AN~ Sorry for the long wait, guys. I'd give you the full story, but I betcha don't care. In recompense, though, you get a whole extra two hundred words after this mega-long round of review replies.
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The Winner of Last QotD: allissocoollike. It was going to be that anonymous reviewer down there, but I can't spell that name, so I went with my second choice. Step up and claim your prize!
New QotD: What bothers you about my story? What do you want me to change? How can I improve it?
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M: Chapter 47: It's not a very smart thing to say. Chapter 115: I don't know how big your poodle is, but I'm not really scared. Also I'd like to remind you that they're keeping their relationship a SECRET.
greekfreek101: Chapter 42: I know. You're only the fiftieth person to 'inform' me of this. I knew already, but this is not a story about Greek mythology, you may have noticed. This is a story about fairy tales, and in my universe, before there were Everafters there were really powerful beings who humans created myths about, some of which were wrong. Chapter 48: But she'd be SUCH a Mary Sue then.
lsimhbinfefmtalol: That's quite a name you have there. I know it was expected, but I figured that I don't have to make EVERYTHING a surprise. Sardines because I had something else but I forgot it, and sardines don't smell to great. Bertie Bott's Every Flavored Beans, by the by. The Scarlet Hand is regrouping. They just got all their prisoners stolen from under their nose, so Mirror is probably having the ones responsible punished. And maybe Bella can. QotD: Lots of portals in your house.
Danstheman: Yes they are. Have you reviewed before?
querty: 1) don't go announcing your age on the internet. 2) what does that have to do with anything?
PenguinLoverGurl: It took me a while, but I did it RIGHT! Bella has a blind spot when it comes to Wendell that probably has something to do with self esteem issues. But that is good advice. QotD: That's a clever idea. The outside being all beat down and the inside being not. It'd keep people from breaking into your house, though you might get some very surprised squatters. Also: That took you two whole reviews. Wow.
Agd: Gee, glad you liked it... XD I'd just like to say that my Puckabrina timeline was a lot more realistic than most fanfics. And it's not like there weren't moments. Bella has maybe possibly realized that she and Wendell will never be perfect, and if she waits for the promise that they will, she's going to be lonely forever. Also Annie and Marcus make me happy. :)
"Hey." Sabrina said, slipping out her window and sitting down next to Puck.
"Hi." Puck said, looking up at her with a smile and patting the shingles next to him.
Sabrina sat down, at the same distance away from Puck that she would normally be, and reached her hand out tentatively. Puck slipped his fingers between hers after a few seconds (right before she was about to pull her hand back), and they just sat there for a bit, not saying anything.
Sabrina felt oddly uncomfortable. What were she and Puck supposed to do, now that they were... more than friends? Were they supposed to kiss a lot? Hug all the time? Rub noses and hold hands and call each other snuggle-bottom? 'Caress each other's faces'? And was she supposed to talk to him different, now? Was she still allowed to call him an idiot?
Puck wasn't saying anything, either. Was she doing something wrong? Was he upset with her? Did he wish he hadn't told her? She'd been walking on air most of the day (he likes me, he likes me!), but now she was definitely back on earth. Funny that being with the person who had made her that happy in the first place was the thing that was bringing her down.
Puck was the one that broke the silence. "You as nervous as I am?" He asked.
"Yeah." Sabrina said. "I mean, assuming you're really friggin' nervous."
"That sounds about right." Puck answered.
"Wanna just... not change anything?" Sabrina suggested.
"Sounds good." Puck said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "But if I wanted to kiss you..." He leaned in a little closer to her, cautiously.
Sabrina looked at him with a smile. "That'd be nice." She said. "Once in a while."
"Well, yeah." Puck said. "I mean, I'm not going to have my mouth glued to yours all the time or anything. That'd be kind of gross."
And with that, they were normal again. He did kiss her, and it was tentative, a half a second of lips together before they were apart again, and the night air seemed colder than it should be on them, though their clasped hands radiated warmth through Sabrina's arm and into the rest of her body. It was a beautiful night, and she'd gladly stay out in it forever, just holding hands with Puck and talking a bit about stupid stuff- how the bats overhead really deserved to have some foil thrown in their path, the shapes in the stars, and what the nighttime clouds looked like, the newest word Daphne had invented (splink). Sometime during this, Sabrina found herself leaning her head against Puck's shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around her.
