fandomtownies | Magic Box,Thursday, March 3

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Magic Box,Thursday, March 3

It was a nice, quiet day at the shop, and Tara had plenty of time to clean and organize the shelves of herbs, readymade potions, and other spell ingredients. She was feeling too lazy to track down a ladder, but that shouldn't be a problem, right?

And as soon as she finished thinking that, she managed to tip over a large jar of some kind of deep purple herbal juice blend. She ducked and wasn't hit by the jar itself, but when it hit the floor and broke and the liquid splashed up ...

Well. There went her second white shirt of the week. Tara would spend the rest of her shift hunting for gremlins.

[OOC: Open shop, slightly besmirched witch inside.]

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There were turkey wrap things and minestrone for lunch, and no news of the sort-of-but-not-exactly-work-related variety to distract Kennedy today, although she was mulling over an idea for next week's reserves meeting.

Until she got to the shop, anyway, at which point there were slightly more immediate questions at hand.

"Something tells me you didn't decide to try some wacky new dye thing. Unless you did?"

You know, like that.

"No," Tara grumbled, barely looking up from the wad of wetted paper towels she was dabbing at her shirt with. "I'm a stain magnet this week. It's like I'm possessed in one really weird way. Hi."

"With bad timing for white shirts," Kennedy noted, possibly a little more flippant about it than she could have been. "I feel you-- I splashed bleach on my favorite jeans last night, and this is why I shouldn't be allowed to do my own laundry." Yes, she was whining a little.

She set the food down, then came over to inspect the damage more closely, offering, "I can run back to the dorms and get you something to change into?"

"I know," Tara said sheepishly. "Go me, wanting to show off the tan..."

She gave Kennedy a pleading look. "Would you? After lunch, I mean. I ... kinda like having you here for a while. I'll try and figure out if I can fix your jeans if you do?"

"This is me not complaining about you showing off the tan," Kennedy told her-- not that she'd complain about anything at all that Tara ever showed off. "I'm pretty sure wearing white shirts in general is kind of like inviting stains to come after you. It's no big, really."

She'd been guaranteed to make that clothing run back to the dorms anyway, but the pleading look made her give in, visibly.

"Duh, like I was gonna go anywhere before lunch... you could fix them?"

That was in the tone of 'people do that, really?' After all, she'd been prepared to just get a new pair.

"Maybe?" Tara said hopefully. "If it's not a huge stain I could dye over it or ... I don't know, sew on a patch. Or, uh, there is the whole magic thing..."

She crinkled her nose. "Why don't I know more laundry magic, anyhow?" She'd been asking herself that a lot lately.

"Because this is a weird new trend in disastrous clothes stains?" Kennedy suggested. "Hey, no pressure, babe-- I can get new jeans, it's no huge thing if you can't fix 'em. There's sort of a big pale splotch that looks vaguely like a gnome on the butt now anyway."

She frowned, then added consideringly, "Though the laundry magic thing, that could be useful."

"A cute gnome or an ugly gnome?" Tara asked absently. "And yeah, I know. I bet Karla could do something."

She reconsidered. Given Karla couldn't even make cookies ... "Or ... somebody from her world."

"Didn't exactly spend that much time checking out the gnome blotch," Kennedy said lightly. "But, I mean, there's gotta be some kind of spell, right?"

The idea of Karla's cooking, er, prowess extending into other domestic areas scared her a little, especially since Kennedy was pretty sure Karla's approach to laundry was a lot like hers: namely, for other people to do.

"'cause, hey, magic shop here. It's a good place to start looking for that kind of thing."

No, she didn't know any better than to suggest this like it was a good idea.

"I mean, if anyplace had books about it, it'd be here," Tara said, and ignored lunch for a minute to go over to the bookshelves. "I know I saw something about practical household magic in here somewhere..."

Kennedy followed along after her, and took a moment to inspect the nearest shelves before she leaned against them. (Just in case she leaned on something with a concept of personal space.)

"Like the witchy version of Hints from Heloise," she remarked. "Man. What isn't there a spell for?"

"Lots and lots and lots of things," Tara said, running her fingers over the spines until she found the book she anted. "At least not at home. At least not that I know ... oooh."

She was screwing up her face in concentration as she read down the index. "There's some weird stuff in here."

That was enough of an excuse for Kennedy to come over and try to lean against her shoulder, peering down at the book. Most of it still made little to no sense to her, but at least she was trying rather than shrugging it off?

"Weird how? Like how to tell when your toilet is actually backed up and not possessed? 'cause I'm pretty sure that happened at the summer house once."

(It hadn't. But she'd been nine, and convinced of it.)

Tara laughed. "Why did you think your summer house toilet was possessed?" she asked. "And just ... like, this. Why would you do three pages of ritual just to get out of vacuuming?"

"It was making weird creepy burbling noises!" Kennedy protested, chuckling. "It sounded like it was saying something."

She leaned closer to peer at the page. "Okay, that is weird. So much extra work. Why?" As if she'd ever vacuumed before in her life, either.

"I don't want to think about what a toilet would have to say," Tara said. "... or the kind of demon who would live in one."

She shrugged at the question. "I don't know! I guess if you really want your room to smell like ... garlic and mugwort?"

Not so appealing.

