Content
Molly Blyndeff sat stiffly behind the register of the Blyndeff Toy Emporium. From a distance, one might have mistaken her for one of the toys, a stand-in put in place to ‘keep the seat warm’ while the real cashier was away. Her cute little handmade bear hoodie only helped the image. And after all, what twelve-year-old would actually be working a checkout line?
The answer was Molly. Molly was. Sitting at the counter of the empty store, waiting out the minutes, putting all her attention into keeping up straight and stiff, because if she didn’t, she just might begin to list and then just collapse and thump right off her stool onto the floor, like a fallen tree. Sit up straight and keep her eyes open, that was just about all she could do.
“Is it time now?” came one innocently squeaky voice.
“Nope, not yet,” came a rougher, yet somehow equally squeaky reply.
Okay, so ‘empty’ might not have technically been correct. The toy store was devoid of customers- an unfortunately common condition- but it did have a couple occupants. Two little girls Molly’s age, her two closest friends, were keeping themselves occupied as they collectively waited out the clock.
Trixie Roughhouse was examining a little toy kitchen set displayed on a shelf. In particular, she was interested in the little toy knife set that seemed to be included, picking one up and fiddling the tiny thing between her fingers as if she were an expert jeweler examining a gem. Despite clearly being a toy and being made of wood, her appraisal revealed it did have some slight edge to it.
“Can you give me a hint? Is it close yet?”
Trixie turned to the clock and then back to the other, inquiring girl. “Could be,” the pink-haired child replied. The time was actually very close, but she couldn’t just go spoiling the game by giving that away.
Phoenica Fleecity sat on her stool and pouted in a look of serious concentration. She noticed a sliver of light peeking through her blindfold and quickly moved to adjust it so she couldn’t see anything. One of her many bells jingled softly as she shifted. This game Trixie had come up with was fun, but kinda hard. She would need to try her best to be able to guess when it was time without looking at the clock.
Trixie- who definitely hadn’t come up with this ‘game’ as an excuse to keep Phoenica busy and make her look silly- casually walked over to her blonde, bell-adorned, blindfolded friend and quietly set the toy knife to work against a tiny lock of vanilla hair. After all, she had to know exactly how well it could cut.
“Trixie, it’s not nice to mess with people’s hair,” Molly droned, in the most exhausted voice you’d ever heard coming from anyone. Normally, she wouldn’t have had the confidence to speak up like that, but these were her friends, after all- also, she was so tired that something as complicated as emotional repercussions were lost somewhere in the fog of her brain.
“Wha- MY HAIR!?” Phoenica wailed. The tiny-knife-wielding child withdrew quickly as a pair of frantic hands came to comb worriedly over the blonde locks. The concerned girl checked herself over, but made no move to remove her blindfold- after all, she wouldn’t want to cheat at their game-
Wait…
*GASP* “Trixie! Did you set up this entire game as some sort of elaborate ruse to make me look foolish and-” she *GASP*ed a second time- “prank me!?” Phoenica was less concerned about her hair, and much more worried about the potential dishonesty.
“Whaaaat?” Trixie replied less-than-convincingly. “Of course not, Feenie.”
“Oh, good,” Phoenica replied happily, completely convinced. …For a moment, until her suspicion clicked back into view like a light switch. “Wait. So you didn’t mess with my hair while I was sitting here, sightless?”
Molly gave a warning sort of grunt from her perch at the register. All three of them knew a thing or two about the value of honesty from their shared ‘interpersonal communication’ lessons. Though what Trixie really knew was that tonight would be no fun if she made Molly upset by lyin’ to their friend in front of her. The young Roughhouse girl twiddled the little bit of vanilla hair she’d managed to get between her fingers.
“I just, uh, snagged a little bit to use in a potion I’m makin’,” she admitted.
“Oh Trixie,” the blindfolded girl replied with a smile, suddenly sounding as if this whole situation was just a silly mistake. “You should have just asked. I would be honored to have my hair put to use in a brew of magic. Go on, take as much as you need!” Her words were exaggerated and solemn, as if she felt she were contributing to some great cause.
Trixie Roughhouse gave an evil little grin. Molly was just about to speak up when out of nowhere-
“Wait!” Phoenica exclaimed.
Everything paused and went silent, except for the quiet ticking of a clock.
“It’s time!” the blindfolded girl declared.
Trixie looked over to the ol’ time wheel. It was. In fact, Feenie had somehow managed to call it to the second.
“…Yeah, it is…” the pink-haired girl confirmed in a suspicious tone, eyeing her friend as if she had just displayed some spooky supernatural power.
“Yay!” Phoenica cheered, taking off her blindfold and tossing it in celebration. “Molly, your shift is officially OVER!”
“And that means it’s o-fficially sleepover time!” Trixie added.
“Oh thank goodness,” the little Blyndeff breathed. She finally let herself slip off the cashier stool, but her little knees buckled beneath her when she tried to stand.
“Molly!” both of her friends exclaimed; cries of excitement becoming concern. They scurried over like startled kittens.
“Sorry,” Molly apologized. “I’m okay, really.”
“‘Okay’?” Trixie echoed in disagreement, helping the girl up. “You look all the way pooped!”
“Wha- Trixie! Don’t swear!” Feenie scolded.
“Gosh, Feenie, poop is not a swear! You don’t even know any swears!”
“Wha- I- yes I do!”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Well, like-” Phoenica opened her mouth to speak but quickly stopped herself. Her face turned red, even at the mere thought of such language.
Trixie chuckled at the sight while Feenie made a face that looked as if trails of smoke should be escaping from her ears. Then Molly tried to walk again- but it wasn’t toward the stairs leading up and out of the toy store.
“Where ya going?” Trixie asked.
“Just gotta… close up the store,’ the dark-haired girl replied, the words coming out almost more like a yawn.
“Here, let us help you,” Phoenica offered cheerily, dropping their little squabble in a blink. Molly was much more important.
“It’s okay, I got it,” Molly insisted, somehow mustering a smile.
“Don’t be silly,” Feenie replied.
“I’ll flip the sign,” Trixie chimed in.
“And I will turn off the lights,” Phoenica announced.
Molly might have insisted more sternly, except the two of them were already zipping off excitedly to their tasks, and she just didn’t have the energy to keep up. In fact she caught herself almost falling over right at that moment and only just managed to keep herself upright.
“Geeze, Mol, when was the last time you hit the sack?” Trixie asked from the door. She’d had a lot of experience locking doors. She got a lot of practice during her lock picking lessons with her older brother- can’t pick an open lock, after all.
“Well…” the heavy-eyed girl tried to think. “I think I got a couple hours of sleep this week.”
“What!? That’s bologna!” Trixie exclaimed, saying the word the way it was spelt. “Your family can’t expect you to work like that!”
