The City of Light, Monday, Early Evening
Jun. 21st, 2007 12:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dark_slippy_thing"Poor things," Helena mumbled as they tripped away from the park. Valentine was less than sympathetic.
"Okay, let's see the charm, then." He crossed his arms and looked at Helena expectantly. If this stupid thing could save the world, he'd be taking it to the palace now, earning his reward, and getting the heck out of here now, yes please.
"I don't think that's what it is," Helena said, looking at the little silver box in her hand. "He said the charm was a mirror... mask."
She opened the box, and sitting quite cozily inside was something that, unfortunately, was neither mirrory or masklike.
"Oh," Valentine mumbled as he stared down at the little key.
"It's a key. It's a start," Helena said, possibly a little too chipperly for Valentine's current 'I've just almost been killed because you were negotiating with rocks and I still haven't eaten' mood.
"Absolutely," he said, starting out in a mumble and finishing off in a flailing, angry yell. "We just have to try the key in every single lock we pass, and when we find the one that key opens, we'll know that ten thousand bloody years have passed!!"
"Come on, think positive," Helena urged. "Think of treasure and all that stuff you like."
Valentine pouted. Treasure was shiny. Shiny was good. This was a key. The key was not a treasure. It was mildly shiny. But it was still not treasure. Which was shiny. And Shiny? Totally good. He liked shini--
The gryphon from before made him jump a good three feet in the air as it pounced Helena out of nowhere and threw her into a wall.
"You shall not pass," it insisted, "unless you tell me, um, the answer to the riddle you asked me before."
Riddle?
"Riddle?" Helena looked about as baffled as Valentine was. Except Valentine clued in faster. The gryphon was an idiot. The gryphon had been asking riddles. There was certain death somewhere after that, so the events were a little fuzzy at present.
"What's green," the gryphon prodded, "hangs on a wall, and whistles, remember?"
Valentine figured that the answer to that one was probably Donatello on a very good day.
"Oh, right," Helena said, catching on. "Yes, that one. So, you give up?"
"Kind of. Not really." The gryphon was rather persistent in the misconception that he was not as stupid as he kept making himself look. "Not really. I mean, I'm sure I'll know it when you say what it is."
"Okay. It's a herring."
Valentine and the gryphon both pulled a double take.
"But a herring isn't green," the beast protested.
"You can paint it green," Helena replied.
Oh.
"But a herring doesn't hang on a wall!"
"You can nail it to a wall!"
Oh.
"But a herring," the creature said, shoving his face into Helena's and speaking through grit teeth, "doesn't. Whistle."
Helena's tone indicated that she was rather pleased with herself, indeed.
"Oh, come on. I just threw that in there to keep it from being too obvious."
The gryphon looked shocked again, pulling away and letting Helena stand. He hung his head. He had been beaten. By what was either insanity, or yet another reason to convince Valentine that Helena and the Jerries would get along together wonderfully.
"And the answer to my one is still 'a secret,'" Valentine taunted as he and Helena ran away.
He couldn't help it. When certain death passes one by, sometimes one must throw its own stupidity right back at it.
~~~
"So. We've got a key," Helena mused as they walked along the edge fo the city. "Just nothing to put it in. Get higher. What did she mean by that? Think."
"Just the interminable ravings of an unsound and enormous mind, I expect. Very big. Not very bright."
Valentine was rather certain that such was the case. The fact that they were walking through the decayed outer edges of the city and he was still jumpy from being attacked by shadows for the fourth time in as many days had nothing to do with the snide remark. Honest.
"MirrorMask," Helena mused. "What kind of thing is a MirrorMask...?"
"Well. It's a... It's an..." Valentnie attempted to demonstrate by way of making nonsensical motions with his hands. "It's the- I've got it!"
"Tell me." Helena sounded less than convinced.
"Yes! We should ask an expert."
"Like who?"
"Like whoever owns that place," he explained, pointing upward at the sign hung above the door on a huge old house.
'Mask Shop.'
If that wasn't fantastic coincidence, Valentine had no idea what was.
After all, what use did anyone have for a mask shop in a world where everyone already had a mask as a face in the first place?
~~~
Helena pushed the door open, and the two of them stepped inside of the gift shop. A sphinx yawned up at them casually from atop a counter. A rack of old, unsold masks made faces at Helena as they headed inside.
