IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED MY FIC "WITH STARLIGHT IN THEIR WAKE" IN IT'S ENTIRETY THEN TURN BACK NOW.
Surprise. (First prize. Heart eyes. Rue dies. ...I really hope someone gets that.)
This story idea has been brewing for over a year now. This will contain two separate arcs, the first with Amelia, the second with someone else. Though you probably can guess who. For the record: these occur within the few years between s3 and s4 If you want an exact year-context clues, yo.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of it's characters.
When Amelia Pond was six years old, she lived in Nairn, Scotland. The farthest south she'd ever been was Glasgow. The hottest day she'd ever felt was 23 degrees. She'd thought it was strange and decided things were never supposed to be that warm.
When Amelia Pond was six years old, she had two parents. Tabetha and Augustus. She thought they were the best parents in the world, even though they made her eat fruits and vegetables. At least her Mum put smiley faces in them. That made them better. It just did.
When Amelia Pond was six years old, her best friend was named Katie. Amy had hair like fire; Katie had hair like smoke. Amy blazed ahead and Katie was always following right in her wake. They played together, got into trouble together, did homework together, and they slept over at each other's houses. They talked about starting Primary Two together and maybe being in the same class this time! They talked about getting married on the same day—or even maybe married to each other! (Katie's mum did not like that.) They were completely and utterly inseparable.
When Amelia Pond was six years old, she could not imagine any other life.
When Amelia Pond was seven years old, she lost her parents.
1995, November the 7th. The day the rain was coming down so thick that her father didn't see the car in the other lane until it was too late.
"They went quickly,"the police, social workers, doctors, and everyone else who bothered told her. "They didn't suffer."As if it were supposed to make things better somehow. They were dead and they hadn't got to hear her say she loved them that day.
She wanted to tell them. She was going to tell them. The funeral was closed-casket and it didn't seem right saying the words to wooden lids so she kept them to herself.
She asked the social worker if she could live with Katie and gave her phone number and address. But, no. She had to live with her Aunt Sharon.
She hadn't spent too much time with Aunt Sharon before. Her house wasn't that fun since she didn't have any kids of her own. Amelia never had really enjoyed going over there. Sharon thought Amelia was altogether too flighty, stubborn, and mouthy. And she didn't put smiley faces in her fruits and vegetables.
When Amelia Pond was seven years old, she threw the absolute biggest tantrum of her life when Sharon told her they were moving to England. Sharon's company had agreed to give her the raise she'd need to support Amelia if she transferred to England and she thought a change would be good. Nairn was full of memories that maybe Amelia would be better off without.
Amelia kicked and screamed and howled and bit. She ran away to Katie's. When her aunt called Katie's mum to check if she was there, Amelia and Katie ran off together. They were found in the park three hours later by the police and were carried home, hollering and protesting loud enough to draw the attention of everyone around.
When Amelia Pond was seven years old, she lived in England. Leadworth, to be precise. It was about as boring and English as it got. She hated it. In July, it was twenty-five degrees some days and she nearly broiled. Everybody spoke weird and had the nerve to tell her she was the one who sounded weird. The lady at playgroup told her not to worry. She was young enough that she'd sound English soon enouh. Amelia vowed, right then and there, that she would never, ever lose her accent.
She started a new school and a new grade on her own. She'd always had Katie with her before but she was 500 miles north where things were as they should be. On the first day she met (actually she kind of collided with) a skinny little brown-haired geek who nearly knocked her over and made her drop her lunch box. He took her verbal abuse with hunched shoulders and a quivering lip and Amelia felt bad almost as soon as she was done.
"You're mean," he told her and, to his credit, he didn't sound like he was about to cry.
"No," she corrected. "I'm angry."
"Then you're mean when you're angry."
She opened her mouth to say something biting but then stopped. Really, it had been an accident…and she didn't want everyone at the school to think of her as 'that mean Scottish girl.' "I'm sorry," she mumbled, ducking her head.
The boy considered her for a moment then bent down to pick up the lunch box she'd dropped and held it out to her. "'M Rory."
"Amelia," she replied as she accepted it from him.
He wasn't ever going to replace Katie. But he was better than nothing. He was fun sometimes. He liked her drawings and he was a grade ahead of her so he could always help with her homework if she asked. He was a bit of a nerd…but Amelia quickly decided that he was her nerd. Some of the other kids called him "freak" and "geek" and whenever these names were jeered in her presence, the abusers suddenly found themselves faced with 72 pounds of Scottish ginger wrath.