“It was the only way to get time for the sleepover. It was just a couple extra hours on each of my shifts, that’s all.”
Trixie gave her a hard, suspicious look. She only had one eye visible, the other hidden behind a clump of her pink hair, but that only made the look even more piercing.
“…And, well, Lorelai blew off her last three shifts, so I had to cover for her…”
“There we go,” Trixie said with a big, expressive gesture, as if she were waiting for a defective crosswalk sign that finally changed. “That sister of yours, let me tell ya.”
“Oh, our poor Molly, working so hard!” Phoenica mourned as she returned. The trio reunited in the darkened store.
Normally, a sleepover should be pretty easy to make happen. Really, all you needed to do was pick a house and all sleep over there. But not much was easy for Molly. Sure, having her friends over wasn’t usually a problem, but sleeping, well… Her ‘normal’ schedule didn’t leave a ton of time for sleep, and the last thing she wanted to do was rope her friends into that and mess up their sleep too.
That’s why when they’d all decided to finally have one, she’d resolved to work extra hard to make sure her friends could get a full eight- well, seven and a half- hours. She’d even explained the situation to her older sister and asked her to please, pretty please, pretty pretty please, make her shifts so Molly could tend to some of her other chores instead of covering. And to Molly’s relief, Lori had showed up on time! …To one of the shifts, at least. Since then she’d gotten invested into another one of her fantasy worlds and there was just no getting through to her once that happened.
“Toil and tire no longer, dear Molly, for now I know of a bed with your name on it,” Phoenica spoke encouragingly, and elegantly, knowing all too well how special of an occasion this was for her friend.
“Yeah, let’s go upstairs already, I’m gettin’ tired just looking at ya,” Trixie agreed.
Molly mumbled something that failed to be words, but sounded vaguely like a relieved agreement. Each of her friends took one hand, and they began to lead her along: down a narrow hall and up a narrower set of stairs.
“Thanks, you guys,” the exhausted girl said with a yawn. “Sorry you had to wait so long.”
“Don’t sweat it, Mols,” Trixie waved.
“Yeah, it’ll all be worth it when we tuck into our nice, warm beds. Oooo, this’ll be so much fun! It’s like sleeping, but with company!” Feenie squeaked.
The other two girls didn’t quite get why she found that so exciting, but they appreciated her joy. Maybe it was an only-child thing?
“Oh, um…” Molly began, already sounding apologetic. “We can’t really… afford… guest beds, but, um, we got a bunch of throw pillows, like a whole bunch of em.” Just hearing herself say those words made her feel guilty. She was basically making her friends sleep on the floor, wasn’t she? “One of you can take my bed, if you want.”
“Ha!” Trixie scoffed, “I’ve slept on way worse in the trailer park. This’ll be like… like a nest,” she decided. “I’ll be like a crow puttin’ a nest together outa all the comfy stuff I can scrounge.” She smiled in satisfaction at the image. She liked crows. Crows were cool. They came in groups called murders!
“And I’m 90% fluff! I’m like a sheep!” Feenie added, continuing the animal comparisons. “I’m like my own bed!”
“Really, it’s okay if-” Molly began, but Trixie interrupted her.
“Nuh-uh. If anyone around here needs a bed, it’s you,” she asserted.
“Thanks,” the tired tot mumbled with a little smile. She was too sleepy to argue anyway.
The three of them arrived at the top of the stairs and made their way to Molly’s room. Feenie went ahead to open the door for them.
“Molly Blyndeff, may I present to you, your-” She was going to say ‘bed’, but when she swung the door open, something unexpected caught her attention and threw her off. “Your… um… Did you redecorate?”
Molly lifted her head and her eyelids. “What…?” she blinked and focused. “No. No no no no!” she whined with exhaustion. “Lori!” she complained.
More than half her already tiny room was occupied by a large, gently glowing object: the side of one of her older sibling’s bubbles. The wall which separated the two sisters’ rooms was completely eclipsed from view, with Lori’s bubble clipping through it like an out-of-place asset in a video game. It ate up most of the space, two-thirds of all the throw pillows Molly had gathered for her friends, and three fourths of her bed.
There was a moment of silence, as if the three of them were looking at the aftermath of some natural disaster. The aftermath of hurricane Lorelai having decimated their sleepover before it even began.
“…Do you think if we knocked and asked her real nice, she would move it?” Phoenica asked hopefully.
“No,” Molly said in a flat, vaguely angry tone. Several frustrated- some even borderline furious- thoughts ran through Molly’s head. She’d tried several times to ask her sister for things nicely. She had a large range of unhappy responses she could give to the suggested idea, but all she actually said was: “No.”
There was another silence, a touch shorter, and the trio continued to stand there, not quite sure what to do.
“…You guys should just go home,” Molly said in defeat. “I think I have enough room between what’s left of my bed and the pillows to lay down, but there isn’t enough for all of us anymore… Sorry.”
“Malarkey!” Trixie spat.
“Yes! Malarkey,” Feenie repeated, the word sounding exceedingly comical in her voice. “You worked hard for this! We can’t just give up!”
“Well what else are we supposed to do? Even if we go in and try to talk to her, it’s just gonna make her mad.” Molly spoke from experience.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Trixie said agreeably. “I say we barge in there and give that sour teen what for.”
“I still suggest we at least try to enter politely and kindly ask her to move her intruding bubble,” Phoenica interjected. Then again, this was Lori they were talking about, so she added. “But I suppose if that fails…”
“What for!” Trixie repeated emphatically.
Feenie nodded; this was an acceptable compromise. Molly, however, still needed some convincing.
“It’s too dangerous,” the hoodie-clad girl began, but Trixie cut her off.
“Danger-shmanger!” She knew her friend had a point, but she was tired of seeing that jerk of a big sis messing up Molly’s life, and she was tired of seeing Molly tired. She was the tough one! So she was gonna do something about it! “Come on, Feenie, you with me?”
“Yeah!” came the determined reply, accented by the gentle clang of bells.
“But…” But before Molly even began the sentence, Trixie was ready with a reply.
“Look, neither of us are leavin’ until we get a sleepover with ya. So if you want us to have a good night’s sleep, that’s how it’s gotta be.”
Oh no, Trixie had turned her friend’s weakness against her. Saying ‘no’ and leaving her friends to sleep on the hard floor would be far too irresponsible for her! The only thing left that she could do was agree.
“…Fine…” Molly sighed. She lethargically shuffled up to the edge of the dream bubble and reached out an arm, glowing green with her epithet aura. She swatted weakly and a large opening appeared, as if she’d waved away a thick fog. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Yes,” Phoenica agreed, electing to take the lead. She stepped in through the gap as she began to lecture. “We should all be very careful indeed. Who knows what kind of strange, twisted world we’ll be stepping into. What sick, unearthly fantasy has been conjured by- AM I A SHEEP!?”
