The rising dawn spilling through the windows of the hovel, Eden sighed as she looked at Dhandi as the child slept peacefully, nestled underneath a blanket. The pair of genies "sat" nearby on the cushions.
"Hey, Babe?" Genie waved his enormous hand in front of his girlfriend's face. The djinn of the Lamp turned to him with expression tinged with slight annoyance. "How's it going, with the possession and the relative freakiness that goes with it?"
Sighing, Eden pulled the blanket off Dhandi and revealed that the child was hovering about three feet above the cushions, her body perfectly level as if she was sleeping on an invisible mattress.
"Should we get a young priest and an old priest?" Genie asked, inspecting her body.
"No," Eden replied, placing the blanket back on Dhandi, "but I'm welcoming any other suggestions, ones that'll toss the pest out without hurting Dhandi."
"We could try tricking him into drinking the Elixir of Life. That managed to work last time, though there was a struggle-"
"No," Eden shook her head, despondently, "Mozenrath will know and he might kick Dhandi out. Besides, he doesn't have anything even resembling a body."
"Come again?" Genie looked at her.
"All that's left of him is a pile of ash at the bottom of a bath." Eden looked at Genie. "I don't think he had any intention of turning back once he got in."
Genie glanced back at Eden, sheepishly. "Dang, that got shot down fast."
The green-skinned djinn began gushing tears. Genie placed his enormous hand on her shoulder. "Eden?"
"It's been a week and-and she doesn't know," Eden sobbed, "and I-I…I'm not even sure she'll be the same girl I love after all this."
Genie regarded Eden, tilting her chin up with his bulbous finger and smiled, reassuringly. "We'll help her, remember?" he said. "She'll be all right when all this is over, 100 percent."
Eden smiled slightly. "I hope you're right."
She looked at Dhandi once more. "The more she learns, the sooner she can be free."
---------
Dhandi's feet touched down on the cool sand, Amir watching and nodding approvingly.
"Not bad," Amir said, approaching Dhandi, who reached down and brushed the sand of her soles. "You've been making great progress. I think you might be ready."
"Yep," Dhandi beamed. "Soon, we'll be able to see each other for real, not just as dreams."
"Yeah," Amir smirked. Dhandi then darted off, the boy double-taking for a moment and he began running after her, guided by the quick trail of footprints in the sand.
"Hey!" Amir shouted as Dhandi dove behind a massive rock, giggling. Panting, he peered behind, Dhandi smiling. "What was that for?"
"Nothing," she said, summoning pieces of paper, "Just wanted to run, make you have some fun. So, what are you gonna do when you have your own body?"
"I guess start where I left off," he replied, eyeing Dhandi, squatting down and drawing on the paper with a piece of charcoal. "What are you doing?"
"Making a memory," Dhandi looked up from her drawing, a crude portrait of Amir and herself, hover lines beneath them. "Got a whole bunch of them. Wanna look?"
Dhandi passed up a picture of a rake-thin dancer to Amir. Amir inspected, interested.
"Who is it of?" Amir asked, passing it back to Dhandi. Dhandi glanced at it, smiling.
"It's a girl in a story I like. She loved dancing more than anything. Then she fell in love and got married and had a baby."
"What happened to her?"
"Well, there was this very mean shoemaker who was also a sorcerer and he was in love with the girl, but she didn't love him back. So he made a pair of sandals for her, but there was spell on them. Anyone who put them on would have to dance forever, no stopping ever."
"So she kept on dancing, then."
"Uh-huh and dancing and dancing, until she danced out of town, leaving behind her husband and her baby," Dhandi continued. "No one knows what happened to her, if she's still alive or she died because she danced so long and so hard without rest."
"What do you think happened to her?" Amir asked, coolly.
"I think…she's still alive, waiting for her hero to come and take those shoes off her and reunite her with her baby."
Amir groaned slightly disgusted. Dhandi looked up, quizzically.
"What?"
"There's that whole 'heroes' thing again," he said. "You shouldn't depend on heroes to get anything done."
"Well, why not? Aladdin's a hero and he always-"
"Yeah, but heroes can fail, die, or even become the thing they're trying to protect against. You shouldn't believe in heroes."
Dhandi wanted to ask him why he had against heroes, but something popped in her head. Maybe when he needed one most of all, she thought, he or she didn't come.
"Well, what should we believe in if not heroes?" she asked, instead.
"Ourselves, I guess," Amir replied, looking at another picture, a figure surrounded by little hearts. "Who is this Wahid kid and why do you have little hearts around him?"
Blushing, Dhandi snatched the picture from Amir, who is smirking as if he found out a secret.
-----
"Hey, sweetheart, time to wake up," Eden nudged Dhandi's body, now planted firmly on the ground. Dhandi yawned, rubbing the accumulation of sleep from her eyes.