"I will admit I never really thought that one all the way through. Anyway, it's fine now, and good thing since that's the one in the bedroom we stayed in when we went there?" Kennedy grinned, then resumed her perplexed-face. "And that sounds pretty gross. Which is not generally a description I associate with cleaning."

A pause, then:

"Or, well, the aftereffects of it."

"Not so much," Tara agreed, flipping through the book to the pages on laundry. "How have you been, anyhow? Other than bleachy."

"Missing Hawaii?" Kennedy wasn't even trying to keep the whine out of her voice there. "We totally should've just stayed there. Like forever."

"We could have just hidden under the bed in our hotel room until they left without us," Tara said lightly. "Hey, maybe we can go back? Like after graduation. Summer vacation."

"We should have. We could be on the beach right now." There was that subject again; it was getting so hard to avoid. But rather than ruin the moment (yet, anyway) with practical concerns like whether she'd be allowed to stay for the summer, Kennedy just went with the idea.

"Summer vacation-slash 'I survived Fandom High' celebration? That would be awesome."

Still, she couldn't sound completely enthusiastic about it.

Tara hadn't entirely processed the possibility Kennedy wouldn't be allowed to stay for the summer; she was going to pretend it was absolutely happening until someone proved otherwise.

"It would be!" she said, determined. "Like the road trip the graduates went on last year? Only just for us."

Kennedy refused to believe any rumblings about that were more than idle talk, anyhow.

"We could hit all the islands," she suggested, happy to run with it. "Get a cabin with a private beach for a couple of days, maybe, take advantage of that..."

Of course she waggled her eyebrows there, and it wasn't that she really had to be that suggestive, but she'd rather focus on that than the inevitable leaving part that came afterward, hypothetical trip or not.

The eyebrow waggling made Tara giggle. "You mean for campfires, right?" she teased. "We could do a big old clambake, right outside our front door..."

Did they do clambakes in Hawaii? Whatever.

"Oh, yeah, exactly what I had in mind," Kennedy retorted easily, reaching over to poke her; she was pretty sure Tara knew exactly what she'd been implying. "Hell, we could come up with so much stuff to do we'd have to just... not leave."

Such a long shot, and she knew it, but hey, she could indulge the wistful thinking, damn it.

Tar poked back. "People would miss us," she said. "And at some point your parents would quit paying for it, or I'd start feeling guilty they were still paying for it, so we'd have to come home anyhow. But mostly, people would miss us."

A beat. "But ... it'd be nice."

"Yeah." Kennedy's smile went a little crooked, and she made a grab for Tara's hand. "Plus you know it'd only be so long before the world's gonna need saving again, and we can't miss that, so forever? Not actually an option. It'd be nice for just a little while, though."

"We could let other people save the world for a month or two," Tara said, squeezing that hand as she put her book on a nearby shelf. "I think we earned a vacation, for a little while."

"I'd miss saving the world," Kennedy admitted. That sort of thing got to be a bit addicting in its way after a while, at least for her. "But I guess we can't hog all of that, huh? I mean, that's a lot of world-saving going down in a single school year, so... yeah, vacation would be nice."

Elphaba entered, smile on her face and a pencil in her hands.

"I think I'm getting the hang of this," she said. "Hello, Tara."

"The hang of what?" Tara asked, blinking a bit, before she noticed the pencil. "Oh! The, um. Floaty thing. That's great. Want to show me?"

Yes, her shirt still had a huge purple blotch on it. She'd figure it out ... later.

"Oh, yes," Elphaba said, noticing the blotch. She, however, thought it might have just been a fashion choice.

"I practiced quite a bit on the trip. And since I've had my room to myself, it's helped with the concentration."

She set the pencil down on the counter. "But before I start, I should ask how you are doing, I think."

"Normal," Tara said. "The trip helped, 'cause I was starting to get a little ... you know."

She fluttered her hands vaguely, trying to convey "overworked" and "keep getting pulled off to save the world" and "my girlfriend is leaving in a few months wah."

"But ... good. Mostly. How are you?"

"Well, I think I have nothing to complain about, really," Elphaba said. "My health is well and I continue to be treated rather nicely here. I think that means I am doing quite well, on the whole."

She gave a friendly little smile. "I am glad that the trip was relaxing for you."

"So am I," Tara said. "Did you like it? And is your health ... I mean, is it usually not good?"

It struck her as a somewhat odd thing to mention.

"Oh, it was a beautiful place," Elphaba said, barely preventing herself from gushing. "I enjoyed it quite a lot, other than when my roommate made herself ill. And my health is quite robust, actually. I was just... I don't know, it is one of those things I am grateful for, I suppose."

"Well that's ... good," Tara said. "What happened to your roommate? Drink too much?"

Elphaba nodded. "She said she imbibed too much tequila," she said. "I'm starting to think that any amount of the stuff would probably have been too much."

"Don't ask me," Tara said. "I can drink a little wine or punch or whatever, but I think most of it just tastes gross."

"I don't really partake, either," Elphaba admitted. "Seeing the effects on Leia is more than enough of a lesson to know that I should avoid the stuff. She seemed in an absolute awful state."

"And her dad was with us," Tara said, wincing in sympathy. "Which I'm sure made it that much better, right?"

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Magic Box,Thursday, March 3

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