Marianne can't help as her mouth drops and she turns her head to Bog while gesturing at the scene in front of them with her free hand. His shocked nod confirms that, no, she is not imagining things and her father really is standing on Cu-Sith's head.
Despite her uneasiness, she holds her ground as the bull-sized dog slowly walks over with its plaited tail tucked underneath it and its head lowered. It isn't acting as it did during their former encounter and even keeps its eyes adverted as it approaches to within touching distance of her outstretched hand.
She quickly moves her left-hand palm up to allow her father to step onto it and giggles as Puck escapes from his hold to run up her arm. But if she was shocked before, nothing could prepare her as a small black-furred imp appears out of Cu-Sith's shaggy dark green fur and chases after her son, catching and kissing him before giggling at his angry hissing.
"Dad?" Marianne questions.
"As I'm sure you've already guessed, Cu-Sith stopped us before we managed to make it to the palace but not to attack us," Dagda answers, turning back to Cu-Sith to urge a larger black-furred imp to join him on her hand. "There's been a misunderstanding. They think that you kidnapped Puck."
"What?" Bog mutters.
"Yes, yes, we're here to save the baby imp!" the pooka explains, finally managing to pull his rabbit form out of the small hole. "We're taking them home."
"Over your dead body!" Marianne states firmly.
"That's...that's not how the saying goes," the pooka comments. "It's not 'over your dead body', it's 'over my dead body'."
Marianne ignores the laughter emanating from behind her and she barely notices as golden-eyes widen in realization before the pooka hastily insists that he wasn't talking literally. Everything is happening too fast. One minute they are fighting for their lives and now this!
It doesn't make any sense!
"The Dark Forest castle has been destroyed and the goblins are dead and you're calling it a misunderstanding!" Marianne growls, her right-hand fisting almost painfully around her royal sword's hilt.
"Bog, Marianne!" Griselda calls, urging her dragonfly closer to her transformed son. "We got the Sacred Spring's water."
"Mom," Bog breathes, leaning his royal scepter against his shoulder to allow the dragonfly to land on his hand. "How...I thought you..."
"Takes more than that to get rid of me!" Griselda states. "Everyone got into the winter burrows before the castle collapsed. The army is ready and waiting."
Looking toward the Dark Forest, Marianne's rigid stance nearly falters from the relief rushing through her and she can't stop the tears from falling as she smiles toward her approaching subjects. She quickly scans the gathered goblins, looking for any obvious injuries but they appear unharmed and ready for battle as they uncork their bottles.
The renewed whimpering from Am Fear Liath Mor and the hellhounds makes it obvious what's contained in the vessels but she signals the army to wait. Better find out what's going on first.
"I'm confused," Dawn mutters, flying up to sit on Marianne's shoulder. "Anyone want to explain what's going on?"
"Exactly what I said. We're here to rescue the baby imp and take them back home," the pooka states.
"But Puck doesn't need rescuing because this is his home," Marianne comments, motioning to the nodding male imp sitting beside Dawn. "He's been living here for the past three months."
"Aha! So you do admit to stealing the baby imp!" the pooka crows, pointing a rabbit paw accusingly.
"We haven't stolen him!" Bog denies with a growl. "Why do you keep saying that?"
"There is no need to explain to a thief their crime," the pooka mutters, turning his back and crossing his rabbit arms.
Any cuteness the picture would normally have is ruined by the frustrating events and Marianne feels no remorse at the rabbit-pooka's look of utter fear as she points her blade against his body. Her patience has been worn through and she wanted answers. Now!
"We're not thieves and if you don't start explaining, you're going to wind up roasted rabbit dinner!" Marianne threatens.
"Kaiden has a stubborn streak as tall as Am Fear Liath Mor. I will explain."
Marianne looks in shock toward the larger black-furred imp sitting in her hand, barely noticing as Bog does the same. Just when she starts to think she imagined the feminine voice that appeared in her mind, the adult imp nods and blinks its black eyes before continuing.
"I am Hermia. We imps use our magic to speak to those who cannot normally hear us," Hermia explains. "As said, this is all a misunderstanding. We're not here to attack you but just to get the little one and then we'll return home to the Great Mountain."
"I'm not going to bother pointing out that they did, in fact, attack us," Marianne comments dully, ignoring the resulting snickers from her subjects. "Instead, I'll point out that Puck has been living here for three months and you've never done anything before. How come you waited so long?"
"We hadn't known the young one was here," Hermia mutters sheepishly. "It was about a week ago that we first felt the little one's magic so close to us but we couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from, so Kaiden took to searching as a favor to my clan. When Kaiden followed another spark of magic to this kingdom two days ago at dawn, he discovered you holding the young Puck before a bonfire."
"The Sunrise Memorial," Marianne murmurs, remembering the white flower being turned pink after Puck kissed it. "We had noticed some things being...changed during the past week but they were all random acts, not something definite."
"Young imp's magic is very erratic when it starts manifesting," Hermia mentions. "Since we had only sensed the magic for the past week, we had assumed that you had recently kidnapped the little one and bound him to you with the necklace that Kaiden saw him wearing."
"The necklace isn't a binding charm. It's a gift given to him when we adopted him, to show that he is our son," Bog explains.
"I know that now," Hermia reassures. "Puck explained to me and Cu-Sith about how you rescued him and then took care of him as your own young. But Kaiden thought it as such because when he caught up with you after trying to avoid detection, he saw the necklace on top of a sealed chest but only you and your mate were in the room."
"The light I saw," Bog murmurs before growling, dropping the sporran chain and picking up the rabbit-pooka by the ears.
"Hey, hey, hey, hey! I didn't see anything!" Kaiden denies.
"If you didn't see anything then how come you know why I'm mad?" Bog growls.
"Uhhh...this is not the proper way to hold a rabbit," Kaiden evades. "And anyway, how was I supposed to know you hadn't stolen the baby imp?"
"You could have asked!" Dawn huffs. "Seriously, all this could have been avoided if you just asked!"
"Like these simpletons would have thought of that!" Plum sneers, flying closer.
"Plum! Where have you been?" Dagda asks sharply.
"Long story but the short of it is that I noticed these idiots hanging around at the edge of the kingdom this morning, so I had to go the whole way to the Great Mountain to yell at their doltish king and now these halfwits are in a whole world of trouble!" Plum gleefully informs, her sharp teeth flashing in the sun.
"Argh! Put me down, put me down!" Kaiden screams, frantically trying to squirm away from the approaching glowing figure.