Beware the Night

Rose was minding her own business, which was to say she was being the responsible one. She was actually minding the business of the Hodge Podge because someone had to from time to time since they were still missing their third. Rose found her reading interrupted though when something viciously blue and bubbling was shoved under her nose by a very enthusiastic fire witch.

“Here! Drink this!” Sebella told her, stealing the book away so that she could press the too cold glass into Rose’s hands.

“What? Why?” Rose asked, eying the concoction warily. It burped cobalt at her in answer.

“C’mon, just do it. It will be fine.” Sebella said, the shrill whine of her voice earning the grown witch a hard look over wire glasses from the other. “I swear.”

“No.” Rose decided. It had been a harrowing enough morning already, thanks to some lost harpies who refused to ask for directions. To make matters worse, they kept looping back to the Front to complain about how lost they were. Rose felt that she didn’t need to deal with bubbling blue drinks that may or may not turn her into something funny looking.

In addition to the lost harpies, Rose had dealt with a rather annoying peddler from some other plane of existence, one who had tried to pawn off some substandard, miniaturized fairy rings to her. Julie had left him and his tacky little rings to the raccoons, letting the shop’s tribe sort him out.

“You’re no fun.” Sebella pouted, slouching over the counter to glare at the returned drink. It spit out more of itself over the rim in a very petulant manner for a drink. Rose wondered if the stuff was going to come out of the wood counters.

“Then why don’t you drink it yourself?” Rose pointed out. There was enough movement from the drink to gain Franklin’s attention, the little barn owl winging down to see what the concoction was trying to do now. At the moment, his best guess was that it was trying to escape from the confines of its glass with limited success.

“I don’t wanna. You know how I feel about carbonation.” Sebella sighed as she shooed Franklin away to have her fingertips nipped at. “Ouch!”

“You know he doesn’t like that. Franklin is people.” Rose said, collecting up her brother. He looked quite cross about the entire ordeal as she placed the tiny barn owl on her shoulder.

“Then maybe someone should have been looking where he was going if he wanted to stay people.” Sebella pointed out. “You should let Franklin drink it. It might change him back.”

“Or?” Rose asked, arching a brow at the other witch who shrugged.

“I don’t know. Make him ten feet tall, or a tomato? I kind of lost track of what all went into it.” Sebella admitted with a crooked grin and a shrug.

“No, no, nope. We are not doing that.” Rose said, picking the glass up to dump the drink down the sink, or at least tried to. It took a little prodding to get it to come out of the glass, Rose finally having to give up. Handing it back over to Sebella, the witch set the whole thing on fire to get it to comply.

Personally, Rose hated it when Sebella’s potions gained sentiency. “Who in their right mind would even want to drink that?”

“I dunno. It was worth a shot. It smelled good at least.” Sebella said in that flippant manner that tended to set other people’s teeth on edge. The witch was already moving on to bigger and better things as she sorted through their latest shipment, which had decided to appear out of thin air as per usual. While fairly convenient for the most part, things could get a little dicey if there were perishables in the mix, and the witches were busy that day. Despite their best efforts, aisles 383 thru 478 still smelled funky from the whole bulk hamster milk incident.

“How would I know? I obviously haven’t had time to inventory anything.” Rose said, adjusting her glasses to peer down better at the boxes of mixed sizes and shapes. “With any luck though, this shipment will have some more All Seeing Eyes in the mix. We’re out again.”

“Shocking, said no one. Those damn things never last long here. Hell, they shatter if you so much as look at them wrong.” Sebella said, “What happened to the last batch of them? I don’t remember selling any.”

“You’d have to up here actually working to recall that.” Franklin snorted, an odd noise for an owl to make.

“Dwarves.” Rose answered.

“Enough said.” Sebella sighed as she opened lids, peeking into containers. As much as she personally loved dwarves, they could get out of hand if they found the Hodge Podge’s hidden bar first. The dragon who owned and operated it ran a fine establishment, but Bluto was a little heavy handed when it came to his pours.

“Looks like we got a lot in this time, more so than usual.” Rose said, reaching behind the counter for a loaded clipboard and pen.

“I don’t know why you bother to inventory anything we get. It’s just going to get lost anyway, or run off on its own. Hey, what’s in this?” Sebella said, shaking a box to have it plucked out of her fingers a moment later.

‘This’ was a small wooden box, covered with strange glowing sigils written in some long dead language. The writing shifted all on its own over the entire surface of the box’s salt corroded wood.

“Please don’t do that. You don’t know what is in it.” Rose said with a long suffering sigh. It was a small wonder to her that Sebella still had all her fingers and toes.

“That’s why I was shaking it. I was trying to find out.” Sebella said, pouting a bit about it. “Well, are you going to open it or not?”

“Open a box with glowing symbols all over it? Sure. What could possibly go wrong?” Rose said, rolling her eyes.

“C’mon. Live a little.” Sebella grinned, “I dare you.”

