Sweet Dreams

[Twisted Infinitum]

The change of lighting in Edgar's bubble image betrayed the passage of time, prodding Calico's anxiety with every passing second since the cruel men had left. They had assaulted Lasair after Edgar, though the dream demon couldn't see exactly what was being done. At least it was over. If the daylight that shone through the windows would just stop, if time would just freeze, then her son and Lasair would be safe. But, with each incremental shift of the shadows, she knew it was more and more likely that the fae/Edgar-nappers would return.

Hurry hurry hurry!

Edgar tried. He had been dragging his deflated flap of a hand over the gummy aftermath as fast as he could all through sunrise. It was just a little hard to do, what with the uselessness of the limb and the impressive blast radius of its innards. The task was almost done, though, with only a few last droplets to mop back up. The misshapen lumps that clung about his hand would reform later. Hopefully.

It's okay, Lasair. We're coming for you! Calico shouted as soon as he was done, and she bid him forward with a few emphatic gestures.

"Coming for you," the puppet sputtered. If not for the shafts of bright sunlight, it might have seemed like a scene from 'Monster of the Storeroom'.

And come Edgar did, slowly. With all his mother's love and his own scrap of desire to be a good son, he lunged forward. The chains hummed with tension, jerking him to a stop at a dangerously forward angle. Then, a sudden cacophony of metal-on-wood pops filled the wide room as the chains began to feed from the crate. Edgar flopped forward and set himself to crawling, moving as forcefully as possible to keep the unspooling chains from losing momentum.

His good fortune was not infinite, though. Just a few feet from Lasair, his limbs were yanked out from under him as the chains knotted solidly in the crate.

"Yay, close enough," Edgar mimicked into the dirty floor.

[Lasair Anubail]

Lasair blinked and stood still as she watched Edgar try to inch his way towards her position. His body looked like a twisted and choppy doll that tried desperately to move closer and closer to her. It would have looked macabre to any other person, sick and twisted; only to Lasair she didn’t see any of it. She just saw a man frantically trying to get closer and closer to her. Sadly, Edgar would not be allowed to get all the way to her position. He pulled upon the chains, which rattled and chipped away at their wooden box until finally they would reach no further and allow him to come no closer.

“I can help!” Lasair said enthusiastically, her high voice bouncing around the large room.

Smiling at the strange man, Lasair took a deep breath and then all of a sudden shrunk. Her form disappeared right before the eyes of Edgar and became nothing more than a floating, fiery ball of light no more than six inches in height. It hovered there—she hovered there—for a few seconds then reverted back to her natural form without the ropes binding her arms. In fact, the ropes had fallen to the dusty ground the moment she had transformed.

“See!”

Quickly standing, the Fae moved behind the chained form of Edgar and to the box a few feet away that the metal manacles disappeared into. At the bottom of the crate, she noticed two hooks that the chains appeared to be attached too and quickly reached down into the crate to reach them. Sadly, her arm length was just a little too short and she ended up nearly crawling into the crate in order to unhook them, leaving her butt high up in the air as her fingers finally got a grip upon the cool metal. With a quick and simple jerk she removed the chains from the hooks and allowed them to fall with a quick rattle.

When she turned back to her new companion though, her golden eyes fell upon the figure of her plushie, still lying unmoving on the ground. Walking over to him, she carefully reached down and picked him and his broken wing up from the ground, holding them carefully in her hand.

“Tristram?”

He still wouldn’t respond to her and as she looked at the broken form of her plushie, she could feel the tears beginning to form in her eyes, blurring her vision. “Don’t worry, I’ll fix you.”

But first she had to find her rucksack. She was rather certain it was somewhere in this room, otherwise Tristram would not have been able to help her to begin with. Looking around at the piles of crates and barrels and cloths covered in dust, the Fae began to explore. She kept close to the area that her and Edgar had been tied up in, hoping that they would not have stashed her belongings very far from them and sure enough, she found her brown leather rucksack hidden a few rows down. It had been stuffed into one of the open crates and was now completely covered in dust and other kinds of debris, but she didn’t really care. She had found it.

“Avery.”

The rucksack moved and then the top flopped open as another plushie came out, wearing only a belt with two daggers, a pair of leather pants and one wing. He looked up at her face with concern.

“What’s wrong, Lasair?”

She sniffled, “Keep Tristram safe for me.”

