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Danny wasn't exactly having a great day herself.

The reason for this was fairly simple; after being stuck for a few hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a car where the back windshield was smashed in thanks to a would-be thief a few days before, thus making her hopelessly late for work and on the verge of being late for her college class, Danny's junky car decided that it had had enough of this traffic bullshit and stopped obeying its master. Leaving a frustrated and, by this point, hungry girl stuck sitting on the hood of her car as she waited for a tow truck to show up and save the day- or at least keep it from getting any worse.

"... This is ridiculous." It just was. Her luck had never been precisely "good", but for things to be this bad? It was horrible! It was TERRIBLE! The past week had been... just... amazingly awful. Starting with that crazy lady at the bookstore, then the car window, and now this....

All since she had gotten that damned stick.

She didn't know quite how, but that thing was bad luck. And she wasn't a very superstitious person! But she had gotten nothing but trouble, trouble, and more trouble since that thing had been all but forced on her, and it seemed like things were just going to keep getting worse and worse.

Fishing the emerald-studded stuck out of her backpack in order to give it a proper glare. "This is probably your fault, you know," she grumbled at it. "Why didn't that damn thief just take you?... at least then your bad luck'd be his problem, not mine...."

The wand, predictably, gave the discontent girl no response. Worthless junk.

The paled-faced Danny's answer was slow in the coming. Her immediate attention seemed to be caught with the strange, smoky creature that had, just moments before, captured her attention and drawn her out of her muttered rantings at her troublesome stick.

Now, Durem was a weird city. It was one of those places where you expected to run into strange things on the street, which is why the smart people kept their gaze on the sidewalk in front of them without faltering. But this? Danny- no, NO ONE could have expected to run into something like this.

To put it plainly- Danny looked as if she had seen a ghost. And she wasn't really wrong about that, either.

"... He... hel........." Screw manners. "What the hell is that?!"

City folk weren't especially known for their politeness, and the open stare the gawking girl was affixing on the foggy form only enhanced that stereotype.

So far as Danny was concerned, of course, Airaka was insane already. I mean, that little ghost... thing, it couldn't be real, right?

... But if Danny saw it... then wasn't she the insane one?

"Y... you mean that crazy chick?" Oh, no. This lady must be one of the cult or whatever. A bit lately, Danny set down the stick next to her on the other side of the car, as if removing it from the other woman's sight would somehow make her go away. Despite this futile bit of subterfuge, the brown-haired girl hid nothing as she replied, "Yeah, that's where I got it. How do you know?"

Danny already had a feeling what Airaka's answer was going to be, but... well, it was human nature to hope for the impossible, even if that impossibility was a rational and sane answer that didn't involve ghosts coming out of wands and becoming (shudder) babies and ruining her carefully-laid plans for school and getting her degree and a good career and maybe someday settling down when she was like, thirty and then having two kids of her own- one boy and one girl- and raising them from conception to birth to childhood to teenagedom with a loving husband that she could always trust and count on and one day growing old and fulfilled together and everything else the she wanted so badly....

"... No. NONONONO." Leaping to her feet and standing in front of her car (leaving the wand where she set it on the hood), the girl was wide-eyed and fidgeting. Running a hand through her brown locks, Danny struggled quickly in an attempt to come to terms with this new... new reality, for God's sake!

She was going to be a mother?

No. Nononono.

"This... this isn't funny!" Turning back to Airaka with a snarl, Danny seemed almost... dangerous. Panicked. Scared. "The joke's gone on long enough, so cut it the <********> out! Why... why are you DOING this to me?!"

Danny stared at Airaka for a long while. Enough to let her frustration and terror to fester, soak, linger, and begin to melt away. If only a little.

"... I know." Grabbing the stick off of her car's hood, she stuck the bejewelled little thing out and shook it in Airaka's face. "You take it. You believe in this s**t, right?" Danny wasn't typically so vulgar, but right now, she didn't really care so much. The thought of being a mother, of raising a child... her salary barely covered the necessities to live! She'd have to quit college, take on a full-time job... maybe even two. She'd have to sacrifice everything, EVERYTHING she had worked so hard for her entire life. Her education, wasted. Her aspirations, denied. Every white-picket-fence dream she harbored... just like that, gone.

She couldn't let that happen. She just... couldn't.

"You take it, and then go off and live your nice little delusional life. And I can go and live my nice little sane one. How's that sound? Good, right? So take it." She gave the stick another insistant wave.

"... But... but a child won't make me happy!" Wailing childishly, Danny slumped her shoulders and drooped her head, staring at the stick in her hands. "I have... I have another year of college before I get my bachelor's. Once I get that, I can get a job. A decent job, not the crappy one I pull down at the rink. And then I'll get my master's. And I want... I want... I can't have a baby! I can't!"

How did this happen, really? This wand had chosen her? Why? Why did it want her? There were so many people out there, and surely many of them didn't have lives for it to ruin. Why her?

It was very slow for her to escape her self-pity. She was barely into her twenties, after all; being self-absorbed was what people at her age did, just as surely as the sun was supposed to shine and the clouds were supposed to rain. But even amid all of her turmoil and worries and what really amounted to nothing short of a nervous breakdown, she was able to snap out of her freak-out long enough to stammer to the coughing woman- "A-are you okay?"

It might be an uplifting speech for Airaka, but Danny just seemed more and more trapped. At least this time it wasn't in a fearful, must-escape-certain-doom sort of way; the girl seemed more and more resigned to what must obviously be her fate. She didn't want the child, but....

"... And it's really... no one else can take it, can they? I have to?" Her voice was flat and sullen, testing the last wall of her new prison as it was built around her. She didn't want to be a mother, and God only knew how she would be able to handle it. But... her hands were tied, it seemed. If there was no other way for this child to come to life--

Murderer, was what Airaka said she'd be. The same sort of murderer, no doubt, as the woman that went to the abortion clinic. Or maybe even worse; the wand had chosen her, after all, and that implied intellect of some sort. Was it aware? Had it heard every word she'd said, felt the barbs from everything she'd blamed it for?

A part of her cried out in protested logic. She was feeling guilty over a stick now! She might as well shed a tear for a log burnt on a fireplace, or a glass shattered on the floor!

And yet... if it was real. If it was going to become one of those... floating baby things, like the little thing by Airaka's side... she couldn't reject it. She couldn't turn her back on something in need like that... could she?

"... What's its name?" Her gaze was locked again on the ghosty child, her dark eyes still lacking emotion and life as she contemplated what she saw as the end of her future.