ME: (Lying on the floor twitching.) So much sugar...so much sugar...
CHIBI JENNA: What's wrong with her?
CHIBI GARET: She overdosed on vanilla Coke and Cadbury's Crème eggs.
CHIBI JENNA: Ah.
ME: (Still twitching.) I think I'm blind...
CHIBI JENNA: Does this mean we have to start the chapter for her?
CHIBI GARET: Looks like it. Well, let's get a disclaimer done!
DRAGON EMPRESS DOESN'T OWN GOLDEN SUN. I MEAN, COME ON PEOPLE, WOULD ANYONE BUY IT IF SHE DID?!
CHIBI GARET: Okay, let's get the story up and running! (Snaps fingers. Nothing happens.) What's the deal? The chapter was supposed to start!
CHIBI JENNA: Oh, you're so useless! I'll do it. (Snaps fingers.) Roll it, Louie!
CHIBI GARET: Who's Louie?
CHIBI JENNA: It doesn't matter.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
"Oh for Jupiter's sake, why don't you two get a room?!" Ivan snapped irritably from where he was sitting cross-legged on the grass outside Isaac's house.
Jenna, who was currently sitting on Garet's lap broke away from her fiancé's embrace (Cough, cough.) and stuck her tongue out at the young Jupiter adept. "Don't be so jealous, Ivan. Just 'cos Sheba won't have you doesn't mean the rest of us can't have any romance in our lives."
"I think there's a difference between having romance in your life and getting it on in your best friend's garden!"
"Hey, we're not getting anything on!" Garet replied indignantly.
"Then where's your shirt, smart guy?"
"It's too hot to wear a shirt today! Mars, lighten up, Ivan, it's got to be about one million degrees out here!"
It was true that in the last day or so, the weather in Vale had gone from pleasantly warm and breezy to sweltering hot and boiling. And because of this, Garet and Isaac had taken to not wearing shirts. Of course, when handsome young men like our two heroes go shirtless, 'accidents' happen among the female population of Vale. Just this morning, there were several reported incidents that occurred when the woman in question hadn't been watching what she was doing.
One such incident included an extremely large pair of hedge trimmers and an unfortunate little poodle, but we won't go into that...
Isaac emerged from his house with Mia in tow. They were talking about something, but Mia seemed to be having trouble keeping her eyes level with Isaac's, and not allowing then to slip down to where his naked torso was gleaming with sweat in the hot sun...
...oh how she could use a cold shower right about now. Maybe if she wasn't afraid of turning what was pleasant afternoon with her friends into a wet t- shirt contest (Which I'm sure the guys would all hate. Yeah right.) She would have just cast douse right on top of her head to cool down.
But Mercury, did Isaac look good without his shirt on!
Clearly, Mia wasn't used to seeing guys walking around town half-naked. After all, any man walking around like that in Imil was going to last about as long as Menardi would without her makeup kit.
Shudder.
So anyway, sitting down on the grass next to Garet and Jenna (But not too close.) she said to Ivan, "What are you guys talking about?"
He snorted. "Only the little matter of those two," And the words were said as if they'd committed a true atrocity against humanity. "Getting a little busy in Isaac's garden."
Garet dismissed the claims with a sad little shake of his head. "Our dear, little friend Ivan over here is just jealous that everybody's in a relationship and he's lonely and single."
"I am not!"
"Oh, I think you are."
"I'm not!"
"You are!"
"What about Sheba?" Isaac asked, with a smug smirk on his face. "We all know you like her. Hell, after the stunt we pulled a few weeks ago I'll bet everyone in town knows you like her!" He and Garet high-fived, while the other three adepts looked on in annoyance.
Jenna whacked her fiancé upside the head. "That wasn't funny, Garet, it was cruel and unnecessary!"
"Cruel, unnecessary and absurdly funny."
"Garet, I am this close to making you sleep on the couch 'till we get married."
"Yeah right, Jenna. As if you could last that long without s...leeping beside me." Garet finished weakly, all the while hoping and praying to Mars that the concussion fairy was not due to visit him today.
Alas, Mars was busy playing poker with his fellow gods at the time and couldn't get round to answering Garet's prayer. However, he did tell our favourite spiky-haired fool to leave a message after the bleep and that maybe he'd get back to him later, if he had time.