From the moment she’d stepped through that opening, her whole body had transformed. She was walking on four legs now. And her vanilla hair and light-colored clothes had blended and morphed into a thick, white covering which blanketed her entire body. You would think spontaneously being transformed into an animal would be some cause for concern. But to Feenie, this was nothing less than a dream come true.
Molly stepped forward to get a closer look, with Trixie quickly following.
“You do kinda look like a sheep,” the tired girl confirmed, “but…” She reached out and gently booped some of the whiteness that now enveloped her friend. It was soft, but not like wool, instead it was solid and kinda squished a bit when she booped it, almost like it was-
Wait… that wasn’t my hand, Molly realized. She raised her palm up to her face.
“Eeep!”
What met her eyes was a smooth, semi-transparent, not-hand, with a color matching her actual skin tone, and a shape vaguely like… like a bear paw?
“Holy smokes,” Trixie exclaimed, “Mol, you look like a big gummy bear!”
She looked herself over further and ran her new hands over her new head. Her familiar bear hoodie had been replaced by a set of gummy bear ears. Yup, this was one of Lorelai’s worlds alright. She always had to put candy in them one way or another. And this time animals too, apparently.
“And you’re not just a sheep! You’re a marshmallow sheep!” Trixie continued to observe.
“I AM!?” Feenie squealed. This was more than just a dream come true! This was beyond her wildest dreams! The sheep-girl turned to try to get a better look at herself, but ended up gradually chasing her own sugar-stuffed little tail in the process, a bell jingling happily around her neck.
“Well? What am I? What am I?” the Roughhouse girl asked.
Feenie stopped herself and joined Molly in examining their friend.
“…Some kind of… bird?”
“Bird?” Trixie realized suddenly that her arms had become wings. She flapped them around a bit: large round masses of soft candy-matter with patterns pressed into them resembling overlapping feathers. She looked herself over. Her new body was almost entirely pink, like the color of her hair, but covered in these little, glittery bits of something… She brought a wing up to her mouth and gave herself a little lick.
“Oooh…” she nodded. “I’m not just a bird! I’m a strawberry sour crow!” she declared.
“Ooo,” Feenie marveled as Trixie flexed her wings proudly.
Molly sighed in a mix of frustration and exhaustion. Here she was in another one of her sister’s stupid fantasy worlds, once again literally getting in the way of reality. All she wanted to do was sleep, just sleep. But she was probably going to have to go on a whole annoying adventure, learning all about this meaningless, fake, diabetic nightmare through countless streams of ‘mini-bosses’ slowly drip-feeding her made-up lore. And even then there was no guarantee of actually finding Lori. I mean, she could be anywhere in-
“So, a little cotton-candy-tailed bunny wabbit has come to challenge me for the Circlet of Life?”
“Huh?” went all three girls in unison.
“I may be but a humble bunny, but I am the one who will free this world from the tyranny of you and your predators, once and for all!” A woman’s voice declared. A young woman’s voice, one the trio- and especially Molly- recognized unpleasantly.
The girls had entered the world in a tiny, shadowed patch of grass, surrounded by trees, but peering through the trunks in the direction of the other voices, they were quickly able to find a much larger, much brighter clearing that made their current location seem more like the far edges of a video game level.
“You fluff-brained little fool,” the tyrant spat. He was a creature of large stature, reminiscent of a lion, with a mane of ice cream. Until suddenly he wasn’t. “You will be sweet slipping down my throat,” he threatened, and all at once he morphed into a long, gummy snake, his jaws stretching wide with bits of candy-slime strung between them to drive his point home.
“It fazes me not what form you take,” Lorelai affirmed from her candy rabbit form, using her classic protagonist voice that Molly had heard her perfect over years of chore ditching. “Your power comes only from the Circlet of Life atop your head; a magic you wield in cruel oppression of all denizens of the Sugar Bark Wood. It shall be yours no longer!” She bared a sword with a hilt made of carrot cake and a long hard blade of frosting.
“I am simply keeping with the order of nature,” the evil snake hissed confidently.
“You twist the order. You’ve granted your predatory ranks unnatural size, unconscionable calorie count, and set them to terrorize and devour all in their path.”
“Predators are naturally larger and more powerful than little prey like you,” the gummy serpent retorted, morphing into an enormous wolf with peppermints for eyes and a body of colorful rock candy. “I am only aiding in a balance of which you are clearly ignorant.”
A glow began to appear above the tyrant’s head, hovering just beyond the rim of a golden headpiece- the only thing which kept a constant form as he shifted.
“All creatures have their place, and you clearly don’t know yours, rabbit. But I will help you find it. Perhaps nature would take its course more easily if you were powerless and a bit more… bite sized?”
The glow crackled with sparks of lightning and then suddenly flung itself across the clearing in Lori’s direction. Her rabbit legs tensed and she-
“Ow! Quit it!” came a loud shout, interrupting the scene.
“Huh?” went Lorelai, distracted.
*ZAP*!
Molly turned away from the scene in the clearing to see sour crow Trixie had quietly made her way behind marshmallow lamb Feenie to nibble on her sugary tail. When she looked back toward the clearing, Lori the cotton candy rabbit was gone.
The evil tyrant, who only a moment ago was projecting utter wicked confidence, now stood pale with shock and fear, as if he’d accidentally texted something incredibly insulting to someone’s mother.
“Who- who’s out there!?” he demanded, all gravitas gone from his voice.
“Feenie, you gave us up!” Trixie scolded.
“Wha-!? Me!? I wasn’t the one trying to eat my friend’s new tail!” Phoenica accused. “My poor, adorable, fluffy sheepy tail,” she mourned.
“I wasn’t eating it. I was just getting a little taste is all…” Trixie tried to defend, sounding more than a little guilty.
“Whoever’s over there, come out and help me!” The rock candy carnivore put his oversized snout to the ground and began to sniff. “She wasn’t actually supposed to get hit by that!” he muttered nervously. “She was supposed to dodge it! She’d had it all planned out! Oh, where’d she go!?”
*gasp* “A cry for help!” Phoenica exclaimed. “As a virtuous follower of the do-gooding ways, I must put my tail-related trauma aside and lend a-” she paused for a moment- “hoof.” She giggled. She was still very happy to be a sheep.
“Feenie, wait! That thing’s a giant w-” But the sheep girl was gone before Molly could finish.
“Hi, I’m Phoenica the sheep,” she introduced very happily. “Did you say you needed help?”
“Yes! I accidentally struck the mistress with a powerful spell. Help me find her- oh but be careful not to step on her!” He wasn’t even attempting to play his part anymore. The purportedly predatory candy creature hardly even glanced at the incoming marshmallow, keeping his nose and eyes to the ground.
