(A Potion Place Story)
By grapehyacinthThis time all three girls from
When Magic Takes Over, Where Science and Magic Meet, and The Melting Point of No Return
use The Ultimate Potion together...Caroline, Lexi, and Gena were set for their last weekend of transforming before Gena's wedding. Gena had promised to try to continue their tradition of using transformation potions after she married, even offering to bring her fiance Jim on occasion. Jim had his share of fun with the potions, but he usually just became a fish in his free time. Although this could pose a problem, Gena was sure she would be able to coax him into other, more fun transformation experiences.
So, Friday night, the three young women gathered at Caroline's apartment. Each held their own bottle of the “Ultimate Potion” which, by combining Gena's scientific research and magic store-owner Mr. Wintergreen's potion know-how, was now able to do whatever the user wanted it to do. “I know exactly what we should do since this is Gena's last weekend as a single woman,” Caroline announced to them, as if making a grand proclamation.
“Don't make such a big deal of it, Caroline,” Gena murmured, but her eyes were watery. Her life was so close to changing in a big way, and of course, like any bride-to-be, she had second thoughts. “You know I'll still transform with you guys. When Jim just wants to be a fish in his tank, I'll come be stuff with you guys. You know, like girl's night out.”
“Girl's night in is more like it,” chuckled Lexi, smiling proudly at her friend. Long ago she'd almost been married, but her husband-to-be broke it off saying she was crazy with the 'potion garbage'. She would never have had any of these amazing experiences had she married him. “Now what's your suggestion, Caroline?” she piped up.
A big grin crossed the blonde's face. “Remember how nice it was when we all merged into Lexi's body? Well, this time, let's merge into one, brand new person.”
“Who would we look like?” Lexi asked.
“I guess a combination of all of us?” Gena ventured.
“Let's try it!” Caroline cried, gulping down her potion. The others followed excitedly.
“So what do we do, just run into each other and smush our bodies together?” asked Lexi, a hint of hesitation in her voice.
“I guess that would work, but I think an easier way, so we're more likely to be equal parts of the new person, is to melt into some kind of liquid together, and then form into a person from it. It should be a lot more fun than just smushing our bodies together,” posited Caroline.
“Yes, the smushing thing might be kind of weird,” Lexi said with a shudder.
Gena, who was a scientist, began to laugh. “Lexi, after all the things you've been, that's what freaks you out? I mean, last time you merged with a couch, for heaven's sake!”
“You know what it is? It's that losing your identity thing. Will we have one mind? I don't want to get lost.”
“No, we'll do what we did last time we merged. We'll keep our minds. That's the point of the Ultimate Potion – it does exactly what you want it to do. 'You are what you think'!”
“I have so many ideas of what we can do like that.” Caroline clapped her hands together in anticipation. And after watching the video she had made using the potion on her own, Lexi and Gena could only imagine what weird ideas were floating around in her head. The girl had turned herself into a space heater for a while. One had to have some imagination for that.
“Ooh...sorry...I'm goo-ifying...Was that what we were going to become?” The bottom half of Caroline was swiftly becoming a transparent glob and melting to the floor.
“Oh, well, I was thinking more of water,” said Gena.
“And I was thinking the bubble bath thing,” cried Lexi, suddenly turning into a big bubble.
“Lexi!” Gena scolded.
“Oops! I couldn't stop myself!” Lexi popped, then fell to the floor as the same goo that Caroline was.
“Hey, Lexi,” the now goo-puddle Caroline oozed over, met up with Lexi, and they joined.
Gena stepped into the middle of them, defeated, “Well, goo it is, I guess.” She was swallowed up.
“Maybe we should stay like this,” Lexi suggested, making their surface ripple a bit.
“No! The merge! Come on, it'll be awesome. Isn't it what you want, Gena?” asked Caroline.
Gena hesitated. “Well, yes, but we kind of have to share the body... I mean, we won't be able to do whatever we want whenever we want it.”
“We'll take turns. It'll be fine. Come on, everyone. Pull us up into one supreme person!” commanded Caroline. “One, two, three, go!”