Bloody gods, always doing things by their own schedules, no time for their loyal subjects at all.
Garet wasn't too pleased that Mars valued a card game over his own personal well being, or perhaps this was just the concussion talking and he was now half way to la-la land and imagining the whole thing.
Ooh, pretty fairies...
*THUMP!*
"Garet?"
His eyes opened slowly, and he found himself staring up into the worried faces of his comrades. "Urgh, that was bloody painful, that was."
Jenna took this opportunity to launch herself at him and hug him tightly. "Oh Garet, I'm so sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm..."
"...crushing my neck bones to dust." He finished for her. She pulled away and instead wrapped her arms around his middle.
"Better?"
"Y-Yeah, crushed ribs are much better, thanks."
"I'm sorry, Garet, really I am! I shouldn't hit you so hard."
"Or so often." Ivan chipped in.
"Or so viciously." Isaac added.
Mia nodded. "And you probably shouldn't enjoy it so much either."
All three were quickly silenced by a particularly vindictive death glare that would make even Saturos start crying like a little girl. And it had once...oh alright, twice...five times, are you happy now? She made Saturos cry seven times, and Alex seventeen times.
Twenty...twenty-five...thirty-five times...she burned his makeup kit and killed his budgie...can we get back to the actually bloody story now?
We can? Good.
"So what are you guys trying to say?" Jenna demanded suspiciously, still holding Garet tightly (His face was dark blue by now, bordering on purple.). "That I'm too violent or something?"
"Yes!" The three said in unison.
"I mean, no offence or anything Jenna, but you do seem to take an extraordinary pleasure in, how can I put this?" Ivan thought for a moment. "Beating the crap out of people."
"Nicely put." Isaac muttered dryly.
"I have a gift with words."
"Yeah, just like Garet has a gift of tact and gracefulness."
At this point Garet would have dearly liked to make a remarkably quick- witted and scathing remark about his best friend's habit of wearing women's underwear, but it hurt to breathe, and he was worried that even the slightest movement under Jenna's patented vice-gip would be enough to shatter what was left of his ribcage into tiny, tiny little pieces that she would then take and use as cocktail sticks as she sat on her throne of human corpses and skeletons, laughing insanely at how her evil plans to take over the world had finally been realised...
Okay, maybe she wasn't quite onto planning her throne design at this point in her maniacal schemes for world domination, but Garet had the nastiest feeling that if wedding plans were first, serving little cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks made from his bones at his funeral couldn't be very far behind.
Dear Mars, he was marrying the Devil herself!
Briefly the poor man wondered if it was too late to fake insanity and get the whole thing called off. No, that wouldn't work, no one would notice one more nutter in this crowd.
But perhaps Garet was letting his imagination run away with him. Of course Jenna wasn't going to serve little cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks made from his bones, she hated cheese.
Stuffed olives on the other hand...
Oh, he was dead man.
Maybe, and his skin crept at the thought, maybe she was like a black widow spider! And she was going to wait 'till she'd gotten a wedding and a couple of kids out of him and then BAM! She'd eat him alive and then go live with a rich billionaire, and they'd both sit together on a joint throne of human corpses and skeletons, laughing insanely at how their evil plans to take over the world had finally been realised...
Hmm, Garet mused over this terrifying future for a second before coming to the obvious conclusion.
And here comes the fairy again...
*THUMP!*
Concussion was such a bitch.
Later!:
Jenna was pissed off. And I don't just mean the "Goddammit Garet, how many times? It's just not possible for a man to fit over twenty mushrooms in his mouth without getting his jaw stuck!" kind of pissed. I mean super-duper- mega-pissed.
Super-duper-mega-hyper-gamma-ultra -pissed.
Super-duper-mega-hyper-gamma-ultra-multi-quasi-pissed.
Super-duper-mega-hyper-ga...oh, you get the point already. Jenna was not a happy lady. And when Jenna is not a happy lady, bad things happen. Or at least, they usually do...
But not today! Oh no, for you see, after Garet's multiple head injuries of the morning (He was still sleeping off his bear-sized headache well past lunchtime.) a small bet had been made. A bet that said that if Jenna lost her temper at all in the next week, she would stand to lose roughly three hundred coins.
