Conflicting Resolutions


Jaden quickly leapt up the ladders to his and Charlie’s home, still feeling like he could take on the entire world from the adrenaline pumping through his veins. The pin was safely tucked in a pocket in the satchel so he wouldn’t have to show it immediately as soon as he got inside, or had to worry about it getting stolen somehow. He scrambled up the last crumbling set of stairs, and pocked his head through the beginning of the door. Two very large books and a piece of lumber were suddenly in his face, and he shouted, covering his head.
“AHH! DON’T HIT ME! DON’T HIT ME!!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
“IT’S JUST ME, I SWEAR!!!”
“Wait, wait, stop!! It’s Jaden!!” he heard Charlie say, and he uncovered his head to see her, Inu, and Lyn putting down their weapons.
He looked up to see the two twins standing next to each other, looking almost exactly the same with their black hair and gray wings, the only bright color on them being their blue eyes. Charlie was busy looking behind him as he stepped into the room and then quickly went over to see if anyone had followed him up.
Inu rubbed the back of his head, his black hair becoming more mussed then usual. “Sorry, man, staking out the door was my idea,” he said, looking guilty.
His sister punched his shoulder. “If you had listened to me, you might have heard me when I said ‘What if Jaden comes back first?’!” she said.
Charlie folded her arms as she came from around behind him, looking the most serious of the group.
“So?” she said. “Where’s the guard?”
Lyn looked at him, both curious and concerned. “And what happened to your head? Inu didn’t get you with the two-by-four, did he?”
Jaden touched his still raw forehead; he had forgotten about that. He had rehearsed what he was going to say about the supposed undercover guard, but hadn’t thought about his nearly cracked open head since it had stopped hurting a while ago.
“Uh…” Inu and Lyn would be easy to fool just because he didn’t live with them, but Charlie would be hard to convince. So long as she didn’t blow his cover now, he thought he could pull it off.
“I tripped looking for the guard, and hit my head,” he said, then turned his attention to Charlie. “Who turned out to be exactly who she said she was. She was as much a guard as you or me. But I told her not to wear that colored cape anymore just in case.”
Lyn’s face lit up like a light post, and she nearly pounced on her brother in excitement. “Ooh, that means we’ve got a philanthropist around here!!” she said, tugging at him. “We have to run into her so we can get a chunk for ourselves!”
Inu tried to shake her off, seeming embarrassed by her enthusiasm, and started heading for the stairs. “Um, sure, Lyn.”
Much to Jaden’s surprise, Charlie didn’t seem suspicious at all. She shrugged her shoulders, and picked up the two books she and Lyn had been ready to bludgeon him with earlier. “So long as she doesn’t suddenly change her mind, I’m fine,” she said as she did this.
Jaden walked over to the door with the twins. Inu let his sister go first, and turned to him. “Just remember that we might not be so lucky next time, man,” he said to him. “Keep an eye out for the capes.”
“And where you’re going!” Lyn shouted from below, her voice on the brink of laughter. “Gotta watch out for those walls!”
Jaden smiled sheepishly as the two left, watching their descent to make sure they were alright going down. He and Charlie were used to scaling the four-story building, but they couldn’t say that for the rest of their friends. He turned around when he saw they were safely at the bottom only to be flicked in the forehead by Charlie.
“OW!” he yelped, covering his injury with his hands in reaction.
Charlie put her hands on her hips, looking like a scolding mother.
“What’d you lie to them for?!” she said, frowning at him. “Inu and Lyn are our friends!”
Jaden looked at her incredulously while rubbing his head. “I know! But I had to!” he said as he flipped open his satchel.
Charlie folded her arms and watched him, wondering what exactly was going on with him today. She had never gotten so many conflicting emotions off of him in one day. Jaden took the pin out of the satchel, and held it out to her. Her eyes widened and he thought he saw a quick glimpse of a normal girl’s reaction.
“Ooh!!” she nearly squealed, taking it from him. “How’d you get this?! Looks expensive…”
Jaden sat down on the floor. “It was given to me,” he said. “That’s why I had to lie to Inu and Lyn. You might want to sit down for this.”
Charlie looked at him warily, hoping that whatever he was going to tell her wasn’t going to be was bad news. He never asked her to sit down unless it was really bad news or really good news. She tucked the skirt of her dress behind her and sat down in front of him.
“The girl I met wasn’t an undercover guard,” he said. Charlie nodded her head.