The place was in a state of unbelievable decay. If the streets outside weren't so bad, it would have been something of a shock to step into this mask shop, coated with a thick later of dust and neglect.
A nervous old lady with a mask someone reminiscent of neglected linens on a dirty clothespile stepped into the room and regarded the pair.
"Can I help you, dear?"
Okay, so not the pair. She regarded Helena.
"I saw the sign," Helena explained. "We're looking for a mask. We wondered if you could help us."
"Well, come in dears, both of you. I was just about to have tea. Do you like cakes?" It was entirely possible that Valentine hadn't been paying attention to a word of this babble until the crazy mask shop lady mentioned cakes. Food. Food was nice. "Oh, you young people, it's all tea and muffins and excitement in your world, I expect."
Tea and muffins and excitement wasn't so far off, Valentine mused to himself, absently reaching to pet a nearby sphinx, and stopping short as it bared its teeth at him.
Right. Not a nice kitty. Not for petting.
"Well, just sit anywhere and I'll go get the tea," the crazy lady stated and she bustled off.
Valentine stared at the seat. The sphinx that was sitting in the seat stared back. This was not a good combination. Not for petting. Not for sitting on. Valentine didn't much think that he'd like his rear to be up there on the sphinx food chain, right along with monkeybird butt.
"Oh, is Ginger sitting on the chair again? Just push him off," the mask-shop lady stated as she returned into the room with a teapot and a tray of cakes.
"It's fine, I'll stand," Valentine insisted. He valued his hands just as much as he valued his butt.
"Tch. Oh, Ginger won't bite," the woman insisted, giving the sphinx a smack on the rump, "he's just a big old silly."
The sphinx didn't seem so impressed as he slunk off of the couch onto the floor.
At least Helena seemed interested in the sphinxes.
"How many do you have?"
"I don't really have them, dear. I could have sworn that when I first started feeding them there were only two or three." The old lady wasn't doing a good job convincing Valentine that she wasn't stark raving bonkers. "There must be thirty of them right now. Let's see... Snowdrop, Stripes, Fluffy, you've met Ginger, there's Spot, Whiskers, Blackie..."
Where this woman got her names for the furless, drab gray beasts, Valentine was pretty certain he didn't want to know.
And the fact that the old lady smacked Helena's hand when the kid reached for the tea and insisted that she wash her hands didn't impress Valentine, either. The place was filthy. How could a psycho sphinx-lady living in squalor be so obsessed about hygiene?
And so, off Helena went, leaving Valentine to listen to the ravings of the crazy lady who had issues resisting the urge to feed the local wildlife.
~~~
In the bathroom, Helena looked out the window to see that other 'her' in her room...
Well! When "father" was around, he was awfully pushy, wasn't he? Demanding to know where she'd been all day -- as if that were any concern of his! And where had she gotten those clothes? As if he really wanted to know she'd stolen money from Aunt Nan! And why did she smell like cigarettes? And what was he to do with her?
He was trying to lecture her, but he wasn't very good at it and just kept shouting. She shouted right back. "You don't OWN me! I'm my own person! Not your toy! You don't understand me! You don't know what I'm going through! I can do whatever I want! You're not the boss of me! And this is MY room! Mine, not yours! Get out of my room! And stay out! Stay out!"
She pushed the door closed behind him as he left, and kicked at things. Who did he think he was, anyway, talking to her like that? And... What was that? She peered more closely at the drawing of the City of Light. She almost thought she could see someone peering out at her... No, no, it was just her imagination. No one from her world could get her here. She wasn't going back.
~~~
Valentine was just working on the last cake as Helena returned from the bathroom. He didn't much care to ask what had taken her so long in there. Perhaps the sink was running mud in the stead of water. It wouldn't have surprised him much. At least Helena was back. Mrs. Bagwell-- Crazy Sphinx Lady-- had been boring a hole through his brain with talk of the sphinxes. Valentine did not want to know their eating patterns. He didn't care what 'the late Mister Bagwell' thought about them.
...
But the cake had been good.
Helena inquired about the MirrorMask and the old lady started off on another tangent about her late husband.
"Mr. Bagwell used to say the MirrorMask concentrated your desires. Your wishes. It would give you what you needed. I remember I said to him, "Mr. Bagwell, how can a mask know what you need?" and he said, "Cynthia, remember, I don't know what I'm talking about.""