He looked at the wounded plushie in her hand, visibly grimacing. Then he flew up and carefully retrieved the downed Draconian from her grip and returned to the rucksack, which she then grabbed and swung over her shoulders before returning to Edgar. Avery emerged a few moments later and perched himself upon her shoulder having safely tucked Tristram inside.

“Edgar! I have everything. Can we leave now? I don’t like this place very much...”

[Twisted Infinitum]

It was a neat trick, the whole shrinky thing, and Calico would have no doubt squealed to see it. However, all she could see through the Dream World end of things was the floorboards that Edgar was mashing his nose into. Even Lasair's untethering of him went unnoticed by the dream demon until Edgar's dream half quivered excitedly around his bubble.

Need a potty break, sweety? she asked with the utmost sympathy. Seeing as you can't go any further, you'll have to go there... somewhere. Revulsion screwed up her fuzzy face. At least go behind the crates so you don't give Lasair an icky show.

'Potty break' was a new concept for the puppet, what with his lack of necessary holes. That whole track of organs floating in his gooey side might as well have been pretty streamers. He did recognize the command to go somewhere, though, so he stood and wobbled over to a crate in front of him.

Calico stared confusedly into the bubble, thoughts humming loudly. You're walking farther? Oh, you're so strong to drag the chain crate with you! He looked back, only because the crate of chains was his master's topic, and saw the loose ends skittering along the floor behind him. A smiling Lasair stood over them. Calico screamed.

She's an escape artist! And she helped you escape! That's awesome! Her voice throbbed in his skull apparently with no effect, for he continued his trek to the shadows between the crates with the chains dragging and forgotten. You should thank her. Edgar knew how to be polite, even if he didn't know the why, so it was with a gurgle of, "Thank you," that he disappeared between two crates.

With a crash that made some of the boxes jump, the fish masher burst into the room. He almost shouted something along the lines of "shut up", but then he realized that there were bigger problems at hand. "Don't move," he commanded of Lasair as he advanced into the room.

The heavy metal thud against his boots distracted him as his feet crashed into the chains that led off into the crates ahead of him. With more cold anger than confusion, he grabbed one up in his bandaged hand and looked to where the strange wooden thing had been tied. A shoreman's curse escaped his lips to find the thing gone.

Run!

Edgar did. He burst from the shadows one gap to the side of where his chains led, and the tension as the metal tails wrapped about the crate barely seemed to slow him. In his path, though, a club appeared and tensed to mash his face in, yet he charged forward undeterred, or unknowing. The chains began to rasp around the edges of the crate, and then also against the man's bandaged palm. With a startled, almost unmanly shout, the chain was released and whipped along in Edgar's path. The flailing ends disappeared and reappeared from the dark recesses of the storeroom as Edgar bounded toward the stunned man.

Obstacle avoidance kicked in, then, and the puppet dodged around the man to head for the door. The chains just kept going, right into the would-be puppet masher's neck. With the force of a donkey kick, the metal hit somewhere between his adam's apple and jugular and wrapped around like a rancher's lasso.

With all his limbs flailing wildly, Edgar shot into the dim hall and careened around a corner. A long stone corridor, water marked and dirty, stretched before him with numerous doorless openings in the sides. He only got as far as the first before him and his gurgling anchor in the other room both left the floor. His own gurgle left his mouth as he was snapped and thrown back to the ground.

Calico watched in horror as the ceiling and walls seemed to spin in the bubble and the scream of metal reached her. There was another sound, though, something that might have gone unnoticed if not for her talent at entertaining numerous trains of thought (until the inevitable derailment). "Ugh ugh ugh," said the pained voice, and it was followed by a relieved sigh like someone finding an oasis in the desert.

Edgar crashed to the floor, his head lolling to the side to point at the speaker, who was visibly shocked but still recognizable behind the wide eyes. "Skinny legs," Edgar barked in response to Calico's shout, and the man just continued staring with a bag of ice held to his groin as he sat at a table, legs propped up, amid a mess of used and dripping ice bags.

Red faced, though whether it was pain or embarrassment is anyone's guess, the bald one kicked the table out of his way and charged into the hall. The bag of soothing coldness fell from his hands as they assumed strangling position.

