Cupcakes and Tea

Chapter Eleven - The Final Gathering

The escape of The Witch's castle earned Toph a remarkable amount of praise, which he tried turning down by reminding them that is was pure luck that kept him alive – they took this as modesty. Although Toph was, indeed, saved by pure luck, had The Witch not blown her throne room door into shards; had Toph not taken the leap of faith by jumping through the floor of which the chandelier had fallen through; had Toph not reached the forth floor in time, running past collapsing flooring, broken glass, and a wall that Kalelius had smashed in half with his dragon tail, as it turned out, Toph would have died. Nevertheless, all the stories about what happened once Ninety-eight and himself had entered the castle passageway were just as exciting as Ninety-eight's explanation of fighting the guard in the dungeon – saving Toph's life, as she put it; although she was probably right.

Anna explained that not long after Ninety-eight and Toph had entered the passageway, they met a horse named Fryfry who, like everybody else, had been cursed. Fryfry told them that ahead of where they were was a forked path that lead into two sides of the castle: the main gates and the courtyard. Anna suggested that Kevin, Same Ol' and Fryfry take the path that lead to the right so they could, as Toph predicted, create a diversion in order to sneak the others into the courtyard. Their plan did not go accordingly as they had not expected The Witch to get involved with Kevin's group (if she hadn't, however, things could have gone terribly wrong), which lead Anna's group into fighting a sound of warthogs that Toph had joined not long after the war broke off.

Then Suzie explained that she knew the badger-like beasts were not originally beasts, because she had met Kalelius when Anna sent her out the night they broke into the burrow; she lead the badgers down towards the flesh-eating beast, later known as Kalelius. From there, Suzie couldn't find where the others had got to, so she flew towards the castle where The Witch caught her and used her as hostage. When she was on The Witch's plate was when Suzie woke from her unconsciousness, opening and closing her claw as a signal to Toph that she was, indeed, alive, which left Toph to improvise something to get Suzie free until Killer, The Witch's servant, interrupted them and they could all escape. Suzie then flew off when the battle of warthogs broke out so she could find where Kalelius had got to, but the badgers couldn't wake the dragon.

Kevin and Same Ol', as it turned out, were battling a sound of warthogs on their own, as Fryfry couldn't fight, and they were later joined by the four badgers who were later known as Pisces, Matt, Miscon, and Alex.

Toph was glad everyone had turned back to normal. He was glad that Anna was glad that she could occupy her ship across the sea with ease, now she had her hands back, as she took every moment possible to steer the ship on her own (although it wasn't necessary); and Suzie was still filled with the need of bossing people about, even though she was no longer a sparrow, but a late adolescent no shorter than himself. Toph was sitting against the main mast, below a self-stitched sail of which Anna had pieced together herself, watching the sun dip behind the ocean beyond their reach; and as Toph replayed all the memories spent with a group of people not much different than himself, he had a slight gut feeling that he didn't really want to return home after all. His idealism, as The Witch had intelligently spoken, had grown him adapted to this persona of everybody that he didn't want to forget, nor depart. In two days time he will be returning back to the family he had solely missed for he hadn't told them where he was going; however, now that he was alive and his life was no longer in jeopardy, unless this giant sea-monster he dreams about pops out of the air, he didn't want to return after all.

'… all right, Tophiee?' said Moofieee, who had placed herself to his side against the main mast.

'I think so,' he said; which was entirely truthful, for he no longer knew how he felt.

'I just want to thank you for getting me out of that dungeon,' she said. 'To tell ya the truth, I didn't know how long I was going to be there. Four days had already past, and I knew ye had to cross the pacific to get to me.'