She kissed him goodnight, before heading in, and she noticed that his smell clung to her, a thick basement smell like cold concrete mixed with dirt and moss and mustard, with just the barest hint of mint still glimmering through, and it rose when she moved.
She shifted around a lot before falling asleep that night.
By the time she woke up the next morning, Bella was already gone. To talk to Wendell, she hoped. Everyone else was downstairs, and Mr. Seven and Morgan were there, with their serious faces on.
"What's going on?" She asked, leaning on the wall across the room from Puck. She really wanted to head to where he was, but she held herself in check.
"Mr. Seven has a plan to draw the Hand out of hiding." Daphne filled her in.
"OK, and it is...?" Sabrina asked.
"Stage a wedding." Morgan said. "They like to ambush us when we're enjoying ourselves, so we'll have a wedding and pretend to be completely defenseless, and then when they show up we beat the pants off them."
Sabrina blinked. "You sure you want to do that to your wedding? It seems like it'd kind of ruin your big day."
Morgan shrugged. "They're going to attack anyway. It's better that we're prepared and let them think we're not than to genuinely not be."
"You sure they'll fall for it?" Veronica asked. "I mean, they've done the 'attack at a wedding' bit before. What if they decide it's old and don't do it again?"
Mr. Seven grinned. "Then we brought our swords to the wedding anyway, and we have a good time, and nobody dies, and we still don't know where the Hand is."
"All right." Veronica said raising her hands. "If you're sure."
"Absolutely." Morgan said, wrapping her arm around Mr. Seven's short head.
Daphne sighed and smiled, watching them.
Sabrina's fingers twitched as she watched the two interacting. What would it be like to do that with Puck? She wondered. Embarrassing? Or just nice?
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Briar asked.
Morgan shook her head. "Not yet. But we'll tell you if we need anything."
"All righty." Granny said with a smile. "Now, who wants some breakfast?"
Two weeks later, it was time for Morgan and Mr. Seven's wedding.
Daphne was out of her mind with excitement, but Sabrina was wearing a lightweight dress that was easy to move in with all her weapons at the ready. They'd made no secret about their plans, and she was fully expecting a Hand attack.
The ceremony went smoothly, though, with no sign of anything untoward happening, and Mr. Seven and the new Mrs. Seven headed to their reception with lighter hearts than they'd expected to have.
In fact, Sabrina was just beginning to think that the Hand wasn't going to take the bait, and that she should loosen up and have some fun, maybe see if she could sneak a dance with Puck without raising any suspicions, when the telltale crack of the roof came.
"They're here." Sabrina whispered, looking up.
Puck grinned, swallowing a mouthful of cake. "Oh, good. I was getting bored."
Sabrina pulled out her sword and rolled her eyes. "You would feel like that."
The roof imploded, showering them all in who knows what, and the Scarlet Hand flowed in through the ceiling of the pavilion built for the wedding, bringing rain in with it.
"They couldn't use the door, now, could they?" Sabrina complained. "Now my dress is going to be ruined."
"Of course that's what you're worried about." Puck rolled his eyes, running forward to meet the Hand.
"Do you know how hard it is to get water stains out of satin?" Sabrina asked demanded, keeping pace with him.
"I didn't think you cared." Puck rolled his eyes.
Sabrina lashed out at a soggy card soldier, getting wet paper all over her sword and not doing much damage. "I own two dresses, Puck! I'd like to keep them nice!"
"Well, that's two more than I've got." Puck said, pulling a grenade out of his pocket.
Sabrina rolled her eyes, slicing at the wet card soldier again. Cutting them in half didn't kill them, but it did make it a lot harder for them to move. And apparently they got soggy in the rain.
She had only gotten halfway through the struggling card soldier- the eight of clubs- when Puck's latest unconventional grenade exploded and she had to move away to avoid coughing her lungs up because of the hideous smell. She didn't even want to think about what he'd put in there, and yet she found herself asking, "What did you put in that?"
