To be honest. I had no reason to really write this. I had no plot in mind. The episode "Into the Wand" just bunched in a lot of concepts that are never brought up again and is so vague that I'm surprise no one plays around with them.

What if it wasn't just a daydream?

Star had to humor the idea as she walked through the walls of the school. A school in a dimension she briefly called home.

She found herself there more and more. She would just close her eyes and she would be at Echo Creek once more. Maybe it something that she was doing to de-stress herself. Working for Eclispa was stressful. She had to be both an advisor and diplomat.

It wasn't much different then she had imagine her role as queen would've been if she kept the throne.

Maybe it was just something she did for fun. She could close her eyes and trail her nails against the metal of the lockers. Listen to the hollow scratching as she tried to remember how the halls looked when they were full.

When she had these fantasies there was no one there; Not Janna, not Jackie, not even Marco.

She could fill in those gaps herself with a little imagination, but without the people, Star had to admit that the experience wasn't complete.

She wished for the stampede, the marching of feet.

Star could shut her eyes and always hear it, but in the end she couldn't hear them.

Just one.

There was just one set of stomping and it was no longer her own.

"Hello?" Star immediately brought a hand to her throat. She hoped that she had only spoke in her daydream and not reality.

The footsteps stopped for a moment.

Star froze. She shifted her weight. Whoever was moving was further down the hall.

She lifted her foot.

The footsteps began once more. They were running. Star had to follow pace. There was something strange, an intruder in her dreams.

The chase was unfortunately short. Star reached a fork in the hall and by the time she was in the center of it there was no sight of where the other person had gone.

She felt tired like she had actually been running.

This wasn't right, she had wished for people, for a population, not a shadow that she had to chase.

This definitely wasn't right, but when she thought about it, it was a step in the right direction. She just had to try again.

Maybe she had to begin the dream all over again.

Star opened her eyes.

Her eyes were already open.

Star tried to open her eyes.

She wasn't trying to open her eyes so she could see inside of the school. She wasn't trying to peer down the halls.

Star was trying to open her eyes the way you do when you dream, the way that one moment reality could seem so vivid around you only for it to disappear with the tiniest muscle.

She wanted to leave the school and go back to eating breakfast at the temple. Star had to finish her day, organize the queen's day or rather have her squire organize the queen's day.

Star had a lot to do before the next fantasy, but despite that she couldn't open her eyes.

Star sunk a nail in her palm, felt a pinch and pressed forward until she nearly drew blood. A little pain would draw her out.

She was still in the hall.

"Hi."

Star twisted and balled her fist. Even in a dream she wasn't planning on being defenseless.

The energy died before she build it up. She has expected maybe someone from the old high school or maybe a ghost if this was somehow a nightmare.

She didn't expect her own face.

"Did you find the thing that doesn't belong?"

"The thing-" Star repeated the words like she misheard "-that doesn't belong?"

"Oh, did Glossaryck not tell you?" Star, the dream Star perked up. "I'm you and I'm looking for the thing that doesn't belong. You and I and all our future selves are looking for the thing before-"

The lucid Star finished "We can replace ourself?"

"Yes." The other Star, the younger Star cheered. She seemed more glad that she, herself understood it then that her counterpart did. "You know it already? So are you a past me? Or a future me? Oh, do you know where the thing that doesn't belong is?"

"Yes" Star looked at the other self, "I'm the thing."

She walked away, hearing the other huff.

"Don't be silly. This is our wand, of course we belong." said as if the other was a moron.

Star left herself. She didn't feel the need to explain that the wand wasn't theirs any longer. That it was never truly theirs to begin with. That it was stolen and gifted to a pie maker.

She would find out sooner or later.

She could find out sooner.

That was an idea, Star admitted. Why not speed things up, but was she supposed to be here?

Star guess that when she wrestled with her future self that no limit was put in how far the future they had traveled from.

Either way it felt like cheating. She knew exactly where the item that doesn't belong is. Across the football field, extra-long like one could only be in a dream.

She traveled across it fast enough, skipping through the hoodie, the warpig and the cafeteria. She had the advantage of both knowledge and magic that none of her iterations seem to have.

It was easy to find herself in the room of queens. Some from her line, others from the queen's.

Star looked up at the portrait of her mother, even before it popped out from the canvas she laid her eyes on the other object that didn't belong.

She had won the race to replace herself.

Star didn't understand in retrospect why she had been so panicked, by this idea the first time around.

She was so scared that she would be replaced, but in the end that Star was replaced. It just took nearly two years for it to happen.

This time it would be faster.

Star raised her hand and allowed Toffee's finger to drop on her palm.

Star finally opened her eyes.

"I didn't know you could do that." Star would've flinched at the blue face floating harmlessly at eye level if not for years of experience.

As she was Star just smiled, "It's not the first time I surprised you."

Star looked around her room. It didn't look too different from when she last saw it. Her room was consistent and and she carried it around her, but it felt different.

It was different. She was different.

"Ya." Glossaryk admitted dragging a finger on his chin. "Then again, considering what you just accomplished, this might just be, linearly." The guide of the Butterfly book of spells floating casually beside her. "Don't know what's going to happen because of this. That's rare for me."

"I'm just going to wing it." Star shrugged. That hadn't change. She admittedly had just followed a whim.

"Hey Star. Have you seen my hoodie?" The door opened. Marco stepped in, looking a bit younger, thirty some years if you didn't go just by appearance.

"Ya, Marco." Star smiled. "I know exactly where it is."

She knew exactly everything she needed.