Damn that Isaac! He knew that Jenna never backed out of a wager, particularly if money was involved. In fact, there was one time in their earlier childhood when she had been goaded into a bet involving a tub of purple paint, a small fire and old farmer Jonah's prize chickens. And without going into any details, I can safely say that old farmer Jonah's prize chickens were never the same again...
But anyway, let us not stray too far away from the original topic, which is the fact that Jenna is not a happy bunny, not at all. In fact, you could even go as far as to call her the anti-happy bunny.
Oh, if only Garet in his concussed state of mind could see this. He'd probably concoct some bizarre alternate reality in his beleaguered mind where his darling fiancée was a thirty-foot monster in a pink rabbit suit.
"Oh no, it is the anti-happy bunny Jenna! We must flee!" The people would cry as she stomped on their homes and ate their children.
Children are very tasty with little stuffed olives on ribcage-cocktail sticks I hear...
"Jenna?" Came a tired mutter from the living room doorway. It was Garet, with a large ice-pack on his head, wearing a pair of pyjamas with little ducks on them that he swore he borrowed from his brother ages ago, and weren't actually his. He didn't usually wear pyjamas, you see, but Mia said that he should just this once, to keep himself warm. And she was the expert on health and all that after all, so it was probably best that he took her advice.
Jenna privately thought it was ridiculous, seeing as she'd never had a problem keeping Garet warm before.
Oh get your minds out of the gutter, they're both Mars adepts! Of course they can keep themselves warm!
Perverts...
"Are you feeling better now, sweetie?" She asked him. Garet made his way over to the settee and thumped down, putting his head on her knee.
"I'm dying!" He wailed pathetically.
"Don't be such a big baby, Garet. You're not dying!"
"I'm not being a baby." He stuck his thumb in his mouth. "My head feels like it's gonna explode!"
"Well, try not to make too much mess when your head does explode. I'd never be able to get the stains out."
"Then I will try to die as nicely and quietly as possible."
"It's all I ask."
For a while, there was a companionable silence between them. Then, Garet said, "Hey, where has Felix been the last few days?"
Jenna shrugged. "Don't know. In fact, I haven't seen him since he moved out on Monday."
"Do you think he's gone and killed himself or something?"
"Oh, there's a cheery thought!"
"Well, I'm just saying. He's either killed himself, or is living under a bridge somewhere." Garet's tired face suddenly became animated. "Like a troll!"
Jenna rolled her eyes, but refrained from making the obvious comment about her fiancé's overactive imagination. "He's still in Vale though, Mia saw him yesterday. Apparently he was up near Kraden's old house, talking to trees.
"Drunk?"
"I can safely say so. Who talks to trees when they're sober?"
"Kraden used to talk to trees. He'd talk to squirrels and things too."
Jenna snorted as she remembered her former teacher's various weird habits. "Yeah, but Kraden was a few apples short of a picnic basket."
"So is Felix."
"He's not as bad as Kraden!"
"Yet." Garet shifted slightly so he could look up at her, and smiled slightly. "But if he's off talking to trees already, I don't think he's very far behind Kraden in the crazy stakes.
"He was just drunk."
"I don't talk to trees when I'm drunk."
"No, you just get all emotional and clingy."
"Like you when you're sober?"
Oh, the urge to whack him was incredible. But Jenna resisted, the thought of the three hundred coins she stood to lose firm in her mind. So, assuring herself that she wasn't really going to cause him any pain, she said, "Don't make me hurt you, Garet."
He grinned wickedly. "Empty threat. I know all about your little wager with the others."
Curse his unconscious ears! "Okay, so maybe I can't hit you, but I will make you sleep on the settee for a month."
"Hah, I'd like to see that. You couldn't last a night!"
Jenna scowled. It was just lucky for Garet that she wanted kids, or he might have soon found himself without the necessary equipment to do so...
"I'm just kidding!" He said quickly, putting his hands up over his face to protect himself. "Please don't use my ribs for cocktail sticks again!"
"Use your ribs for...what the bloody Hell are you talking about?!"
"You remember, the whole get a wedding and a few kids out of me thing, before you kill me and cut me up into cocktail sticks to stick stuffed olives on at my funeral before you go and marry the rich billionaire guy who helps you take over the world." He looked up at her blank face. "You don't remember? Really?" Then realisation slowly dawned. "Oh that's right, it was all a hallucination, wasn't it? Wasn't it...?"