“Okay, you said that earlier…”
“But she wasn’t what she said she was either.”
Her eyes widened, and she looked like she was going to get up to start packing their stuff again. He put his hands up to try and stop her if necessary until he told her the whole story.
“Wait, wait, don’t panic! This is why I had to lie about my head!” he said. “Um… You may think I’m crazy when I say this, but the girl I met was Princess Mirhae.”
Charlie sat right back down in front of him, looking like her legs had suddenly stopped working and she had no choice but to plop down in front of him. She stared at him, completely expressionless. She then started laughing so hard she nearly fell over, her strange shrieking laughter almost sending Jaden down the stairs again. He had to stop himself from putting his hands over his ears; he had forgotten what her ear-splitting cackles were like. He waited for her to recover, and when she finally stopped, she was rubbing her stomach in pain.
“Okay,” she giggled, calming herself down. “That was pretty good. Now really, who’d you meet?”
Jaden looked at her, his mouth nearly dropping open.
“I just told you!” he said, the shock from the night catching up with him so he on the brink of raving. “Princess Mirhae! Now if you don’t believe that, how the hek am I going to tell you how I nearly cracked my head open?!”
Charlie blinked, completely taken aback by his sudden excitement.
“Wait, you were serious?”
“Of course I was serious!” he almost shouted, throwing his hands in the air above his head. “I got chased around by Darklings half the night, and you don’t even believe me about the garm princess!”
Her expression immediately changed when he had mentioned the Darklings, going from disbelief to a mixture of alarm and curiosity.
“Darklings? How did you run into Darklings in this city?!” she said, her curiosity overcoming the alarm.
Jaden gave her a stubborn look. “Oh, now you believe me! Well, maybe I don’t feel like telling you now.”
“Jaden!!”
His face broke into a smile, as he couldn’t have resisted teasing her a little. “Okay, calm down, I’ll tell you.” he said, trying not to laugh at his glowering friend, and started his story.
“After I found the princess, and she told me she wasn’t an undercover guard, I asked her if I could walk her back to the merchant’s sector.”
Charlie tried not to snicker too openly. “Well, aren’t you chivalrous,”
Jaden rolled his eyes. “You didn’t see the way she was dressed; she would have gotten robbed in a heartbeat. Anyway, we started walking, and after a while it felt like somebody was following us. Next thing I know, Mirhae freaks out, and starts running like crazy!”
“Pfft, I’d run like crazy too if I was being chased by Darklings!” Charlie interrupted once more. Jaden shook his head.
“Yeah, but get this; while we were running, she suddenly decides to tell me who she really is! And what do I do? I wind up tripping, and almost break my neck!”
He then found himself trying to talk over Charlie’s laughter again, the pitch scratching his eardrums.
“So then the Darklings surround us, I get up, grab Mirhae and run for the nearest mercantile building. And as we’re running, they start shooting lightning at us! Like, bright blue lightning going past my head!! I thought we were gonna die!”
“Well, you didn’t! What happened after you got into the building?” She was listening intently now, finding both the story and his varying expressions interesting. She hadn’t seen him so active since they had successfully ran the guards around the neighborhood for two solid hours.
“We figured that they would go after her no matter what we did so we came up with a plan with to send Mirhae to the marketplace to get the guards, and I would stay behind to distract the Darklings-“
Charlie nearly jumped up just to kick him. “What?!” she shouted. She resisted the urge to hit him, and settled for getting into his face with anger. “No, Jaden, you don’t do that!!! They were Darklings, for crying out loud!! What if you had gotten yourself killed, huh?!”
Jaden had put his arm up in front of him as if she was going to hit him instead of verbally assault him. “But she’s the princess!! I had to do something!” he protested.
“The princess isn’t my best friend!! She can go jump in the Sable River for all I care!!”
Despite his being touched that Charlie was worried about him, and had actually expressed it for once, Jaden felt he had to defend the princess. She had saved him from the prison, and that repaid him for saving her life just as easily.
“Yeah, but she talked the guards out of arresting me! That’s a pretty good reason for being a distraction, don’t you think? Would you rather I be in jail instead of here?” he said, hoping that this would turn her temper down.
Charlie didn’t seem phased at all, and just walked over to her small collection of herbs and plants. She wanted to berate Jaden for almost splitting his head open like a melone and being so foolish as to think he could take on Darklings, but she would have to patch him up first before the gash got infected.