"Did you sleep okay?"
Dhandi nodded.
"You hungry?"
Dhandi nodded her head more energetically. Eden smiled and, summoning a frying pan along with eggs, flat pita bread, round black olives, plump tomatoes and cucumbers, a lump of white cheese, a spice rack of multi-labeled bottles and jars, and a bottle of olive oil, lit a flame with a snap of her fingers. Soon the delicious scent of scrambled eggs, pan-fired cheese, and bread floated in the air.
"Eat up," Eden announced, placing the plate of scrambled eggs, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, bread, and cheese before Dhandi along with a bowl of olives. Dhandi scooped the eggs with her hand and plopped them into her mouth, only to have Eden point to the pita in front of her. "Use the bread, babe. You're not an animal."
Embarrassed, Dhandi swallowed what was in her mouth and scooped the eggs up, this time using the pita.
"So, how's your lessons going, Dhanders?" Genie asked, popping an olive in his mouth.
"Oh, great," she replied, swallowing her food. "Amir said I might be ready."
"Oh," Eden spoke up, making the frying pan vanish back into thin air, "really, 'cause we have to make sure-"
"Really, I am and I'm not scare because you're gonna be with me. Genie, too."
"She's right," Genie replied, taking another olive. Eden smiled, a bit uneasy though. She wasn't ready to tell her quite yet about her having to go to the Underworld.
"Well, you'll have talk to Father binGud before we head out about homework," the green-skinned djinn said. "I don't want you missing the important stuff while we're gone."
Dhandi nodded readily, mouth stuffed with eggs and bits of vegetables.
-----
The sun hung high above Agrabah as Dhandi trudged away from the mosque, a bag slung over her back filled to the brim with scrolls. Father binGud had the habit of giving extra homework to those who asked for it or who he deemed deserved it, but as the scroll littered with algebraic equations popped out of the sack, Dhandi began to regret telling him that she would be absent for an indefinite time.
"ASFOUR, QUIT IT!" Dhandi's ears perked as she turned her head. She frowned, seeing Babkak at the receiving end of a wet-willy over by the well. The rotund boy shrieked as Asfour's moistened finger prodded into his ear, two burly boys held him at both sides.
"Stupid boys," she frowned, picking up the scroll, "bad enough they pick on me, now Bab?"
Suddenly, she smirked playfully as a plan formulated in her head. Crouching out of sight, she crept closer. She peeked from behind a barrel. The boys were now working towards his underwear. Dhandi focused on a small corner of one of the boys' shirt who was holding a squirming Babkak.
"Come one," she thought to herself, her power glowing brightly inside her head. Suddenly, a small flame ignited on the shirt and the sound of a boy shrieking in horror as he tried to extinguish the fire echoed in the alley. Asfour and the other boy pushed Babkak aside, rushing to aid their friend. Their victim crawled to his feet and darted away. Dhandi chuckled to herself as she watched the scene.
Babkak panted as he ran into the barrel where Dhandi hid herself. He looked down and uttered a "hi" to the girl.
"Hey," she answered, getting up, "come on and run before they put it out." Before the boy could answer, Dhandi took Babkak by the hand and darted down the alley.
-----
Approaching the doorway of her hovel, Dhandi and the sweating Babkak slouched against the sun-baked wall, exhausted though upon Dhandi's face is a look of triumph.
"Hey…(pant)," Babkak turned to Dhandi, "(pant)…binGud gave you a lot of homework…(pant)…why?"
"Well…(pant)," Dhandi replied, "he...(pant)…doesn't want me to (pant) fall behind while (pant) I'm gone."
Babkak's eyes widen with curiosity. "Where are you going?"
"Oh, on a trip with Eden and her boyfriend," Dhandi answered in a coy tone.
"Where?"
"Nowhere in particular."
Babkak frowned. "Why are you keeping secrets?"
"I'm not keeping secrets," Dhandi replied. "Sometimes people just don't want to tell other people things."
"You've been acting weird since last week," Babkak sniffed. "You never want to play with me anymore."
"No," Dhandi sputtered, "it's nothing like that. I'm just going through...changes."
Babkak looked at his friend, questionably. "Is it like...changes that happen to girls when they're older, like what binGud talked about two weeks ago?"
"Yeah," she said quickly, "sure, something like that."
Babkak glared at her as if she had asparagus sprouting out of her nose. "Ooookay, but when you get back, you better not be looking at me funny. I'm not ready for it."
A/N: Sorry for the delay, but the computer crashed a few weeks ago and I had mid-terms before Christmas.
Disclaimer: As always, I do not own these characters, save for Babkak, Asfour, and Father Habya binGud.