"Garet, sweetie, don't take this the wrong way, but I really think you need to seek professional help."
But Garet wasn't listening. "Was it a hallucination? Or-Maybe this is the hallucination! Oh no, that means..."
"That's right." From behind her back, Jenna produced a large hacksaw. "But I'm afraid you've figured it all out too soon, so you're gonna have to die!"
He screamed loudly, and sat bolt upright in bed...wait a minute, bed?
Looking around, he saw that he was in fact, in bed, still wearing his pyjamas with the little ducks on them.
Jenna sat up beside him, rubbing her eyes. "Whasamatter?" She mumbled, looking at him through half-shut eyes, clearly not one for being woken up in the middle of the night.
"How did I get up here?"
"You fell asleep downstairs and I used my psyenergy to carry you up here."
"Oh." He let out a small sigh of relief. "That's good. For a second I was afraid I was going crazy or something, because I just had the weirdest dream. It was about you being evil and chopping me up to use my bones for cocktail sticks..."
Jenna groaned and flopped back down onto the pillows. "Go back to sleep, Garet."
"But I'm not finished yet..."
"Go back to sleep, Garet." It wasn't a request, it was an order.
"Oh, alright. I'll tell you about my dream in the morning." He lay back down beside her and put his arms around her waist. "Good night, Jenna."
"Good night, Garet."
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
ME: (Recovered.) Wow, the sugar rush seems to have subsided. (Grins.) Well, that's good. Sorry 'bout the delay in getting the chapter out, but I've got exams right after the Easter holidays and my teachers have given me a shed- load of homework to do. (Grumbles.)
CHIBI JENNA: (Coughs pointedly.) Can we stay on topic, please?
ME: What? Oh, right. Once again I apologise for the delay, and I really feel I should apologise for the fluffy crap at the end there too. I feel ashamed for writing it, really I do.
Next chapter: Jenna goes looking for Felix, and finds something truly disturbing. Plus, where the bloody Hell is Sheba?!
ME: Well, that just about covers it. So, 'till next time folks, and you'd all better review!
CHIBI JENNA: What's wrong with her?
CHIBI GARET: She overdosed on vanilla Coke and Cadbury's Crème eggs.
CHIBI JENNA: Ah.
ME: (Still twitching.) I think I'm blind...
CHIBI JENNA: Does this mean we have to start the chapter for her?
CHIBI GARET: Looks like it. Well, let's get a disclaimer done!
DRAGON EMPRESS DOESN'T OWN GOLDEN SUN. I MEAN, COME ON PEOPLE, WOULD ANYONE BUY IT IF SHE DID?!
CHIBI GARET: Okay, let's get the story up and running! (Snaps fingers. Nothing happens.) What's the deal? The chapter was supposed to start!
CHIBI JENNA: Oh, you're so useless! I'll do it. (Snaps fingers.) Roll it, Louie!
CHIBI GARET: Who's Louie?
CHIBI JENNA: It doesn't matter.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
"Oh for Jupiter's sake, why don't you two get a room?!" Ivan snapped irritably from where he was sitting cross-legged on the grass outside Isaac's house.
Jenna, who was currently sitting on Garet's lap broke away from her fiancé's embrace (Cough, cough.) and stuck her tongue out at the young Jupiter adept. "Don't be so jealous, Ivan. Just 'cos Sheba won't have you doesn't mean the rest of us can't have any romance in our lives."
"I think there's a difference between having romance in your life and getting it on in your best friend's garden!"
"Hey, we're not getting anything on!" Garet replied indignantly.
"Then where's your shirt, smart guy?"
"It's too hot to wear a shirt today! Mars, lighten up, Ivan, it's got to be about one million degrees out here!"
It was true that in the last day or so, the weather in Vale had gone from pleasantly warm and breezy to sweltering hot and boiling. And because of this, Garet and Isaac had taken to not wearing shirts. Of course, when handsome young men like our two heroes go shirtless, 'accidents' happen among the female population of Vale. Just this morning, there were several reported incidents that occurred when the woman in question hadn't been watching what she was doing.
One such incident included an extremely large pair of hedge trimmers and an unfortunate little poodle, but we won't go into that...