When Amelia Pond was seven, she started noticing a woman watching her. She wasn't always there but sometimes she'd see her out of the corner of her eye or across a crowded area, standing alone, watching her. She had dark hair, sharp features, a weird thing covering one of her eyes, and she looked at Amelia as if she were a prized pie at Leadworth's semi-annual pie fest. At first it didn't bother her too much. Leadworth was a small place. She saw the same faces all the time. Logically, the woman might not even be looking at Amelia at all.
Then one night Amelia had looked out her window and saw the woman in her garden staring up at her window. When her aunt Sharon had gone to investigate the woman had vanished without a trace. Sharon didn't believe her when she said she'd been seeing the woman all over the place. Amelia tried to draw the woman but unless Mrs. Manny was suddenly thirty years younger, there was no one like that in town, now stop it, Amelia.
There was only one thing for it. She'd have to get help from someone important. Someone who could see anyone, anywhere, day or night. The big man himself.
According to her Mum and Dad, the proper way to contact him throughout the year was by letters but desperate times called for desperate measures.
"Dear Santa," Amelia prayed, kneeling beside her bed, with her hands folded in front of her. "Thank you for the dolls and the pencils and the fish. It's January now, so I hope I didn't wake you, but honest, it's an emergency. There's a scary woman who keeps following me, watching me. My aunt doesn't believe me. So if you could send someone, anyone, maybe a policeman, I'd really be grateful. Also, no disrespect, sir, but I really don't think Bella Kingston deserves that bike you brought her."
Satisfied, Amelia lowered her hands and climbed into bed.
She waited patiently for several weeks. She knew Santa couldn't be rushed. It was his post-Christmas holiday, after all, but she was still scared. The woman was still following her and every time she tried to tell a grownup they wouldn't believe her.
She was playing on the swings at the park one sunny Saturday afternoon by herself. Aunt Sharon didn't like when she went very high on the swings but Aunt Sharon wasn't there. Rory was around somewhere, he didn't like the swings much on account of him getting kicked in the stomach every time he walked in front of them. Amelia was working on getting as high as possible, arms pulling and legs pumping in tandem, when she noticed a dark figure in the corner of her eye on the way down.
The woman was at the edge of the playground.
Amelia slammed her feet on the ground at her next pass and they dragged along with a harsh scraping sound. She flung herself off the swings before she'd even come to a complete stop and jumped to her feet. The woman was staring straight at her with a vile smile on her face. Amelia backed away a few paces then turned and bolted for the play equipment. She ducked underneath the platform and wove through the supports to the dark patch beneath the slides.
She took a few deep breaths then looked out through the space between the slides. The woman was gone. Just as she realized this she heard soft footsteps in the mulch behind her. Amelia whipped around, ready to scream and shout and bite.
It was a woman…but not the woman. This one was soft and young, just a bit older than a teenager but not really a grownup yet. She had a round face, pretty green eyes, and blonde hair tied into two pigtails behind her shoulders. She wasn't wearing any sort of clothes Amelia had ever seen before and definitely weren't appropriate for February. She must've been freezing with most of her arms showing but she didn't seem to care at all.
She knelt in front of Amelia and cocked her head to the side. "Why are you hiding?" she asked.
Amelia gulped and glanced over her shoulder. "There's this woman, I've been seein' her everywhere. She was outside my house the other night."
"Did you tell your aunt?"
She sighed irritably. "Yes…but she wouldn't believe me."
"Well, I believe you."
Amelia narrowed her eyes. "Who are you?"
"Jenny." The woman smiled at her, warm and reassuring and Amelia suddenly missed her mother very much. "And I'm here to let you know that you have absolutely no reason to be afraid."
"Did Santa send you?" Amelia asked.
Jenny blinked in surprise. "How'd you guess?"
"I asked him. And you're the first person to believe me."
"You're right," she agreed. "Santa sent me. Would you like to see why?"
Amelia nodded. Jenny held out her hand and Amelia placed her own in it nervously. Surprisingly cool, firm, but still gentle fingers curled around her hand and Jenny straightened as much as she could in the cramped space. She led Amelia out from under the play equipment and into the rare February sun. Amelia looked around for the woman then up at Jenny and noticed she was staring straight ahead. She followed her gaze…
The woman was standing just beside a bench with an elderly couple sitting on it. They didn't seem to be aware of the Disney villain standing next to them. Amelia glanced around and realized that, apart from herself and Jenny, no one else was looking at the woman. It was as if she wasn't there.
