Lost Destinies

↳ 06: Restricted Spells And (Not) Imaginary Sisters

It was far too easy, in a place like Fairytaletopia, which was filled with enough wonders and surprises that it was difficult to keep everything occurring in the present in your head, to forget both the joys and the hardships of the past. Everything became a sort of blur, a grayed-out mush of things that you might vaguely recall had happened but couldn't remember the consequences of, or else you could remember the consequences and not why they occurred. The present would fly by in an instant, doomed to become the good-old-days.

Easily, then, Ramona had forgotten of a minor inconvenience that some might call a curse of hers. It was the morning directly after she and the rest of the thieves had checked into a middle-of-nowhere hotel (hotel being a generous description), exactly two days and counting since the botched Snow Palace heist that had ended with the death of Snow White. It was early, but the crew ran on a busy schedule in order to ensure their survival, and Lindsay was hovering over Ramona in the bathroom of room 3-24, placing various lip colors next to her face to determine which would best match her complexion. Something about lying low to avoid the law enforcement... she hadn't really been listening.

"Oh, I've got hair dye, too," she said, setting down the lip tint and rifling through the duffel bag of beauty supplies resting on the counter. "The good stuff; you just drink a potion."

Ramona's mind was so preoccupied with the logistics of getting through FastTrav that she absentmindedly took it, knocking it down without a second thought. Contour the hell out of Claude's face to get through security. What to do about the van...? Luggage transport can shrink it, but they're bound to search it first—

"See, it's working already," Lindsay said with a nod of approval, bringing Ramona's attention to her reflection. She'd never been too fond of staring at herself in the mirror—as a kid it was mostly because of insecurity but now she just didn't find it to be all that important. But now her hair, black on one side and platinum blond on the other, was fading to a shiny auburn from the roots down. She watched with mild curiosity as the new color made its way all the way down to her shoulders, soaking through her entire head of hair. That was when she remembered.

"Oh, wait. Lindsay, that's not going to—"

The ends of her hair shriveled as if she'd lit them on fire and with a faint crackling sound, the auburn disappeared as quickly as it had come. She frowned and touched it delicately. Lindsay turned to her in horror.

"What the actual fiddlesticks. Hair dye doesn't—"

"Yeah, it never does."

Lindsay smacked her on the shoulder. "You should've told me that before you wasted my hair potion!" Ramona found it amusing that she didn't even bother with asking for a reason behind it; she was just offended. And it was a good thing, too. She didn't have an explanation.

They were interrupted by loud clanging out in the room. Ramona and Lindsay stepped out to see Penny banging pots and pans in front of Claude's figure sprawled on the couch. Claude, the only one of them who was still asleep, awoke with a start, and in fast succession jumped up, smacked the pans away, and tackled Penny to the floor—all survival instinct. Even Ramona couldn't stop herself from bubbling up with laughter. Bear and Minerva were chuckling to themselves from the pop-up kitchen, both collaborating on the effort of breakfast.

Penny and Claude were both swearing loudly, getting in sloppy kicks and punches and rolling across the floor like angry siblings (or perhaps feral cats).

"Now, Verelia," Lindsay said giddily. "Attacking a lady? What would your mother say?"

"She'd say that Penny is a sick son of a—"

Penny, who had him in a chokehold, cracked him in the nose, knocking his head back and eliciting an irritated grunt. She grinned triumphantly. Claude wriggled out of her grip and gave her one last glare before dusting himself off.