does not anymore work

[campanas]

Here, in a place where she is quite an unexpected sight, is:

an eight year old girl with brown-flecked white wings, looking dismayed and lost.

with Prime (Aestrix)

with Edie and Emily (Maggie)

with Gloria (Maggie)

with Gren (Rockeye)

Comments

[iamnotpolaris]

"So they journeyed through the woods a while longer. Along the way they found a woman who had been transformed into living fire by the sorcerer for rejecting his advances, and who wanted nothing more than to be detransformed so she could go home and take care of her little sister. The boy promised that once the sorcerer was defeated, he would search through his books to find a way to change her back, and she agreed to go with them. They met a man with a voice so sweet it would charm the woodland creatures into doing his bidding, who had fled to the woods to escape the king who wanted him to sing for his court, and he agreed to go with them. They met a very clever young sword-smith, who was charmed by the swordswoman's beauty, and he agreed to go with them.
At this point, they agreed that they probably had enough people, so they drew straws about whether they should deal with the sorcerer or the count first."

[campanas]

"Drew straws?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"When you can't decide on something, but it has to be decided, you usually settle it through chance. One of the ways of deciding things by chance is that you take as many straws as there are options, cut one of them shorter or longer than the others, and have an impartial party hold them in their fist so you can't tell which one is the odd one out. Then everyone who's arguing draws a straw. The person who gets the odd straw out either wins or loses depending on what kind of argument it is."

[campanas]

"Oh. Who win?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"The swordswoman and her brother won. So they all set out for the county of Vesser, where the siblings came from and their wicked stepfather was currently ruling.
They walked up to the castle gates, where a pair of the mercenaries the wicked count had hired were guarding the castle. The swordswoman walked up to them.
'My stepfather isn't the rightful holder of this land, and you know it. Get out from between us and him, and you'll come to no harm.'
'Yeah? You and what army, girl?' one of the soldiers laughed.
'Me, for a start,' said the fire-woman, having come up behind the guard as sneakily as fire can, and hugged him."

[campanas]

"Fire hugs," giggles Pen.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Yep! Luckily for the guard, he knew to drop to the ground and roll over when he got set on fire. But it distracted him and the other guard long enough for the boy to magic open the castle gates and for everyone to walk through. Those particular guards didn't follow them, presumably to avoid more fire."

[campanas]

Nod nod.

[iamnotpolaris]

"They met more guards, of course. Some of them the fire-woman managed to hug, and some of them were pelted with birds that the singer called from the sky, and some of them were magicked to sleep, and some of them were industriously sworded at by the swordswoman with the excellent new sword the sword-smith had made for her."

[campanas]

"Pelted! With birds!" cackles Pen.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Yep. So eventually they reached the wicked count's throne room. He was, naturally, quite surprised to see them. He grabbed a little magic crystal that let him talk to people who also had little magic crystals, and demanded that the captain of the mercenaries send up more mercenaries to protect him.
'Um. No,' said the mercenary captain.
'No? No? What do you mean no? What exactly am I paying you for again?' the wicked count screeched.
'Well, y'see, every time some of my men engaged with them, they were not only defeated, but many of them embarrassingly so. And if there's one thing that can hurt a mercenary company more than defaulting on a contract, it's being humiliated. Th'thing one a them c'n do with birds, it's not natural.' "

[campanas]

Pen cackles.

[iamnotpolaris]

"The swordswoman walked up to him and laid the edge of her sword against his neck. 'Hello, step-father,' she said menacingly. 'Are you going to remove the coronet, or shall I do it? I warn you, if you leave it to me, I might take a little extra by mistake.'
Naturally, he stopped shrieking. Hands shaking, he removed the coronet and handed it to her.
Having defaulted on their contract, the mercenaries left in short order. The siblings re-hired the old guards, and the swordswoman was installed as the true countess of Vesser. She threw her step-father in the dungeons, and they had a giant party to celebrate their first victory."

[campanas]

"Hooray!"

[iamnotpolaris]

"The sword-smith expressed the opinion that he felt that this might have ended a little anticlimactically, and when he had been imagining this he had imagined there might be, oh, explosions or something. The boy offered to provide explosions. The swordswoman-countess told him firmly no."

[campanas]

Pen cracks up.

[iamnotpolaris]

"So once they had rested and provisioned themselves, the merry band took a squadron of the county's soldiers and they all set off for the tower of the evil sorcerer."

[campanas]

"I bet they win," predicts Pen.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Well, yeah. It's a story, after all. The good guys almost always win in stories."

[campanas]

"Yeah. But say how winning."

[iamnotpolaris]

"So they tromped through the woods--the county was on the other side of the woods from the kingdom with the sorcerer and the bad king. They tromped through the woods until they came through the other side, and they made their way to the sorcerer's tower.
When they arrived, the sorcerer was out--possibly searching for the boy, possibly arresting someone on behest of the evil king. The boy knew the magic password to get the tower's doors open, because the sorcerer hadn't bothered to change it."

[campanas]

"Silly sorcerer."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Well, possibly he thought the boy would change his mind and come back. He was very arrogant, you see. So the boy let everyone into the tower, although the soldiers stayed outside and hid nearby because there wasn't enough good hiding places for everyone inside, and they laid an ambush.
When the sorcerer came back, the fire-woman was the first to greet him. She hugged him as she had hugged the mercenary guards, and said in his ear, 'remember me?'
The sorcerer was extremely surprised, but he was far less susceptible to fire than a random mercenary. He flung the fire-woman off of him into a magic pool, and her fire was put out, and she was a human woman again."

[campanas]

"Oh no!"

[iamnotpolaris]

"No, she wanted that, remember? She couldn't go home and take care of her little sister while she was made of fire."