Isaac emerged from his house with Mia in tow. They were talking about something, but Mia seemed to be having trouble keeping her eyes level with Isaac's, and not allowing then to slip down to where his naked torso was gleaming with sweat in the hot sun...
...oh how she could use a cold shower right about now. Maybe if she wasn't afraid of turning what was pleasant afternoon with her friends into a wet t- shirt contest (Which I'm sure the guys would all hate. Yeah right.) She would have just cast douse right on top of her head to cool down.
But Mercury, did Isaac look good without his shirt on!
Clearly, Mia wasn't used to seeing guys walking around town half-naked. After all, any man walking around like that in Imil was going to last about as long as Menardi would without her makeup kit.
Shudder.
So anyway, sitting down on the grass next to Garet and Jenna (But not too close.) she said to Ivan, "What are you guys talking about?"
He snorted. "Only the little matter of those two," And the words were said as if they'd committed a true atrocity against humanity. "Getting a little busy in Isaac's garden."
Garet dismissed the claims with a sad little shake of his head. "Our dear, little friend Ivan over here is just jealous that everybody's in a relationship and he's lonely and single."
"I am not!"
"Oh, I think you are."
"I'm not!"
"You are!"
"What about Sheba?" Isaac asked, with a smug smirk on his face. "We all know you like her. Hell, after the stunt we pulled a few weeks ago I'll bet everyone in town knows you like her!" He and Garet high-fived, while the other three adepts looked on in annoyance.
Jenna whacked her fiancé upside the head. "That wasn't funny, Garet, it was cruel and unnecessary!"
"Cruel, unnecessary and absurdly funny."
"Garet, I am this close to making you sleep on the couch 'till we get married."
"Yeah right, Jenna. As if you could last that long without s...leeping beside me." Garet finished weakly, all the while hoping and praying to Mars that the concussion fairy was not due to visit him today.
Alas, Mars was busy playing poker with his fellow gods at the time and couldn't get round to answering Garet's prayer. However, he did tell our favourite spiky-haired fool to leave a message after the bleep and that maybe he'd get back to him later, if he had time.
Bloody gods, always doing things by their own schedules, no time for their loyal subjects at all.
Garet wasn't too pleased that Mars valued a card game over his own personal well being, or perhaps this was just the concussion talking and he was now half way to la-la land and imagining the whole thing.
Ooh, pretty fairies...
*THUMP!*
"Garet?"
His eyes opened slowly, and he found himself staring up into the worried faces of his comrades. "Urgh, that was bloody painful, that was."
Jenna took this opportunity to launch herself at him and hug him tightly. "Oh Garet, I'm so sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm..."
"...crushing my neck bones to dust." He finished for her. She pulled away and instead wrapped her arms around his middle.
"Better?"
"Y-Yeah, crushed ribs are much better, thanks."
"I'm sorry, Garet, really I am! I shouldn't hit you so hard."
"Or so often." Ivan chipped in.
"Or so viciously." Isaac added.
Mia nodded. "And you probably shouldn't enjoy it so much either."
All three were quickly silenced by a particularly vindictive death glare that would make even Saturos start crying like a little girl. And it had once...oh alright, twice...five times, are you happy now? She made Saturos cry seven times, and Alex seventeen times.
Twenty...twenty-five...thirty-five times...she burned his makeup kit and killed his budgie...can we get back to the actually bloody story now?
We can? Good.
"So what are you guys trying to say?" Jenna demanded suspiciously, still holding Garet tightly (His face was dark blue by now, bordering on purple.). "That I'm too violent or something?"
"Yes!" The three said in unison.
"I mean, no offence or anything Jenna, but you do seem to take an extraordinary pleasure in, how can I put this?" Ivan thought for a moment. "Beating the crap out of people."
"Nicely put." Isaac muttered dryly.
"I have a gift with words."
"Yeah, just like Garet has a gift of tact and gracefulness."
At this point Garet would have dearly liked to make a remarkably quick- witted and scathing remark about his best friend's habit of wearing women's underwear, but it hurt to breathe, and he was worried that even the slightest movement under Jenna's patented vice-gip would be enough to shatter what was left of his ribcage into tiny, tiny little pieces that she would then take and use as cocktail sticks as she sat on her throne of human corpses and skeletons, laughing insanely at how her evil plans to take over the world had finally been realised...