“Well, good for her. You still could have gotten yourself killed.” she said as she picked up a small, chipped jar and found some clean bandages.
She sat down in front of him, and started to clean the gash on his forehead. Jaden kept on talking, tempting her to put the poultice in his mouth to get him to stop moving. He was practically vibrating after everything, the colors in his eyes still swimming dizzily and his face flushed.
“I know, but I didn’t. Oh, but I wish you could have met her; she’s not like the king at all! She sounded like one of those equal rights people that try to do stuff at the market, but always get arrested,” he said, trying not to wince from the stinging sensation of one of Charlie’s healing potions.
She snorted as she cut the bandages. “Did she reek of jakiel too?” she mumbled to herself.
“And you know what? I think I believe her. I mean, she’s going to have the power when the king passes away, isn’t she? I think we all might have a chance once she’s queen,” he continued, even though he was aware he was mainly talking to Charlie’s neck as she fixed his head.
“Time tells everything,” she said as she finished with the bandage. She then picked up the pin that she had lain beside her to inspect it more carefully.
“What I do think though is that we should sell this,” she said, eyeing it with more interest then before.
It hummed in her hand with magik, making her want to take it apart just to find out how strong it was. The materials it was made out of had their own properties she could put to use as well, but it would most likely be worth more in one piece so she resisted her impulses. She picked up one of her battered books, and started searching through it to try to identify the types of magik in it. Jaden didn’t even seem to notice what she was doing at all, he was too busy continuing his own thoughts earlier on what Mirhae had been talking about.
If anything, he was living proof of what she had been talking about, and he agreed with how she felt. He had been the victim of prejudice his entire life, the same thing had happened to Charlie, and practically every other Grayling. The racism that ran rampant in the city had torn his family apart, his father thrown into the prison for a crime he never committed, and his mother dead from grief. He wondered what exactly Mirhae wanted to do in order to put everyone on equal ground when nearly every wealthy Lit would oppose her. He wished he had had the time to talk with her some more to find out, and maybe spread the word.
If only he could meet her one more time, he would ask her as many questions as he could think up, and listen to what she had to say. He also had to admit that the small kiss on his cheek was jumping around in the back of his mind, but he quickly pushed that aside before his cheeks turned pink. He was vaguely aware of Charlie saying something about selling the pin, but he was a bit busy in his own mind to be sure. Wait a minute! The thought suddenly came crashing through his head.
“So, do you think Ryzz would be willing to sell this for us, or-?” Charlie was cut off by him suddenly coming over, and grabbing the pin from her.
“Wha-? Hey!” she said, but Jaden held up a hand.
“I have an idea,” he said, holding the pin in front of him. “Do you think this pin could get me through the shield surrounding that palace?”
Charlie gave him the best confused expression she could manage under such short notice. She then started laughing once more.
“Dear Evawnryzza, Jaden, you’re a genius!!” she crowed, almost getting up and dancing around the room. “With that pin, we could get into the palace, and rob the kitchens blind!! Whoo-hoo!!”
Jaden found himself trying to talk over her shrieking laughter, and getting his racing thoughts in order enough to convince her he wasn’t crazy for thinking of this.
"Charlie, we're not going there to raid the place."
She quickly stopped laughing, and looked at him, more confused then ever.
"Then why the linxak are we going?" she asked. Jaden bit his lip.
"We're going so I can talk to Mirhae again?" he said, sounding like a child who had gotten in trouble but was trying to justify it all.
She stared at him in disbelief, her mouth nearly dropping open. He tried not to fidget in front of her, feeling his bright idea dimming the slightest. But he knew that if he could persuade Charlie to help him do this, they would be successful. Even though she made a majority of their income from being the western Grayling quarter’s main healer and magik user, she could still walk as quiet as a brief wind and knew how to take apart any lock set in front of her.
"You're joking," she said. He shook his head, determined to convince her to help him.
"Aw, Jaden!"
She got up and walked away from him, then turned around to consider him. Her normal glower was on her face, and he could see she was getting ready to fight him on this.
“Jaden, why in the world would you want to go into the most protected part of the city just to talk to somebody?! Just wait until her dad kicks the bucket, and then we’ll see what she does. It’s crazy, and completely unnecessary to try to break into the palace just for that!” she said, elaborating with her hands. Jaden listened to her, arms folded.