The puddle pushed itself up. It was shuddering and quaking, and definitely trying to form into something resembling a human. But the process wasn't going as smoothly as they would have hoped. There was an internal struggle within, each girl asserting different parts of herself. A set of arms began to emerge, then were inexplicably pulled back in. A face formed, changing slightly with each second. There were Lexi's eyes and Caroline's nose, then they shifted to Caroline's eyes and Gena's mouth...
“Stop it, stop it!” Gena cried. “Let us form! Just...stay where you are! We'll all have control of everything! Who cares what part is from who?”
The body solidified, and Caroline uttered, “I wanted her to have my eyes.”
“Her?”
“Us.”
“Let's go look in the mirror.” Since all three wanted to do this action, there didn't seem to be much of a problem getting across the room. “Oh, yes. Caroline, we do have your eyes.”
“And my nose,” Lexi murmured. “Thrilling. Glad to contribute.”
“That's my mouth!” Gena exclaimed, watching in fascination as she forced it to smile. “Guys, we have to take a picture of us! I want Jim to see! He can try to pick out what part is who! Caroline, where's your phone?”
“My video camera's still out in the corner there.” She tried to raise their arm to point it out, but Gena was already walking them across the room and reaching for it. Taking control, the scientist began to fumble with the buttons with little success.
“Let me do it!” Caroline demanded. Their arm flopped to its side until Caroline commandeered it. She flipped on the camera and hit the play button.
“Hi, Jim! It's us! All of us...together for the last time before you two are in wedded bliss...” The newly-created girl twirled around, as if in a fashion show. “Can you pick out what part of us is who? You know, we need a name...hm...Carogenexi?”
Gena contributed, “How about Gelexine?”
Lexi countered it with “Lenaline?”
The girls paused. “Hey, I like that. Lenaline!”
And Lenaline it was.
When they flipped off the camera, Gena chuckled. “We must be hysterical to watch. We're talking to ourself. Ourselves? I don't even know what pronouns to use for this!”
“I bet we're a regular riot,” Lexi uttered. “Now what should we do first as one person? The usual transformation stuff?”
“How about we go somewhere?” suggested Gena.
Caroline balked. “But I want to be stuff.”
“We should go visit Mr. Wintergreen. He'd love to see us merged like this. After all, it's his potion...well, with Gena's help, of course,” said Lexi.
“But...”
Gena cut Caroline off, making their new body jump up in her excitement. “Forget showing Jim videos! We totally have to visit him! He's working late in the lab tonight. We could keep him company.”
“Ew. I'm not doing anything disgusting with him, Gena,” said Lexi.
“I'd never ask you to do anything you guys don't want to do,” Gena reassured her. “Anyway, he'll probably just want to be a fish as usual.”
“We could do that,” Lexi acceded grudgingly.
“I want to change right now!” Caroline demanded, smashing her hand onto the counter, and then they were falling into her favorite form, a pile of fruit.
“Always the fruit with you, Caroline!” Lexi growled. “We were going to visit people first!”
Lexi made the pile they were collapse somewhat, and some parts of them – mostly berries – rolled across the room.
“Oo, nice,” Caroline purred. “I don't know why I enjoy this change so much.”
Gena, deep in thought, suddenly queried, “Caroline, you said you can fly with this potion?”
“Yes, you saw my video.”
Suddenly the fruit came together and formed into a thin, hard object.
“I feel like I'm wood...what are we, Gena?” asked Lexi.
“Yes, Gena, what are we? Thanks so much for ruining my fruit experience,” said a bitter Caroline.
“Oh, I just changed us to whatever object I thought of first. We're a pencil.”
“A pencil? Not that I don't feel nice like this, but why?”
“Oh, it's not the form, it's this!” They started to rise into the air. “Cool!” Gena's exclamation made them wobble a bit, then they continued to rise. “We're really levitating! Imagine defying physics like this!”
“We're defying physics with every sip of these magical potions, Gena,” snorted Lexi.
