Drag

By Allusia Starkiller & Aislin Oriel

Estell stormed back into the room where Ceres and Miranda resided, both still slightly singed and glaring at each other.

"You guys are not going to believe this!" she announced. This drew Ceres' attention, and Miranda lifted her head off of the wall where it was resting.

"Huh?" Ceres prompted.

"Wait, where's Emille, I want you ALL to hear this." Estell walked onto the balcony where Shana was still dangling, but the queen was nowhere in sight.

"Help . . ." Shana called weakly.

"Where did Queen Emille go?" Estell asked.

"She went to go find some more manservants . . . something about redecorating." Ceres called out to her.

"Oh well, I guess she'll find out later;" the enraged Wingly looked over the edge of the balcony, and spoke to Shana.

"Well, I suppose you'd like to know where your faithful rescuer is?" she rested her elbow on the rail, and her chin in her hand.

"Dart . . . ? Dart, are you here to save me?" the girl called in a faint voice, hinted with hope.

"When I found him, he was too busy to help;" she replied, trying to draw out the conclusion. She raised her voice for the next statement, "Too preoccupied with ALBERT and ELLIS to help!"

"Oh nooo . . . " with the startling pitch in Estell's voice, Shana let go of the ledge and fell two feet into a rosebush.

"Yeah," Estell sighed, getting angrier as she retold the story, marching back inside.

Inside Ceres and Miranda sat trying not to look like they had been eavesdropping.

"Did you hear?"

"Hear what? No I'm casual." Ceres stated, while Miranda kept silent and looked away, avoiding Estell's ambery gaze. "Okay, so I might have heard the names Albert and Ellis – waitaminute . . . what did you say?"

"Well, I tried to say it loud enough for EVERYONE to hear it. So you can stop pretending you didn't. It's true. Damn it Ceres, why did you have to be right!" Estell stomped over to her sister's corner, pointing an accusing finger in her direction.

"I . . . I was? Oh no." Ceres looked disturbed.

"Are you sure you know what was happening?" Miranda inquired.

"Are you questioning my intelligence? Do you think that I'm just that stupid to not know what was happening!" she snarled at Miranda, "When Ellis was laying in natural condition atop of Albert and Dart who were practically embracing one another? What would you call that?"

"Um, I'd rather not." the blonde concluded, trying to get the image out of her head.

"Oh no . . ." Ceres frowned. The possibilities were dancing through her head like Lloyd after drinking.

"Don't worry. I was wrong. Lloyd wasn't in on it." Estell said bitterly.

"Oh, thank Soa." Ceres clutched her hand to her chest, then after seeing her sister's expression, quickly added, "I mean damn?"

"Spare us your impressive display of theatrics." Miranda commented.

Estell grumbled something unintelligible. Her eyes shone cold fury.

Ceres took a step back. Then, as everything fell together she muttered a final, "Oh nooo…" and sat down on the floor blindly.

Miranda began raging on about the predicament, "Can you be so sure? That is inexcusable behaviour . . ."

"It cannot be . . ." came Shana's thought on the matter.

After a series of 'oh nooo . . .'s, commotion could be heard in the hallway.

"It's them." Estell growled. "I'm outta here." She disappeared as she leapt off the balcony and flew off.

The disgraced men clamored into the room in different versions of desperation. Albert's was a spirited pursuit to protect his royal reputation and respect amongst his people. Lloyd's was to flee from the grasp of anyone who wished him harm (which was everyone more or less), Dart's was to convince Estell of what actually happened or kill Lloyd, and Ellis' was to primarily obtain a new change of clothing.

Awkward silence came from nowhere to fill the room as the group burst through the doors rather anti-dramatically. The customary cricket chirped in for such a moment. The four men were met with looks of utter disgust. Miranda stared at them with a hard, uncompromising yet vacant glare, while Ceres' lip curled up slightly.

"I suppose she has already got to you. We can explain." Albert began, stepping forward.

"No need. What goes on –" Ceres stopped herself, "I mean, we don't want to know. However, I think Estell would be interested to. If you can get in close enough and she doesn't kill you first."

"Where . . . ?" Dart began, but Ceres motioned out onto the balcony, and then pointed a bit higher to indicate that she left. "I can't fly."

"I can." Lloyd pointed out. At the many a warning glare, he quickly retreated to a safe distance behind Ceres where he used her as a shield.

"Well, that's great. The only person here who can fly is Lloyd." Ellis commented, flinging his arms in the air.

"Um, what may I ask happened to your clothes?" Miranda asked a little reluctantly.

Albert was standing behind Ellis, holding his tattered rags. Gravity was threatening to cruelly assault everyone's eyes.

"My god man! Not here! Your wife is due to be back at any moment!" Ceres hollered in aversion, as she turned from the scene.

Ellis quickly got hold of his wayward garments, taking them back from Albert. "Ceres! This – that is not – would you let us explain!"