Puck grinned at her and said, "Let's just say that cats don't like enchiladas. Or- they like them, but their stomachs don't."
"Puck, that's disgusting!" Sabrina exclaimed, wrinkling her nose and shaking her sword to dislodge the card soldier, who was still attached to her sword. He seemed glad that he was being pulled away from the stench.
Once she'd gotten her sword free, she considered abandoning the soldier and finding something her sword would cut through, but she was reluctant to actually kill someone, and she'd always preferred fighting monsters and zombies and not-quite-human creatures to people who looked at her with their faces. She didn't want to watch them die.
So she went back to slicing at the soggy card soldier, hacking at him and feeling less effective than a pair of scissors on a cardboard box that had been sitting in the rain.
It took her another fifteen minutes to finish with the one soldier, and she shook off her sword, flinging a piece of wet cardboard into the face of the soldier, who was propping himself up with his arms and attempting to scoot out of the way of the feet of other fighters.
"Sorry." Sabrina said, not meaning it.
The card soldier cursed at her, trying to pull the cardboard off his face without falling flat on the ground.
Sabrina ignored him and unfurled her wings, flapping her way to the hole in the ceiling to get a better look at the battle.
It was going fairly well. Apparently, their preparation had paid off, because the Scarlet Hand was looking very overwhelmed, and most of the wedding party was still standing and fighting.
She was about to go rejoin the fray, having found where she'd be most useful, when the rain overhead abruptly ceased.
Sabrina looked up slowly, and her eyes bugged out when she saw the thing blocking the rain: a giant, leaning directly over the hole in the roof, looking down with a disgusting crooked-toothed grin.
The giant reached down towards her, and Sabrina dove sideways, screaming, "Giant! Everybody scram! Giant!"
She had to fly higher to avoid the giant, and as she did so, she stared, because not only was there a giant, there was also a giant beanstalk stretching up into the rain clouds overhead about twenty feet to her right, and beyond that was another beanstalk, and another, and another and more, giant twisted plants stretching up into the clouds as far as she could see, anchoring the cloud over Ferryport Landing in hundreds of places. And coming down from the clouds were giants, all at least twenty feet tall, some closer to thirty or even forty, stomping their way to the pavilion, wrecking everything in their paths.
"Oh no." Sabrina whispered, her hair blowing around her face as she stared at the destruction headed for the wedding.
The giant who was already there swiped at her again, and she dodged down through the roof and began shouting for everyone's attention, trying without too much success to warn them. Most people were too busy fighting to pay attention to one more scream, so she settled for grabbing Puck and dragging him away, high enough into the sky that they'd be safe from the giants, but low enough that they weren't in the clouds.
"What the-" Puck started, staring at the scene.
"Mirror must have gotten into the room with the beans!" Sabrina called over the storm, her hand still wrapped around Puck's arms.
Puck nodded, and, into Sabrina's ear, called, "It makes sense. He needed an advantage, and Oz's robots aren't waterproof. Besides, this is a surprise."
"Great." Sabrina snapped, dodging the same giant again and pulling Puck with her. "Now how do we stop them?"
"I want to know how he got them on his side." Puck said thoughtfully.
"Worry about it later!" Sabrina snapped. "How do I kill it without Excaibur?"
"Worry about that later!" Puck yelled back, pulling her out of the way as the giant's arm swiped by again. "Worry about surviving!"
Sabrina dove out of the way, pulling Puck with her and saying, "We need to get the others out!"
"We can't!" Puck shouted, pointing. "There's too many of them! We should just run and hide 'til we can regroup!"
"Running and hiding is supposed to be my forte!" Sabrina complained, but she let Puck pull her away, looking back worriedly at the pavilion where her family was still fighting. He was right. There was nothing they could do.
"Daphne, we have to get out!" Art shouted, yanking her back from the zombie she was fighting.
"Just let me-" Daphne sliced the zombie's head off and jumped back from the rolling lump of oozing wet flesh. "There. Finished. Where's Sabrina?"
"Gone already!" Art snapped. "Just like you should be! Come on before you get stomped!"
"But-" Daphne protested.