She tugged on Jenny's hand. "Why can't anyone else see her?"
"Noticed that, did you?" Jenny muttered. "She's got a perception filter—it's an object that makes the wearer hard to notice. I can see her because I know she's there…but you didn't even know she was there but you saw her anyway."
"What does that mean?"
"That means—" Jenny looked down at her and smiled "—that you're a remarkable little girl."
Then Jenny returned her gaze the woman and her expression hardened into something that was a bit frightening. But Santa had sent her for a reason and he knew best. Amelia swallowed nervously and glanced at the woman.
"Is that why she's following me?" Amelia whispered.
"Yes. But," Jenny raised her voice, "she's not ever going to get near you. She's going to leave this place, she's going to stop trying to interfere with your childhood, and she's never going to come back or I will make sure she never leaves."
Before Amelia's eyes, the woman's expression changed from smug to nervous. Unsure. Amelia wondered exactly whose hand she was holding. But then the woman's expression became defiant, her eyes narrowed, and she stayed resolutely where she was. She smirked and folded her arms, daring Jenny to do something.
Amelia glanced up at Jenny. Without breaking eye contact, Jenny pulled a slim silver tube from her pocket and pressed a button on the side. A purple light flickered on at the tip of the tube and it emitted a peculiar whirring sound. Sparks flashed around the woman's head and she jumped, reaching for her ear.
The couple on the bench looked right at her.
It was Jenny's turn to smirk now. She released the button on her tube thing and lowered it to her side. The woman pursed her lips angrily and gave Jenny and Amelia a nasty look.
"Kovarian," Jenny warned, her voice dangerously low and her skin seemed to buzz beneath Amelia's palm. "Leave while you still can."
Somehow, the woman seemed to hear her, and this time she took the threat seriously. She squared her shoulders then turned and walked away. Amelia watched her disappear behind a large lorry and waited for her to emerge on the other side but she never did. Ten seconds after the woman disappeared Jenny finally relaxed.
"She's gone," Jenny announced.
"Gone where?" Amelia asked.
"Back to where she belongs." She tucked the tube into her pocket before Amelia could get a closer look at it. "Unfortunately, I can't promise you'll never see her again, but, hopefully, it will be a long time from now."
"Amelia!"
Amelia twisted around, not letting go of Jenny's hand, and scanned the playground for Rory. He was standing at the top of the tallest slide, looking around below for her. He didn't even pause as his gaze swept over her. Amelia rolled her eyes in irritation. The little dork obviously needed glasses.
"I fink she lef," a little girl with black braids called up from the merry go round.
Amelia's mouth fell open. Were they blind? She was standing right out in the open! Jenny squeezed her hand. "Can they see me?"
"Nope," Jenny replied, popping the 'p'. "Not as long as you're holding my hand."
Amelia frowned up at her. "Have you got a perrycepshun filler, too?"
"Perception filter," she corrected, "and yes, I do."
"Can I have one?"
"No."
"Please? Could do to skip school."
"And that's exactly why you can't have one." Jenny said.
"But it's boring," she complained.
"I know," she sighed and knelt down in front of her. "Wait until your older, though, and you get to study more interesting things. Might not seem so bad then. Homework though…" she made a face. Amelia giggled.
"Do you go to school?"
Jenny shook her head. "Nope. Not anymore. But, between you and me, that doesn't mean I ever stop learning. School may be rubbish but learning never is. Always be curious."
"Okay."
She smiled and patted Amelia's hand. "Good. Time for me to go now."
"B-but are you sure she won't come back?" Amelia glanced fearfully at the truck as Jenny stood up.
"Pretty sure. She knows I'm serious."
"But what if she does?"
"Then I'll stop her." Jenny said simply. Then something occurred to her. "By the way, don't tell anyone about me. I was never here, alright?"
"Why?"
Jenny sighed and kneeled back down so she was at Amelia's level. "See, Santa doesn't usually handle things like this. He's just Christmas, just like the Easter Bunny is only Easter. But he knew you were scared so he passed the word along. People like me, we're big secret and it really needs to stay that way, because if people found out about us, they might try to use us for bad things because we're special. Can I trust you to keep my secret?"