Feenie nodded seriously and began looking as well. Only problem was, she wasn’t entirely sure what a tiny mistress looked like. The only mistresses she had around the mansion were full-sized, and not at all made of candy, or in the forms of animals, like everyone here seemed to be. But the more she thought about it… She had been cautioned not to step on said mistress, so she needed to be careful. And if she didn’t know exactly what not to step on, she might do it by accident, and that would be terribly rude!
“Um, mister?” she asked, but something eye-catching distracted her. When she looked over to the wolf, searching frantically nearby, she noticed a golden circlet atop his head. “Oh, whoopsies!” she said in an apologetic tone. “I must have brought one of these by accident.”
She had several dozen headpieces like that in her wardrobe, and it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d misplaced one. She wasn’t sure how it had ended up on top of that doggo’s head, but if it had been in her coat when she’d been upgraded to sheep status, it could have magically ended up anywhere, she reasoned. It’s worth pointing out that at no point did she ever consider the jewelry might belong to the wolf. Dogs didn’t wear tiaras! She knew it for a fact. She’d tried. They always just fell off, no matter how cute they looked.
So Feenie the marshmallow sheep stood up on two legs like she was in a cartoon, reached out with her front hooves and quietly corrected her mistake by lifting the ring of gold off the doggo’s head and placing it on her own.
“I’ll save you Feenie!!”
“Huh!?” *POOF*
Trixie had rushed at the huge wolf, holding a big jawbreaker rock awkwardly overhead between her wing-hands. But her target disappeared into a cloud of powdered sugar the moment the circlet had been lifted from his crystalline head.
“Wowsa. You did it Feenie, ya killed him!” Trixie congratulated. She wasn’t sure how she felt knowing that goodie-goodie Fleecity had managed to off someone before she had, but she was proud nonetheless.
“WHAT!?” the goodie-goodie exclaimed. “I- I- I did not!” she insisted.
“Yup! Poofed ‘em right outa bein’ alive.” Trixie dropped the rock she’d been holding, seeing as it wasn’t needed anymore.
“Wha-! No! I couldn’t have! These sweet, adorable little sheep hooves could not possibly have done something so horrid as to- Do you hear that?” There was an annoying, high-pitched squeaking sort of sound that was making it hard for Feenie to construct her alibi.
The pair looked around and noticed a nearby tuft of grass that was shaking like an occupied tile in a video game. They both peered closer. Between the green blades, there appeared to be a tiny, itty-bitty, little chocolate mouse, being assaulted by a miniature cotton candy bunny.
“You stupid, pea-brained, loser!” The bunny yelled in her tiny, squeaky voice- pea-brained being an especially hurtful insult toward candy creatures. “You were supposed to miss me with that spell!”
“You were supposed to dodge it!” The little coco mouse pleaded in defense, shielding its little face with its even littler paws.
“And then within five seconds of me being gone you lose the Circlet of Life!? Your final form was supposed to be the big reveal! It was all thematic!” The bunny complained, pounding harmlessly with her fluffy shrunken paws.
“Okay, break it up you two,” Trixie intervened. She reached down and picked the two little creatures up, one in each bird-wing-hand, forcing them apart.
“EEEEEEEEE! Oh! My! Goodness! You. Are. So. Cute!” Feenie exclaimed, shoving her face uncomfortably close to the coco mouse. “And you are also so cute!” She switched over to the little rabbit.
Lorelai, in her newly miniaturized form, very quickly noticed the golden band atop the sheep’s head.
“Hey! What are you doing wearing the Circlet of Life! Who do you think you are!? Messing with the- Wait… Phoenica!?” The bunny spat the name like a curse. It was an attitude which very much clashed with her soft, snuggle-wuggle exterior. And the bunny knew that if she was here, then that meant-
Molly walked up to her friends with weary steps. “Hey, what happened to the scary candy wolf? And what happened to-”
“Ugh! Molly! What the heck are you doing here!? You and your stupid friends ruined the whole climax!”
“-Lori,” the heavy-eyed gummy bear finished. Well, that answered one of her questions. She looked at the little hazel-brown mouse in Trixie’s other wing. “Is that… the big scary bad guy from a second ago?”
“It was supposed to be a big reveal,” Lori squeaked angrily. “The big mean predator, but turns out they were a little mouse the whole time? It was great! And now it’s garbage!”
“But mice aren’t predatory,” Phoenica corrected in a slightly confused tone.
“Ugh! He was wearing the Circlet of Life!” the Lorelai bunny groaned, as if it should be obvious. “The literal source and embodiment of all of nature’s power. Its wearer has complete control over the forms of all creatures in the wood.” She wasn’t sure why she was explaining this, except that it was her lore, and it was good lore! And now that it was useless the least these brats could do was listen and be impressed.
“Complete control over form?” Phoenica echoed. “So I could become any candy-mal I wanted with this?” She gestured to her head. “Yay!”
…They all paused and looked at her, as if expecting her to morph into some amazing, fantastical beast. But she just stood there grinning.
“…What?” she asked after a moment. “I’m already a sheep!”
“…Um, I don’t mean to interrupt,” the chocolate mouse peeped. “But, um, why is she looking at me like that?” He pointed nervously up at the crow who was holding him.
Trixie hadn’t spoken for a few seconds, not since picking them up, and her eyes were fixed on the little candy rodent… and she was starting to drool.
“…No. No no no no-!”
But some deep, crow-based instinct from inside her was taking hold. And the little chocolate ball looked just too good to resist.
*NOMF*
“EEEEEEEEE!” Feenie squealed again, this time giving voice to a very different feeling. “No! Bad Trixie!”
Bad Trixie felt the squirming chocolate paws on her tongue, and sucked the wriggling tail into her mouth like a tiny noodle. This… this tasted great! She wasn’t sure if it was her bird half liking the taste of mouse, or her human half liking the taste of chocolate, but it didn’t matter. She’d found a treat to topple the best of Halloween candy!
“Spit him out! Spit him out! Spit him out!” Feenie demanded, wriggling in discomfort, not unlike the mouse in question.
“You ‘ant ‘e uh ‘it ‘em ou’?” Trixie asked rhetorically around her mouthful.
(You want me to spit ‘em out?)
She shifted the morsel around and popped the chocolate head out into view, dripping with her drool, growing soft and melty under the heat.
“Ew!! Put him away! Put him away! Put him away!” the sheep girl bleated, bells jingling in distress.
Trixie did as she was told. She sucked the little snack right back into her mouth, savoring the treat, and then almost without meaning to-
*gulp*
“…Ah, whoops,” the crow muttered.
“You… you… YOU ATE HIM!! Of all the rude things to do Bellatrix Roughhouse, that is VERY, VERY RUDE!!”
“I think it’s a little more than ‘rude’,” Trixie corrected.