No bloody kidding. Valentine had hear just about enough, and it was time to put this banter to rest.
"Excuse me," he broke in, wearing his best 'you're a crazy freak but I'm going to humor you' grin, "I just wondered if there were any more of those amazing cakes?"
"I'll go and see, dear," Cynthia Bagwell said, and bustled off into the other room for more.
"Why did you have to interrupt her?" Apparently, Helena was less pleased about the silence in the room than Valentine was.
"Because she's barking mad!"
Helena was ignoring him already. Valentine was beginning to get the feeling that she figured that that so-called 'Really Useful Book' had more insight to share than he did.
"Oh," he said, staring at the pages.
"What does it say?" That had not sounded like a happy 'oh.'
"Don't let them see you're afraid," Helena murmured under her breath.
"Don't let who see--" Valentine looked around the room. At the many, many grinning sphinxes. Something like thirty? That's what the crazy lady said. He slowly pulled himself to his feet and started to inch for the door.
"Are you sure you don't want to stay, dear?" Crazy Old Lady Bagwell had returned to the room with a tray full of cake. She was talking to Helena, apparently. "I can freshen up the spare bedroom, throw Sooty and her kittens out, and your jester can sleep in the attic."
"I'm not a jester!" Valentine? Insulted? Never. "I'm a very important man! I have a tower."
"That's nice, dear."
...
Ugh.
"I don't think we have any time, I'm afraid," Helena explained, saving Valentine from having to get too affronted. "But thank you."
"Well, here are cakes for the road, dear," Cynthia Sphinx-Feeding Mental Case Dipwad Bagwell said as she handed a big paper bag over to Helena. And then she leaned in close to the girl and whispered. "And dear? Don't let them see you're afraid."
...
Freaky.
~~~
No more crazy lady. That was a bonus. And even if they hadn't gotten any information they could use (except the realization that old ladies who run shops that peddle faces to people who already have them are likely to be batshit and are to be avoided), at least they had cake.
So, there was Valentine, and there was Helena, and there they were, wandering the streets, right back where they had started. They had a key and no keyhole, a useless Useful Book, and some ridiculous hero quest.
And to top it off, the walls and signposts seemed to be practically wallpapered in wanted signs with Helena's freakish visage and a shiny reward promise all over them. Valentine couldn't help but notice that. Reward. Princess. All the jewels you can carry. And that they looked like one in the same...
Valentine was beginning to gt his suspicions.
"Why do you keep saying you've got a tower?" There went Helena-- the princess? -- interrupting his musings. Nothing new, there.
"Because I have." Wasn't that much obvious?
"Well, where is it?" Leave it to Helena to ask him the tough questions.
"Well..." No, he didn't want to answer that one, really.
"Is it a big tower?"
"Huge!" Hooray, a topic switch! ... Sort of! "Enormous. Hundreds of rooms! Stairs! Doorknobs." Doorknobs were important. "A scullery... possibly more than one scullery, actually."
"And I can't see it because...?"
Leave it to Helena to bring the conversation right back into code red.
Valentine coughed and looked over his shoulder, mumbling something under his breath and hoping that perhaps it would serve as a half-decent answer.
"What?"
Apparently it wasn't a half-decent answer, after all.
"We aren't talking," Valentine stressed, grumpily. "The tower and I had a... minor disagreement. And if left without me. I said something..." ...True. "Stupid and it just flew off without me."
Who knew that towers would get so offended if their chicken-feet were brought into the conversation, anyhow?
"Why don't you find it, and say you're sorry?"
"Valentines never apologize," Valentine explained, leaning in toward Helena to stress his point. "Stupid... building."
As he kicked at the dirt, Helena looked upward, picking at a piece of cake thoughtfully.
"Buildings never leave without you where I come from," she mused.
Yeah. Buildings didn't do that in Fandom, either, until space aliens descended from above to vaporize the school. Or something.
A snarl from behind prompted Valentine and Helena both to turn around.
"Hungry."
The sphinx expected them to feed him. How cute. Except... so very not.
"Is this a riddle thing?" Helena leaned a little slower to Valentine,possibly hoping that he knew a way out. Valentine could only stare at the little sphinx, trying to work out some way to get away from--
"Hungry."
