Young Writers Society

Kate didn't look happy about that in the slightest. She wrestled the sweater as still as she could get it and glared at Baba. She was going to kill that little thing one day.

Baba frowned. Just because they never did it on purpose, didn't mean they couldn't learn how to stop it on purpose.

Baba looked up, and squinted at the sweater as hard and as purposefully as they could.

The sweater responded by flapping an empty sleeve vaguely in Baba's direction, and then ignoring them entirely, more interested in lovingly patting Kate's cheeks.

Baba blushed in frustration.

"It's okay! Baba will keep trying! Baba can stop it." they assured, unconvincingly, and unconvinced.

Lira glanced between the two again, unsure of what exactly she could do. None of her stories had ever involved animated pieces of clothing, and Levi definitely hadn't told any stories about it, either. Which left her with absolutely no idea on how to suddenly make the problem of Kate's sweater go away while Baba grew increasingly more flustered and Kate grew increasingly more upset.

"Uh..." she started, awkwardly clearing her throat as she glanced between the two of them. "I don't know how animated clothing works, but maybe us calming down would help the sweater go back to normal? I know some quick exercises that are meant to be calming."

Kate batted the sweater's sleeves away and tried to get them to stay put at its sides. She glared at Lyra. There were so, so many things she would rather be doing. One of those things was finding out if either of these people could survive a bath in boiling oil.

"That's for the offer," she said sarcastically, "but if you tell me to 'calm down' again, I'm going to rip your throat out."

Baba was still upset that Kate was so angry, but disregarded the threat. Vampires tended to say things like that.

"What are they?" said Baba, to Lira.

Lira, like Kate, thought it was wise to ignore Kate's threat and focus on calming Baba down. She turned to them and tried not to think about how irritated Kate now was with her.

"There's a couple," she said. "One of them is a breathing exercise, and the other is an exercise that's supposed to ground you. Which one sounds like it would work better?"

Baba had only been breathing for a few hours. Did Baba like it? it was time to decide.

Baba had seen the behaviours of breathing folk, but until now did not understand the action underneath. It was a strange, but not uncomfortable sensation, unless one overexerted oneself, or stopped doing it.

Tubes, thought Baba, I'm full of tubes.

Ultimately Baba decided that breathing, though it was icky, and the concept of doing it forever was creepy, it was fun, and they could stand to play with it more for a bit longer.

"Let's try breathing!" said Baba, now excited.

Lira nodded and ironically took a deep breath of her own.

"Okay," she said. "The goal of the exercise is to think about something other than what's worrying you, so hopefully you'll be able to focus more on your breathing. You need to breath in for four seconds, hold your breath for seven seconds and let it out for eight seconds."

Kate rolled her eyes and continued trying to still her sweater. Breathing excersizes were more than redundant, they were stupid. Even when she was alive, Kate didn't consider breathing a good way to calm down. More oxygen for the brain to freak out with, she thought.

Baba drew the air. Baba held. And Baba released. Calm was attained. The tubes were appeased. Baba repeated the process, slow and deep, just to play with the feeling a little more. And then they looked.

The sweater had already stopped moving.

Baba stared at the sweater for a few seconds, just to make sure. Yes, it was done.

"Lira!" they cried. "Look, it worked! Oh, you're so smart!"

Baba turned back to Kate.

"-Sorry about that." said Baba, more calmly sheepish this time, "It won't do that again."

Kate was already pulling the sweater over her head, taking a moment to let the familiar sensation calm her down.

She glared at Baba, "I know you won't," she growled. The sweater was still, back to normal. Her eyes betrayed her calm at that fact. If it hadn't stopped, she was fully prepared to get violent. She might still be prepared to get violent. She'd have to wait for motivation. The way things were going, she didn't think she'd have to wait long.

Lira gave Baba a smile, though it faltered when she glanced over at Kate to see how her sweater was. It looked normal now. Part of her still expected that it would suddenly move, but it thankfully didn't live up to her worst expectations.

Donald Duck, Grand High Wizard to the Court of King Mickey, Expeller of Plentighoulery, Vanquisher of the Phantasmic Blights, Venerated Ambassador of Anatidae, Master of the Scubanautic Arts, and Goofy, Captain of the Guard, were lost.

But it was Goofy’s fault, of course.

“Goofy,” said Donald Duck, (Grand High Wizard, et cetera,) “Stop getting us lost.”

“Sorry,” said Goofy, accepting the blame, “I musta interper’ted you wrong, when you said, ‘Let’s try this corner next,’ and I followed you, around that corner.”

“Yes,” asserted Donald, “You did.”

Several misinterpretations later, around the apparently labyrinthine backstreets of quaint little Traverse Town, Donald Duck and Goofy resorted to a nondescript secret tunnel, and emerged through a trapdoor in the middle of the square. In the middle of the fountain in the square, to be precise.

“This was your idea,” Donald quacked flatly.

Goofy looked at him. He looked at the three keyblade wielders standing right in front of him, and back at Donald.

“If you say so,” said Goofy. He waved at the keyblade kids with his free hand, as he shielded himself from the water with his round shield. “Hey, fellers! Girls?”

Donald looked where Goofy looked, and upon seeing the thing he was sent to find, leapt out ahead of Goofy, waving his wizard staff importantly in the air. It had a cute little witch’s hat on top.

“I’m Donald Duck, the Grand High Wizard of King Mickey’s Cour-” he excitedly quacked, almost incomprehensible.

“Goofy, Cap’n of the Guard,” said Goofy, stepping out of the fountain with his long, long legs.

Donald stepped in front of him again, spraying water droplets from his duck tail with each pompous waddle.

“We’ve been sent on a mission from his Majesty himself to personally locate the wielder of the Keyblade, in the unrelenting battle against the forces of the Heartless-”

“Donald, yer gonna hafta speak slower.” said Goofy.

Donald frowned beadily, and poked Goofy’s gut. He had to stand on his webbed toes to do it.

“When you’re a Venerated Ambassador, then you can tell me, how to speak, Mr Captain, of the Guard.”

Lira had been through a lot in the past hour.

She had tried to go on a sailing adventure. Her world had been destroyed by monsters made of darkness, and she had seen her best friend for the first time in years among them - implying he was somehow tied to her home being lost. She had ended up here. She had met a vampire. She had met Baba. And then more of the darkness monsters had shown up, only to be beaten and followed up by Kate's sweater coming to life.

This was all crazy, and impossible, but it was the arrival of a duck and a dog that were people-sized and talked like people that made her finally question if she was dreaming.

She stared at the two.

Then she slowly raised her hand and pinched her bare arm, hoping that the pain would wake her up.

It didn't.

"You're real?" she squeaked.

There was a pause.

And then, a second later, in just as quiet of a whisper, "You work for royalty?"

Kate crossed her arms and sized up the newcomers. They like the mangled creation of a witch out-of-their-mind on magically boosted painkillers. But, they were sentient, and sentient meant they could walk, or waddle, back to whatever dungeon, tower, or whatever they'd been created in. The duck, in particular, sounded bossy, and he could just shove it with that nonsense.

"What do you want?" she asked sharply.