The floating pencil bobbed in the air momentarily, then swiftly became human.
But Lexi was in charge now. “Let's go to Mr. Wintergreen before he closes up the store.”
They entered the Potion Place, Mr. Wintergreen's magic shop. Except for Caroline's turning them into a dead leaf to see what it felt like to be swept around by the wind, they had managed to get to the store without any great calamities.
The store owner sat behind the counter, fiddling with a new potion that Lexi and Caroline had requested as a surprise wedding gift for Gena. “We're closing soon, Miss. May I help you?”
The three girls found it almost eerie that he did not recognize them.
You'd think he'd notice our eyes!
Or our mouth!
Or hair color!
They pondered whether to fool Mr. Wintergreen into thinking they truly were a new, different person, but none of them had the heart.
“Mr. Wintergreen, it's us!”
“Us?” he pushed down his glasses and gazed closer at the new girl. Brown hair, blue eyes...
“Who...Gena, Lexi, Caroline, is that you?”
“Yes!” they cried excitedly. “All three of us merged into a new person!”
He began to laugh. “Interesting. Very interesting! I'm so glad you came by to show me. So, do you have a name for yourself, new young lady?”
“Lexaline!”
“No, Lenaline!”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
Blinking, Mr. Wintergreen watched the girl apparently arguing with herself. All of the different opinions came from the same mouth, but the voices and accents differed ever so slightly... One would never suspect there were three girls in the one body on that alone. However one might think this particular person had a bad case of multiple personality disorder... “You better watch it,” he warned. “You can hear each other in your thoughts, right?”
“Yes.”
“So argue in your mind. When you do it out loud, people will think there's definitely something wrong. And be careful. Don't stay like this too long. You'll begin to feel like you really are one person.”
Caroline came to the forefront. “You know, it's funny you brought that up. When I turned into a space heater when the heat was broken in my apartment, first it seemed silly. Then, with that amazing electricity running through me, things changed. I was pushing my heat through the rooms like I was designed to do. I was running like a good little heater, and I was beginning to feel like I always was one.”
“Yes, that's what I mean. The longer you are something, the more you become it. Don't lose your individual identities.”
“Oh, we'd never do that.”
“Jim, where are you?”
For a time, no one answered. Lenaline walked around the lab, trying to determine if Jim was there. There were no fish in his tank, so he was definitely not a fish, but he could have been anything – a book on the shelf, a piece of paper... Or maybe he was simply not in the room at present.
“Jim, it's me...us...Lexi and Caroline are with me...” Gena lowered their voice. “We're merged!”
They caught sight of movement out of the corner of their eye. There, on top of Jim's ant farm, was a very big ant, and it was waving wildly at them with its front legs. “Can you hear me like this?” it called.
“Very faintly.”
“You joined your ants, huh, Jim?”
“Yeah, sometimes if I'm lonely, I'll join my friends in here.” The ant paused, studying the woman before him – who right now appeared to be a giantess. “That's all you in one body? Awesome! You guys wanna be an ant with me?”
“Sure!” cried Gena.
“Ew, no,” muttered Lexi.
“Come on, I stuffed all kinds of food in here so I can eat it in ant form,” pleaded the large ant. “We're having a veritable feast in here, the guys and me!”
Lenaline's body began to shrink. “Hey, what are you doing? I don't want to be an ant!” cried Lexi, forcing their body back to its proper height.
“Come on, Lexi, it'll be fun!” Caroline said, making an extra set of legs pop from their abdomen.
Lexi stared down at their body in distaste. “Oh, this is horrible! A person with a set of bug legs! Hey, that's not fair! Hey, stop!”
They had become maybe two feet tall, and now they were basically an ant with a human head.
“You guys are cool like that!” Jim yelled. “Like some kind of ant-monster!”
“No, way! I don't want this!” The extra set of legs disappeared, and the odd creature toppled onto its stomach.
Struggling to stand back up on only four bug-legs, Caroline cried, “Lexi, that hurt! Can't you ask us first?”