Right. No time to develop that plan further really, was there?
Another sphinx walked up beside the first as Helena threw them what was left of the cake. "Still hungry." A few more sphinxes trotted up alongside it.
"I've got a plan," Valentine decided at last, whispering aside to Helena. "Leave this completely to me." Deep breath. Deep breath. "Hullo, puss. I'm out of riddles, but how about a knock-knock joke? I know the best one in the world?"
The sphinx seemed somewhat intrigued as it stepped forward and tilted its head curiously at him.
"The best?"
"Absolutely. You start." Oh please, oh please let this work.
"Knock knock," the sphinx said, then waited for his turn to come around again.
"Who's there?" Valentine leaned toward Helena and mumbled as quietly as he could. "Keep walking."
The sphinxes tried to work out 'who's there,' conferring amongst themselves quietly as Valentine and Helena inched back, then turned to make their bid for freedom-- right into the rest of the sphinxes, who at some point had managed to surround them completely.
"What do we do know?" Helena was looking to Valentine for advice. Clearly, now was a bad time.
"That was as far as my plan went."
"Right." She pulled out the Really Useful Book, which instantly caught the attention of the hungry throng of sphinxes, and opened it up to look inside. "Oh."
Valentine was seriously starting to hate it when Helena went 'oh' like that.
"What does it say?"
"My pages taste excellent," she whispered, "but are stickier than toffee and very hard to chew."
Valentine nodded faintly. Any advice that the book had at this point was very welcom-- wait.
"What an appalling book! That's the most useless thing it's told us so far!"
"No," Helena said gravely. "It's a very brave thing to say."
In one swift motion, she tore a handful of pages from the book and threw it at the creatures. And then another. And then another. They sphinxes pounced the pages and started to gnaw on them, making faces as they attempted to chew the thick, sticky pieces of paper.
Helena and Valentine once again made a break for it.
Valentine was likely to be very adept at running by the time he got out of this city again.
(OOC: Once again, not for interaction, not for broadcast! Spiffed from the MirrorMask scriptboook and chunks of the movie- point of view and novelization-formatting is mine, the rest is Gaiman and McKean. The princess interlude was done by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarcasm_guy, who continues to be an awesome pretty princess! This is all still backdated to Monday, whee!)
"Okay, let's see the charm, then." He crossed his arms and looked at Helena expectantly. If this stupid thing could save the world, he'd be taking it to the palace now, earning his reward, and getting the heck out of here now, yes please.
"I don't think that's what it is," Helena said, looking at the little silver box in her hand. "He said the charm was a mirror... mask."
She opened the box, and sitting quite cozily inside was something that, unfortunately, was neither mirrory or masklike.
"Oh," Valentine mumbled as he stared down at the little key.
"It's a key. It's a start," Helena said, possibly a little too chipperly for Valentine's current 'I've just almost been killed because you were negotiating with rocks and I still haven't eaten' mood.
"Absolutely," he said, starting out in a mumble and finishing off in a flailing, angry yell. "We just have to try the key in every single lock we pass, and when we find the one that key opens, we'll know that ten thousand bloody years have passed!!"
"Come on, think positive," Helena urged. "Think of treasure and all that stuff you like."
Valentine pouted. Treasure was shiny. Shiny was good. This was a key. The key was not a treasure. It was mildly shiny. But it was still not treasure. Which was shiny. And Shiny? Totally good. He liked shini--
The gryphon from before made him jump a good three feet in the air as it pounced Helena out of nowhere and threw her into a wall.
"You shall not pass," it insisted, "unless you tell me, um, the answer to the riddle you asked me before."
Riddle?
"Riddle?" Helena looked about as baffled as Valentine was. Except Valentine clued in faster. The gryphon was an idiot. The gryphon had been asking riddles. There was certain death somewhere after that, so the events were a little fuzzy at present.
"What's green," the gryphon prodded, "hangs on a wall, and whistles, remember?"
Valentine figured that the answer to that one was probably Donatello on a very good day.
"Oh, right," Helena said, catching on. "Yes, that one. So, you give up?"
"Kind of. Not really." The gryphon was rather persistent in the misconception that he was not as stupid as he kept making himself look. "Not really. I mean, I'm sure I'll know it when you say what it is."
"Okay. It's a herring."
Valentine and the gryphon both pulled a double take.
