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El looks like she wants to murder someone. Which, if we’re being honest, isn’t all that different from how she normally looks, but usually her death glare is reserved for people other than those she calls friends. Usually.
“Chloe, if you don’t reverse this spell,
I swear to God, I’ll raise hell .”
Liu manages to pull herself up into a sitting position on El’s bed and chokes out, “El, stop - you can’t say things like that!” between fits of laughter. And she’s right…because given El’s power, there is a very, very real chance a statement like that would, quite literally, raise hell. El shoots Liu a withering glare, then also paces the entire distance of the yurt in four long strides, closes her eyes, unclenches her hands, and takes a deep breath trying to let go of any world-ending thoughts. But as soon as she hears the words coming out of her mouth she knows her zen will be short-lived.
“You think I don’t KNOW that, Liu?
It’s why Chloe needs to reverse this brew.”
“I’m trying! I don’t know what went wrong. And you’re the one who wanted me to try this,” Chloe huffed. “It’s not like there was a handy dandy manual I could consult called How To Give The Most Powerful Wizard Of Our Generation The Ability To Perform Simple Magic; so I’m doing my best!”
Once again, Liu was able to pull herself together long enough to add, “She’s right El, most grade school kids can learn half a dozen simple spells a day. You’re just an anomaly.”
“I know that you git!
That’s why I wanted to try and remedy it.”
Liu tried to nod seriously, but hearing El call her a git and watching as Chloe ran around the yurt frantically smelling Gwen’s collection of flowers was too much so she quickly turned her head before stifling a laugh into the palm of her hand. Luckily, El didn’t notice because at the same moment that was happening, Chloe had turned to Aadhya asking, “can you–” before remembering that Aadhya couldn't anything at the moment because she was currently a butterfly. And a perturbed looking one at that–how an animal with no discernible face was able to look perturbed would have been an excellent question had the still-human humans not had other things on their mind.
When Aadhya went to leave for a nap, and El said “ bye ” it was as if some magical force intervened–which, as it turns out is exactly what happened–compelling her to add “ butterfly ” to the end of the sentence. That would have been bizarre under the best of circumstances, but the loud pop and puff of green smoke that appeared where Aadhya had been standing quickly alerted everyone that these were not the best of circumstances. And as if to drive the point home, when the smoke cleared, all that was left was a madly flapping butterfly. Which was when everyone realized with various levels of dread and laughter that Chloe’s spell had gone seriously wrong (also because El had never used the phrase “ bye bye butterfly ” in her life).
That was followed by a quick, take this crystal off my neck before we all have to…hit the deck, from El. Which prompted Liu’s giggles to begin while she asked whether it was because El planned to raise an army of butterflies–earning El’s murderous glare. El’s response, “I can transform any swarm into a storm, and to my will they will perform,” combined with the levels of anger pouring off her and the completely serious way she delivered it convinced Liu to quickly hop up and grab the crystal off El’s neck without any further questions. No one was messing around with the potential of having survived the Scholomance just to die from a swarm of controlled butterflies.
“I wanted the ability to cast a small, simple spell
I thought you said this had the right smell.”
And Chloe had said that, but an affinity for scent and the ability to know whether a spell would work based on smell and knowing whether a spell would work as intended were two very different things. It seemed best for her to keep that distinction to herself though, so she just went right on smelling everything she could get her hands on in the yurt in an effort to fix the problem.
Chloe mumbled to herself while she worked, something about the direction she needed to “stir,” but it was apparently loud enough for everyone to hear because El interrupted to ask whether, “if it worked, she'd stop being a rhymester."
“Oh look, you can rhyme with other people too,” Chloe ventured, trying to find a silver lining.
El immediately thought about how that opened up a whole new world of terrifying ways she could accidentally kill everyone, but decided against voicing that thought. And for obvious reasons.
Instead she sighed, unclenched her jaw and said:
“Okay enough, I don’t care if it sounds dumb,
Someone please go and get my mum.”
Aadhya promptly flew off, flapping madly as if to say, “I’ll go get the crazy potentially murderous-sorceress’s mum.” Or maybe she was just trying to get away from Precious who had taken a sudden interest in her. Chloe and Liu looked at each other confused, both wondering what Aadhya would do if she actually did go find Gwen, other than flap madly around her head.
But knowing what they did about Gwen, they probably shouldn’t have been surprised when not five minutes later she pulled aside the fabric at the front of the yurt with a cranky looking butterfly on her shoulder. And if you’re wondering how Aadhya managed to convey that level of emotion and feeling as a butterfly, so was everyone else in the yurt.
Gwen took one look around the room and a deep breath before nodding her head, as if she could feel what had gone wrong. From the shelf she pulled up four specific herbs and three plants before bringing them to Chloe with a soft, “Mix these in counter-clockwise, darling.” Chloe didn’t hesitate in complying, and when she was done she was able to smell a new aroma in the yurt. It smelled the same as the Set It Right spell that El had cast at school which seemed promising because if anyone needed to be ‘set right’ it was El.
Gwen smelled it too and smiled encouragingly. Which was more than enough for everyone to trust that this would work much better than the first. El practically grabbed the flask out of Chloe’s hand, moving slowly enough only to make sure that it wouldn’t spill, and swallowed the whole thing in one gulp. Then she grabbed her crystal from Liu and said curtly, “You’re not a butterfly”and waved her hand in Aadhya’s general direction. And because El knew that Aadhya wasn’t really a butterfly, it didn’t even take much mana for Aadhya to tumble out of the air and land on the hard yurt floor, fully human looking just as perturbed and cranky as she'd been when she was a butterfly. El on the other hand looked thrilled with the fact that the spell did not in any way sound like a poem, nor did it rhyme.
After a moment of thick silence, Liu volunteered tentatively, “Well, both butterfly spells you created were short and simple, so maybe the potion worked after all.”
And because El didn’t actually want to tear the universe down, she made the conscious decision to let go of her anger and annoyance, saying instead, “Yes, even so, let’s never do that again.”
To which everyone responded in unison, amen.