[Lasair Anubail]

Nothing seemed to be going very well for the odd pair. With Edgar free of the crate, though still dragging his chains, they should have been able to escape. They should have been able to run away from the weird men who wanted to keep them as captives and ransom them, whatever that was. Because no one had given her a clear answer on it. They were mean men too, who squashed Edgar’s hand without any thought or care and then tried to hit her and played with her wings! She hoped the mana dust mixed with the substance that made up Edgar and exploded upon whoever opened that enveloped. Yep, exploded, right in their little face and went boom! That would teach them to mess with the wings of the Fae and the powerful substance that came off of them. But no, it appeared things were not going to be so easy for the two of them as that mean man that smelled like fish came back into the room and tried to stop them from leaving. Of course, Edgar took one look at him and started running for it, leaving Lasair standing there staring at the man rather confusedly and wondering exactly what she should be doing at this point in time.

“You know, I think it would be wise to follow him.”

She agreed with Avery, but she couldn’t help watching his strange gait and run as he practically leapt from the room. Sadly for the smelly man, the ends of his chains wrapped around his neck, tightened and yanked and cut off his air supply while also knocking him from his feet. He landed with an audible thud as he hands rose and tried to rip the chains from his neck, which were distorting the skin into something grotesque looking that she wanted to turn her eyes away from. So she did.

Hesitating for but a moment longer, the small Fae quickly began to take off after Edgar. He was already out the door and into the hallway but she was rather certain she could keep up with him, especially since he was dragging the human too. The white boots covering he feet slammed into the hard, stone floor as she quickly ran, creating a hollow thudding sounds that followed her into the hallway and ricocheted off the walls and back to her ears. She rounded the corner just in time to see Edgar thrown from his feet and land on the ground with a gurgle and a thud. She was so busy looking at him that she forgot to stop running and more importantly to look at where she was going!

Her tiny little frame slammed into the body of the human, occupied with the downed form of Edgar and despite her size, she was just enough to knock him off his feet. His much taller and large frame hit the ground with a loud grunt and she quickly followed, landing on top of him in a tangle of arms and legs and a dull, thudding pain in her leg.

“Damnu air!” She whimpered as she slowly got into a sitting position.

She didn’t make it very far before the hands of the human gripped her arms rather tightly and his growling and angry face turned to her. His lips pulling back into a sneer and revealing yellow teeth, that were neither straight nor pretty to look at.

“A-Avery!”

The small plushie was no longer on her shoulder, he’d been knocked off when she had collided with the human. Luckily for him, he has wings—err one wing—with which she could fly and keep himself from hitting the ground. And the moment he heard her call his name, his hands were on the two small daggers sheathed at his waist. Pulling them from their resting place, he charged at the human, coming in at his face and trying to literally slash his eyes out. The human of course, let her go to try and attempted to bat away the small, pesky little toy and she took the opportunity to quickly crawl away from him and towards Edgar.

[Twisted Infinitum]

Calico had seen the hands coming closer, growing in Edgar's vision like a landslide over his poor wobbly neck, and scream as she might, he couldn't do anything with his wooden limbs held fast by the taught chain. Then, a bullet, red and gold with sparkly wings, slammed into the man's rather dainty hip. His heavier top half crashed down with a force that should have shook the building.

"Yay!" Edgar screamed in unison with his master, though he lacked the enthusiasm that was currently making his head spasm.

Sadly, the "Jubilation of the Nice Shot" ended quickly with the clap of burly hands on the fae's little arms. The dream demon sputtered numerous commands at the same time, ranging from "save her" to "find their base's self-destruct switch." Edgar could do none of the above. All he accomplished was a shakey lunge with his gummy arm that did nothing more then tussel the brute's boot laces with his lumpy stump of a hand.

Another bullet saved the day, this one smaller and pointier, and landing squarely on the faenapper's face. He shouted in surprise, releasing Lasair, and at any other time, it would have warmed Calico's heart that the fae crawled to Edgar for protection. However, there was a touch too much chaos for her to pay that much attention. Edgar got his arm around Lasair, and how very fortunate for her that his wooden one was preoccupied. A hug from that limb often resulted in splinters or worse.

Then, a scream shook the mold from the smelly walls, and it came from Avery's opponent. Still screaming like a siren, the man jolted to a sitting position and swatted the doll toward where the fae and the puppet huddled. Blood flowed down his face from one ruined eye, though it was almost unnoticeable against the furious beet red of his skin. In a blur of blood and spittle and hate, he charged them.

His powerful strides seemed to take him too far at first, but then he reached down and grabbed the chain. With a herculean scream, he hoisted everything on the end of the chain into the air and swept it in circles that barely cleared the walls and ceiling.