“You're not listening!”
Suddenly Jim was standing before them, completely human, and completely clothed. The Ultimate Potion, if one preferred, could transform and bring back the user's clothes so there wouldn't be anymore embarrassing nudity. “You know what, guys? I'm done for the night here. I'm gonna take a swim. You're welcomed to join me.” With that, he shrank to a foot tall or so, climbed onto the shelf where the fish tank sat, and jumped in. Within seconds, his body shaped itself into a fish, and he began to circle his tank quite happily.
Lenaline became human, and went over and dumped some fish food in for Jim. He gave a wave of thanks and started to dine.
“Can we join him at least?” Gena asked. “Is a fish okay now, Lexi?”
Lexi agreed, and like Jim, they shrank down, climbed into the fish tank, and slowly and very pleasantly transformed into a fish.
As nice as being a fish was, there was only so much to do in a fish tank. Lexi and Caroline grew bored, wanting to embark on the next part of their merging adventure. However, Jim was going to spend the night in his tank, and he was hoping they would remain with him.
Lexi and Caroline weren't too keen on this, but they knew Gena would like it, so they agreed. But Gena herself was concerned. “Honestly, I don't know if we should sleep in this form. It's tricky with the gill slits and underwater breathing. Since there's really three people in charge, I'm afraid we won't be able to control the form in our sleep and we'll end up killing ourselves.”
“You have a point. Maybe we should be something inanimate. That way we won't have to breathe, at least,” Lexi suggested.
“We could still have the control problem, though,” Caroline said.
“Well, it's less likely to be a death sentence if we're inanimate. If you girls are willing to try it, I say let's be a nice, pretty rock to beautify Jim's tank!”
“I want to be a diamond!”
“No, an emerald!”
“How about some obsidian?”
The little fish expanded and glittered into a large diamond with clusters of emerald and obsidian strewn through it. It was an interesting geological specimen, but everyone was happy with the result, and a pleasant night was shared by all.
At the nearby diner which served breakfast, Jim sat at a table with the 'new' girl, fascinated. Lenaline had trouble deciding what to eat, so she ordered three different foods and dined on them with relish. “Who's controlling the eating?” Jim asked with interest.
“We all are. It's not like one of us controls one thing. We all control the whole body, although if we fight a bit, we can win over with what we want.”
“Oh.”
“Wait, a minute,” Lexi began. “I don't like hashbrowns.”
“I do.”
“Oh, don't eat that garbage.”
“Stop it, Caroline!”
“I'll spit them out!”
“No!”
Jim remained silent, merely watching the attractive woman before him fight with herself. She would shovel up the hashbrowns, try to eat them, spit them out, and the whole cycle would begin anew. “Guys, how about you give up the hashbrowns,” he suggested. “Okay?”
“Good idea. Lenaline is keeping healthy,” said either Lexi or Gena. Jim wasn't sure. But when the woman snorted, he had a good idea that that was Caroline.
Quiet yet again, he tried to pick out what parts of the new girl were from his fiancee. The brown hair, perhaps? Those piercing blue eyes most definitely were from Caroline...
“Why so quiet, Jim?” This had to be Gena speaking. He could hear her concern in the voice, and he felt a pang. He wanted her back for himself.
“I'm trying to pick out what part is who,” he explained.
Caroline, obviously, chimed in, “Oh, we made a recording for you so you can watch it and pause it if you need to. It'll be like a game to see what part of us is which person.”
“Oh,” Jim said again, scratching his head. It didn't really sound like a game he wanted to play, however.
Jim went back to the lab, and Lenaline returned to Caroline's to continue to experiment. “So, what next?”
“Can I have a say now?” Lexi asked.
“Lexi's turn,” Gena stated in an authoritative tone.
Settling them down on the couch, Lexi began, “I really liked being a plant. Can we do that? It's so relaxing. I don't even want to flower, because even that takes energy.”
Caroline agreed to do this, but she did want to flower.
“A simple spider plant is fine by me,” Gena murmured.
