“Nothing is going to get my dog,” I replied fiercely. The hand that wasn’t squishing Cap to me rested over him protectively.
Shaking out his hands, smiling at my fit of pique, Leste lifted his arms, shoving the loose sleeves of his robe up as he went. “I can fix him for you, foolish female. Set him down and step aside. I’ll have him capable of survival in no time.”
“Like hell. He doesn’t need any fixing. He’s a dog!” I shot back, glaring warningly. He even thought of touching my dog and I was gonna brain him.
“But what, truly, is a dog? A silly pillow with legs to pet and fawn over? Ridiculous! You said you had him for his offer of protection, did you not? A fault in his list of wanted qualities. If you’re to be here with that insipid thing lapping at your feet, the least you could do for it is offer it some form of natural protection!” Leste tapped his wrist, flicking his hand up, and a bit of wood, which he caught midflight as it shot forward, poofed out of nowhere, like, well, like magic. Waving his magicked stick around, because that’s what that pathetic excuse for a sliver of wood was, he shook it at me. “Look at him. He’s creature fodder. He’ll be needing your constant protection if he’s to survive here. He wouldn’t even last a day in Sparrow’s Foot with the mushroom people, and they’re the nonviolent sort. Here, I wouldn’t give him an hour out of your sight.”
“No,” I grumbled firmly. Cap’s little ears trembled at the anger in our voices, giving credence to Leste’s ramblings.
“You will thank me later,” Leste said agreeably, a weird light in his eyes as he focused on Cap so intently, like this was all settled, done deal. No deal, buddy.
Gasep, who’d stepped aside to lean his backside against a desk, his arms folded over his massive chest, just shook his head. He was content to watch the shnitzel show unfold before his eager, from the looks of it, eyes.
“No,” I said quickly.
Alestaire frowned. “But it will only take-”
“No.” I went for volume where vehemence just wasn’t cutting it. Gasep winced at my thundered return.
Leste wasn’t fazed. “If you’d just-”
“No.” Firmer. The man must have a very thick skull, for all his overall scrawniness, too thick to get it through that fat head no means no.
“Will you not see reason?” he shouted.
My chin lifted and I gave a snooty sniff. “No.”
Face reddening, flushed with an angry blush, he stomped his foot, actually stomped it, snapped his wand back into poofing out of existence, and growled at me.
“Temper tantrum, party of one, your table is ready.” My smirk said what my silly Earth phrases could not, Wally Wizard not hip to the lingo.
“Whatever that means, you infuriating creature, you can... you can just...”
“Stick it up your butt like you probably did that stick you like waving around? The one you won’t use to help a gal out and get me outta here?” I offered, my sarcastic smirk widening. We were oil and water, a bad mix. There was something strangely titillating about taunting the man. His reactions were pure gold.
“My stick?! A stick?!” Procuring the stick in question, he carefully waved it about airily. Gasep winced and hunched like he feared Leste might point that thing at him and turn him into a tebbimenk, whatever that was. “Have you no clue? Not a one? This is my wand!”
And that was supposed to mean what to me? “A wand you can’t use to poof me out of this existence and into my own?”
“I’ll poof you out of existence,” Leste snarled, and went to advance on me.
Stiffening, I stood my ground, turning to tuck Cap safely into my side. “Wooooo. You’ve got a sparkly stick. I’m so scared.” Then, with a dry tone and a horrible accent, “Congrats, Harry, yer a wizard.”
Leste looked positively apoplectic. I really didn’t know when to quit. It was a fault in me I’d never cared to work on. I supposed it was time to reap what I’d sown. Thinking of my stupid head ornament, I lowered it meaningfully, hoping he might take it as some kind of threat. It was really hard to look tough waving your head about as he aimed his little stick at me.
A thick arm shot out, blocking Leste from whatever he was going to do to me, one sharp look for each of us causing us both to deflate under that warning death glare. “Enough,” Gasep’s deep voice rumbled. “Acting like children.”
“She started it,” Leste mumbled, his wand hand dropping.
“He waved his stupid little stick at me first,” I countered, but quieted down.
“It is a wand,” Leste gritted out, “and quite impressive, I might add.” Sparks shot from his hand, as if in answer.
“Then use it impressively to teleport me outta here!” Bullying him into poofing me back home, honestly, probably wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much I pissed him off, I was beginning to realize.
“Make me, heathen,” he roared, tiny little sparks shooting from his eyes. It was quite the mesmerizing sight as his shoulders began to spark and smoke started to curl out of his flared nostrils, but probably not in the way he thought. He looked like his batteries had shorted out, his left eye starting to tic.
“Well, I dunno how to work this thing,” I huffed, waggling my head at him, “but screw you, okay, mine’s bigger than yours, I’ll figure this shit out by myself. I got here on my own, didn’t I?”
“Then go back! Away with you! Begone, dragon woman!” Now he was bellowing, spittle flying at my face. Rude.
Settling down in the face of all that crazy, I frowned, brow beetling. “I’m sorry I said your twig was insignificant. No need to pull out the straight jacket and slide right into Crazy Town.”
Baring his teeth at me, bearing down on me, leaning heavily on Gasep’s forearm as it provided the barrier my tiny brain was slowly realizing I probably needed, he snarled viciously, “There is nothing wrong with my wand!!”
Leaning towards Gasep protectively, magically gone half chicken all of a sudden, I leaned into the Unipeg to whisper through the corner of my mouth, “I said twig and not his prig, right?”
Gasep blinked and glanced down at me.
Shrugging helplessly, I forced a wince of a smile. “What? Just checking. He’s turning blue. I had to ask.”
Craning that big ol’ horsey head of his, Gasep glanced down at his friend, who was turning purplish. My face went a little green in the face of mage-y-pants spluttering wrath. He’d heard me. He’d totally heard me. Dead meat, that was my new name.
Wiggling my horn a little experimentally, I sighed heavily when nothing happened. Not even a back the heck off twitch or pinch of pixie dust. What kind of supposed dark mage was I? A really crappy one. Just a chick with a horn stickin’ outta her head, nothin’ more.
“You are going to stay the waters to gather yourself,” Gasep was saying as I waggled and wiggled my noggin, only half listening in my wish I knew how to work this crap befuddlement. “And I will be taking the lady to relieve herself and eat. Her stomach is growling too loudly to hear myself think. We-”
“It’s not that loud,” I mumbled petulantly, shutting it when the horse man whipped his head sharply in my direction and gave me a look full of warning.