“I know, it does seem crazy, but… I think she can do something, I really do. And I just really want to talk with her just for a little bit.” he said. She looked like she was going to object again but he quickly started again. “After that, we can forget about everything! We can sell the pin, and be set until after the dry season. But I can’t do this without you.”
Charlie groaned in annoyance. “Jaden, we’re not breaking into the palace just for that! It’s… It’s just, no! If we were going to get food or something, then it would make sense, but this doesn’t make any sense at all! We’ll get ourselves killed!!”
“Only if we’re not careful!” he said, determined to persuade her. “If I went by myself, yes, I would most likely get caught. But if I went with you-“
Charlie let out a bark of cruel laughter, interrupting him with her scorn. “Yeah right! There’s no way I’m helping you do this!! I like living, thank you very much!!”
She sat down stubbornly on her mat, and started to obstinately organize everything in front of her, even though it was already all in order. Jaden sat down next to her, hoping he could try to reason her out of her brooding. She edged away from him, frowning determinedly at her herbs.
“Charlie, come on, please?” he pleaded. “You know I can’t do this without you.”
She turned her back to him, and he could tell she was definitely in a stubborn rut against him breaking into the palace. He folded his arms, thinking determinedly. He knew that if he left on his own, she would eventually come after him since they had been friends for so long. But he really didn’t want to do that since it made him feel bad, and he wanted her to come willingly. He smiled as he thought of the one thing that always worked.
"Hey Charlie," he said, a mischievous smile on his lips.
"What?" Charlie said flatly, relenting if only to try and discourage him some more.
"I know what'll make you more agreeable!"
"Oh really? What on earth could that be?" she drawled
"Such a feelin's come o-ver me! There is wonder in everything I seeeee!" he suddenly burst out, singing happily and very badly.
Jaden's off-key singing set Charlie off in seconds. She whirled around to face him, her eyes nearly glowing with annoyance.
"No no no no! Stop that! No!"
"Not a cloud in the sky-got the sun in my e-yesss!" he continued, grinning like a fool. He had to stop himself from laughing at her continued seething.
He suddenly came up behind her and lightly shook her.
"C'mon, Charlie! Sing with me!" he said.
"NO! I don't sing! Now, shut up!"
"Alrighty then! I'll just keep going!"
"Nooooo..." she moaned. She covered her ears with her hands and started spouting gibberish to try and block him out. Jaden continued, of course.
"And I won't be sur-prised if its a dreeeeeeeam!" he practically shouted.
"You're not even singing it right!" she snarled at him through gritted teeth. "Will you shut up already?! You sound like a dying kiyote`!"
"Nope! Not until you say you'll help me!" he sang. "Everything I want the world to beeee!"
"Rrrrrgh! I'm going to snap you're neck if you don't stop, Jaden!!"
"Is now coming tru-oooooh especially for me! And the reason is cleeeear, it's because-"
"ENOUGH!" she shouted, making the room shake. She jumped up, eyes wild and looking like she was going to strangle him. He almost jumped away from her.
"I'll help! Okay?! Just stop that absurd howling!!"
His face broke into a huge, excited smile. "You will?" he said, the color in his eyes brightening.
"Yes," she said, already felt an impending sense of doom.
"Promise?"
She took a breath, hesitating the slightest. "Mm…Yes."
"Ya-hoo!"
He hugged her he was so happy, and Charlie promptly shoved him off of her, annoyance taking over her face once more.
"But only on one condition!" she said, not willing to give in too easily.
"Anything! Just say you'll come with me no matter what,"
"I will," she said, a small smirk starting on her face. "Only if you let me steal something from the palace."
Jaden's face fell. He really didn’t want to steal anything from the palace when Mirhae was trying to convince her father they weren’t all thieves.
"Charlie... You know we can't-"
"Then I won't help!" she interrupted. "We're going to need to sell something to replace that pin, and this is what you've reduced me to!"
He sighed. "Alright, fine. But only one thing! That's it!"
She grinned at him almost too fiercely, looking more like a cat who had caught a mouse instead a girl who had won him over. "Then we'll go first thing in the morning!" she said. “I’ll run over to Lil’s before we go and ask her how she got in the first time. Then we can go.”
Jaden nodded, the smile from before still on his face. “Fine by me. The more help, the better.” he said.
"Does this mean we're going on a little excursion?" asked Weirdling, sounding like a tired mother while it spoke. Jaden looked at him, wondering where the mouse had been up until then.