“You’re right! It’s- it’s-” she struggled to get the word out, like it was the harshest insult she had ever let slip. “It’s mean!”
“Meh,” the candy crow replied with a shrug. “He was tasty.”
“T- T-” Phoenica couldn’t even repeat the word in disbelief, her mouth simply hung.
*gurgle*
*urp* went the Trixie crow.
Feenie’s jaw dropped lower. “MOOOLLLLYYY!!”
“Huh!?” The brown gummy bear jolted to life. She’d managed to drift off into half-sleep while standing up, sometime during her sister’s explanation of how her latest meaningless fantasy world worked.
“Trixie ate a mouse!!” Phoenica told her, jabbing a hoof accusatorily in the crow’s direction.
“A chocolate mouse, tattle tale,” Trixie responded.
“Wha… Oh,” Molly said, regaining her awareness. “The bad guy? That’s okay. He’s not real, he’s just imaginary,” she yawned.
“…You guys. Are so. GROSS!” Lorelai finally squeaked up from Trixie’s other wing-hand. She’d spent the last several seconds gawking at the spectacle with growing levels of disgust. “I can’t believe you actually ate one of the animals. That was a mouse, you disgusting freak!”
“Hey!” Molly complained. She very much did not approve of her sister’s language. Even Feenie, who vaguely agreed with her point, scowled disapprovingly at the little rabbit.
“Um, newsflash genius: You created this whole world based around the animals eatin’ each other,” Trixie pointed out.
“Yeah, as a thematic backdrop for the story. All that food chain stuff happens off screen.”
“Off screen?” Phoenica parroted in confusion. She didn’t see any screens around.
“Ugh. As in out of my sight!” she explained. “Like you three should be.”
“Look,” Molly said, “just move your bubble so it’s out of my room, and we’ll leave you alone.”
“I would have been done with it in a few minutes if you little weeds hadn’t popped up,” she replied angrily. “Now you’re going to have to wait until I make a new antagonist and finish my story. Now give me the Circlet of Life.”
“Okay!” Phoenica chirped. She started reaching up, but Trixie stopped her.
“No! What are you doing?” the crow scolded.
“But it’s hers!” Feenie insisted. “I can’t keep it, that would be stealing!”
“Just give it to me already!” The tiny bunny demanded indignantly.
“Why… do you need it?” Molly asked, confused. This was her world after all, she usually had total control over just about anything.
“Ugh! Weren’t you listening? That Circlet of Life controls all the magic in the world.” Lorelai had done that to make the game more fun. It wasn’t much of a challenge when you could magic your way through all the bosses. She’d never expected to run into any real trouble, since she could always tell any of her characters to simply stop and give it to her. She wasn’t expecting one of them to hit her with a spell that was supposed to miss, and then give the thing over to her dumb little sister’s even dumber friend.
“So what yer sayin’ is, without that doodad on Feenie’s head… you’re powerless?” Trixie asked. A big, evil, power-trip of a smile began to grow on her pink, candy-feathered face.
“It’s mine! Give it back!” the Lori-bunny whined angrily like a little girl. In fact she did more than that, she used her little rabbit legs and leapt for Phoenica’s marshmallowy face.
“Oh no you don’t, buster!” Trixie snatched the cotton candy creature out of the air in one wing, only for Lori to wriggle out of her weak grip a second later and make another leap. “Hey! Stop! Quit it! Cut it out!” The two continued to struggle, Trixie grabbing at her target over and over only for it to slip away like a wet bar of soap, until finally:
*NOM*
Some facet of frustration and candy-crow instinct combined and Trixie snapped Lorelai up in her mouth. Everyone went silent and still for a moment.
Then the crow’s smile slowly returned. Bigger. Eviler!
“Well, well, well, well,” Trixie sneered, feeling the tiny squirms roll against her tongue with each word. True to the spell’s wording, Lori really was perfectly bite-sized. And the fact that her body was mostly cotton candy floof gave the sour crow plenty of room to speak around her.
“Uhhh…” Molly mumbled, rubbing her eyes. She was so tired she thought she might have been seeing things at this point.
“Now Trixie…” Feenie said cautiously, in a tone more suited to addressing an approaching panther than a crow. “Let’s not do anything rash.”
“Me?” the smug crow replied sarcastically. “I would never.” She flipped the little candy bunny over in her mouth, tasting her.
“Stop that!!” Lori objected harshly.
“Nuh-uh, that’s not how we ask for things,” Trixie replied teasingly. “Use the magic word.”
“WHAT!?” The rabbit screeched in her squeaky little voice.
“You know, the magic word. Feenie, I bet you know the magic word.”
“The magic word?” The sheep pondered for a moment. “Oh! ‘Please’!” she answered.
“There we go! Feenie’s got the ‘circle set’ with all the magic, and she says the magic word is ‘please’, so you gotsta use it.”
“It’s a CIRCLET!!” Lori yelled, pushing the ever-flexing tongue out of the way and reaching for escape. Trixie flipped her back with a little splat.
“Nuh-uh-uh.” She closed her mouth and spent a few moments tossing her around from cheek to cheek like a piece of hard candy, as a punishment for trying to escape improperly. “Hm… you know, I think she’s actually kinda sour,” she reported.
“I AM NOT SOUR!!” The saliva-soaked bunny shouted from behind closed lips. “You're the sour-flavored one!” Trixie smacked her tongue a few more times with Lori on top of it, tasting.
“…Nah, pretty sure it's you,” she confirmed.
“Ugh! Okay!! Stop! Stop! Please stop!”
Trixie turned to Feenie, arbiter of the Magic Word. The sheep gave a little nod and a smile, this was a definite improvement for Lorelai. The candy crow obeyed, stilling her tongue and opening her mouth for a moment to give them both a breather. A wet, sticky Lori-bunny panted on the strawberry pink surface.
“Give. Me. The. Circlet,” she demanded weakly between breaths.
“Um… maybe we should stop and give it to her,” Molly suggested.
“And why would we do that?” Trixie asked.
“So we don’t make her mad…er?” the gummy bear offered. Her sister already made her life miserable just by slacking off, she really didn’t want to imagine a world where Lori tried to ruin her day.
“She deserves to be madder! She deserves to be madderer! Look at cha! You’ve been coverin’ her shifts for days while she’s been goofin’ around in here! She’s a jerk! Right, Feenie?”
“Well… if I’m being honest, she is a little bit of a jerk,” Phoenica admitted.
“She’s a LOTTLE bit of a jerk!”
They both turned to Molly. Even if she was trying to convince them, she still couldn’t really disagree with that.
“Okay, yeah, she’s an axolotl jerk, but still. We need her to move the bubble, right?”
Trixie “hmmm”ed, unconsciously closing her mouth around Lori in the process, while she considered the situation carefully.
