002. Through the Looking Glass..

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"Wendy, darling," Agatha called from the living room when she heard the backdoor from the kitchen open and close, "I was beginning to worry you got lost on the way back again." Her joke was said as she was seated comfortably on the couch, half wrapped in a puffy blanket, cozy enough to require an enchanted mug of steaming tea with de-aging properties to go along with the black and white tape of a horror movie she put into her odd TV, out of time.

Only once she saw, from the corner of her eyes, Wendy standing in the doorless doorframe of the kitchen, alone and oddly puzzled, did she lower her cup from her thin lips and paused the cassette with a mere turn of her head towards this new direction. "You look like a cloud of rain is about to appear over your head."

Humored by the horror she laughed at while watching, Agatha was in a good mood, so, balancing her cup in the left hand, she waved her right into the air and a violently purple cloud thundered over Wendy's head, breaking down immediately into pouring rain.

To some extent, Wendy was grateful for the cold shower. She had no memory of just how fast or how slow she ran back "home". What paths she must have taken were but a blur now to her fuzzy head, busy with balancing the conflict between voids and neon. The battlefield of her thoughts made her pale while her breath felt abnormally warm; the truth was giving her a fever and even if she stepped from under the cloud feeling heavy from the wet costume she was wearing, Agatha's jest refreshed her to the point that she remembered why she came back.

Something is wrong and I need to find the real Peter.

"Where's Peter?" As if she read her mind -Oh, I hope she cannot really read minds, Wendy prayed- Agatha spoke, then made the cloud disappear in a fog of purple. She's been meaning to do that for a while, because if she really was to act like she could stand the child, she might as well make her look decent, not dressed in unfit uniforms from the TVA of some boring universe. The fog covered Wendy completely in her next step and not only did it dry her, but once it cleared out, she was wearing a puffed up, dotted, baby blue dress, pulled right out of the 1950s; matched with a pair of gentle shoes, the only thing which wasn't taken away by her spell was the broken watch which Wendy felt herself holding tightly in her hand.

Now, expectedly, Agatha awaited her answer, while Wendy was gathering herself out of shock. It wasn't exactly the spell which stunned her, because in a Multiverse of madness, she met all sorts of sorcerers and mystic situations, be them occuring next door or in tales; she was shock to see that after such a spell, Agatha's hands started shaking. For a second, she could have sworn she saw them age to the point in which her skin was sucked to the bone and rusted away like some old, old metal.

Then, with Agatha's second long blink, Wendy straightened up and cleared her throat out of worries and stutters, which happened anyway. "He..." He was not my Peter! "He forgot to get the eggs!"

Agatha stared for a second.

Then she scoffed, rolling her eyes, "Typical!"

Well, that worked out, Wendy sighed not on the outside, but on the inside, through her thoughts.

"You look pale, Wendy," Agatha pouted, exaggerating her sadness which, between the cracks, started seeming rather fake to Wendy. Snapping her fingers, the witch conjured in a cloud of violet smoke, right on her coffee table, the same sandwich on a plate and the same glass of orange juice from earlier. "Have something to eat. It will invigorate you. I have been told my cooking is rather smashing."

"Oh, I know it is," Wendy nodded along and moved along the living through the back of the couch, to lessen the distance between her and the hallway with the two doors: he one for her supposed bedroom, the same painted blue door she saw under the neon sign and the door made of rust and heaviness, smelling of dark places. Wendy was so focused on the doors, she forgot to sound anything but bland, or even continue her idea; she knew she had to go through the awful door, but she needed a plan before doing so, because something told her she was being lucky Agatha was nice.

RIPPLE ( peter parker.. ) ✔Where stories live. Discover now