Okay, maybe she wasn't quite onto planning her throne design at this point in her maniacal schemes for world domination, but Garet had the nastiest feeling that if wedding plans were first, serving little cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks made from his bones at his funeral couldn't be very far behind.
Dear Mars, he was marrying the Devil herself!
Briefly the poor man wondered if it was too late to fake insanity and get the whole thing called off. No, that wouldn't work, no one would notice one more nutter in this crowd.
But perhaps Garet was letting his imagination run away with him. Of course Jenna wasn't going to serve little cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks made from his bones, she hated cheese.
Stuffed olives on the other hand...
Oh, he was dead man.
Maybe, and his skin crept at the thought, maybe she was like a black widow spider! And she was going to wait 'till she'd gotten a wedding and a couple of kids out of him and then BAM! She'd eat him alive and then go live with a rich billionaire, and they'd both sit together on a joint throne of human corpses and skeletons, laughing insanely at how their evil plans to take over the world had finally been realised...
Hmm, Garet mused over this terrifying future for a second before coming to the obvious conclusion.
And here comes the fairy again...
*THUMP!*
Concussion was such a bitch.
Later!:
Jenna was pissed off. And I don't just mean the "Goddammit Garet, how many times? It's just not possible for a man to fit over twenty mushrooms in his mouth without getting his jaw stuck!" kind of pissed. I mean super-duper- mega-pissed.
Super-duper-mega-hyper-gamma-ultra -pissed.
Super-duper-mega-hyper-gamma-ultra-multi-quasi-pissed.
Super-duper-mega-hyper-ga...oh, you get the point already. Jenna was not a happy lady. And when Jenna is not a happy lady, bad things happen. Or at least, they usually do...
But not today! Oh no, for you see, after Garet's multiple head injuries of the morning (He was still sleeping off his bear-sized headache well past lunchtime.) a small bet had been made. A bet that said that if Jenna lost her temper at all in the next week, she would stand to lose roughly three hundred coins.
Damn that Isaac! He knew that Jenna never backed out of a wager, particularly if money was involved. In fact, there was one time in their earlier childhood when she had been goaded into a bet involving a tub of purple paint, a small fire and old farmer Jonah's prize chickens. And without going into any details, I can safely say that old farmer Jonah's prize chickens were never the same again...
But anyway, let us not stray too far away from the original topic, which is the fact that Jenna is not a happy bunny, not at all. In fact, you could even go as far as to call her the anti-happy bunny.
Oh, if only Garet in his concussed state of mind could see this. He'd probably concoct some bizarre alternate reality in his beleaguered mind where his darling fiancée was a thirty-foot monster in a pink rabbit suit.
"Oh no, it is the anti-happy bunny Jenna! We must flee!" The people would cry as she stomped on their homes and ate their children.
Children are very tasty with little stuffed olives on ribcage-cocktail sticks I hear...
"Jenna?" Came a tired mutter from the living room doorway. It was Garet, with a large ice-pack on his head, wearing a pair of pyjamas with little ducks on them that he swore he borrowed from his brother ages ago, and weren't actually his. He didn't usually wear pyjamas, you see, but Mia said that he should just this once, to keep himself warm. And she was the expert on health and all that after all, so it was probably best that he took her advice.
Jenna privately thought it was ridiculous, seeing as she'd never had a problem keeping Garet warm before.
Oh get your minds out of the gutter, they're both Mars adepts! Of course they can keep themselves warm!
Perverts...
"Are you feeling better now, sweetie?" She asked him. Garet made his way over to the settee and thumped down, putting his head on her knee.
"I'm dying!" He wailed pathetically.
"Don't be such a big baby, Garet. You're not dying!"
"I'm not being a baby." He stuck his thumb in his mouth. "My head feels like it's gonna explode!"
"Well, try not to make too much mess when your head does explode. I'd never be able to get the stains out."
"Then I will try to die as nicely and quietly as possible."
"It's all I ask."
For a while, there was a companionable silence between them. Then, Garet said, "Hey, where has Felix been the last few days?"
Jenna shrugged. "Don't know. In fact, I haven't seen him since he moved out on Monday."
"Do you think he's gone and killed himself or something?"
