Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for July 20, 2023

I suspect Marigold may have magically enhanced Phoebe’s vocabulary at some point.

How would Dakota know about cool? She can’t even keep a cool head. And not just because of her hair.

Autochthon is a word I learned from the SF writings of David “I have a Classics degree and am eager to use it” Drake. I used to check dictionaries for that and fungible to see if they were reasonably complete. :)

(Autochthonous means that your species evolved there. Humans are autochthonous to Earth, but a future human born on Mars would be a native there but not a Martian autochthon.)

There are no legs under Phoebe’s skirt. Is she levitating?

I’ve always been good at spelling and I think that’s awesome, so there.

Spelling autochthonous isn’t so hard. Now, spelling CHTHONIC, that’s tricky because the CH is silent.

(Somewhere I saw autochthon as student slang at some British university for what Americans might call a “towny”.)

I’m beginning to wonder what “Most Enchanted Lands” sounds like when Marigold speaks that phrase.

Dakota’s award will be for making LSH look even more ‘humble’ in comparison, and I doubt either Dakota or Phoebe are going to leave entirely satisfied.

So when do we get the Phoebe anticoolated action figure?

Pride goes before the fall, Dakota!

Phoebe does hang out with a cooler unicorn. Yeah, I said it.

I’m voting for “they won the same award.”

Dana does a fantastic job in conveying Dakota’s guarded, smug sense of superiority… her eyes, smirk, placement of arms/hands, and shifting her weight onto one leg like that.

I had to look up how in the world to say that!

Dakota looks like she’s really enjoying herself. Without Phoebe, her life would be very empty. I love Phoebe’s hairstyle. It’s so well drawn.

When my car broke down, I took it to an autochthonous.

Off I go to google autoch…that word.

“Come, little children; I’ll take thee away/Into a land of enchantment….”

Hey, wait a minute. “Thee” is a singular pronoun.

Typical Dakota.