I'd be happy to oblige. TOPTOPTOPTOPTOP!!!

~Chandra~

My eyes fly open. For a moment I have trouble focusing, hoping as hard as I can that the field and the hag and everything were just a dream...until I register all the feet at eye level. Great. Just great. I pick myself up, brushing dirt off my rag-skirt-thing. A glance up confirms the worst: I'm still in this creepy otherworld, and in trouble yet again. I'm surrounded by witches! And a skeleton! And a goblin thing even more gross than the hag! But...hold your horses. One of the witches, who is back-to-back with the goblin and another witch and apparently holding the skeleton's hand, looks strangely familiar, even from down here...It can't be. Is that Nadia? From my soccer team? How did she end up here? If she realizes who I am, maybe she'll help me! I back up against her shin, looking warily at a particularly nasty witch with a craggy wooden staff. Suddenly, an ear-piercing scream sounds from overhead, making me collapse with my hands over my ears, but not before I catch a glimpse of a black spectral woman overhead- and realize what she said: "The Witch Mother approaches! You are at Her mercy!" Well, actually she said something more like "AAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEAAAGHHH!!!!" That's what I heard, and yet understood as words. How is it that I suddenly know a language I'm sure I've never heard before? That I would otherwise not even have recognized as a language?

Then another witch steps out of a wisp of fog. How I could have missed it- and her- before I can't tell. For some reason she seems to exude an aura of fear, that makes me wish I could just get as far away from her as possible. I feel Nadia's leg stiffen, and know that she's scared too. I hear the new witch and the one in the huddle who isn't Nadia talking, though I can't discern intelligible words from their low, faraway voices. Or maybe just faraway to me, with my ears as close to the ground as they are. Then the new scary witch turns one hand palm-up. The fog coalesces into a little globe of swirling gray in her hand. As if acting as one, all the other witches in the circle (there must be twenty or thirty) raise their hands, wands, staffs, or whatever else they have to the sky. It is the first movement they have made the whole time, and there's something creepy about the exact synchronization with which they made it. The new witch, who I'm now realizing must be the Witch Mother, throws the ball of fog into the air, toward the center of the circle, right above my head. Suddenly, from each witch in the circle comes a bolt of lightning the exact same shade of purple as a blacklight, aimed at the ball. They converge at the instant it reaches the center of the circle, whereupon the ball explodes into a flat disc of black magic with a sound like a clap of thunder. The Witch Mother says a few words that somehow sound foul, like they're swearwords or meant as curses on any who hears them.

Instead of cursing anyone, however, the jet-black disc above starts to show images, like a television screen: A much younger-looking Witch Mother, cradling a baby; the Witch Mother sobbing bitterly as the same baby is sucked into some sort of swirling light; the same light appearing over a crib, with "EVE CITY ORPHANAGE" visible on a sign in the background, and the baby dropping into the crib; a pair of perfectly normal humans holding the baby, who I have come to recognize by a little curl of dirty blonde hair on its forehead. I gasp at this last image, because I recognize the adults! They're Mr. and Mrs. Reese, whom I know from the many times they've helped out at dance practice! And the baby must be Ellen. I barely know her, but she does play oboe in the same school band as me, and she's in my grade. I had no idea she was adopted...and with such an improbable biological mother. Why would the Witch Mother be showing these images? The other witch who isn't Nadia is blonde. Could it be...?

A gasp ripled around the circle, then the witch mother laughed.

"You shouldn't have done that....."

"Mom", begged Ellen, "please don't!"

But it was too late. In a burst of green light, James was a skeleton toad. 

The witch turned back into a human.

" You are strong. Daughter, how are your powers coming?"

"Er.... about the same as hers..... I haven't used them for an hour...."

"Blow that leaf off the tree."

Ellen saw a leaf hanging off an otherwise perfect tree. She sent a gust of wind.

Which actually tore the whole tree into tiny pieces.

The witches grinned. 

No, you're not! Woohoo! Top page!! Let's hope you stay that way, little thread!!!!!!

Cappie says ngan. Does Cappie like Nyan Cat? Or are the captchas having a party, with Cappie and Spammy and Nyan and Gordon and Mewmew and Squishy and Wishy-Washy and Sir Captcha in attendance?

And the silly thing just said I typed it wrong, and now Cappie says dyzz. Cappie spun/danced himself silly! (The amazing quantities of Mountain Dew were no help either.)