"But a herring isn't green," the beast protested.
"You can paint it green," Helena replied.
Oh.
"But a herring doesn't hang on a wall!"
"You can nail it to a wall!"
Oh.
"But a herring," the creature said, shoving his face into Helena's and speaking through grit teeth, "doesn't. Whistle."
Helena's tone indicated that she was rather pleased with herself, indeed.
"Oh, come on. I just threw that in there to keep it from being too obvious."
The gryphon looked shocked again, pulling away and letting Helena stand. He hung his head. He had been beaten. By what was either insanity, or yet another reason to convince Valentine that Helena and the Jerries would get along together wonderfully.
"And the answer to my one is still 'a secret,'" Valentine taunted as he and Helena ran away.
He couldn't help it. When certain death passes one by, sometimes one must throw its own stupidity right back at it.
~~~
"So. We've got a key," Helena mused as they walked along the edge fo the city. "Just nothing to put it in. Get higher. What did she mean by that? Think."
"Just the interminable ravings of an unsound and enormous mind, I expect. Very big. Not very bright."
Valentine was rather certain that such was the case. The fact that they were walking through the decayed outer edges of the city and he was still jumpy from being attacked by shadows for the fourth time in as many days had nothing to do with the snide remark. Honest.
"MirrorMask," Helena mused. "What kind of thing is a MirrorMask...?"
"Well. It's a... It's an..." Valentnie attempted to demonstrate by way of making nonsensical motions with his hands. "It's the- I've got it!"
"Tell me." Helena sounded less than convinced.
"Yes! We should ask an expert."
"Like who?"
"Like whoever owns that place," he explained, pointing upward at the sign hung above the door on a huge old house.
'Mask Shop.'
If that wasn't fantastic coincidence, Valentine had no idea what was.
After all, what use did anyone have for a mask shop in a world where everyone already had a mask as a face in the first place?
~~~
Helena pushed the door open, and the two of them stepped inside of the gift shop. A sphinx yawned up at them casually from atop a counter. A rack of old, unsold masks made faces at Helena as they headed inside.
The place was in a state of unbelievable decay. If the streets outside weren't so bad, it would have been something of a shock to step into this mask shop, coated with a thick later of dust and neglect.
A nervous old lady with a mask someone reminiscent of neglected linens on a dirty clothespile stepped into the room and regarded the pair.
"Can I help you, dear?"
Okay, so not the pair. She regarded Helena.
"I saw the sign," Helena explained. "We're looking for a mask. We wondered if you could help us."
"Well, come in dears, both of you. I was just about to have tea. Do you like cakes?" It was entirely possible that Valentine hadn't been paying attention to a word of this babble until the crazy mask shop lady mentioned cakes. Food. Food was nice. "Oh, you young people, it's all tea and muffins and excitement in your world, I expect."
Tea and muffins and excitement wasn't so far off, Valentine mused to himself, absently reaching to pet a nearby sphinx, and stopping short as it bared its teeth at him.
Right. Not a nice kitty. Not for petting.
"Well, just sit anywhere and I'll go get the tea," the crazy lady stated and she bustled off.
Valentine stared at the seat. The sphinx that was sitting in the seat stared back. This was not a good combination. Not for petting. Not for sitting on. Valentine didn't much think that he'd like his rear to be up there on the sphinx food chain, right along with monkeybird butt.
"Oh, is Ginger sitting on the chair again? Just push him off," the mask-shop lady stated as she returned into the room with a teapot and a tray of cakes.
"It's fine, I'll stand," Valentine insisted. He valued his hands just as much as he valued his butt.
"Tch. Oh, Ginger won't bite," the woman insisted, giving the sphinx a smack on the rump, "he's just a big old silly."
The sphinx didn't seem so impressed as he slunk off of the couch onto the floor.
At least Helena seemed interested in the sphinxes.
"How many do you have?"
"I don't really have them, dear. I could have sworn that when I first started feeding them there were only two or three." The old lady wasn't doing a good job convincing Valentine that she wasn't stark raving bonkers. "There must be thirty of them right now. Let's see... Snowdrop, Stripes, Fluffy, you've met Ginger, there's Spot, Whiskers, Blackie..."
Where this woman got her names for the furless, drab gray beasts, Valentine was pretty certain he didn't want to know.