"Yes," Amelia replied without hesitation.
"That means no telling your aunt, your friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors—not anybody. Not ever. Do you promise?"
"I promise."
Jenny beamed at her and Amelia felt warm inside. "Thank you. Now, I think your friend Rory is getting worried. Time to let go of my hand."
Amelia looked down at their linked hands and sighed, letting go, and dropped her hand to her side.
"I'll see you around, Amy." Jenny told her as she turned to leave.
"My name's not Amy."
Jenny glanced back and smiled. "Would be a great nickname, though, don't you think?"
"I like my name."
"Amelia's the name of a princess. Amy's the name of a princess with attitude."
Amelia grinned. She quite liked that idea. Jenny winked then jogged away. Amelia watched her go, ignoring Rory's relieved cries of her name, and didn't look away from Jenny even as he tugged on her arm.
"Amelia, where've you been?" Rory fussed.
"Right here, stupid," she answered.
"Who were you talking—what are you lookin' at?!"
The blonde woman didn't look back once as she ran. And then before Amelia's eyes, she vanished in a tiny flash of light.
Amelia gawked at the empty space where she'd just been. "Nothin," she whispered after a moment. She didn't see Rory frown suspiciously at her.
Jenny had promised Kovarian wouldn't come back, but Amelia didn't stop looking for her everywhere. Her aunt noticed her paranoia and insisted she stop it. There was no one following her. Amelia just wished she could be as sure as her aunt. Eventually she stopped looking over her shoulder, stopped scanning crowded places for the sharp-featured woman with the wicked smile, and allowed herself to forget about her. She focused on school, thinking of the promise Jenny made about how it would get better as time went on.
She finished Year 2 with good marks and Rory's marks were better. He was way smarter than he looked but unlike some of the other children, he didn't boast and wave the sheet of paper around for all to see. Amelia had to approach him directly before he hesitantly unfolded the paper and let her look.
When Amelia Pond was eight years old, she celebrated her first birthday without her parents. Her mother and father would always make sure they had the day off. They'd wake her up with a plate of hotcakes with smiley faces made of whipped cream and chocolate chips. The house was always decorated with balloons. They'd spend the day doing fun things, they'd have a party in the afternoon with her friends and family. Her Dad always made her favorite dinner, they watched a movie, they'd let her stay up an hour past her bedtime.
Aunt Sharon had to go to work. Amelia woke up alone with the sense that this day was going to be no more special than the one before. There were no balloons except for a single green one taped to the back of her chair in the kitchen. There was a note on the table telling her there was a plate of hotcakes in the fridge for her to heat up. She looked around for whipped cream or chocolate chips and found neither. She called Katie to ask if she was coming down but she wasn't. Too much gas and they wouldn't be able to get there in time.
They had a small party in the park after Aunt Sharon got off work with some of Sharon's friends and Amelia's classmates. Rory and his dad, Brian, came. Brian presented her with a book of fairytales and Rory gave her a bag of sour sweets she knew she loved. Amelia couldn't help but look around the entire time for her parents or Katie and tried to not to be disappointed when she found neither. Part of her hoped Jenny might come but no such luck.
Aunt Sharon asked what she wanted for dinner and Amelia told her what her Dad had always made. She nearly cried when she took a bite and it didn't taste the same. It wasn't bad…just different. After dinner, Sharon sat down to watch her evening shows and Amelia retreated to her room. Sitting on her bed, she looked at the few presents she'd been given and sighed. Then she looked at the picture on her nightstand of her and her parents taken not long before…well, before.
The sight of them all happy and smiling was enough to undo her. All the frustration and grief from the First Birthday Without Mum and Dad came rushing to the surface and refused to be contained. Pressing her face into her pillow, she cried her little heart out. She beat her fists on the mattress and screamed her anger at the world into the squishy cotton. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it just wasn't fair! She wanted her parents, wanted them so badly that it made her heart ache like it hadn't since Christmas.
Eventually, the tears ran dry and she was left a shuddering pathetic lump on the bed. When she had the strength to move, she rolled out of bed, changed into her nightie, and crawled under the covers. She lay there and tried to read from the book Brian had given her but the words didn't make sense in her mind and she eventually tossed it to the floor in frustration.
