Page 97 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
I was calm. So, so, so calm.
I took another breath and tried again.
Caaaaalllmmm.
After a third try, I finally felt calm enough to push that correct emotion into the statue, so I sent as much as I could into it. Sola’s power filled my veins, and the amount of magic that passed from me into the statue doubled.
Chaos and Clucky were enhancing my magic, adding their own and making it even stronger. More powerful.
Another minute passed by with us pushing our magic inside, and finally, Chaos said, “Okay, stop.”
I cut my magic off, and the second I did, Chaos put a clump of sage and a large piece of black obsidian on top of the statue, locking the magic in. I took a breath and stared at it.
“How do we get it to stay in there?”
He grinned. “We just have to let it sit like that for a few hours and let it sorta soak into the statue. The sage and black obsidian will help keep it in until it settles.”
“How will you be able to tell that it’s set?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really know how to explain it. Right now, it still feels like your magic is kind of connected to you, right?”
I thought about it and gave my magic a little nudge, and oh yeah. He was right. It felt like the statue was an extension of my magic. Like there was a small rope connecting it to me.
“Oh wow, yeah. Like a rope connects it to me.”
“Exactly!” Chaos looked excited, and it took me aback for a second until I thought about all of our interactions. He prettymuch always seemed happy or at least content when he was doing magic. This was something he truly cared about. “It’ll start feeling thinner and thinner until that connection disappears completely. That’s when we’ll know we can remove the sage and black obsidian, and the artifact will be good to go.”
I nodded in understanding. “Awesome.” I offered him a fond smile. “Thank you for helping me with that.”
He nodded. “No problem. It should be good to go by the morning.”
“Alright, I’ll take it over to the museum after I wake up. Do you guys work tomorrow?”
He nodded. “We do… I could, um, take it there, if you don’t want to make the trip?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you have pixie gear to protect yourself while you’re placing it out there?”
He sighed. “No. Obviously.”
“Then I’ll take it. But thanks anyway.”
He nodded, and when I looked at Win, he was staring at me with this look of… affection on his face. Like,so muchaffection. More than I’d ever seen aimed at me. Probably more than all the affection that’d come my way in my life added all together.
He stood and held out his hand, so I took it without hesitating, even though I didn’t have my gloves on. He pulled me to my feet, kissed my temple, and dragged me back over to the couch, saying, “Why don’t you guys sit on the other couch, and we can finish the movie?”
The twins exchanged a look, then stood and sat on the couch, so I grabbed the remote off the coffee table and played our movie, doing my best to ignore the gross gnome statue on the floor.
Even though I could feel my connection to it. Ugh.
Winter decided to carry the gnome for me when we arrived at the museum the next morning. The twins had left after dinner with plans to say hi today, so I wasn’t surprised when Chaos waved at us from the ticket booth. He walked out, then led us inside so we didn’t have to pay for tickets again.
Chaos texted Aeson, and he met us at the manager’s office door.
Winter knocked, and after getting the okay, we all went inside.
Chaos explained our plan, and even though Sharp didn’t seem to believe it’d work, he gave us the go-ahead to place the statue in the garden.
But first, he gave us a key to the gate so we could gear up and enter from the outside without scaring guests away.
