Ok - Just a short little chapter. Don't worry, longer chapters are in the works. Thanks for all the reviews!! I'll try to keep the chapters pumping out!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything ~ belongs to Chima.

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Part Two: A Turn of Phrase

Jessamine Longbranch peered over the top of her dark glasses at the waitress in some tiny, dingy, diner in a rundown mid-west town south of Trinity. The waitress was young and distinctly southern by her accent. She smiled, a sweet look that lit up her face. Jessamine Longbranch hated her immediately.

'Mornin' ma'am," the waitress chimed, "What can I get for you today?"

Jessamine rolled her eyes and suppressed an urge to gag before muttering, "Coffee. Two creams. No sugar."

The girl wrote furiously, and without looking up, asked, "Is that all? You know, we have a dee-licious assortment of muffins – they go great with coffee."

When she did look up, the scowl on Jessamine's face nearly knocked her on her butt. She smiled tentatively anyway, but then backed up to leave. As she walked away, Jessamine heard her mumble to herself, "City-folk, they just don't know the polite way to treat a person."

Jessamine's irritation with the girl melted as the last three words of her mumble sent a shock wave of memory through her. The phrase had caught her off guard the night that Madison Moss had waltzed into her tent outside of Trinity. She remembered smiling at the girl's quaint colloquialism. But now, the mere memory of that night haunted her. She braced herself against the sticky tabletop to keep herself from falling to the floor.

Ever since the Dragon has stolen away her weirstone, Jessamine had suffered and struggled through the non-magic world. One might imagine that, through her hardship, Jessamine might have learned humility and the error of her indulgent and selfish lifestyle, but no. Instead, Jessamine wandered the countryside – trying to lay low, hiding from any wizards or underguilds that might take it upon themselves to take revenge against her – and growing more and more bitter as she mourned her unfair state and dreamed of finding the Dragon and getting her stone back.

Jessamine shivered as she thought of the Dragon. So shimmery, so powerful, so – terrifying. The thought of being in its presence again turned her blood to ice. A Dragon. She'd spent the near 200 years of her life wishing to meet a Dragon but not really believing that they existed. But then, Hastings, she winced internally at the name, and his brat son and his upstart friends just happened upon a Dragon and convinced it to support them! ARGH! She slammed her fist against the table. What rotten luck.

"If I had found the dragon first," she mused to herself, "I could have convinced her to follow me." Her smile grew pronounced as she imagined ordering the Dragon to remove the weirstones of all of her enemies. "Then I could be the all-powerful. I the giver and taker of power." She almost laughed aloud with greed and vindictive pleasure.

She was jolted out of her daydream as the server returned with her coffee. The girl looked much less animated than before – she'd learned her lesson. She laid the check alongside the coffee and said, "There you go. You go on home and have a nice day now."

Jessamine's eyes widened as yet another of the girl's phrases brought back a startling memory – the Dragon's final words to the assembled wizards – "You all better go on home and preach to your friends…" Something like that… Jessamine struggled for the exact words, but she was sure that the Dragon's turn of phrase shared the same distinctive southern lilt as this waitress.

A distinctive southern lilt she'd heard before.

An evil grin started to form on Jessamine's lips as a plan began to form itself in her mind. They'd been led to believe the girl was dead… but was she? What was her power that had allowed to her vanquish Leicester at Second Sister… and that boy, Haley, had spoke of her ability to handle the Dragonheart… had that been a ruse too?

There were too many questions to be answered in the dingy diner, but Jessamine, despite her distaste for anything 'rustic' (she desperately missed her fabrics and jewels and fine foods, but of course she couldn't return to her palace where every lower wizard, servant, or assassin of the Red Rose would be vying to cut her throat) found herself planning to extend her stay in the mid-west.

Jessamine sat smiling into her coffee for a few more minutes, savoring the feeling of being back in the game and imagining the feeling of getting back her power and being free of non-magic squalor, before leaving the diner.

Engrossed in her daydream, she didn't notice the dark figure who'd been watching her from across the diner. After she left, he rose and, throwing a few dollars down on the table, followed her out into the sultry summer heat.