And the fact that the old lady smacked Helena's hand when the kid reached for the tea and insisted that she wash her hands didn't impress Valentine, either. The place was filthy. How could a psycho sphinx-lady living in squalor be so obsessed about hygiene?
And so, off Helena went, leaving Valentine to listen to the ravings of the crazy lady who had issues resisting the urge to feed the local wildlife.
~~~
In the bathroom, Helena looked out the window to see that other 'her' in her room...
Well! When "father" was around, he was awfully pushy, wasn't he? Demanding to know where she'd been all day -- as if that were any concern of his! And where had she gotten those clothes? As if he really wanted to know she'd stolen money from Aunt Nan! And why did she smell like cigarettes? And what was he to do with her?
He was trying to lecture her, but he wasn't very good at it and just kept shouting. She shouted right back. "You don't OWN me! I'm my own person! Not your toy! You don't understand me! You don't know what I'm going through! I can do whatever I want! You're not the boss of me! And this is MY room! Mine, not yours! Get out of my room! And stay out! Stay out!"
She pushed the door closed behind him as he left, and kicked at things. Who did he think he was, anyway, talking to her like that? And... What was that? She peered more closely at the drawing of the City of Light. She almost thought she could see someone peering out at her... No, no, it was just her imagination. No one from her world could get her here. She wasn't going back.
~~~
Valentine was just working on the last cake as Helena returned from the bathroom. He didn't much care to ask what had taken her so long in there. Perhaps the sink was running mud in the stead of water. It wouldn't have surprised him much. At least Helena was back. Mrs. Bagwell-- Crazy Sphinx Lady-- had been boring a hole through his brain with talk of the sphinxes. Valentine did not want to know their eating patterns. He didn't care what 'the late Mister Bagwell' thought about them.
...
But the cake had been good.
Helena inquired about the MirrorMask and the old lady started off on another tangent about her late husband.
"Mr. Bagwell used to say the MirrorMask concentrated your desires. Your wishes. It would give you what you needed. I remember I said to him, "Mr. Bagwell, how can a mask know what you need?" and he said, "Cynthia, remember, I don't know what I'm talking about.""
No bloody kidding. Valentine had hear just about enough, and it was time to put this banter to rest.
"Excuse me," he broke in, wearing his best 'you're a crazy freak but I'm going to humor you' grin, "I just wondered if there were any more of those amazing cakes?"
"I'll go and see, dear," Cynthia Bagwell said, and bustled off into the other room for more.
"Why did you have to interrupt her?" Apparently, Helena was less pleased about the silence in the room than Valentine was.
"Because she's barking mad!"
Helena was ignoring him already. Valentine was beginning to get the feeling that she figured that that so-called 'Really Useful Book' had more insight to share than he did.
"Oh," he said, staring at the pages.
"What does it say?" That had not sounded like a happy 'oh.'
"Don't let them see you're afraid," Helena murmured under her breath.
"Don't let who see--" Valentine looked around the room. At the many, many grinning sphinxes. Something like thirty? That's what the crazy lady said. He slowly pulled himself to his feet and started to inch for the door.
"Are you sure you don't want to stay, dear?" Crazy Old Lady Bagwell had returned to the room with a tray full of cake. She was talking to Helena, apparently. "I can freshen up the spare bedroom, throw Sooty and her kittens out, and your jester can sleep in the attic."
"I'm not a jester!" Valentine? Insulted? Never. "I'm a very important man! I have a tower."
"That's nice, dear."
...
Ugh.
"I don't think we have any time, I'm afraid," Helena explained, saving Valentine from having to get too affronted. "But thank you."
"Well, here are cakes for the road, dear," Cynthia Sphinx-Feeding Mental Case Dipwad Bagwell said as she handed a big paper bag over to Helena. And then she leaned in close to the girl and whispered. "And dear? Don't let them see you're afraid."
...
Freaky.
~~~
No more crazy lady. That was a bonus. And even if they hadn't gotten any information they could use (except the realization that old ladies who run shops that peddle faces to people who already have them are likely to be batshit and are to be avoided), at least they had cake.
So, there was Valentine, and there was Helena, and there they were, wandering the streets, right back where they had started. They had a key and no keyhole, a useless Useful Book, and some ridiculous hero quest.
