It turned out that the curse or whatever it was tended to affect her magic one in every three or four times she used it, not every time. So eventually, she was able--battered, bruised, and eventually bleeding from the nose when she smacked her face with the public network receiver--to return home. There was work to be done, but she knew better, and it was late enough that she risked a bath (and oil to get the gum out of her hair), sent Neil her love from her laptop without saying a word about it because she intended to sleep it off, and went to sleep.
She slept fitfully, woken often by dreams of gum-octopods, Snow White costumes, the Sheriff, loud noises, threats of execution, none of them bad enough to upset her on their own, but after the day she'd had, by 11:30, she was in tears. Her ankle hurt, her face hurt, her hands and knees were scraped, and she looked like she'd been in a playground war. When she got up to get herself a glass of water (plastic, no magic), the sheets tangled around her feet somehow and she fell out of bed.
She gave up and whispered, "Neil," only then remembering that she didn't have a phone for him to call and she wouldn't until tomorrow. Then she just sat with her back against her bed and cried harder.
9/23: Regina's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - around midnight
It turned out that the curse or whatever it was tended to affect her magic one in every three or four times she used it, not every time. So eventually, she was able--battered, bruised, and eventually bleeding from the nose when she smacked her face with the public network receiver--to return home. There was work to be done, but she knew better, and it was late enough that she risked a bath (and oil to get the gum out of her hair), sent Neil her love from her laptop without saying a word about it because she intended to sleep it off, and went to sleep.
She slept fitfully, woken often by dreams of gum-octopods, Snow White costumes, the Sheriff, loud noises, threats of execution, none of them bad enough to upset her on their own, but after the day she'd had, by 11:30, she was in tears. Her ankle hurt, her face hurt, her hands and knees were scraped, and she looked like she'd been in a playground war. When she got up to get herself a glass of water (plastic, no magic), the sheets tangled around her feet somehow and she fell out of bed.
She gave up and whispered, "Neil," only then remembering that she didn't have a phone for him to call and she wouldn't until tomorrow. Then she just sat with her back against her bed and cried harder.