A Beauteous Flower

Chapter 4 - The Pixie, the Doll and the Parking Lot Pugilism

As always, breakfast had been a quiet affair. Madison and her roommates had a tacit agreement that breakfast was quiet time because the rest of the day would be loud and proud.

When she finished her Frosted Flakes, a guilty pleasure held over from her high school days, Madison went to her room and changed into her practice uniform. She said goodbye to her roommates and walked across the hall to Cassidy and Kelly's apartment to catch a ride with them to practice.

Cassidy and Kelly were another odd pair of best friends. They hadn't been best friends for very long actually, as prior to Kelly, Cassidy's best friend had been her previous roommate, Gail. However, Gail had inexplicably and suddenly moved out about two weeks ago, and Kelly moved into both roles of Cassidy's roommate and best friend.

At Madison's knock, Cassidy opened the door and invited Madison in while she and Kelly finished their preparations. Madison plopped into a big soft easy chair in the living room and waited patiently. Her car had a flat tire and her student loan payments, and her recent pedicure conspired to keep that tire flat until her next paycheck. Fortunately, many of her teammates lived in the same complex, so it was easy enough to find a ride.

As she waited, Madison sensed an odd aura that pervaded the apartment. Nominally the apartment appeared the same. It was brightly lit as always, and soft jazz music played in the background. Cassidy and Kelly both went about their familiar routines to get ready to go to work, but there was none of the normal bounce to their activity. Something was off, but Madison couldn't quite put her finger on it. It was as if things were slightly out of rhythm.

Cassidy was an impossibly energetic and dainty woman, and it would not have surprised anyone to find out she had little fairy wings on her back. It seemed like she never slept, and she was entirely too giddy, like someone who drank way too much coffee. Cassidy would dance to any music at any time, and she giggled and tittered and jabbered constantly in a high-pitched Minnie Mouse voice.

She sported two crystal green eyes like someone had set huge emeralds in her head. She had long fiercely roan hair, which she wore fastidiously straight with one curtain bang over her left eye. Cassidy thought that hairdo gave her a mysterious appearance, and she went on and on about how it made her look like Emma Stone. It didn't, but Cassidy was still pretty, and tiny and frail to the point that it seemed a stiff breeze would waft her away to whatever fairly-land she hailed from.

Due to her small size it only took a few sips of alcohol to lift Cassidy into a party mood. In her small hands, bar glasses looked way too big, and bouncers and bar tenders constantly asked to see her ID. That suited Cassidy just fine as she dated a steady stream of bar owners and special guest deejays, and the frequent identification checks were a great icebreaker for her. Deva had once wryly noted that Cassidy didn't date anyone who didn't work after dark and that, if the trend continued, Cassidy would eventually wind up married to Dracula.

That would have probably suited Cassidy just fine, as she practiced Wicca and claimed to be a white witch. In the light of day, it seemed a rather silly claim, but when night fell it seemed that the desperately horny or desperately in love teammates would try any silly thing. Cassidy had a steady stream of clients for her love potions and spells that allegedly tilted the odds in their favor, and for a few extra dollars Cassidy would hook them up with an aphrodisiac potion to ramp up their intended's sex drive too.

Cassidy giggled along like a magical wisp, but she did sport a few huge traits. The first was an outsized personality that dominated a room with sheer force. She was impossible to ignore and if she ever sat still, she still would have demanded attention. But Cassidy never sat still. Instead, she flitted around the room tirelessly and by the end of a party, she had met every person at the party, committed their names to memory and nattered some personal factoid out of each of them.