Calico had screamed for less, so she didn't know what to do now. She just stared into the Edgar bubble with a nauseas expression as stone and lovely fae hair flitted about. "Hold on!" she pleaded, though Edgar had no intention of letting go of the girl at mach 3.

The hollering beast at the center of their rotation pulled his shoulders back, preparing for a very sudden and very solid end to the performance, likely involving a puddle of Hanchulan goo and sparkly fae bits on the floor. A split second before the impact, Edgar's wrist and ankle began to make scratching, cracking sounds. Blessings be upon V'dralla and her selection of low quality wood for his prosthetic side, because it brought them salvation in a cloud of splinters that released Edgar from his manacles.

And miracle on top of miracles, they flew straight down the hall. Stone flashed by so quickly it was featureless. Only a smudge of brown in the distance retained any definition, and it became clearer as they sped closer, resolving into a thick wooden door. Then, on the godly hammer of Edgar's skull, it ceased to be a door, and instead became a portal to the sunlit expanse beyond.

[Lasair Anubail]

Everything happened too quickly for the poor little Fae. One moment she was holding onto Edgar and catching her poor little Avery as he was so meanly thrown from the man’s face and the next moment she was being spun around in circles. Good thing Edgar could hold on to her, because she wasn’t sure if her small little arms could have done the trick. They tried, wrapping around his sides and grabbing onto his clothes and allowing her to cling to him as if he was her most favourite cuddly thing in the world. He most certainly wasn’t, in fact he felt really weird to be squashed against. She could feel the wobbly bits of him moving around like some kind of jelly packed bag of goo. It made her shudder slightly, but the spinning motion she was constantly being tossed around in was beginning to make her feel dizzy. And only one of two things happened when Lasair got dizzy, either she fell over and if that wasn’t an option she threw up.

Right now, it didn’t appear that falling over would be an option.

So she closed her eyes against the sight of the spinning room and buried her face against Edgar’s chest, or what she thought was his chest, hoping that it would help. It did, a bit, but not enough to make the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach go away. Oh, she hated getting sick.

Then she heard the sound of cracking and splintering wood and suddenly they weren’t spinning anymore. No, they were flying in one direction and the sudden change in velocity and motion nearly caused Lasair to lose what she’d eaten for breakfast. Good thing for Edgar’s clothes that she was able to hold it in. They didn’t fly for long before an even louder crack of breaking wood filled her ears, followed by the sharp and painful feeling of splinters of wood hitting her bare arms, shoulders and even her wings. She could feel the sharpened edges price her skin and cause silver blood to well along her arms and her wings. They didn’t travel very far outside before Edgar crashed into something else, completely stopping his forward momentum with a sudden jerk and grunt.

Feeling the safety of something stable beneath her besides Edgar the small Fae dared to open her golden eyes and was nearly blinded by the bright sunlight. Shaking her head and clearing it of the dazed and spinney feeling of the world not staying still even though she wanted it to, Lasair looked down at Edgar. He seemed even worse than her as nothing but grumbles and groans seemed to come from him. Though, even when he talked it came out very grumbly so perhaps he was actually all right and he just didn’t know what to say.

Slowly sitting up, Lasair realized that they were currently in the back of a wooden cart. They had crashed through the side of it and stopped only when they hit what looked to be sacks of grain. Curious, she poked one and watched as the yellowed little cylindrical thingies came out of a small tear in the side and fell along Edgar’s chest. It was definitely grain. So they were saved by flour, how nice was that. Turning her head towards the front of the cart she smiled very brightly at the elderly looking human that was dragging it forward. Or, he most likely had been dragging it forward. He wasn’t now. Nope, right now his wrinkly face was kind of skewered in a look of surprise as his deep brown eyes were held wide and his mouth hung open ever-so-slightly. And she understood that she looked rather strange to humans, but honestly there was no reason to gape at her like she was some kind of freak.

“Oh, thank you Mister Human for catching us with your cart!” She said to him rather cheerfully. “We were kidnapped by these mean old men that wanted to ransom us, so we decided to escape.”

As she finished talking, the small plushie she had been holding tightly onto took this opportunity to shake whatever brains he had back into place and climb up to her shoulder. He wrapped his cute little arms around her neck and held onto her tightly.

“Man I was worried back there.” Avery said.