“Oookay,” the crow agreed, in a tone which practically wrote out the subtext ‘on one condition’. “But first, you better apologize to Molly.”
“What?” Lori grumble-squeaked, holding back her frustration like one of those mean dogs on chains you weren’t supposed to pet.
“Apologize to Molly for making her work so dang much, and then trashin’ her room with your dumb bubble.” Trixie finished her demands and then opened her mouth wide to give the pending apology an unobstructed path to Molly’s gummy ears.
The soaked, saturated ,dripping mini-rabbit glared at her sister with a look that could make the happiest baby cry.
“Oh, no, no, that’s okay,” Molly waved frantically. Asking Lori to say sorry was like asking a bull not to charge at a red cape. She was just trying to get some sleep! Not get trampled!
“‘ay it,” Trixie insisted, keeping her mouth open and wriggling her tongue for good measure.
“You expect me to apologize? After this!?” She gestured to her matted, sticky cotton candy fur. “How’s this for an apology!? You’re all a bunch of-” The teen-turned-teeny began spouting off a stream of insults and curses, some of which Trixie didn’t even know. Feenie “eeep”ed and struggled in vain to find and then cover her little sheep ears. Trixie glanced at Molly and saw her gummy ears drooping and her face turning even sadder.
The candy crow snapped her trap shut, shutting Lori’s in the process.
“O-oh yeah!? W-well ya know what!?” Trixie stammered angrily.
*GULP*
A little bulge appeared then disappeared in her sugary neck, and then the candy crow swiped her wingtips together a few times dismissively, as if she were wiping her hands clean.
“…Did you just eat my sister? …DID YOU JUST EAT MY SISTER!?” Molly wasn’t exactly angry. More surprised and somewhat terrified at the concept.
“Ah-AH-AH-AHHHHHHHHH!” Feenie screamed. “You’re a murderer! And I HELPED you! And that means I’M a murderer! I’m a murderer! I’m a -”
Molly muted her. She knew it was mean, but it was hard enough handling the exhaustion and the panic, she just couldn’t take the noise on top of that. She hardly had enough brainpower left to even process what was happening.
“Relax, Feenie. You’re not a murderer yet. Pretty sure we gotta wait a few hours first,” Trixie soothed, as if that was supposed to calm her down.
Phoenica started going silently berserk, spinning and stomping around to the point where it looked like she might accidentally hurt herself. The other two girls spent a minute or two just calming her down again.
“Okay, okay, geeze!” Trixie finally said. “Look, I’m pretty sure I have a Potion of ‘Blech!’ stashed in the toy store for safe keepin’.”
A still-muted, panting Feenie gave her friend a confused look.
“You know: BLECH!” Trixie made a mock retching sound like she was about to blow candy chunks. “We’ll just cart Lori outta here with me and I’ll cough ‘er up out there. Then we get her to pop this bubble from outside and you don’t have to be an accomplice. Problems a-solved.” She patted her sugary midsection demonstrably, accidentally forcing up a little *urp*. “But we should probably hurry.”
…
*GULP*
Lori felt- ironically- her heart leap into her throat as she went slipping into Trixie’s. Gross, slimy esophagus bits squished into her uncomfortably from all angles and sent her packing like, well, a bite of cotton candy.
It only got worse the further she went. Everything past the mouth quickly became more and more real. She’d done a little bit of work on the candy-mal mouths to make them fit the aesthetic of the world, but she hadn’t done anything about the insides. After all she was never going to have to see them! That didn’t matter much for her characters, which were made from nothing. She could just leave them empty, default. But the default for humans was a mass of weaving, intestine-y tubes and organs, like the ones little Lori found herself entering now:
*SPLAT*
She comically peeled herself off the slimy stomach floor.
“Ew! Gross gross gross gross GROSS!” She tried to pull away from it all, but there was nowhere safe to go. The walls of Trixie’s gut pressed against her as they rolled by, welcoming her. “No no no! Let me out of here right now you big, dumb-” She pounded and raged against the wet walls, but it was like hitting a moist punching bag. The wrinkled sac simply absorbed every cutesy impact of her fluffball paws. She could hear that bratty sheep’s bleating so loud, even inside there, that she was sure no one on the outside could even hear her. When the wailing finally stopped, she heard Trixie’s words, vibrating around her:
“Relax, Feenie. You’re not a murderer yet. Pretty sure we gotta wait a few hours first.”
“Oh NO! If you think I’m going to end up a snack for a little urchin like you, you have GOT ANOTHER THING COMING!!”
The stomach squelched her together between its walls indifferently.
“UGH! Okay, come on. You’re smart. You’re creative- way more creative than they are. Yeah! You’ll figure a way out of here and then you’ll make them SORRY they ever dared set foot in your wor- WHOA!” She toppled over as Trixie moved suddenly; she was busy on the outside trying to calm her friend down. Lori’s paws plunged into something hot and thick.
“UGH! THIS IS SO DISGUSTING!” she whined. “Come on! There has to be some magic I can still use!” She tried various spells, waving her arms about as best she could, rhyming until her mental thesaurus ran dry, but couldn’t manage a thing. “Dang it! I can’t think in a place like this! Why did that stupid rat even include the word ‘powerless’ in his spell!? The only magic in this world is in artifacts anyway! …Wait! Duh!”
‘Artifacts’, a.k.a. magical objects. She made liberal use of them through her games. Blessed swords to slay dragons, enchanted helmets that let her breathe underwater or in outer space, or in this case…
She reached behind her back and grasped her hand as if she were reaching for something in a bag. Her furry little digits wrapped around something long and vaguely cylindrical. Luckily, hammer space didn’t require any special magic on her part, it was just a baked-in feature of how this world worked; having every character physically carry around all their inventory messed with their aesthetics. Trixie was lucky Lori had dropped her Frosted Blade when she’d been hit by that spell. Instead, what she pulled out was:
A CARROT!
But not just any carrot, a special carrot. Given to her as a gift from the blind, Rabbit Elder when she visited his burrow before setting off on her heroic quest. She was supposed to use it after one of the tyrant’s spells temporarily blinded her, but because of Molly and her annoying friends, she was gonna have to waste this special, important, key item gift on this.
Lori brought the vegetable to her mouth and quickly took a bite, being extra careful not to let any stomach goo get on it. She swallowed. Her belly grumbled. And then she began to feel something… in her eyes.
The mystical Corneal Carrot, expertly grown with the nutrients to instantly improve eyesight 1000-fold. Sure, maybe it didn’t help her a ton, but it was something! Surely being able to see would be a good first step to help her look for a way out, right?
Her eyes slowly adjusted to the nearly non-existent light. Her opinion of this idea adjusted much more quickly.
Ooooh no… No no.