Grumbling, Lexi led them to where Caroline had her gardening supplies. She picked up a pot which was already filled with potting soil and placed it onto the windowsill. Then she shrank their body down to a height small enough so they were able to climb into the pot. Covering their feet with dirt, she allowed their roots to grow, then grew off the mass of roots as a side shoot.
“Hey, what's happening to me?” Caroline was growing off to another side, and Gena was off on her own. But they still shared the same roots.
“What is this?” Gena asked with curiosity, as she thinned and lengthened into a graceful spider plant.
“We're still merged at the roots, but we're our own plants at the top! Kind of like the way they graft fruit trees.”
“We're grafted? Ooo!” Caroline exploded open into a beautiful blossom. “Oh, I like!” she giggled, shaking the whole odd chimera plant and making the pot wobble. “Way to spend the day!” she added, and they sucked in the sunlight quite happily.
“I like being one person. We should stay merged all week, like for a wedding gift for Gena. Can you take off the week, Lexi?” said the big blossom. It was so enthusiastic about this idea that it dropped a petal.
“I could try. I just have a three-day week anyway. Would you like that, Gena?”
Things were starting to change. Despite their frequent disagreements, Gena found that she loved being part of a bigger, better person like this. There was the strength and knowledge of three minds all wrapped into one! She cherished always having her friends with her, and she wished they could even be with her when she married... Perhaps Jim wouldn't like that, but at least doing the wedding preparations as Lenaline couldn't hurt. “I'd love it.”
The plant merged and grew back into Lenaline, and she downed more of the potion.
“What to be today?”
Again, the disagreements set in, and Lenaline found herself as a puddle of goo once more. But it didn't stop here. “We're twinning!” Caroline yelled as the mass of ooze split into two.
“I wanted to be something solid!” complained Lexi. “We already did the goo thing so many times. Let's be solid!”
“I wanted to be a butterfly at some point. In fact, I wanted to go through the whole metamorphosis – caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly! We could make the whole thing happen in one night only! It would be so interesting!” recommended Gena.
Lenaline was now two people. One of her was a gooey woman, the other one was solidifying into a statue. “Who's where?” Gena asked from the solid part. “I don't feel myself in the goo.”
“Either do I. I'm the statue with you, Gena,” Lexi said. “Which is damned cool.”
“I'm the goo!” Caroline cried, slithering across the room while fighting to retain her shape. She stopped in front of the statue and ran her jello-like finger down its torso.
The whole statue shuddered violently. “Oh, God, Caroline! Touch us all over!”
Caroline's ministrations were apparently so pleasurable that the Gena/Lexi statue nearly fell over. Caroline began to feel lonely, but she hated to give up her ooze-figure, so she began to wrap herself around the statue.
“Oh, God, that's awesome too,” Lexi gasped. “You're surrounding us.”
When they were covered in ooze, they remained like this, conversing like it was simply any other day. But then they stirred and began to change.
“Now I want to be a butterfly!” Gena demanded.
“Oh, I don't really want to be a small little bug right now,” Caroline complained. “I like being amorphous and wrapped around you.”
“So be my cocoon!” Gena shrieked.
“But we won't be merged.”
“We'll re-merge when we emerge!” Gena found this incredibly funny. Even while trying to shrink her and Lexi into a caterpillar, she could not stop her peals of laughter.
Lexi was not too excited about Gena's suggestion. She was enjoying the changes to the many-legged, worm-like form, but she wasn't so keen on being a small bug right now. She was in the mood to become something weird, or something enormous! At about two feet long, she pushed for a stop. “I say we're good at this size.”
“No butterflies are this big.”
“We'll be!”
“I'm turning into your cocoon now,” Caroline warned as her substance grew thicker and less transparent. She was becoming silk, and she was weaving herself tightly around the new caterpillar, covering it completely. She then attached part of herself to the ceiling so the cocoon would be suspended from it.
“You guys comfy in me?” she asked, causing them to rock gently.
The imprint of a head pushed against Caroline's silk form. “We're awesome. Good night!”
