Cupcakes and Tea

Chapter Eight - The Whooping Exorcist

The passageway felt as though it had been there for years: they had walked for what felt like a very long time, till the light behind them was not even a pin prick and Toph began walking through layers upon layers of webbed walls. He felt them clamp over his face, gently glueing through his hair, and lightly brushing against his lips as he breathed. The only sounds were that of their feet wading through the ankle-deep water, the clanking of Toph's necklaces bouncing against his chest, and Ninety-Eight's fast breathing as she held Toph's bag for comfort as though afraid of getting lost in the narrow, dark and cold passageway.

When the webs were far too much to bare, and the air was getting so thick he could feel it inhale down his throat, Toph pulled his bag off his back and used it as a shield against his face; Ninety-Eight now holding his shirt for direction, as he could feel the moisture of her hands, sweat or water, dampening in her grasp. From the conversation only the previous day when they had arrived at the burrow of the badgers, the Snoop had clearly stated she knew passageways into The Witch's castle although didn't know where they lead; but surely, thought Toph, if she knew they were passageways, she would know where they lead because how else would she have known they were ways to break into the castle? Perhaps they aren't passageways at all, but merely traps into a path of death, came a familiar voice in Toph's head, this drain is filled with spider-webs, and it's so dark there is no knowing what else may be in here.

The narrowness of this passageway felt just as worse, to Toph, as that of his bedroom with three surrounding brick walls that felt very much like a prison cell. He couldn't help thinking that if he were back in his home with a bowl of fresh fruit, a kettle of boiled water for making a pot of tea in his favourite purple mug, and someone such as Cat had turned up at his front door to tell him everything this journey would behold, Toph wouldn't have believed a word of it and probably would have slammed the door in Cat's face. Howsoever this comes into being, as he looked back upon the day Cat had, indeed, turned up at his house without knocking or even a simple welcome, but merely helped himself to the kitchen-bar stool and ate Toph's macaroni-and-cheese, he came to realise why Cat hadn't used the front door, nor the back door for all that matters, because he simply wouldn't have let him in – then he considered Cat would have just walked in anyway. Although it was a major shock to see Cat in his home as though he had popped in out of thin air, and he had, indeed, been writing about his odd encounter at the beach meeting three strange beings later known as Moofieee, Ninety-Eight and Cat, and that he had, indeed, been dreaming of meeting the three, seeing dancing teapots, having an abnormal tea party, and Moofieee casting his house into flames, but all these would have been seen to him as simple dreams.

“Perhaps this is a dream, too” came the voice in Toph's head; a voice he remembered as the laugh which caused him to laugh aloud, too, and the one who suggested the path of death, “and you just haven't woken up yet, like being in a coma for a week because you stupidly hit your head against the wall in your sleep.”

“But what about the other dreams,” suggested another, though calmer, voice which Toph thought was the one that mentioned camembert cheese and the crackers and the brie, “the dream about a llama with wings of bones falling into a hurricane?”

“It wasn't a hurricane,” snarled the other, “it was a swirling pool of water caused by the giant sea monster – or whatever it was - inhaling the llama into its mouth!”

“But all the same, isn't it. The llama was about to drown.'

“They are not the same!”

“Never mind what is and isn't the same. The llama was about to die … and what about all those other eyes? They looked like those mermaids eyes if you ask me.”