Aunt Sharon came to check on her a while later and Amelia pretended to be asleep. She didn't want to talk to her. She knew her aunt had never wanted children and she'd only taken her in because they were family. She was doing her best. She just wasn't mum material and every time she made an attempt at it only reminded Amelia of what she'd lost. She couldn't handle that right now.
Amelia lie awake for a while after, waiting for sleep to come. It wouldn't.
"I miss you," she whispered into the silence. The only answer was a faint wheezing sound.
Amelia's eyes snapped open and she frowned as she realized the strange noise seemed to be getting louder. Closer? She sat up in bed. It sounded like it was coming from her back yard. Throwing the blankets off her, she swung her legs over the side of her bed and sprinted to window. Peeking through the curtains, she spotted a blue box fading in and out of existence right next to her garden shed.
Curiosity won out before worry could even assert itself. She grabbed the torch from her closet. She pulled her Wellies out from underneath her bed and shoved her feet into them. She grabbed her sweater, pulling it on as she crept down the hall. She unlocked the back door and eased outside, shutting it softly behind her, then flicked the torch on. Amelia scampered down the path towards the garden shed and the solid blue box waiting beside it.
She stopped right in front of it, eyes wide and mouth agape. She'd never seen anything like it before. It was easily three times her height and a beautiful deep shade of blue. The words Police Public Call Box glowed at the top and a sign on the door said something about pulling to open.
Glancing around, Amelia crept closer to the box. She raised her free hand and touched the wood. It felt warm, like an oven door as the insides were heating up but not quite hot yet. She lowered her hand and shined her torch around the garden. "Hello?" she called.
When no one answered, she turned back to the box and considered her options. She could go back to bed and check on it in the morning, sit here and wait for something to happen…or she could try to go inside. Curiosity won out before she could even really give the arguably more reasonable options much thought. Amelia reached for the handle and gave it an experimental tug. To her great surprise, the door opened and light spilled out.
It took her a few seconds to realize what she was seeing and then she could not believe her eyes. Inside was a room easily the size of her entire house back in Scotland. Logic said it wasn't possible. Logic said she should go inside right now. But something (her own curiosity, maybe?) was telling her to step inside. So she did.
The floor beneath her feet was metallic grating. She took a deep breath of the air, so different from the hot summer air outside. Richer, almost, and definitely cooler. A giddy laugh bubbled past her lips and she looked up at the ceiling high above her head. She remembered at the last second to close the door behind her then she stepped up the ramp.
Amelia ran her hand along the large coral column at the top of the ramp. It was warm beneath her hands, almost like it was alive, and it made her fingers tingle. "Magic," she breathed, gazing around. She licked her lips then called out, "Hello? Is anybody here?"
No response. She was alone. Or so she thought. Unbeknownst to her, even though the occupants of the ship were out, her presence had not gone unnoticed.
The ship's hum swelled around her and Amelia thought she heard the faintest sound of laughter coming from somewhere to her right. She turned and saw a door at the other end of the room leading further into…whatever this was.
"Hello?" she called.
The laughter came again, high pitched and full of glee. Amelia tucked her torch into the pocket of her sweater and started for the door. She stopped just before it and peered down the long corridor. The walls were the same reddish brown as the room she was in now, bits of coral branching out from the walls, floor, and ceiling. There were several doors along the walls and the end of the corridor branched off in two separate directions.
As she stepped into the hallway, the hard grating gave way into soft carpet. She stopped, lifting her foot, and grimaced when she realized there was a dirty footprint where she'd stepped. She bent over and pulled her boots off and set them behind the closest coral strut. She hopped onto the carpet and wiggled her toes against the soft material.
She heard the laughter once more and set off down the corridor to find the source. Most of the doors she passed were made of ordinary wood. She tried to open a few of them but they were locked. When she reached the end of the hall, she looked in both directions and frowned, waiting for more laughter. When it didn't happen, she chose the path to her right.
The doors she passed now weren't nondescript. One of them was made entirely of opaque glass with a shiny handle. She turned it and, to her surprise, the door opened and she found herself staring at a pool surrounded by stone with a waterfall trickling down from an overhand. Her jaw dropped.
Amelia withdrew from the room and shut the door, moving on.