Art didn't wait for Daphne to finish her sentence, pulling her out of the way of a falling section of roof as another giant joined the large crowd already at the pavilion, and throwing her over his shoulder. He ignored her pounding on his back as he ran and shouted, "I am not letting you get killed, too!"
He dodged the giant's stamping feet with ease, Daphne supported on the muscular side of his uneven chest, both of them getting even more wet than they'd already been as they left the chaos of the battle scene, Art searching for a hiding place that would hold them both.
He finally stopped about a mile away from what was left of the wedding reception under a thickish copse of maple trees, which caused the rain to, instead of hitting them with a steady spray of droplets, plop down on their heads and shoulders in big unevenly spaced blobs of wet that rolled from one leaf to another before landing on them.
Daphne looked at Art's soaked head after he'd put her down, and she took pity on him as another raindrop felt on his head with an audible noise. "Here," she said, and concentrated on the trees around her.
It was easy to make them grow, in the rain and the summertime. They were already stretching their roots and their branches farther and farther up, so it was just a matter of convincing them to grow faster, and in a way that would shield the two people inside. She barely spent any energy as she talked- well, not really, because trees didn't speak the way animals and people did, but she communicated- with the trees.
When she was finished, their space had become an orb with a flattened bottom with only small gaps between the tree trunks, almost all of which were filled in with some very tall undergrowth. This thick spot, she'd made sure, spread out a good distance around them, making them almost impossible to find. She'd also strengthened everything she convinced to grow, but added elasticity, trying to make the plants into something that would survive a giant's crushing footsteps.
"Whoa." Art said, grinning at her. "Nice."
"I think we should be safe here." Daphne said, satisfied.
Art laughed. "Yeah, I'd say so! The only way we'd be safer is if we had one of your sister's barriers."
"And all the bushes are berryliscious, so we won't starve!" Daphne said, allowing a note of pride into her voice.
"But you couldn't make it dry in here!" Art complained. "You're slipping, Daph."
Daphne pretended to get offended for a bit before sinking down onto the wet but nicely thickened moss carpeting their campsite and putting her hands under her head. "You know what?" She said, "I don't care how wet it is, or how cold. I'm tired enough that I could sleep on a rock in the middle of the sea, like they did in 'The Seven Swans'."
Art laughed, but Daphne was already sound asleep, filthy wet clothes and all. He smiled a little, sadly, and took off his own sopping suit coat and laid it over her, before going to the other side of their enclosure to get a bit of sleep for himself.
Sabrina and Puck were about ten miles away from the wedding pavilion in the opposite direction, making their own camp near where the barrier hit the ground, which they'd figured would be harder for the giants to get to because it was lower. Just in case, though, Sabrina had put up a barrier that was impervious to anything but air, which was about fifteen feet in diameter.
Puck was trying to start a fire with some very wet logs he'd gathered before the barrier was put up, while Sabrina wrung out her soaked satin dress, standing there shivering in her stockings and camisole. At least she'd worn sensible shoes.
"Of course it had to be raining when they attacked." She muttered.
"Well, yeah." Puck said, downing another soda. "The cloud kind of comes with the giants."
Sabrina gave him a blank stare, squeezing her dress harder.
"The beans are like connectors. The giants don't exactly live in our world, they live in this place that's separate, kind of like Neverland and Wonderland, and the way through is the beanstalks." Puck explained. "But the cloud thing they live on is stuck here now, until all the beanstalks are gone. I don't know if they're raining 'cause all the giants are stomping around or 'cause they're angry or they haven't been here in so long, or just 'cause the weathermen said it was going to be nice today, but I betcha we won't see the sun until every last one of those bean plants gets chopped down."
Sabrina made a face and groaned. "I'll never be dry again."
Puck grinned at her and said, "Well, you don't have to put the dress on 'til it's dry. I don't mind. In fact, if you want to take your other clothes off, too..." He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
Sabrina blushed darker than she ever had before and pulled her dress back on faster than you could say 'inappropriate'. Puck shrugged and went back to his steaming logs, belching again. This time there was a thin trail of smoke, but still no fire.
Sabrina sat down with a moan as her stomach grumbled. It was going to be a long night.