t even feel it.”
“Magic!” Alexis emphasized again, holding out her hand with the invisible ring on it that she could feel but not see. When Daniel took her left hand with his right, she did the same in reverse. Although she couldn’t see either of their rings, she could feel both of them and knew she could easily remove them.
“Your ring is gone too,” Daniel said feeling all of Alexis’ fingers in a failed attempt to figure out the trick. “That was some trick! What did you say the rings were supposed to be for besides disappearing?”
“I told you but you weren’t listening. They are for fun Daniel,” Alexis grinned with a wicked gleam in her eye.