"Uh, yes, we are.” He said, giving the familiar the same excited smile he had given Charlie.
"Then I suggest the both of you go to bed," it advised, heading towards its own small nest. "Its two minorae."
"Two minorae? Is it that late?" Jaden said, poking his head out the window to see the moon high in the clear night sky. He heard Charlie yawn quietly.
"I was wondering why I was so tired," she mumbled. She looked at him, a half serious expression on her face. “Couldn’t possibly be from looking after you.”
She kneeled on the floor and pulled out a ragged blanket. She then unfolded her sleeping mat to the proper length. Jaden turned from the window and unrolled his own blankets underneath it. He kicked off his boots and nestled himself in his little nest of warm blankets. He looked over at Charlie, who was already settled and curled up in a tight ball.
"Good night, Charlie," he said.
"G'night," he heard her mumble before rolling over to face the wall.
He lied down, and looked up at the moon. His hurrying thoughts went to Mirhae as his fingers found the pin. He held it up in the bright moonlight, the jewels glittering. He quietly sighed, trying clear his mind enough so he could sleep.
Hopefully, this will all work. he thought. And Mirhae won't think I'm out of my mind. Tomorrow is going to be one crazy day....





"Come on, Jaden! It’s time to get up!"
"Nh..." Jaden waved his hand wildly in the air as if shooing a fly to get Charlie away from him. He missed her completely, and she continued to shake him.
"Jaden! Get up, you useless Grayling!" she grumbled. She hated trying to wake him up for things since he was such a heavy sleeper.
He slept on, and Charlie frowned at him crossly. She took one of her measuring cups from her magik supplies, and dipped it into the gutter outside the window. She then turned it over on his head.
"Ah!" He leapt out of bed like a rabbit, sputtering from the cold awakening.
"Charlie! That water's freezing! What's wrong with you?!" he gasped, the freezing tendrils of the water creeping through his skull.
"You wouldn't get up, so I improvised," she said simply. She walked over to the table and tossed him a mela. "Now eat. They'll be changing guards at the palace gates in an hour."
Jaden turned his head from wiping his face dry to look out the window. It was Durn, the moon had gone down but the sun hadn't come up yet.
"It's still dark out! We don't have to get into the castle this early!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, we do. If you don't want to be seen, we have to beat the servants and people to the rooms. We'll hide until nine minorae, and then you can go after Mirhae while I find something good to steal." she said, as she busied herself putting things into Jaden's messenger bag. “That’s what Lil told me to do or else we’ll be caught for sure.”
He looked at the things she was putting into his satchel. The end of a sledgehammer, a battered crowbar, and some slightly bent twisters were put into it like medical equipment.
"What's all that stuff for?" he asked as he ate his mela.
"Oh, that's in case I find something good but it's nailed down or something," she said, trying not to smile too openly. She picked up a pair of rusty pliers, inspected them, and then put them in the satchel as well. He would have said something, but he had promised she could take something.
"Just make sure you don't take anything huge," he said. "Anything you can't carry yourself, we're not taking."
"Aw, but all the really cool stuff is big," she pouted, folding her arms stubbornly. "What if I find this jewel encrusted vase, but it’s too heavy for me?"
"You do remember we're going there for me, right?" he reminded her. He really hoped she wasn’t going to go too overboard with this improvised heist. "I'm going to talk with Mirhae, and then we're out of there. No stopping to pull something out of something, or trying to take a golden door handle. We're just going to get in and get out as quick as possible."
Charlie rolled her eyes. "You mean, we take as long as you take to buddy up with the princess. While you're doing that, I'll go around and try to find the lightest payload I can find." she said. This earned her an annoyed glance from Jaden.
"How are we doing this anyway? My plan isn't going to work with you running around." he asked. He set his mela core down on the floor for Weirdling to eat. He wasn't awake enough to see that Weirdling was perched on Charlie’s shoulder.
"Charlie is going to cast a bonding spell between me and you. That way, you and I will be able to communicate the way we do. I'm going to keep a watch on the guards and servants, and warn you if someone is coming too close to either of you." said Weirdling as it scrambled from her shoulder and over to the mela core.
"Oh, so we can stick to my plan, and you'll be our little watch-dog."
"I don't like the term 'watch-dog', but yes."
"It would be nice to know what your plan is before we go on with this." said Charlie as she went through her bottles of minerals and herbs, looking for what she needed for the bonding spell.