"Oh, there's a cheery thought!"
"Well, I'm just saying. He's either killed himself, or is living under a bridge somewhere." Garet's tired face suddenly became animated. "Like a troll!"
Jenna rolled her eyes, but refrained from making the obvious comment about her fiancé's overactive imagination. "He's still in Vale though, Mia saw him yesterday. Apparently he was up near Kraden's old house, talking to trees.
"Drunk?"
"I can safely say so. Who talks to trees when they're sober?"
"Kraden used to talk to trees. He'd talk to squirrels and things too."
Jenna snorted as she remembered her former teacher's various weird habits. "Yeah, but Kraden was a few apples short of a picnic basket."
"So is Felix."
"He's not as bad as Kraden!"
"Yet." Garet shifted slightly so he could look up at her, and smiled slightly. "But if he's off talking to trees already, I don't think he's very far behind Kraden in the crazy stakes.
"He was just drunk."
"I don't talk to trees when I'm drunk."
"No, you just get all emotional and clingy."
"Like you when you're sober?"
Oh, the urge to whack him was incredible. But Jenna resisted, the thought of the three hundred coins she stood to lose firm in her mind. So, assuring herself that she wasn't really going to cause him any pain, she said, "Don't make me hurt you, Garet."
He grinned wickedly. "Empty threat. I know all about your little wager with the others."
Curse his unconscious ears! "Okay, so maybe I can't hit you, but I will make you sleep on the settee for a month."
"Hah, I'd like to see that. You couldn't last a night!"
Jenna scowled. It was just lucky for Garet that she wanted kids, or he might have soon found himself without the necessary equipment to do so...
"I'm just kidding!" He said quickly, putting his hands up over his face to protect himself. "Please don't use my ribs for cocktail sticks again!"
"Use your ribs for...what the bloody Hell are you talking about?!"
"You remember, the whole get a wedding and a few kids out of me thing, before you kill me and cut me up into cocktail sticks to stick stuffed olives on at my funeral before you go and marry the rich billionaire guy who helps you take over the world." He looked up at her blank face. "You don't remember? Really?" Then realisation slowly dawned. "Oh that's right, it was all a hallucination, wasn't it? Wasn't it...?"
"Garet, sweetie, don't take this the wrong way, but I really think you need to seek professional help."
But Garet wasn't listening. "Was it a hallucination? Or-Maybe this is the hallucination! Oh no, that means..."
"That's right." From behind her back, Jenna produced a large hacksaw. "But I'm afraid you've figured it all out too soon, so you're gonna have to die!"
He screamed loudly, and sat bolt upright in bed...wait a minute, bed?
Looking around, he saw that he was in fact, in bed, still wearing his pyjamas with the little ducks on them.
Jenna sat up beside him, rubbing her eyes. "Whasamatter?" She mumbled, looking at him through half-shut eyes, clearly not one for being woken up in the middle of the night.
"How did I get up here?"
"You fell asleep downstairs and I used my psyenergy to carry you up here."
"Oh." He let out a small sigh of relief. "That's good. For a second I was afraid I was going crazy or something, because I just had the weirdest dream. It was about you being evil and chopping me up to use my bones for cocktail sticks..."
Jenna groaned and flopped back down onto the pillows. "Go back to sleep, Garet."
"But I'm not finished yet..."
"Go back to sleep, Garet." It wasn't a request, it was an order.
"Oh, alright. I'll tell you about my dream in the morning." He lay back down beside her and put his arms around her waist. "Good night, Jenna."
"Good night, Garet."
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ME: (Recovered.) Wow, the sugar rush seems to have subsided. (Grins.) Well, that's good. Sorry 'bout the delay in getting the chapter out, but I've got exams right after the Easter holidays and my teachers have given me a shed- load of homework to do. (Grumbles.)
CHIBI JENNA: (Coughs pointedly.) Can we stay on topic, please?
ME: What? Oh, right. Once again I apologise for the delay, and I really feel I should apologise for the fluffy crap at the end there too. I feel ashamed for writing it, really I do.
Next chapter: Jenna goes looking for Felix, and finds something truly disturbing. Plus, where the bloody Hell is Sheba?!
ME: Well, that just about covers it. So, 'till next time folks, and you'd all better review!