The next day, the caterpillar stirred, which ticked Caroline's silky form. She began to giggle at the sensation, which roused the slumbering Gena/Lexi creature completely. Gena was ready to burst out and fly as the large insect they had become, but Caroline and Lexi had other ideas.
“Lexi, are you changing us?” Gena asked. She felt like parts of their body were rearranging.
“I'm joining you again,” Caroline announced, and as the creature pushed its way out of its cocoon, Caroline simply allowed herself to be absorbed into them. Lenaline was back, and she fell roughly to the floor.
“Hey, what the hell are we?” Gena cried angrily.
“Awesome,” Caroline breathed.
Between all the mixed signals, Lenaline was now a butterfly-person.
Perhaps three feet high, she was almost fairy-like, containing a large set of colorful wings on her back and a pair of antennae on her head. The rest of her was human.
“But...but...we're not a real butterfly,” Gena protested.
Caroline made the wings flap, which lifted the hybrid creature off the ground and back down. “This is better than being a butterfly,” she replied with satisfaction. “Let's go fly around.”
“People will notice us,” Gena said.
Lenaline shrank down another foot. “Not like this they won't.”
They flew around town, amused at how people reacted to the big 'bird', 'butterfly', or 'bat' that was fluttering past them. But the moon soon was peeking out over the trees, and the girls made their way back to Caroline's. After all, they needed a good night's sleep to be Gena tomorrow.
Lenaline took on Gena's physical characteristics, but she was still a merging of the three girls mentally. Over the next few days, she walked through the lab, working on Gena's experiments, and living Gena's life in general. She found as she worked that her inner voices quieted, leaving her to concentrate on the task at hand. However when she was not busy, Gena, Lexi, and Caroline would come back, and sometimes their arguing led Lenaline to change shape or size. She had just dropped to the floor as a sneaker before, and Jim had come in and discovered her. “Why are you guys a shoe?” he laughed, picking up the ratty-looking sneaker. “Can I wear you?”
The shoe widened to the size of his foot. “Only a little.”
“Someone will see him with two different shoes!”
Gena pushed in, “Listen, I'm the scientist here. I can tell you that instead of being footwear, we need to work on that experiment or I'm not going on any honeymoons!”
But Jim ended up wearing them for a half-hour, and the occasional movement or giggle from the shoe titillated him immensely. On his lunch break, with help from his own stash of potion, he turned into a match for the sneaker, and they sat in a closet and conversed together in secret.
When lunch was over, Jim regained his form and held up the quivering sneaker. “So, Gena, you have to meet with the wedding photographer for the last time tonight. Want me to come or not?”
“I'm not Gena. I'm Lenaline.”
Jim paused. “Well, Gena, you're in there.”
“No, no, Jim. We're Lenaline.”
Okay, this was getting weird and not funny. “Can you guys like, un-merge for a bit so I can talk to Gena in private? The wedding's in a couple of days, and we have to get the last-minute things done.”
“We're one, Jim. We'll take care of everything together. As Lenaline.”
“Gena, can you come out?” The request sounded so silly, yet Jim was growing concerned. Perhaps being one person for too long was making the three willingly lose their own identities?
The idea of the new person at first had excited him to the point of arousal, but now that it was playing out before him, and the fact that his wife-to-be seemed to be getting buried in this scary Lenaline-person... Well, he had to get to Mr. Wintergreen fast, before things got worse. He wanted his wife back.
“Where are you going?” the Lenaline-shoe asked, brandishing its laces at him furiously. “Wear me! Please!”
“Gena, you need help!”
“Lenaline!”
“No, you're three people, and I'm marrying one of them in two days.”
“Marry me. I have the perfection of all of them.”
“And the bad things too! Tripled! Gena, come back!”
“No. I'm Lenaline.”
Jim stood in front of Mr. Wintergreen's counter, pounding on it with his fists. “It's like they're happier this way. I need to get them separated! I'm getting married to Gena on the weekend, not stupid Lena-whatever!”
