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Three's Company - Matilda's lame

A Wand Finding

The silence of the room was something that Ianna wasn't used to, in the least bit. No nagging voice in her mind and Coailiann, bless her heart, was worn out and currently curled in a small ball atop the fluffy mountain of pillows which were resting on the couch.

She had quiet. Something she hadn't had since...Well, for a few years. Malen wasn't there, he was off with Kishi and Del...And, well, she liked it. Perhaps it was wrong of her to bask in the idea of having the people she loved far FAR away from her.

But right now? The silver haired lady didn't seem to care. At all.

She was just about to lay down for a nap (since she'd seriously been lacking sleep with Malen and his daughter and Coailiann) when she heard a familiar ping in her mind. More wands had awakened.

But how many? God she hoped only one. She didn't want to do too much, especially on her day OFF.

"How many this time, Matty?"

There was a soft groan, seemingly of pain, "Three. Two in Ireland, so that's one job...They're close to each other. The other is in Romania. I don't know what the soul is, you'll have to consult the book on that. The Celtic wands are Leprechaun and Lesidhe.. I know simply because of the Kinship with Coailiann, I think. Their magic is guarded."

Ianna gave a soft sigh, "Had to be on my day off...How are you feeling? Three at once must have hit hard..."

There was a pause, "I feel tired, weak, and very very pained. But I can deal with it. After this, however, I'm going to nap. Send Coailiann here, mother, I'll watch her."

Ianna gave a small nod of her head and picked up the sleeping Sidhe child, moving to the small portal and laying her inside. She watched Matilda take her before closing the door and walking to her closet to fetch her boots, "Any idea where you're going to send me in Ireland?"

"Just a forest. Both wands will be found in the same place, just outside of the forest. It should be an easy fetching, since you don't have to go underground like I did with Coailiann. Romania, I believe, the wand was found by a woman and is now being used as a torch. It's naturally on fire."

Ianna closed her eyes, "All right, I won't need any weapons then. Maybe some money..." she reached for her dresser and opened it, picking up several golden coins, "Let's go."

Without a word she was teleported to a very old-fashioned village in Romania, just outside a small house. If it could be called one.

The silver woman raised her hand to knock on the door, only to have the door pulled out from her hand. It was then that she came face to face with an old, worn woman.

"What do you want?"

Ianna took a deep breath, "I was admiring the light you have," she indicated to the wand stuck in a metal cone to hold it up and give light to the outside of the house, "And I was wondering if I could purchase it from you?"

The old woman raised a brow, "You wish to buy my torch? It must be very special if you do. I just found it out by a haystack...Amazing that it didn't catch the hay on fire. Gypsy magic."

Ah...A Gypsy soul, then, Ianna thought, a smile crossing her lips, "You see, I had one like that. My grandmother gave it to me," damn, she was good at pulling things out of her a**, wasn't she?

"But I lost it. I'll give you five gold pieces for it."

Five gold? The woman had never seen five gold pieces in all of her existence. The torch had to be worth more than that if the woman would start with five gold! "Ten," came her greedy croak.

Ianna had only brought seven or so gold coins with her. That wasn't good. Taking a deep breath she did her best to look distressed, "Madam, I don't have much more than five coins...Please, will you take 6?"

The creaky old woman eyed her quietly, "Seven."

With a nod of her head, Ianna pulled out all seven coins and exchanged it for the torch, "Thank you so very much!"

Her pale hand wrapped around the wand and pulled it close to her, feeling the cool fire and the crispness of the reeds bound together. They felt stiff, like a steel handle, more so than the pliant reeds they looked to be made out of.

Definitely her wand.

Ianna bowed to the woman before walking away, only to disappear thanks to Matilda's magic.

"Well, that was fairly easy," she muttered, setting the new wand atop the Shoppe's desk, where she usually kept the wands, "Cost me some gold though," a face was made, "Ready to go to Ireland now...Maybe I should bring Coailiann? I'm sure she'd love Ireland...."

"I don't think that's a good idea. While the fetching looks easy, you never know. Besides, she's sleeping like an angel here - and she's safe."

Ianna gnawed on her lip and then sighed, "You're right."

"I'm always right."

"Bite me."

"How hard?"

"Oh shut up."

"Very mature."

Ianna growled low in her throat, "Just send me where I need to go, okay?"

With a small pop and a rough landing on the side of a hill, causing Ianna to roll rather quickly to the bottom (and stain her favorite shirt), Ianna arrived in Ireland.

Thankfully, unlike last time, no bones were broken, "Thanks. I see how much you value my physical well being and the mental sanity of my silk shirt."

There was a gleeful laugh inside her mind as she trudged up the hill and to the edge of the forest, "Edge of the forest? I see nothing. Nada. Cept the undergrowth and shrubbery," there was the sound of Matilda's mouth opening, "Don't you DARE make a Monty Python joke, missy."