She put a hand to her mouth, trying desperately not to hurl. She thought the texture, the sounds- not to mention the SMELL- had been bad enough before. But now that she could SEE this place in all of its fleshy, messy, mushy horror, all she could do was stare in utter revulsion.
Trixie’s body rocked again, nearly knocking her over once more. She caught herself with her paws this time, but again felt them sink deep into something hot and gooey. She looked down reflexively and immediately wished she hadn’t.
She squeaked out a gasp. It was the mouse. The adorable little chocolate mousey she’d made to be the big villain’s real, final form. He was supposed to learn a valuable life lesson and go on to lead a cute little mousey life after his heroic defeat. Now he was a vaguely defined lump of melty chocolate, hardly even in the right shape anymore thanks to Lori’s stumbling. Trixie’s belly had dissolved all the intricate details right off him. Just about all that was left was his face, with two big cartoon Xs for eyes.
The sight made the cotton candy bunny equal parts terrified, disgusted and furious. It was that last emotion she decided to act on.
“How dare they just come in here and destroy my hard work like this!? I mean how inconsiderate can you get!? When I get out of here I’m gonna-”
Trixie’s words interrupted her, something about a potion and a plan to hack her up like she was a bad burrito from a sketchy food truck.
Good, she thought evilly. The minute I get out of here, I’m going to make those brats wish they were never born. I’m gonna-
“Whoa!”
Vibrations shook her and the entire chamber around her as a satisfied wing-hand patted the belly she was inside of, sending her toppling face-first into the sugary corpse of her creation. Before she could even attempt to wipe the chocolate out of her cotton candy fur, let alone attempt to stand up, the walls squeezed tight around her in a sudden motion, and she heard a muffled:
*urp*
Did… did that kid just BURP her!? Oh yes, that was the last, last straw. She was going to trap those kids in a nightmare world that made this place look like a paradise! No, even better: she would tell both their parents and get them grounded for life! Molly too! Then maybe her little sister would remember how to actually have fun again instead of hanging out with Jerky and Dorky! Yes! Perfect! The second she got out, it would be her mission to-
*BWOMP*
…
Back in the world of cute candy animals, the trio had settled on their plan. They’d walked a short distance back toward where they’d entered the world, stepping just out to the edge of the clearing, before Molly raised her hand and flicked open a hole in her sister’s pretty plastic world.
A portal to her room appeared, a passageway back to reality. She stepped through it with the weary promptness of someone who just really wanted to drop into a bed as soon as possible. Her cute little gummy bear form very quickly dissolved away, morphing back into her familiar star-speckled afro and hand sewn bear hoodie. She hardly even took notice as she turned back to usher her friends safely back into reality.
“Oh…” Feenie whimpered sadly. She took one last look at herself, her adorable, perfect, sheepy little self. But she knew she couldn’t dawdle. Her friend Molly was waiting for her, and Molly’s time was a precious thing, more precious than even sheep. She stepped through the opening without another word, her marshmallow wool reverting to hair and clothing, her hooves to shoes and feet and hands.
Trixie was next. She took one moment to look back at the clearing and said in an imitative, cartoony voice: “So long! Nice to eat ya!” Then she spun back around and triumphantly trotted through Molly’s portal, back into her room, back into a completely un-augmented reality without fantastical candy animals or magical-
*BWOMP*
That was the sound of a belly tripling in size.
Within a second of stepping through the hole, Trixie’s pink candy feathers had returned to skin and clothes and pink hair. And Lori’s tiny, half-dissolved cotton candy fur had likewise become her normal attire, and at her normal size.
“Holy Toledo!!” Trixie exclaimed. The weight in her midriff pulled her forward and she fell right on top of the Lori-sized bulge, almost rolling over like a big bowling ball but ending up slumped to one side, resting on top of the few throw pillows that hadn’t been sucked into the dream bubble. “Aw bones!” she exclaimed, staring at this giant lump that had once been her flat belly.
“Trixie!” called both her friends, rushing to her side. Molly lowered herself- or really just sort of collapsed- onto her knees, while Phoenica flittered all around her in a panic.
“Oh! Dear Trixie! Speak to me!” the ex-sheep wailed. “Are you okay!? Can you breathe!? Are you going to pop!?”
“I’m okay! I’m okay!” the bloated girl assured, though she really didn’t sound assured. “I- I think,” she added. She wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, or how. She wasn’t even really sure what ‘going to pop’ felt like, but she was pretty sure she didn’t feel like it.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” Molly muttered worriedly. “What do we do!?”
“Uh… uh… Go get my Potion of ‘Blech!’ I think I stashed it inside one of the big teddy bears!”
“Right!” Feenie chirped seriously. She dashed for the door, nearly stumbling as she went. She’d already gotten quite used to being a sheep and using her four legs.
That left Molly alone with Trixie. …And with Lori.
…
The little cotton candy bunny had barely even had time to squeak out a scream. The walls had pressed in all at once, growing tighter and tighter and tighter like they might crush her. She called upon her epithet reflexively, and as she left her dream bubble world and all its self-imposed rules, it began to work. Augment. All she could think of were the oppressive, fleshy walls around her, so that’s what she augmented. They grew bigger, fleshier, stretchier.
When she finally returned to her full, normal size, she found herself bound into a fetal ball, packed tighter than a can of sardines. She couldn’t yell, she couldn’t speak, she could barely breathe. She tried to struggle, but the stomach around her just moved with her punches and kicks, stretching and bulging in ridiculous ways like something out of a cartoon before snapping right back into place like elastic.
UGH! LET ME OUT OF HERE ALREADY!! she screamed in her head.
The belly rumbled violently and then:
*BUUUURP*
“Wowza!!” Trixie exclaimed.
Aside from GROSS!! the sound made Lori think back to what the pink haired little imp had said a minute ago:
“You’re not a murderer yet. Pretty sure we gotta wait a few hours first.”
The tight walls pressing around her. Keeping her in place. Kneading her. Digesting her.
NO!! You are NOT having me for dinner you little shit! She felt a spark of confidence. She was outside her bubble now! She had full control of her powers once again! She could inscribe to the limits of her imagination! All she had to do was conjure up something, anything, any of a vast number of possible things, and she would be out of this mess in an instant.
She squeezed her eyes shut harder, clenched her fists, and focused.
Stomachs, melty mice, gross slimy- NO! Try again! Uh… tight spaces, hungry goblins- NO NO!!
Then she felt it, for the first time. A gentle burning sensation, steadily spreading over her body.
Acid. Digestion.
And suddenly that was all she could think about. Digestion, a hungry, churning stomach, melting her away into nothing. It was a horrible, disturbing idea, and it dominated her mind.
NOOO!! I WILL NOT LOSE TO THIS STUPID LITTLE TWERP AND HER STUPID BELLY!!
She used her power on impulse, absolutely refusing to do nothing and admit defeat.