Lasair just giggled and reached up, petting him slightly. “No need to worry, Avery. Edgar protected us.”

“Yeah, with his skull. I think we can count ourselves very lucky.”

“Okay, the lucky lady loved us today!”

“It’s lady luck.” Avery said to her with a large grin.

The old man holding the cart took this time to pinch his arm and make sure he was still awake and not having some kind of strange nightmare. When that didn’t work he checked his head for a fever. And finally, when Edgar got up—the hood having fallen away from him and revealing the wood and gooey thing that he called a head—he only waited for one grunt to come out of his mouth before yelling, throwing his arms up into the air and running away.

“Oh, I guess he had somewhere to be...” Lasair said a little sad as the man ran away. But no worries, Edgar and she had other things to worry about. More important things like the fact that they still needed to find Imperial despite the strange humans trying to deter them. “Come on, Edgar, we’ve got a mansion to find!”

Shifting out of the cart in a shower of grain, Lasair held out her hand and attempted to help the human thing that wasn’t really a human but she didn’t have any other way to classify him.

[Twisted Infinitum]

It was true. Edgar didn't know what to say. But, that was only because of his master who, despite having many many things to say, only managed to express the first word of each thought before rising into a shrill shout and a dance of joy. The puppet's rendition of caveman-speak was the only response he could think of as he rolled about in the grain and sat up.

Eyes. That's what he saw. First hands, then blurs, then splinters, and now eyes. Every pair of them along the whole street stared at him in awed, awkward silence like a fallen angel in her for-the-hubby-only nightgown. Some shielded their eyes against the noonday glare from the roofs and cobblestones, and then their mouths stretched even lower upon realizing that it wasn't a halucination induced by the fumes of fish merchant stalls. The merchants, too, were doing good impersonations of their wares.

Only one person was not like the others. He stared with the bald spot on the back of his head as he galloped unsteadily down the gentle slope toward the harbor. Maybe his pants are on fire, Calico mused, unconcerned, It happens sometimes on hot days.

Through the space between worlds, the fae's voice reached her like a chorus of bells, and she couldn't have turned Edgar's head faster if she had actually grabbed hold and cranked it to the side. Oh! Is she- Her words failed her. Silver lines marked Lasair's skin like decorative gilding on fine china, sparkling beautifully but still so disturbing. If Lasair's pretty inside didn't stay inside... It was only the fae's innocent, industrius smile that kept Calico from exploding in a blast of motherly sympathy.

"There they are," wheezed a familiar voice from one of the buildings. Specifically, from the doorway whose door was scattered across the street. "Get 'em!" the bouncer of a man continued, though he clearly didn't intend to be the one running. His hands were pressed so hard against his groin and his bleeding face that he could barely stand, let alone run.

The man next to him wasn't going to give chase either, for he was preoccupied with the long-forgotten art of breathing. His neck was a lively purple, and his face a cerulean blue as he leaned against the doorframe and shivered like death's cold hand was tracing his spine.

"Idiots!" bellowed a voice behind them. In a rush of muscle that sent both men to the street, their leader appeared from the depths of the stone warehouse. His mouth was twisted as jaggedly as his scar, baring teeth that should have been pointed to match the fury with which he snorted and charged. His chest plate was absent, laying bare the bandages that wrapped his torso and were beginning to spot with fresh crimson.

Calico had just been ordering Edgar to crawl down from the cart, so he was caught with his thinner-than-usual wooden hand in the fae's and one leg hanging over the edge. Retreat! came the sudden command, so short and frenzied that the word was barely recognizable. With the same force normally reserved for a possession from above, Edgar threw himself back into the cart bed and yanked Lasair after him. The old wood creaked as they once again crashed into the running mountain of grain, and there was no driver to still the cart this time.

"My money!" spat the charging warrior, and his eyes widened as if watching two cut coin purses rolling down a hill. And rolling is exactly what they were doing. Slowly at first, one bump over a stone, then another a moment later, until the cart had reached the slow march its driver usually preferred. The slope increased ever so slightly as Radasanth leaned down toward the ocean, and soon the cart was moving faster than human legs could have moved it.

The fae-napper was so close then, hovering and huffing just behind them. His grasping, calloused hands swiped over and over like a tiger behind its bars. Another bump, and a fresh puddle of grain spilled over the lip. One heavy foot landed in it, then the man took flight. His thick fingers grappled onto the edge of the cart as his toes skittered and bounced behind, and it was with a victorious, self-satisfied grunt that he seized hold of Lasair's dress.

