Quick Note: This was written in response to the "yuiseppe Art Omake Challenge #1"—a challenge I had innocently suggested to the gang at the Animesuki GrimGrimoire fan-group "Exiled to the Couch" =D. The picture in question by yuiseppe is of Tahlea having exploded her lab, with DezoPenguin's original character Hibiscus being furious at her. Check out the other fics by various authors too!
The Little Things That Matter
When the laboratory was too quiet, that was when Hibiscus knew that something suspicious was happening. Even though Hibi was a fairy, instinctually wary of Alchemy in the first place, she had learned from harsh experience that a silent lab meant that nothing good was going on—either Dr. Chartreuse had passed out from days without eating or sleeping over his workbench again, or Tahlea was trying to sneakily attempt some innovative concoction or another.
At least the former usually didn't end badly—Dr. Chartreuse was careful enough to cast protective magic over his work to prevent most alchemical mishaps.
The latter case…there was a reason Tahlea tried to hide her more inventive experiments from Hibi. Ever since that last incident involving hyperactive blobs the size of mini marshmallows, Hibi had made her friend promise to stick with the grimoire instructions for another year until she had learned which liquids not to mix with which.
Of course, Tahlea had never listened to Hibi for long even when they had both been fairies, yet alone when she had a spiffy new homunculus body that could withstand bizarre amounts of alchemical mishaps. While Tahlea had changed when she had become a homunculus, there were still some personality traits that appeared to have transferred over unaltered.
Hibi zipped towards the workroom door, tossing a handful of fairy dust on the doorknob to turn the handle. It sucked that she wasn't as big as normal fairies and be able to just push the handle like any larger creature, but Hibi's had to live with that disadvantage her whole life. As the door swung open, Hibi hovered in the doorway and assessed the situation.
There was Tahlea, holding two flasks up to her eye-level as she carefully transferred drops from one to the other. From the messy state of used glassware around her, she had been at it for a while.
And most notably, there was no instructional grimoire in front of her.
"Tahlea!" Hibi hissed, keeping her voice relatively low so as to not startle Tahlea too much. God knew what was in those flasks?
Tahlea jerked, the liquids sloshing dangerously, then spun around and quickly shoved the flasks behind her in a poor attempt to hide them. "Hibi! What—um, how are you today?" She gave Hibi a wide, toothy smile, her eyes blinking with false innocence.
Hibi narrowed her elfin eyes, flitting closer and crossing her arms. "What are you doing? You—is that flask supposed to be smoking?"
Tahlea gasped and turned back to the vibrating, fizzing flask behind her. "Oh no—"
Not surprisingly, it exploded.
Hibi yelped and clutched at her hat, keeping it from flying off in the smelly, gaseous shockwave. Her wings fluttered wildly, trying to keep her from being buffeted off the walls. Black and green smoke filled the room, making both of them cough. After a few moments, the gas cleared slightly, rising up in noxious clouds towards the ceiling, allowing Hibi to focus back on the sheepish scientist.
"Tahlea…what did you think you were doing?"
"Nothing!" Tahlea replied, laughing nervously. "Okay, I was just…messing around. You got me. I'm sorry, okay?" She peered at Hibi through a black streaked face and slightly scorched eyelashes, her pale blond hair wildly askew. "Are you okay? You're not hurt?"
"No. You're okay?"
"Fine, fine," Tahlea waved it off, her wide smile still plastered to her face. "I'll just clean this up…"
And Hibi remembered why she was mad again. "Clean what up? Didn't you promise me you weren't going to fool around with alchemy anymore? What if you did something that really hurt you! Argh…" Hibi gnashed her teeth, weaving about in a figure eight as she tried to keep her temper. "Why can't you think things through?"
"I did think it through!" Tahlea said crossly, eyeing the broken flasks and dishevelled equipment around her. "I just got so exc—anyway, I just made a little mistake, that's all." She tried to nonchalantly shuffle her notes into a pile, but Hibi pointed at them.
"What's that? You're trying to hide it from me."
"I'm not trying to hide anything from you! I said I was going to clean up, didn't I?" Tahlea rapidly mussed the papers together. Hibi darted forward and snagged the top sheet with both hands.
"Hey, give it back!" Tahlea slammed a hand down on the sheet, covering the writing and tables. "Leave it alone, Hibi!"
"If it wasn't a big deal, you'd show me! Please tell me you're not trying to do anything illegal!" Hibi's wings buzzed rapidly as she strained to yank the paper out without tearing it. It wasn't like Tahlea to be so vehement about hiding her blundering. Her uncharacteristic panic was creating multiple worst-case scenarios in Hibi's mind.
"It's none of your business!" Tahlea swung out a hand, and instinctively Hibi let go and flew backwards to avoid the fly-swatting motion. She hung in the air silently as Tahlea quickly flipped the paper over before looking crestfallen back at her friend.
"Hibi…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that."
Hibi blinked back tears, unable to forget the earlier insult.
"Hibi…" Tahlea reached out the same hand, slowly, and touched a fingertip to Hibi's cheek. "I'm so sorry. I…it was supposed to be a surprise."
"A surprise?"
"Yeah," Tahlea admitted, looking slightly relieved to have confessed and to have Hibi speaking with her again. "It was going to be a present for you."
"For me?" exclaimed Hibi, her curiosity pushing out any remnants of hurt.
Her friend nodded, flipping over the note paper that she had been hiding. "I was trying to make a…a growth potion."
Growth potions were notoriously unreliable, and most Magicians who tried to make them ran into numerous secondary problems involved with the process. With the advent of Rune magic and summoned familiars, the purpose and need for body-altering potions had declined as Magicians found it simpler to summon a Familiar to do whatever large or small task was needed. Hibi looked at the large stack of notes in front of Tahlea; she would have to have been studying the potion for weeks to accumulate so many haphazard personalized notes.
"You…were trying to make me a growth potion?"
Tahlea flinched, and nodded glumly. "Please don't get mad. I only wanted to help. You've always been teased so much because you're smaller than the other fairies, and I…I just wanted to give you something that would help."
It was utterly humiliating that Tahlea had been trying to make such a thing for Hibi…and so very sweetly Tahlea at the same time. Hibi sighed, looking down at her tiny hands. She could hear the humming of her wings in the silence—a normal fairy's wings wouldn't beat so fast or sound so sheer. They'd be able to wear proper leaves in their hair and use bows with arrows large enough to kill a demon in a fight.
"I'm really sorry," mumbled Tahlea, tucking her hands into her lab coat pockets. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
Hibi chewed her lip, then fluttered closer to stare determinedly into Tahlea's downcast face. "Hey, Tahlea?" She waited for her friend to meet her gaze, and crossed her arms.
"You're an idiot, for doing something so dangerous. You could have melted yourself down or blown yourself up! You're my best friend, even if you need lots of watching over no matter what form you're in." Hibi let out a longsuffering sigh, but bobbed up and down in the air with a crooked smile. "It's nice that you want to make me a growth potion present, but I don't need it."
She spread her arms as wide apart as she could. "You're huge compared to me—so why should I care about other faires being a few inches bigger? I'm getting too old to care about what people who aren't my friends think about me."
Hibi cut through the air, twirling around Tahlea's head before settling down onto one of Tahlea's scorched shoulders, rolling her eyes at the ripped fabric and burnt cloth. She curled her hands through Tahlea's chin-length blond locks, crossing her ankles over each other as she leaned into the warm spot by Tahlea's neck for a gentle sideways hug.
"If I were big, then I wouldn't fit so perfectly right here."
And really, that was good enough for Hibi.