“I’m sorry, but I would prefer to live a lot.” Rose pointed out, though it was tempting. There was something about a closed box that just begged to be opened.

“C’mon. I double dog dare you.” Sebella said, earning herself a Look. “Grow up.”

“Never.” Sebella laughed, chucking some bubble wrap at Rose’s head. Catching it, Rose passed it off to Franklin to throw away for her.

The little owl decided popping it would be far more entertaining, Jay waking up long enough to come join the owl. Giving more to Franklin, Rose laughed at the noise as the fox bodily rolled on the noisy packing material, making it crackle and pop. Caught up in the spirit of fun, but still against her better judgment, Rose opened the box.

Always go with your gut. If your gut is telling you that something is a bad idea, odds are, it is.

The box turned out to be a pocket dimension of some sort, big black tentacles bursting out from it. Rose did the first thing that came to mind, which was to fling the box away from herself with a high pitched ’eep’ noise escaping from her.

To add insult to injury, Sebella fell over laughing as the box righted itself to start crawling away. Jumping off the counter he shared with Franklin, Jay bounded after it, the fox soon returning with just the box, empty of its tentacles and rogue pocket universe.

“Oh bother, there it goes. Now we’ll never find it.” Rose said sadly, watching as the tentacles turned a corner in the shelving to disappear into the abyss of the aisles. There was a rumbling among the various products there, and then an ominous silence, which could have been a very good or very bad thing depending on who you asked.

“Your face was priceless.” Sebella laughed, crowing from the floor. She still hadn’t bothered to get up which was rather brave on her part considering what was down there. “Why would you open of box with glowing sigils on it? That’s a good way to lose a finger or five.”

Rose sighed, taking off her glasses to clean them. “Please quit being horrible, and get some work done.”

“Is there any coffee left?” Sebella asked, still giggling as she picked herself off of the floor.

“Not anymore.” Rose said with such grim resolution, it made the other witch stare in open horror at her.

“Now who’s being horrible?!” Sebella said with a long suffering groan. “You know I need my coffee.”

“Then learn how to make it.” Rose huffed, picking her book up from where it had been tossed to dust it off.

“I know how to make it. You just make it better.” Sebella told the other witch. Sebella was not above shameless flattery to get what she wanted. Rose was on to her though, leveling a flat look at the other witch.

“I know I do. You would do well to remember that.” Rose pointed out, opening her book again with every intention of finishing it. She decided to ignore the complaints of the caffeine deprived in favor of finding some place quiet to read.

“Hey, where are you going? Who’s going to put all this stuff away?” Sebella called after the Maiden.

“You are, my darling dear. It will give you time to think about being a better person.” Rose told her, already paying more attention to her book than the whiny witch.

“Cruel.” Sebella sighed as she sorted through the rest of the inventory, making faces at it. Despite popular opinion, unicorn’s poop was not rainbow colored, or made of glitter. Mermaid scales, while beautiful, still smelled strongly of fish. Either item also tended to waft their odors, imparting it to anything placed near them. The combination of the two made Sebella’s eyes water.

“You’ll live.” Rose said, sounding all sorts of smug until she rounded a blind corner in the aisles. Jay, Franklin, and Sebella all quickly looked up and over when a scream came from that direction.

A moment later, Rose slowly came walking back to the Front, covered in red wet…well, all Sebella could think of it as was gunk. The thusly named ‘Gunk’ covered Rose was frizzy blonde head to high heeled boot toe, dripping off of her clothing in little chunks of wet plopping messes.



“Is that gelatin?” Sebella asked, swiping some of the red might-be-gelatin off of Rose’s arm with her finger. The blonde witch made a sour face at her as Sebella shamelessly tasted the gunk. Sebella was pleasantly surprised to find out that the gunk was cherry flavored and nonlethal. “So, what the hell happened to you? You were barely gone six seconds.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Rose muttered as she climbed up to the second level of infinite many where the witches lived with their respective animal others.



“C’mon, why are you covered in cherry gelatin? At least, it tastes like cherry gelatin. Might not be though.” Sebella called after her, leaning against the railing to watch little bits of wobbly red fall off Rose to stain the floors. “Was it the tentacles?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Rose yelled back, sounding thoroughly put out.



“She doesn’t want to talk about it.” Sebella told the animals, making a face at the fox and owl who blinked back at her from their spots on the counter. Jay just yawned, offering no opinion on the matter. Unless something was on fire, or threatening to explode, the fox deemed it not worth his time to get involved now that there wasn’t any more bubble wrap to pop.

With a quill made from his own feathers, Franklin jotted down a note of the incident in his ledger. After conversing with some of the shop’s sparrows, the owl noted a cleanup was needed between aisles 39 thru 64. It would be tricky though, mostly due to the fact that aisle 61 currently existed on another planet.

Franklin knew one thing for sure though. Nothing good was going to come of this. Owls are rarely wrong about such things.