As the worn buildings and frightened people shot by, he hoisted his chest onto the rumbling cart and threatened to drag the poor fae with him should he fall. "You're mine, you little bitch," he snarled.

"No! Mine!" screamed the red-eyed puppet, now standing in a wide stance behind Lasair. In her shaved wooden hand, the maddened goddess raised a sack of grain like a smith's hammer and brought it down on the napper's anvil of a head. The sound as his face struck the cart bed was more of a splat than a clang, and it sounded over and over again as Calico wailed on him with the soft bludgeon. Any witty retort of his was lost in bubbles as he spoke from under the puddle of nose blood. Then, finally, he lost his grip on both the girl and the cart. Dazed and jittery, he flopped down to the street and disappeared in a puff of yellow and brown as Calico threw the sack after him.

"Victory!" the dream demon screamed, raising both hands but only managing the victory symbol with the wooden hand, seeing as fingers had yet to reform on the other. Right on cue, almost as if it was a reward for the hard fought battle, the street leveled out and turned to wooden planks. Their escape vehicle would have slowed to a gentle stop if not for the steep angle with which the nose hit the dock. The driver's handles bit in, slipping between planks and wedging the front of the cart tightly in place. The rear continued forward, and up, and ejected its load out to sea.

For the second time in five minutes, they flew. Though, this time they had wingmen in the form of a dozen grain comets, and the landing looked to be softer, or at least soggier.

[Lasair Anubail]

Lasair did not like the ride. The ground shifted and moved and jostled her around in the cart. She jumped and landed with thuds that hurt her legs and her behind. Not to mention more than once the back of her head hit Edgar’s chest and his chest was not squishy enough to be called completely comfortable. Plus that man was chasing them again and he didn’t seem intent on letting them escape. Some humans could be so rude. They had already gotten out of the building, which meant logically they had already escaped. Prisoners no more, he had no control over them so he should just give up and go home. Find someone else to kidnap. Or better yet, find a better line of work. He didn’t appear to be very good at kidnapping people. But Edgar man had smushed him with a sack of grain and then the man had let go of her. She didn’t appreciate him touching her dress. It did not belong to him.

Hopefully he would realize his defeat and surrender all his base to them!

The ground beneath them began to level and the small Fae felt a bit of relief knowing that they would soon be stopped and safe and sound. Something rather unexpected happened though. The cart stopped, jerk and then went flying up sending the contents into the air. Sadly for Lasair, she happened to be some of those contents. Lucky for Lasair, those cute little shimmering wings on her back were not just for show. As the sky loomed and then began to fall, replaced by the choppy waters of the ocean her mind kicked in. As rare as that could be in times when most people would start screaming panic. Her wings stretched and then fluttered before they started moving faster than the human eye could follow. A blur of motion began behind her as she stopped falling but merely left a trail of sparklies that fell from them and landed on the surface of the water. But she hadn’t seen any wings on Edgar. Was he incapable of flight?

Just as the thought passed her mind, the loud sound of a body impacting the lapping water resounded throughout the area. Droplets of the cold and salty liquid landed upon the Fae’s skin and mixed with the silver blood along her arms. With her eyes on the rippling place that Edgar had landed in, Lasair moved towards the dock and touched her little feet down upon the steady wooden surface. A second later Edgar’s head popped above the surface of the water and Lasair called out for him.

“Yay, Edgar!” She jumped up and down and waved her arms in the air to get his attention. “Out of the water silly, now is no time to swim!”

The little plushie on her shoulder scoffed. “Lasair, I don’t think he landed in the water by his own will, though weighing an impact upon water against one on land, I’d go for the water too.”

Edgar merely mumbled something that sounded like ‘coming’ but the Fae was unsure. His head rose a bit more out of the water and Lasair realized he could touch the ground. He was so cool and tall like that. Pretty soon he had managed to pull himself from the cool liquid and Lasair would have hugged him, if not for the fact that he was soaking wet. His clothes were clinging to his small frame and dripping water onto the dry wooden dock. She hoped the dock didn’t mind. Reaching out and grabbing his wooden stub of a hand, Lasair began leading Edgar away from the yucky water and back into town. Hopefully he would dry off soon. It would be bad to meet Imperial dripping all over the ground.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

The small Fae was once again at a bit of a standstill though. She didn’t know where to go. Or better yet she didn’t know where she should go. They had been exploring some house areas but then they’d been kidnapped. Now she was all turned around and didn’t know where she’d been and where she still needed to be. She had just made it off the dock, ignoring the stars from many onlookers when her feet stopped.