*GURGLE*
…
“Wha- what’s happening!?” Molly asked anxiously.
“I don’t know!” Trixie responded in an equally frantic tone.
“But- but it’s your belly? Can’t you tell?”
“I’ve never had a belly the size of a beach ball before! Who do you think I am, my mom!?”
The huge bulge writhed and jiggled and wiggled. Big, cartoony lumps sprang to life and disappeared. And unsettling, exaggerated noises leaked out: a cacophony of glorps and gurgles and groans. And the louder the sounds got, the smaller the bumps became. With increasing speed, the vaguely Lori-shaped contours of Trixie’s stomach became more rounded, more uniform, softer.
And then suddenly there came a second, even louder blast of:
*UUUUUUUURRP*
The plump lump vibrated with the sound and the rushing gas leaving its confines, and then it gave one last emphatic:
*GLORP*
And then it went eerily still. Trixie and Molly looked at each other in unnerving silence.
“Guys! I found it! The Potion of ‘Blech!’” Phoenica called, charging back up the stares and into the room. She literally skidded to a halt.
“Um… I don’t think we’re gonna need that anymore…” Molly said, trying to break the news as gently as she could.
“That’s a true,” Trixie confirmed with an awkward mix of emotions.
The triumphant smile dissolved off of Feenie’s face like melting chocolate. She looked from the face of one friend, to another, then back, then to the belly- all round and still- and then to her friends again, and then the belly and then-
Feenie passed out. Full on swoon, hands thrown out limp, out like a light. She toppled over like a ragdoll.
*bworp-el*
She landed straight on top of Trixie’s oversized stomach, sending ripples through the squishy sphere.
“Hey!” the Roughhouse girl complained. It hadn’t hurt, she just thought Feenie of all people would think better of collapsing onto a friend’s giant, distended belly without asking first. Then a second thought crossed her mind. “Uh, she okay?”
Molly, still processing- or really, failing to process- all this, inched closer on her knees. She pressed them into the soft fleshy flab and leaned over it, reaching with one hand to nudge her friend.
“Feenie?” she asked, exhaustion heavy in her voice. “Are you- Hey…” A newly registered sensation sidetracked her burnt out brain. “Trixie, your belly is… really soft…” she muttered, lowering her hand from Phoenica’s side to instead poke curiously at the yielding mass beneath her. It was soft and smooth and squishy, like a waterbed, but also warm, like a hug.
Molly felt herself drawn to it, like it had its own gravity, a pull stronger than a black hole. She continued to poke even as her head descended. “It’s actually… a little… comfy…” Her face fell limp into the side of her friend’s belly, like it was the nicest pillow in the world.
“Huh?” Trixie asked, confused. “Really?” She decided to test it herself. She reached out with her own hand and, a bit awkwardly, poked the side of her own bulge. Her finger sunk into her stretchy skin like some kind of toy. “Whoa! That’s a lottle comfy!” the girl confirmed.
“Aaaaxolotl comfy,” Phoenica yawned unconsciously.
Well, that made it unanimous!
“Zzzzz… Zzzz…”
And just like that, Molly Blyndeff was out cold. Finally asleep. Snoring into her friend’s blubber.
Trixie thought for a moment in silence, realizing that she was the last non-sleeping person in the room. She shrugged. This was actually pretty cozy for her too. She’d landed on the pillows after all; she had her crow’s nest. She definitely didn’t mind sharing her belly-bed. And really, between Molly’s bear hoodie and Feenie’s 90% floof body, they made pretty good blankets. She picked up one nearby pillow and placed it over her face to block out the light, rubbed her belly a few times with a little evil smirk, and then let herself drift off to sleep with her friends.
And Lorelai Blyndeff found herself in a new form, one of her own making, though not her own design, sealed inside a different kind of bubble, a softer one, a dome of doughy detention, a prison of pudge.
At least now she was finally helping her little sister.
…
Trixie Roughhouse had left the Blyndeff Toy Emporium fairly early that next morning. She’d had her family come pick her up, since she was still having trouble walking, even though her belly had shrunken considerably.
She’d tried to help Molly before she left. Feenie still passed out every time they talked too much about what happened, so it had been up to her to be the emotional backup when Mol told her pops about it. Her father seemed… very weirdly unfazed. Trixie had briefly pondered if her friend might be adopted, since she couldn’t possibly fathom how such a nice, empathetic kid like Molly could be related to a man like that.
Back home, several family members had praised her on her first murder, several others were suspicious of her story, and a few more eyed her with cautious glances. That last group made her smirk and wring her hands. Good, good, her terrifying reputation was growing!
Her stomach, on the other hand, was shrinking. In fact her stomach was getting pretty empty at this point, really. Lori was moving along surprisingly well and surprisingly smooth. She didn’t really understand how a little girl who didn’t even know her own epithet yet had managed to do something as crazy as eat another person alive and gurgle them without a problem, but she wasn’t exactly complaining.
She had been walking down the hall, sporting her gut like a trophy, and picking some scraps of Lori’s fur-turned-clothes from her teeth with a little toy knife, when she finally felt a knock at her back door.
She made her way to the Roughhouse restroom, which was just about in the state you might expect: a used and abused toilet, sink, shower packed into a tiny room. Pressing her hands down around her gut, she managed to wiggle her skirt out of the way and plopped herself up onto the seat. Swinging her legs idly, she put her face on her fist, resting atop what was left of the bulge, and let nature take its course.
She glanced down at her belly with idle fascination as it rumbled and glorped, its contents shifting. Then something caught her eye.
There was a figure in the room with her!
She flinched a little from surprise, pressing her legs together in a privacy reflex. She might have shouted something, except she quickly recognized two things: first, that the figure’s complexion was unnaturally, ghostly pale, and second, that the figure was Lorelai Blyndeff.
They made eye contact. Trixie had seen quite a few ghosts before; some part of her cool epithet power that she hadn’t discovered yet, she was sure. But she’d never met the ghost of someone she’d killed before- probably because she hadn’t killed anyone until now! It made sense that she’d show up here, the girl reasoned, after all, this was basically her burial.
The phantom Blyndeff glared at Trixie silently. An unspeaking, angry, vengeful spirit.
Trixie Roughhouse stuck out her tongue in a brazen neener-neener expression. And then she squeezed. Her little body twitched and her bulge compressed slightly, and a little bit of Lorelai landed in the bowl below.
*plop*
*plop*
*prt* *plop*
With every little sound, the ghost’s expression cracked and chipped away a little more, anger giving way to disgust.
*prrrrt*
*splash*
The ghost of Lorelai Blyndeff wrinkled her un-smelling nose and rushed out, phasing through the closed door.
Trixie smiled in satisfaction and reclined against the toilet tank to finish attending to her business in peace.