The Girls of Ohmer Chapter 6 The echoing darkness

The Girls of Ohmer Chapter 6
The echoing darkness

Erika closed the bedroom door. Upon inspection, the room seemed quite nice. There was a canopy bed big enough to sleep ten. It was mounded with pillows that matched the satin curtains hanging from the canopy. The ceiling was speckled with glimmering lights that mimicked the starlit sky, and the walls were painted all around with a mural of a beach. All in all it was a beautiful place for three girls to spend their nights. On one wall was an open doorway leading into a bathroom. There was a large tub shaped like a swan.

"Alright! Exclaimed Bear Dog Vampire "look at the size of that tub!"

Vay eyed it suspiciously " I don't wanna take a baff!" She was adamant. She crossed her arms and sat down defiantly.

Erika knew how to handle this. It was nothing a little dose of nevertime couldn't handle. "It's OK Vay, you don't have to if you don't want to."

With that Erika took a deep breath and raised her arms.

"Nooooo" Vay protested  " dats not fayah!"

Erika smiled with her eyes closed and lowered her arms, also lowering the volume of Vays disagreements. Vay was as still as a stone, her little legs poking out from underneath the bed where she was scrambling to hide.

Erika grabbed Vays ankles and dragged her out from under the bed. Then reaching under Vays arms, Erika pulled her into the bathroom, up over the edge and into the tub.  Vay sat in the luxurious tub like a marionette with the strings cut.

"First things first." Erika reached for the bottle of Toms Terrific Tonic and popped the cork out. Pungent fumes that escaped causing Erika to hold the bottle at arms length. " Eeeeeewwww! That stinks!" She was about to give up on the stuff right then and there when she spied a particularly large glop of glue and glitter right on the top of Vays head. " Well," she resigned" stinky is better than baldy!" And with that she poured half of the putrid goop over Vays head. It was like an explosion of funk in Erikas nostrils. Pouring the liquid out released so much stinkieness that she could hardly breathe. She was coughing and gagging, her eyes were watering, she thought she might get sick.  "Just get it over with." she coughed to herself.  She began vigoursly lathering Vays hair, and to her surprise the glue loosened right up, it really did work in a jiffy as Tom had said. A horrendously stinky jiffy, but a jiffy none the less.

In less than a minute all of the sticky glue and sparkly glitter was washed off and running down the drain. Even the mess on Vays clothing was gone without a trace.

Erica saw only one knob on the bathtub. It wasn't labeled hot or cold, simply bath. When Erica experimentally turned the handle ( she did not want her sister scalded or frozen)  warm sudsy water poured out of the mouth of the swan shaped tub. In no time the most wonderful bubble bath surrounded Vay. The smell of lilac perfume scented the air, and the horror of Toms Tonic was a thing of the past.

Erika stripped vays clothing off and wrung it out. Then she gave vay a proper bath and cleaned herself up as well. When Erika brought real time back, both girls were squeaky clean and lilac scented. Vay was snuggled in the bed amongst a mountain of soft pillows, grumping about the loss of her " spawkowies".  It would take her days to forgive Erika for washing the sparkly pixie dust off.

Erika explained how the swan tub worked and handed Bear Dog Vampire the bottle of Toms Teriffic Tonic. " Just get in the tub, pop the top off and dump it all on your head. Then take a bath. The lilac smell comes from the swan bubbles, but I think Toms Tonic smells much better!"

Erika grinned as she shut the bathroom door and heard Bear Dog Vampire scream "Eeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwww, yuck! Get it off get it off! I'm gonna get you for this Erika!"

" Just lather up and wash off! It's really not that bad ya big baby!" In truth it was that bad and then some, but Erika couldn't resist playing a trick on her sisters every once in a while. Otherwise what would be the fun of being the big sister?

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Nina awoke. Well she didn't so much wake up as she slowly became aware that she was in pain and in the dark. For the longest time that's all she knew. Then she became aware that she was upside down. Shortly after Nina realized that most of the pain was in her head and left ankle, she couldn't feel the foot below that ankle and when she tried to reach that foot with her hand, her body was racked with pain. Nina screamed out and her voice echoed for a great distance. This alarmed her. She recalled the cave of the shackles where she had presumably fallen prey to a simple hunters trap while on the lookout for complicated magic traps. That cave was much too small to produce an echo like this. She must have been moved somewhere else, but where? She recalled the twig snapping, the noose around her ankle, and then... She strained to remember what happened next but her mind was foggy. A ride down a tunnel perhaps?

Well, nothing to fear, Nina had only to tap into her inner light to brighten this space and surmise what her situation was. Only she couldn't. That place inside her was still filled with power, yet she could not touch it. Almost as if it were behind a wall or... Nina gasped, she had not seen this magic trap because she had been dragged into it! She was as helpless as a man, dangling from who knew where in the echoing darkness.

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Hilario Melchore was a simple man. He worked, he ate, he slept. Right now, he traveled. Hilario was from the jungle of Wahaka, and things were not going so well for his people. There was a new tribe that had moved close to his village and they were not peaceful as his people were. They were warriors. They raided his village and took his people as slaves. Hilario barely escaped with his life. He decided to search for help in the east, where it was known that the people had much knowledge on the practice of war and the practice of peace as well.

Hilario had travelled for weeks. Now he was hopelessly lost. Earlier in the day he had turned down a valley that he was certain would lead him to his destination. Now hours later, he found himself in a canyon with steep walls on either side. As he rounded a bend he saw that the canyon ended at a sheer wall. He also saw something that made him think he was hallucinating from the fatigue. It was a blue ram grazing in the grass. Then he noticed a cave, and from the cave he heard cries for help. Hilario crossed his heart and ran toward the cave.