The next door was made of bamboo wood and the word "EARTH ZOO" was carved into it. Oh, this she had to see. She opened the door and was greeted with the sight of five white tigers looking at her through glass about five yards away. Within view of the door she could see, lions, cheetahs, and, believe it or not, three sabre-tooth tigers.
A zoo.
There was a zoo with sabre-tooth tigers inside this box.
She shut the door.
The next room was full of slinkies of all sizes and colors. After the size of this place and the pool she'd decided was prepared for anything. The slinkies, though, she hadn't seen coming. Undeterred, she plucked a rainbow slinky as wide as a cricket ball at the edge of the room and shut the door. She fiddled with the slinky, pulling it open and pushing it together, as she progressed.
If she were older, she would be questioning exactly how all this was here, but Amelia thought the explanation was simple: magic. The box was magic. Simple enough. The only problem was that magic boxes weren't just left lying around. There had to be someone somewhere. She'd heard them laughing.
She tried every door she passed. Some refused to open but each one that did revealed a room just as bizarre as the last. She found one room with four ordinary walls and what appeared to be a mural in progress. Dozens of jars of paint and a jug of different paintbrushes sat on a wooden bench near a wall that hadn't been completed. Amelia, being an art lover, was very tempted. But the pictures were so pretty, much better than anything she could do, and she didn't want to ruin a fellow artist's project.
Rounding the corner, Amelia spotted a door with a mat in front of it up ahead. She ran past the others, curious about what sort of warranted a mat. She stopped in front of it and bent over to have a look at the black words written there. At first, she couldn't understand the strange mess of letters. She thought one of them might have been a lowercase 'a' but beyond that it was gibberish. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were in English.
Come in and have a cuppa
"Weird," she whispered and looked at the door.
There was no handle on this door. She pressed her hand against the side of it experimentally and it swung inward. She pushed it open all the way. Inside was a kitchen. At least, she thought it was a kitchen. It looked like the inside of a tree house. Everything was made of wood. There were even windows, through which she could see sunlight and jungle trees. But it was nighttime! She couldn't resist stepping inside and the door swung shut behind her, swaying in and out for a few minutes before settling.
Amelia took a deep breath and her nose was filled with the rich smell of fresh wood and fruit. A small table with beautiful carvings all along the sides and legs sat near the wall. A single chair sat on either side of the table, each with a wicker placemat in front of it. There was a wooden basin on the counter beneath one of the windows with a faucet behind it. The sink, she realized. There was no refrigerator; instead there were two wooden iceboxes right next to each other. She lifted the lid of one of them and found that it was bigger on the inside. The interior was divided into sections, each holding a specific thing: like milk, juices, breads, cheeses, some fruits and vegetables she recognized and at least a dozen she didn't. She found something near the sink that she thought might have been a dishwasher but couldn't for the life of her figure out how to open it.
The stove was the only thing not made of metal and other than the two dimensional burners, it looked entirely like an ordinary stove. A blue kettle sat on top of one of the front burners.
She heard a faint clink and turned towards the noise. A bright yellow mug sat innocently on the counter. Amelia was sure it hadn't been there a second ago. Magic, it had to be.
Come in and have a cuppa.
Well…someone or something was definitely giving her permission.
With a shrug, she plucked the kettle from the stove and carried it over to the sink. She filled it with water then returned to the stove and turned on one of the burners. She rummaged through the cabinets she could reach and brought one of the chairs over to inspect the ones higher up. She found one cabinet entirely full of teas, some were familiar, some sounded a little familiar but were completely exotic, things she'd never even heard of, and she decided to play it safe and just go for Earl Gray. She returned her chair to the table and sat down to wait for the water to finish boiling.
For the first time allowed herself to think about what she was doing. This box had just appeared in her back yard and what did she do? She just wandered on in and made herself at home. What if this was like Hansel and Gretel and there was a witch waiting for her? She bit her lip at the thought and suddenly the tea didn't seem very appealing.
Oh, oh what if this was like Hansel and Gretel? She'd walked right into the witch's house and now the witch was inviting her to have a drink. What if this tea would make her sleep? Any minute now she was gonna swoop in and make her into a pie!
She should go. She should really, really go—
The room shuddered Amelia was nearly knocked to the floor. She screamed. The floor shifted beneath her feet and Amelia felt as if the room were flying upwards…then the sensation faded and the room stilled. But the hum she'd barely noticed before was louder now, almost happier, and she had the sinking suspicion she'd just missed her chance to leave.