"I think they've done enough already," Lloyd said, gripping Ceres' shoulders and talking to her as he rest his head on her shoulder.

"Have you been drinking?"

"They did it." Ellis pointed to Albert who in turn put his hands up in defense.

"I, I, –"

"Shut up! Ceres go get your sister!" Dart commanded.

"I wouldn't advise that. Unless of course good ol' Al doesn't mind his castle becoming a worse disarray of rubble than this . . ." Ceres motioned around the room.

"Just let her go cool off and blow off some steam." Miranda suggested.

"That's what we're afraid of; she will cool off by spreading this rumour around the entire village!" Albert exclaimed.

"But you don't understand. Estell doesn't 'cool off', she only gets angrier. If you don't bring her back now, she'll destroy the entire village with more than just a rumour." Dart exaggerated, as was his style.

"Rumour?" Ceres raised an eyebrow.

"Excuse me, I'll be right back. I need clothes." Ellis hurried off into the hallway.

"My castle!" Albert shouted, having finally noticed the havoc of the room. "What happened?"

"Uh…" Miranda tried.

"Huh, rumour. You horny little idiopathic twerps just couldn't wait to be alone." Ceres muttered. She turned to face Lloyd, "And you gave him mead, I can still smell it on him." Her nose scrunched up, "Eww."

"Hey, Shana, what are you doing down there?" Dart asked off-handedly, as he stepped out onto the balcony trying to catch a sight of Estell.

"Oh . . . Dart! Finally! I thought you'd never come to save me . . . that horrible woman told me she was going to get you, but then she made me fall down here when she came back yelling . . . Oh Dart, I think I broke something . . ." she whimpered, trying to evoke some sort of sympathy from him.

"Oh yeah, really?" Dart mumbled disinterestedly, trying to see as far off into the distance of the night sky as he could.

". . ." Shana waited during the long pause while Dart tried to find something, ". . . um Dart?" she called up to him.

"What?" he asked, not intending to answer her.

"Are you looking for something to lower down to me?" Shana inquired.

"No."

"Then aren't you going to save me? I'm in great pain!" she cried.

"Huh." Dart responded simply before hurrying back inside, to find that Emille had returned after fetching her manservants, and figured that one of them would aid to Shana's accident.

Emille was busy pointing every which direction as the manservants scurried about, attempting to comply with all her orders at once.

"Dart . . . Dart . . . come . . . back . . ." Shana called after him.

"So what're you all doing standing around here?" Dart demanded as he re-entered the room. "We've got an awry Wingly to catch!"

"Hey! Who you calling awry? I'm not taking orders from you!"

"Shut up Lloyd." Ceres voiced the popular phrase of the day.

"No one asked you." Albert said. He joined Dart where he stood, "I think we can leave the drunk here." He suggested.

Ceres jumped to Lloyd's defense, despite telling him to shut up not two minutes earlier. "Hey, he's no drunk!" she turned to Ellis who was walking in the door and pointed her finger at him.

Ellis put his hands up, "Ah, what'd I do?"

"You should have known better than to let him have alcohol!"

"Wait a minute!" Ellis defended himself, and his new spiffy duds, "I didn't let him have any drink! I was never even at the tavern. I had to trade in my cape for directions, but then I got lost anyway and ended up out of pure luck, or perhaps bad luck, finding the rest of the lot atop the roof of some house! And Lloyd was in said state when I arrived." He finished, quite satisfied.

"Who cares how he became inebriated. It was no one's fault but his own. You mightn't be defending him Ceres, if you knew that, out of his own free will, he was practically absconding a barmaid at the tavern and had us all removed." Albert spoke up.

Ceres whirled on her heel to glare at Lloyd, who was enjoying all the attention he was getting. "Is this true?" she demanded of him.

"Is what true?"

"Don't play dumb you drunken barmaid-absconding excuse for a scumbag!"

"Oh . . . that." He chuckled to himself, causing Ceres to look as if she were about to erupt.

"Can we get back to the matter at hand?" Dart asked in exasperation. When no one answered, too caught up in the little scene between the Winglies, he casually walked back to the balcony, hopped down to the ground, and went off by himself to look for Estell.

Albert noticed this out of the corner of his eye and followed, leaving Miranda and Ellis still enthralled by Ceres and Lloyd's predicament.

"Hey, wait up!" Albert called to the fast paced Dart.

"Well at least someone is going to help me look." Dart said half-graciously as he slowed down to wait.

§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

AN: So, I apologize. Due to technical difficulties (server went down!) I was unable to keep up my end of the bargain. (Damn you sympatico!) Fortunately, that left me with a lot of time to work on my stories. Thus, I'm able to update just about every active fic I have online at the moment so here's to it. Thanks for reading this crazy thing, please review! Cheers!.-k.ramsey