It was silent again.

"I thought s--" We are the knights that say NI! "MATILDA!!!!!"

More laughter, "God damn it all," Ianna groaned, holding her head to try and block out the laughter despite the fact she knew it was futile. What was inside her head would never give her a moment's peace when there was a wand - or in this case - two wands - to find.

"A leprechaun and a Lesidhe, hmm? Lesidhe should be harder to find. The soul's naturally programmed to camouflage. Leprechauns are just flashy...."

Speak of the devil - the moment she said something a green and gold wand seemed to glint in the sunlight, "Well then. One down, one to go..."

It took another hour of searching before her hand grasped both the shiny Leprechaun wand and the more natural looking stick with an eye and leaves made of real emeralds.

A pity it housed a soul. The leaves could be worth a lot of money. Not that she NEEDED the money.

She just liked it.

Well, home, ho!

And hopefully, Matilda would simply give Kay back and take a year long nap.

God knew that Ianna needed one.

A day off... a day off at LAST. It was like finding water in the desert, like stumbling over the antidote for the poison. It was funny how a job that only paid slightly above minimum wage could demand so much from its workers, but it seemed like it had been ages and ages since Danny had been freed... and heck, maybe it wasn't exactly Christmas or Easter or any of the other times that most people would skip for joy to have a day off, but still! It was freedom!

Freedom which Danny had not only seized with gusto, but had taunted with, tangoed with, waved around like a third-grader with a "get-out-of-school-free" card. Once satisified that her co-workers were properly envious (not that they said as much, of course; heck, they barely even gave her a wave as she danced out of the building), she had hopped in her car and fled far, far away. She was going to goof off, she was going to have fun, she was going to spend an entire day doing nothing of use until she was so sick of it, she'd be dying to go back to work.

... Well, maybe not dying to go back. But she'd at least not loathe the thought so much.

Her day off had taken her to the streets of Barton. Window-shopping was a marvelous sort of therapy; seeing the pretty things there, thinking of who else would like them or what uses they could have or what she could do with them (if only she could afford them!)- there was something very soothing and relaxing about it, even if she wasn't flashing a credit card around everywhere. Clothing boutiques, furniture stores, places that sold tiny little knick-knacks and others that sold stuffed animals... she couldn't resist but to get a little something when she passed by the tantalizing hints wafting through the open door of a bakery, and she was thoroughly enjoying her guilty cinnamon bun (so much for her diet...) when her attention was caught by a quirky little place lined with bookshelves and some little trinkets or another.

Stopping in front of the window, absently wiping a few crumbs off the corner of her mouth, the brown-haired girl peered through the window in curiosity. What kind of books was the place selling? Danny could do with a new novel or two... not that she was an avid reader or anything, but she did work through books at her own pace, and she was always in the market for a new read.

There were a few bites left to her cinnamon bun; stuffing as much in her mouth as she could fit, Danny surrendered the rest to a trash can and entered the shop at last. Chewing away at her mouthful, her eyes scanned the books with complete disregard to the shopkeeper- it would be a bit awkward to try and start up a conversation with a full mouth, anyway....

Ah, the overwhelming excitement of the shopkeeper! How she lept to the presence of a potential customer, eyes shining and ready to serve!

Pah. It was hard to be too annoyed by Ianna's less-than-interest; after all, Danny knew her bored-and-no-doubt-exploited-employee plight well. Still... it was hard not to be a little smug, smug in a "heh heh I've got the day off and you don't" sort of way.

Swallowing the last of her cinnamon splurge and gave a customary smile and nod in the direction of the worker. "Just looking," Danny chirped back, pointedly turning to one of the shelves and making browsing-motions. The books here didn't exactly seem to be recent... not the romance novels that Danny was into, anyway. But she was here anyway, she might as well keep looking to see if there was something that caught her fancy.

... In some ways, it was almost disturbing the way that Ianna suddenly spoke up, running a caring finger along some book and calling out to Danny. It reminded her of those old movies she'd been forced to watch in grade school, the ones about strangers offering kids candy to get in their cars. Like there was something sne-e-e-aky going on....

But hell. Danny was a big girl, and hardly scared of strangers. Deserting the bookshelves, she approached the desk with a friendly, "Oh? What genre is it?" Getting a good eyeful of the tome, she seemed a bit dubious. The book looked nice enough, sure, but it looked expensive. The salary of a grunt at a skating rink wasn't precisely what you'd call remarkable, and this book looked to be just a little bit out of her price range.

There was a good, face-saving escape to the too-expensive book situation, though. "Who's the author?" Danny questioned in an curious tone. And voila! Now, she could just say that she didn't like the author and duck out of being pressured into buying the book, easy as that! Best tactic ever.

Soul trapped in confines of wand... next guardian... best of luck....

