"I'm not what I was, maybe I was never what I believed I was." Patting the brown dirty cat laying asleep on the ground, Shivani looked at her mother, pacing anxiously.
Ray stood leaning on the wall, his expressions white cold.
"This place is- numb but when something goes off, it's a turmoil." Said Ray from his spot in the corner.
"I don't believe 'the mother sorcerer' broke her promise. Whitesnake attacked you?" Evesa said, her fidgety fingers almost shaking with fury.
"Maybe it was a random snake, not someone that belonged to Martha, your mother sorcerer." Ray said, moving away from the wall while keeping safe distance from the cat.
"Whitesnake ain't some random snake, only Martha owns the whitesnake named Luilli in this realm. And judging by the description, she was the one."
"I got it. But Shivani, will you go change into something less bloodied? And also get rid of this cat." Ray almost pleaded, his features not like normal self but exasperated and fatigued, messed hair and wrinkled cloths were all proof of the physical and mental challenges they faced since past few days.
When their eyes caught Shivani on the door, both rushed to check on her but it turned out that it was her who killed some enormous white coloured snake that attacked her on way back.
"The cat's going nowhere, Fudel will stay. And I have no spare dress."
"Fudel? You named her already."
Ray gave another disgust look to the sleeping kitty, no denying, she was cute but cats weren't Ray's ally.
"I can help with that." Evesa, pointed her index finger with ring on, towards the empty space on the floor, with a swish of sparkles, a blue sponge Bob t-shirt and black baggy pants appeared out of nowhere on the grubby floor.
"I'll go and change out of it." Shivani collected the cloths and stood up to leaving the meowing cat on the floor.
She crossed the hall towards exit which was now illuminated with dim evening sun rays falling on the doorway along with lightning up the part of cabin.
"This place doesn't have a restroom?"
"Of course it do, we just spelled it out of sight." Ray's sarcasm didn't hit her, instead, with another wave of her index finger, a toilet appeared in one of the far corners of the room.
"With these abilities you could actually get us out of here momi, you realise that?" Shivani crooked her head towards Evesa who remained silent to this suggestion. Without any more nag Shivani walked into the cuboidal box of wood.
It wasn't surprising that this box was actually a toilet with a pot and sink, not that she doubted her mother's wizarding abilities in the first place.
"No, like seriously, why don't you help us out of here?" Ray repeated the question.
"That can get us all in big bad trouble and if you're here Ray, you have an important role to play."
Ray didn't bother pushing as he knew it will get out nothing but another shake off.
"If you have nothing else for me then I'm gonna hit the streets, explore the town."
"Wait wait." Shivani came, bursting the door open.
"I've yet to tell you the big stuff."
There she spilled her experience with hut, stretchy mirror and the search crew in the jungle.
Somewhere in the middle of Forrest Latebrosa, night was lit and alive with firewood burning into a small bonfire, surrounding it, sat Sol and Ariem, closely in front of Hell burrow, a bunch of green apples laying on the sand before them. To the opposite side were Imam, Diya and Fonjuar in a slight curve.
On one of the rocks beside them was Dadi, reading a book from Hendoor's library while Zoya was busy frying the dead rabbit on the fire in middle.
"I fail to understand this, how can we not satisfy ourselves with these apples." Sol said, frustrated with looking at her overkilling efforts to fry the dead animal while it's skin refused to budge.
"I'm doing it for all of us, a little encouragement here." Said Zoya, "it's still cold. This is so weird."
While other's were busy with lighting up the woods and dry leaves for campfire, Zoya wandered around for a couple of meters from the house and to her extreme delight, found a cold dead bunny. To her utter surprise and annoyance, after being held by a long branch on the top of blazing fire for half an hour, it was still cold.
Ariem and Sol after exchanging a look of amusement, glanced at Fonjuar, who shrugged with an apologetic smile.
"This is weird, show me." Dadi finally got up from her spot and approched Zoya, who pulled the lifeless bunny away from fire.
"How did it die? Well- it's pretty peripheral wound so can't be another bigger animal, for sure." Dadi examined the body round about.
"Looks like a tiny piercy object hit this guy, like Ariem's arrows." Zoya said, which got Ariem up and excited, she left Sol's side and reached out to take the bunny from their hand.
"It is very much like my arrow would leave on living beings. Who else use my killing methods?"
Just then Hendoor came out of the house, holding four Carafe with a basket made out of bamboo.
He placed the basket near the fire and beside it, the wine bottles.
"Here's wine, cheese and bread puffs." He announced, pointing at the basket on ground.
"Tell me again man, how do you get these human food here?" Mikesh asked, reaching out for one of the carafe, "thanks for the wine by the way." And with a swift fingers motion, he popped the the cork off the bottle and gulped down half of it in a go.
"We do visit human world, it's them who can't enter this."
"Didn't listen, don't care. I'm all sold for tonight." Mikesh was now soaring into the sky with drink and food in front, after long hard day.
"I don't believe I spent my day repairing that stupid ladder when I could've done this." He took another sip of wine.
Imam and Diya too, were now picking out tissue wrapped cheese and bread puffs out of the basket.
"Take it easy wood master, you don't want to sleep through the ground breaking story you're about to hear." Ariem stretched her legs and back, easing the stiffness as she rubbed the dust off an apple, ready to engulf it in.
"Zoya's having troubles baking, you mind helping her?"
"Sol? You didn't tell her yet?" Hendoor looked at Zoya, his eyes screaming sorry but mischief evident on the face.
"What? What didn't you tell me?" Zoya demanded, her posture fury and surprise ridden.
"Oh honey we played with ya. It was a prank." Ariem spoke between the bites as everyone else stopped munching and stared at Zoya.