“Does Edgar know where to go?” She asked hopefully, looking up at him with big, golden eyes.

[Twisted Infinitum]

Honey, Edgar always knows where to go, Calico cooed, her eyes still quaking from the beautiful sight of Lasair in full sparkly flight, or as much as she had seen before Edgar landed in the shallow end with his grain sack pool buddies.

"Honey always," Edgar barked as his wobbly orange eye met her golden pair. It took him a moment to start moving, the orders from beyond a bit jumbled. But, when he finally stepped forward, it was with all the pride that a puppet could manage.

What was he prideful of? Hell if he knew. His master was happy. The sparkly girl was happy. He wasn't banged up as much as normal, considering how most of his great escapes went. So, it seemed like as good a situation as he ever saw through his orange-tinted glasses.

He led the fae back up the street they had just raced down, where the air now crackled with bewildered questions and harsh accusations toward the grain pile that bore bulky arms and legs. The lowest of the kernels had turned red, no doubt from a combination of the man's ruptured knife wound and the red fountain that was his nose... somewhere in the mess. Voices hushed as the two neared, and a long and awkward silence began that hovered between "Are you okay?" and "Ewww, what's wrong with that thing's head?"

I guess we ruined the fae-napper's day, giggled the dream demon sweetly. Edgar-doodle, give him a coin for trying so hard.

The kidnapper didn't seem to notice their approach. His face was mashed into bloody grain and cobblestones, and one of his rough fists pounded the road in shuddering strikes of pain and disappointment. There was even a faint whimpering that could be heard along the awe-struck street.

Then, the short ping of a single gold coin bouncing just past his dirty, matted hair.

With bloodshot eyes, the warrior looked up and slapped the dancing coin to the ground. Then he turned around harshly, but all he saw were two silouettes, hand-in-hand, disappearing down the street.

[Lasair Anubail]

The day seemed to turn to night all too quickly for the wandering duo. They’d wandered deeper into the houses of Radasanth trying to find the one place they wanted and the one place they didn’t seem capable of coming across. As the light was chased from the city, Lasair felt herself beginning to grow rather sluggish. The sky was all dark and there were lights coming through the windows on the houses they passed. They made her feel so sleepy and like all she wanted to do was curl up somewhere into a tiny little ball and fall asleep. But Edgar kept leading her forward. Did Edgar not get tired? Maybe he just had much more energy than she did. She supposed she could hold on a little longer then.

Yawning and rubbing at her eyes with her free hand, Lasair continued to follow Edgar through the streets. They were dark now, though lit by these cute little lanterns on high poles with flame within them. They cast a warm glow over the dirt streets and the fences and walls that surrounded the now much bigger homes. It seemed the farther they travelled, the bigger the homes and the property got. Maybe the families got bigger too, after all it would take a lot of people to fill some of these houses.

Lasair held on for as long as she could, which meant for the next few minutes. Then she started walking a lot slower and it seemed that Edgar was trying to pull her along more than anything else. Though he did quickly realize she was not entirely following him. Her little feet just barely stumbled and pushed forward, jerked into motion only each time he gave her a slight tug in his quest to continue.

“Edgar...” She mumbled in a small voice. Her next words cut off as her mouth opened up in another big yawn, one she quickly covered with her hand. “I’m tired.”

For a bit, Lasair was rather certain Edgar hadn’t heard her. The human, wooden thing just kept moving forward and dragging Lasair along with him. She stumbled and nearly fell once or twice, her small feet no longer able to keep up with him. She just wanted some sleep. After a few moments of tugging on her, Edgar finally stopped and turned around, much to Lasair’s relief.

“Scoop’d up, fiery-man.” He grumbled.

Confused, Lasair just looked up at Edgar as he suddenly, and creakily leaned down. She took a step back as his wooden and gooey arms wrapped around her and hefted her small frame up onto his wooden shoulder. She let out a small squeak as she shifted around on his shoulder, the wooden parts of him digging through the material and into her stomach. Being so tired though, Lasair eventually just gave up squirming around and relaxed against him as best she could. Somehow, within the next few minutes she actually managed to fall asleep, even with the constant bounce of Edgar walking.