DG slipped past the night guards into her sister's bedroom. It had been arranged so that in all the royal residences that the royal progeny would sleep across from each other. It was an arrangement that pleased everyone. It was convenient for the Royal Protection Detail and more importantly it was convenient for the princesses themselves. Especially, on a night such as this.
It had been two months since the last time Azkadelia had a nightmare. The first month DG had all but moved into Az's room. Az would dream of the cave. Az would dream that the witch's defeat was a dream and that she was still trapped in the prison of her own mind, that one would send her screaming.
DG tiptoed over to Az's canopied bed. The elder princess had stopped thrashing around and now whispered and moaned to herself under the moonlight dripping in from the window. DG put the beribboned box with the curious holes careful down on the lamp table before sliding in the bed with her sister.
DG took her sister's trembling hand with her own, the clear light of their joined magic flared to life, and she began to sing, "Two little princesses dancing in a row… spinning fast and freely on their little toes… Where the light will take them, no one ever knows…. Two little princesses dancing in a row…"
Az's eyes fluttered opened. She tightened her grip on DG's hand and took up the song with her. "…spinning fast and freely on their little toes…Where the light will take them, no one ever knows. . . . Two little princesses dancing in a row…"
Their shared light filled the opulent chamber chasing darkness away. Two hearts slowed and steadied.
DG refrained from pleading forgiveness from running when they were children. About the ninth time she had done it, Az had thumped her on the shoulder and told her to stop being an idiot. The time for blame and recriminations had faded away. DG would never run again. That was all she could really do. Guilt would not bring back Azkadelia's stolen years.
"What triggered it?" Az would be fine and then something would bring back the tears in the night.
Azkadelia rested her head on DG's shoulder. "The latest reports on how many are addicted to the vapors. It seems that the number of children taking the damn stuff is…" She trailed off with a sigh. "The witch gave the dealer specific orders to target the young."
DG listened. Sometimes you couldn't make it better. Sometimes all you could do was be there.
"The witch made me feel like an extension of her," Az began hesitantly. "I tried to fight her but I was too young. After, she used my hands to kill you…I just couldn't anymore. I held her off for three months."
DG stroked Azkadelia's waterfall of dark hair comfortingly.
"She made be believe that our parents had abandoned me to her and that she was all I had," Az bit her lip. "She made me feel the pleasure she took in all the horrible things she did. And she tricked me into thinking that they were my feelings too."
DG shuddered and felt hot tears leak out the corners of her eyes. "Oh, my sister," she whispered and planted a kiss on one pale temple.
"Maybe," began DG tentatively. "We could figure out a cure for the vapors."
Az pushed up on one her elbow. "A cure?" interest filled her voice.
DG shrugged, "If we stay together what can't we do? And if we got Glitch to help us…"
"I do know how she made the loathsome concoction in the first place…" A smile worked its way onto Azkadelia's finely sculpted features. "I think I'd like to heal the things she used me to break." A spring shower of hope rained down on Az's parched heart.
A soft sound broke the now peaceful silence that permeated the room.
"Oh!" DG exclaimed and detangled herself from her sister. "This was going to be a birthday present; but, I though you might need it now." She plopped a beribboned and beholed box on Az's stomach.
Azkadelia sat up and regarded the gently rustling gift. She took of the lid and let out a soft delighted laugh. She dropped the lid to one side and pulled out the box's mewing contents.
It was a kitten. "It's pink!" Az gasped in enjoyment. "Where did you find a pink kitten?"
DG shrugged. How did one explain a mysterious shop appearing in the marketplace that disappeared once she made her purchase?
It was indeed pink. And adorable to an almost ridiculous degree, with soft rose petal pink fur that felt like fine velvet against the skin, amethyst eyes and outsized ears made the little creature look like something that escaped a five year old's imagination.
It wore a jeweled collar with a gold name tag with 'Eureka!' spelt out in ornate script.
"She came with the name," DG explained.
"What does it mean?" Az asked as the little creature began to purr sibilantly against her stroking fingers.
"It's from an old language called Greek. It means 'I got it!' Supposedly, some philosopher jumped out of his bathtub and ran down the street naked yelling 'eureka!' when he thought of something brilliant."
At that Azkadelia laughed out loud. It was something she could easily imagine Ambrose doing in one of his glitchier moments.
"It's a good thing we got all the documents out of that tower before I destroyed it. There were reports on how the vapors directly affect the body." Az chucked Eureka under the chin.
DG nodded and considered just how Az destroyed the seat of the witch's power. She still wondered why sending in a demolition team wasn't acceptable. Personally, the younger princess thought that summoning meteors to bombard it was a going a bit overboard.
People had taken to calling the plateau with the pile of scorched rocks 'Witch's Waste.'
"I don't really know a lot about physiology…" DG sighed leaning back on a mountain of pillows. "I mean I passed two biology sequences at the college I was attending on Earth." She still couldn't call it the Other Side. It seemed to be an unnecessary affectation for someone who was raised there. "But that's about all."
"It's okay, Deej. We'll figure it out." Azkadelia hugged DG about the shoulders. "As long as were together we can do anything."
Eureka the pink kitten was in the Oz books.