MOTHER?!

"... Uhm... wha....t kind of book...."

What the hell. What the HELL. Was this supposed to be serious?! Was this chick for real?!

"What do you mean...."

Mother. That was not a word that applied to Danny. Noooo, no no. Her life was still planned out, and motherhood had at least ten more years, sometime after she got her master's, got a good job, found a man she really loved that wouldn't just use her....

Mother was what you called that greying-haired, batter-covered spoon-wielding matriarch.

Danny was not a Mother.

"... I... uh... don't... think I'll buy this book after all."

Crazy woman. Crazy. This lady was either insane or joking, and she didn't really seem like she was joking. It made so much sense, in its own mad little way. The woman had written a book, and obviously thought it was real. She needed help. Medical help... from people wearing white coats and with tranquilizers. You didn't just threaten motherhood on someone like that, no more than you pulled out a gun and shoved it in thier face. Damn crazy lady.

Spirits, spells, second chances... those were for the storybooks. Danny wasn't a storybook. She didn't believe in that sort of crap, and the fact that she didn't fall into line and start nodding like a zombie sheep might have suggested that.

"... Kill a child?" Her tone was gentle and hesitant, but her eyes were scoffing. How much did she dare to dispute with this woman? Did Ianna really believe what she was saying? She thought there was a child in the wand, did she really think there was....

Tonight, Danny suspected, she would be writing a loooong entry in her LiveJournal.

She didn't believe this lady's ramblings for a second. But crazy people tended to be dangerous, and especially if Ianna thought there was a child in this wand-thing... a child that she thought was the same in essence as her own child....

Danny took the wand gingerly, trying to give off a "friendly believer" sort of vibe at the same time as she rolled her eyes heavenwards for support. It was a stick. A stick did not hold spirits, even if it was a pretty stick, and no matter how you looked at it, it was nothing but a OMGMAGICALLYGLOWINGSTICK!

"Gyak!" Caught off-guard by the sudden light that enveloped the stick, Danny fumbled it before dropping it on the desk, staring at it in surprise. "... Was it SUPPOSED to do that?!" She asked, her voice a little bit higher-pitched than she had really intended.

... So now, it wasn't just a crazy lady. It was an entire damn cult.

Taunting her racing heartbeat for its irrationality, Danny's sense of intellect stepped forth to force the situation into logic, elbowing the details in and stomping it until it fit properly. When it was done, the situation became as clear as sunshine, realization dawning upon the college girl. Obviously, the wand- not a wand! She meant to think that obviously, the stick, it wasn't magical! It just had some sort of electronic gizmos in it. It had glowed because she'd hit some button or something that triggered the lights. It was just a toy; a toy that Ianna, for whatever reason, was convinced was "magical" and "special", but not one that Danny would get hyped into making into something it wasn't.

"Uh... yeah. Yeah, sure. I get it." The door; Danny had had enough of this talk, she was ready to make her escape now. Taking a few inching steps away from the wand on the desk, she measured the distance to her escape out of the corner of her eye. If needed, she could sprint and be out of there in a second or two... she'd really prefer a more dignified escape, though.

"Well, uh. It was nice to meet you and all, and-" I hope you get some good medicine soon "- thanks for the nice fairy tale, but I'd really better get going. I'm, uh, meeting with a friend soon." Lie, lie... right now, though, Danny didn't mind lying too much. Anything that gave her an excuse.

Door's locked. No escape. And here, Danny had thought her one day off was going to be nice, relaxing....

Testing the handle of the door with that same futile hopefulness those chicks in the thrillers had when they were locked in a room with The Killer, Danny was growing increasingly nervous- how the hell couldn't she, the doors just fricking locked on their own and blocked off the only exit! And the more worry that she gained, the more she wanted out of this situation. By the time she turned away from the door, her eyebrows were slanted furiously and her hands were balled into fists.

"The hell sort of place are you running, anyway?!" She rounded on Ianna first, bristling as the storekeeper talked to that invisible voice. "This is insane! What is this, a marketing gimmick? Where's the damn speakers?!" Speakers, of course, being the only rational explanation for a voice coming out of nowhere- Danny's gaze shot around, trying to locate the source of the mysterious voice as it tried to order here.

Pick up the wand? Oh, she'd pick up the wand all right....

Grabbing the stick up from the desk, she held one end in either hand and held it up- much like (oh dear) she might snap it at any moment.

"Unlock the door now... if you don't mind." Trying to maintain some semblence of calm, Danny came off more like a whining animal trapped in a corner, not sure whether it should snap back or try to back away some more.

Honestly, it was a complete bluff; I mean, what, how would snapping a stick help her out if Ianna refused to do what she wanted? And those leaf-things were pretty sharp, she didn't really want to put pressure on them....

But hell if she wasn't going to try spooking her way out of the place! It was worth a shot, right?