"After we sneak onto the palace grounds, I thought I could try to find the royal family’s rooms while you go on your merry thieving way inside the palace." he said. ""
"Mmm... I think we could do away with the splitting up part," she said, picking up a mineral bottle and breaking off a few leaves from one of hr plants. The broken stems immediately started to ooze. "With Weirdling running around, he could find Mirhae for you while you help me. When he finds Mirhae, you can go to her, and I'll start working on getting whatever I've found loose."
He watched her as she mixed the minerals from the bottle, which looked like different colored sand, and the green ooze that was coming from the leaves in a battered cup. As it blended together it started to turn a variety of colors, from a dark green to a bright red.
"I'm not going to have to drink that, am I?" he asked anxiously.
"No," she answered. "I've got to use this on the floor."
She moved the table to the side, and started to pour the mixture onto where it used to stand. She poured the mixture, which had decided on becoming purple at that point, on the floor so it made two circles that overlapped each other. One was small and the other was large. She then took her inkpot and a brush, and started to write in the space where the two overlapped. She wrote a number of runes, and when she was finished, she wrote what looked like a bridge made of runes from the center of one circle to the other.
She brushed herself off and held a hand over the bridge.
"Orhinkto!" she commanded. The purple runes glowed, and she beckoned Jaden to come over to her.
He cautiously came over, and watched as Weirdling scampered over to the small circle. He was used to watching her do stuff for other people; he had never been a recipient of her unusual talent so he wasn’t sure what to expect.
"Jaden, look at me," he heard Charlie say as he did.
"Why?"
A cloud of yellow dust was dashed into his face. His eyes immediately watered, and he was suddenly shoved into the larger circle. He coughed and looked at a blurry Charlie, who had turned into a phantom of silver and black.
"Was that really necessary?!" he sputtered at her.
"You wouldn’t have let me do it if I had told you anyway," she said, opening one of her books, the pages yellow from age. "Now hold still. You can't move, or we'll have to start all over again."
"This isn't going to hurt, is it?"
"No, but you might feel a little hot."
"Alright,"
Jaden closed his eyes, and listened to Charlie speaking. She didn't mumble like other witches, she actually nearly shouted the incantations. He didn’t know whether it was because she never got a chance to practice out loud since she usually dealt with potions, or because it was fun.
"Mina quar ryzza, koh tamora mina aquihert," she began. "Yun kyte il, mina ouma eh mina ryu treh la juntakeen ja mesnanda. Evawnryzza mista jun."
He suddenly started feeling a warm sensation creeping up his legs until it enveloped him. It was almost like diving feet first into some warm water, but then someone turned the heat up. A flash of fever, and then he snapped back to normal. He opened his eyes, and blinked. Charlie snapped her book shut.
"All done," she announced happily. Jaden looked down around himself and then over at Weirdling.
"How do you know it worked?" he asked. She looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully.
"Um.... Weirdling, think of something insulting about Jaden," she said, waving at the mouse.
"Hey!"
"Alright... But what? I don't like saying mean things."
"Graylings are idiotic dreamers," Charlie suggested off-handedly. Jaden scoffed, folding his arm, and she looked at him flatly. “What? You know I don’t mean it.”
"Of all the-" he began, but suddenly stopped. It sounded as if someone had briefly whispered something to him, but he had only caught the tail end.
"Weirdling, are you talking to me through your mind?" he asked it, looking at him with wide eyes.
It nodded. "I just was."
"Talk louder then, I can't hear you."
"I'll try..."
Jaden stood very still and concentrated hard. Jaden's a silly dream-chaser. Weirdling's voice suddenly fluttered through his head.
"Hey! That's not true!" he burst out.
"I know! I just needed to say something that would get your attention!" protested Weirdling, cringing the slightest in embarrassment.
"Why? What'd you say?" asked Charlie. Jaden pointed at Weirdling, sounding like a teased child.
"He said I was a silly dream-chaser!" The girl immediately started laughing at the half-hearted insult.
"I didn't mean it!" it said over Charlie's quick laughter.
"Alright! At least we know it worked!" she giggled, recovering from her outburst. "C'mon, we better start moving or we'll miss the guard switch."
She scooped up Weirdling, and Jaden found the pin under his blankets. He put it in his pocket, and shouldered the satchel full of tools. He saw the mouse slip up Charlie’s arm and curl itself around her neck. They slipped out of the building and disappeared into the complete darkness of Durn.