Sighing, the store owner responded, “I warned them about this, and they did it anyway.” He pulled out a bottle that had been stowed behind the counter. “This is a separator... kind of like the opposite of the twinning potion – this one pulls merged people apart. I figured that with selling merging potions, I'd eventually need an antidote.”
Jim took the bottle from him, glancing at the label. “Separator”, it simply said. There were no flashy descriptions or directions on its usage. He hung his head. “They know I want to separate them. I bet they won't trust me enough to drink this.”
Mr. Wintergreen took the bottle back from him. “Easily solved. We turn this,” he poured the bottle contents into a rectangular dish he pulled out, “into this,” he waved his hands over the solution, “and voila!”
“Voila what?”
Peering at the liquid, Jim could see it solidifying into...chocolate fudge. “Wow! You're amazing!” he gasped.
“We'll send it to them as a gift from me, and hopefully, they'll indulge!”
“'To Caroline, try this when you have a chance. If you like it, I'd like to give Gena some for her wedding gift'.” Lenaline held the card in her hand, hovering over the fudge that Mr. Wintergreen had sent. “Oh, I hope it turns us into something awesome!”
“Maybe it's not a transformation potion.”
“I love surprises!”
Lenaline was diving into the fudge without thinking twice. “Delicious! Delicious! It's making all of me tingle–”
Suddenly there was a large pop, and Lenaline simply parted into three girls, who fell dazed to the floor.
“Oh my God,” murmured Gena ashamedly as she rubbed her achy head.
The three apologized profusely to Jim, even going as far as to become his outfit for the day before the wedding. Gena had to change back a few times for wedding preparations, however.
But everyone danced at their wedding, and the three girls remained as whole, individual human beings. Of course when Caroline got a look at the dessert table, it was all she could do not to join it. “I want to be lots and lots of little cakes,” she admitted to Lexi in a whisper. “That would be awesome.”
Lexi glanced at her watch. “You have something else to be very soon,” she reminded her.
“This address isn't on my GPS,” said the limo driver. He was to drive the newlyweds to where they would stay tonight, and then tomorrow they'd be off on their honeymoon.
“Well, get the closest address and we'll wing it from there,” suggested Jim.
They were off to a distant cottage to spend the night. Lexi and Caroline had presented the night's stay as a gift to them, and Gena and Jim were truly touched by their generosity.
The driver did manage to locate the small dwelling. It was quaint but pretty, looking as if it were simply inserted into the thick forest as an afterthought. Outside had the requisite white-painted walls and black shutters, while the inside was expertly furnished and decorated. “Oh, it's perfect!” exclaimed Gena.
“I only wish we could stay here more than one night!” said Jim, placing down their bag.
“We'll make this night count,” Gena smiled, throwing her arms around her new husband. “No potions allowed.”
He made a phony pout. He and she both had plenty of potions on hand for the honeymoon. “Well, maybe not tonight. But I intend to spend a lot of my honeymoon as the weirdest, freakiest things you can think of me turning into.”
“Hmm. Can't wait,” Gena chuckled happily.
Gena and Jim lay down on the bed, and Jim took her into his arms. “Finally, you're all mine. Only you. No Lexis, Carolines, or LexiCaro-whatever-you-call-her's.”
Gena smiled. She did miss her friends, but she had a feeling she'd be seeing them very soon – in one way or another.
They began to paw at each other, and Jim was ripping off the silky nightie that his new wife wore. “I want to be one of those at some point for you,” he mumbled, but he was far more interested in getting her naked right now.
Suddenly the whole cottage shuddered.
Jim looked up in alarm. “What the hell was that?” he yelled.
Gena stopped, her mind at work. This cottage stay was Lexi and Caroline's gift?
She swept her hand down the wall, and she could swear it shivered. Openmouthed, she gaped at it momentarily, then threw herself back into Jim's arms. “Minor earthquake,” she said dismissively, and they dove under the covers.
Outside, on the cottage's door, a little face giggled quietly. The “Cottage and All Its Contents” potion had transformed Lexi and Caroline quite nicely.