And to top it off, the walls and signposts seemed to be practically wallpapered in wanted signs with Helena's freakish visage and a shiny reward promise all over them. Valentine couldn't help but notice that. Reward. Princess. All the jewels you can carry. And that they looked like one in the same...
Valentine was beginning to gt his suspicions.
"Why do you keep saying you've got a tower?" There went Helena-- the princess? -- interrupting his musings. Nothing new, there.
"Because I have." Wasn't that much obvious?
"Well, where is it?" Leave it to Helena to ask him the tough questions.
"Well..." No, he didn't want to answer that one, really.
"Is it a big tower?"
"Huge!" Hooray, a topic switch! ... Sort of! "Enormous. Hundreds of rooms! Stairs! Doorknobs." Doorknobs were important. "A scullery... possibly more than one scullery, actually."
"And I can't see it because...?"
Leave it to Helena to bring the conversation right back into code red.
Valentine coughed and looked over his shoulder, mumbling something under his breath and hoping that perhaps it would serve as a half-decent answer.
"What?"
Apparently it wasn't a half-decent answer, after all.
"We aren't talking," Valentine stressed, grumpily. "The tower and I had a... minor disagreement. And if left without me. I said something..." ...True. "Stupid and it just flew off without me."
Who knew that towers would get so offended if their chicken-feet were brought into the conversation, anyhow?
"Why don't you find it, and say you're sorry?"
"Valentines never apologize," Valentine explained, leaning in toward Helena to stress his point. "Stupid... building."
As he kicked at the dirt, Helena looked upward, picking at a piece of cake thoughtfully.
"Buildings never leave without you where I come from," she mused.
Yeah. Buildings didn't do that in Fandom, either, until space aliens descended from above to vaporize the school. Or something.
A snarl from behind prompted Valentine and Helena both to turn around.
"Hungry."
The sphinx expected them to feed him. How cute. Except... so very not.
"Is this a riddle thing?" Helena leaned a little slower to Valentine,possibly hoping that he knew a way out. Valentine could only stare at the little sphinx, trying to work out some way to get away from--
"Hungry."
Right. No time to develop that plan further really, was there?
Another sphinx walked up beside the first as Helena threw them what was left of the cake. "Still hungry." A few more sphinxes trotted up alongside it.
"I've got a plan," Valentine decided at last, whispering aside to Helena. "Leave this completely to me." Deep breath. Deep breath. "Hullo, puss. I'm out of riddles, but how about a knock-knock joke? I know the best one in the world?"
The sphinx seemed somewhat intrigued as it stepped forward and tilted its head curiously at him.
"The best?"
"Absolutely. You start." Oh please, oh please let this work.
"Knock knock," the sphinx said, then waited for his turn to come around again.
"Who's there?" Valentine leaned toward Helena and mumbled as quietly as he could. "Keep walking."
The sphinxes tried to work out 'who's there,' conferring amongst themselves quietly as Valentine and Helena inched back, then turned to make their bid for freedom-- right into the rest of the sphinxes, who at some point had managed to surround them completely.
"What do we do know?" Helena was looking to Valentine for advice. Clearly, now was a bad time.
"That was as far as my plan went."
"Right." She pulled out the Really Useful Book, which instantly caught the attention of the hungry throng of sphinxes, and opened it up to look inside. "Oh."
Valentine was seriously starting to hate it when Helena went 'oh' like that.
"What does it say?"
"My pages taste excellent," she whispered, "but are stickier than toffee and very hard to chew."
Valentine nodded faintly. Any advice that the book had at this point was very welcom-- wait.
"What an appalling book! That's the most useless thing it's told us so far!"
"No," Helena said gravely. "It's a very brave thing to say."
In one swift motion, she tore a handful of pages from the book and threw it at the creatures. And then another. And then another. They sphinxes pounced the pages and started to gnaw on them, making faces as they attempted to chew the thick, sticky pieces of paper.
Helena and Valentine once again made a break for it.
Valentine was likely to be very adept at running by the time he got out of this city again.
(OOC: Once again, not for interaction, not for broadcast! Spiffed from the MirrorMask scriptboook and chunks of the movie- point of view and novelization-formatting is mine, the rest is Gaiman and McKean. The princess interlude was done by
sarcasm_guy, who continues to be an awesome pretty princess! This is all still backdated to Monday, whee!)
