In Old Fantasy Scotland

Dry. That's the best way to describe northern Illinois at the moment. I don't ever think I've seen my yard so brown, just to take one very small sample. Little rain is forecast for the days ahead. Cracks are appearing in patches of ground not covered with brown grass. Wind blows clouds of dust from the baseball field in the park behind our back yard.

At least the temps have cooled down. But back when it was still hot, on Friday, we ducked into a movie theater, a time-honored way to escape the heat (we have air conditioning, but never mind). Ann wanted to see Brave, so we all went. Even when not at their best, Pixar movies are usually worth seeing in the theater, and so it was with this one. Better than most animations that I've seen, but not as good as most of the other Pixar animations I've seen.

Still, I was taken with the way the Fantasy Medieval Highland forests were drawn. Gorgeous backdrops. The story, I could take or leave. Not quite enough drunken brawling and bloodletting, if you asked me. We're talking about medieval Scotland, after all.

But I did entertain myself dreaming up sequels that will never be made. The story involves an independent-minded daughter of the king of Scotland, who ultimately refuses, in a very modern way, not to marry into any of the powerful neighboring clans to keep the peace. The king also has three young sons, triplets apparently, whose main function is to make chaos. Add to the mix a bit of drunken brawling, archery, a comic witch, magic spells, an angry bear, an anachronistic theme of mother-adolescent daughter conflict, and a happy ending, and there you have it.

Anyway, I imagined that a few years later, the princess did marry, and according to her wishes, not to a Scotsman. Instead she married one of the younger sons of the king of France. The purpose, of course, was to cement an alliance against England. She comes to like the court of France but, alas, dies in childbirth. As for her brothers, as soon as the old king is dead, they immediately make bloody war on each other.