Jazz hands shake as she can't help but stare in confusion.
That was it? She didn't even need to raise a finger for a scare to get in? How?
The hands reached out and shook with a small bit of force, a small bit of excitement but not beyond. A chance not only for a scare but some quick cash, who could resist, with only 3 pieces of copper on her person. The coinage in Wondertale she still had trouble grasping. She understood a single copper was this nation's equivalent of a single cent in the world she originated, but beyond this it was beyond her reach until eventually, a friend of hers in Limbo explained very politely;
A copper is a cent
A silver is a half dollar
A gold piece is a dollar
A platinum is ten.
"Uh" she let out a sound
A sound negated by the sound of a skip down the hallway behind the two of them.
An innocent voice of a child excited for where life could go next.
Arthur couldn't help but smile at the sound of this, his daughter was home after a long day of errands with her mother. He walks past Verity towards the sound of both entering the shop. Verity follows him soon after as floating upwards would more than likely only lead to her trying to see how high the man made sky in this anomaly of a shop would go. As the two make their way up a flight of stairs found in the middle of the 'main shop', a door in the middle of a small corridor meets them.
As it is opened, a massive yet comforting living room can be seen surrounding what seemed to be a trunk of wood where the stairwell spiraled downward into the main shop.
Two floors, the second being seen from the first, the lower level in question being a home built by a mad man and painted by a child with black paint. Patterns on the ceiling resemble a cathedral sparkling with a soft gold glow for those sensitive in the eyes. Multiple pictures of the family all together and a few small paintings lay throughout the dark green and blackened walls, all with a similar stripe patterned wall paper as the shop downstairs. A single sofa sits in the middle left of the entire room with multiple bookshelves accompanying its being.
A door at the end of a hallway closes and the source of the voice runs up to Arthur and hugs him on his leg, wrapping itself around it so he could barely move.
A child with sky blue skin and hair in a pair of pigtails with a bow in each looks up at her found father. Her dress is a small red pastel tutu dress with a pink long sleeved shirt with ruffled sleeves and bright striped pants underneath a petticoated skirt with a pair of muddied square patterned shoes. Her eyes behind a pair of bifocals look up at her father with a massive smile, only to reveal a missing tooth.
"Hey Dad, Mama and I are back from the farmer's market."
This was almost a prime target for a ghost to try and haunt for the sake of a quick laugh, but the morality towards the safety of children remained in her head after all the time she's had roaming the new world, well, 'new' as a general term.
"Never compromise a child's safety." A small yet effective message that was burned into her head during her days in the orphanage, one she was proud of in her ability to uphold.
The child in blue pigtails looked over to Verity herself showing the same tooth-missing smile of someone just making a brand new friend.
"HIHI!! I'M STELLA ANAMDEAD WHATS YOUR NAME!!!" she said, running up to her and waving quickly in front of the new house guest. Her energy was something else.
Verity said not a word as she awkwardly stands in place, Stella tilts her head to the side as another woman, twice the size of the girl in red hair, a slightly wrinkled face and a wedding ring strolls up to the old man and plants a kiss on his lips. She, with her finger wrapped in a wedding ring in the shape of a heart, leans over to communicate with the girl.
"Alright, lil Cataloni, maybe let her breathe a lil."
Stella frowns a bit before complying with a small "Okay". She runs off to play with a couple of small doll-like toys she left on the floor and forgot to pick up. A small tin knight and a dolly stitched together as a birthday present.
The lady in red hair drops her bags on the living room's table near the sofa and waves to the host in a smile.
"And hello to you, I'm Mary-Anne. You must be the new waitress we've been needing to hire, trust me you'll love it here. The people who come in here are the sweetest bunch."
Mary-Anne wraps her arms around Arthur's as she smiles even wider, sighing in contentment. Her husband was finally in front of her again. The smell of the sweet potions and fiery oak coming off of him almost made her swoon as if it were the first time they fell in love all over again. Arthur seemed to smile with the exact same form of love towards his most precious one he called his "beating heart". Yet, for some reason, a look of contemplation hit him before any emotions could hit him.
Who did we forget to introduce? He would think, tapping his available arm on his chin.
A vine from the outside of the caravan appears behind Verity as it taps her on the shoulder. A flower blooms from it and waves at her as if the petals were the fingers on a severed hand, yet the gesture was calm and almost welcoming.
"CHRIST, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" Verity thought it was far less so.
Stella gasps and puts her hands onto her hips to show a slight bit of disappointment at Verity's choice of words. As she huffed and puffed from her own slight bit of anger, sparks of what Verity hoped was simple electricity generated from her body, almost as if it were a badly lit furnace being struck by the lightning of a storm.
"Dad said you shouldn't say those words if you want to become a proper lady."
Verity, again, was confused, albeit fascinated.
This kid looks like she knows some stuff.
Her thoughts almost betray her as Arthur steps in between them to break up whatever destruction might come to the living room, Stella going back to playing with her toys. She liked to play pretend over the fairy tales her father would read to her.
"Now, then Ms. Verity. As a new employee of mine, how much do you know about magic as a whole?"
"How does that matter? I'm already a ghost I can just…."
"You can't say that I never said it wouldn't."
…..
Verity's mind began to run and run at 20 mph hoping to find some form of an answer, yet in all 300 years of her forever time, she never once bothered to learn the basics of the residents of the world she now inhabits. Still, an answer must be given.
"It's this stuff that does things with weird energy?" She beamed with pride at her answer.
"Not even close." Arthur kept an innocent smile as the answer sort of slipped out of his mouth. He raised a finger to set a demonstration into effect.
"Listen carefully, Verity. As you work for me, everything involving the world of magic is soon to be revealed to you."
….
Nothing came out of anyone's mouths. Mary-Anne cringing at the mention of "everything" at once, knowing where her husband is going with this. She begins to quietly leave the room, only to wander back in and whisper a small mantra of love into Arthur's ear. He stood up straight as if a series of hands were straightening his spine.
"I'll go make some cookies. This could take a while." she said with a smile as she went down the stairwell.
The ironic chaos she was unable to cause made Verity begin to trip over her own words and speak like a fool who had just read the worst possible source of information they could and pawned it off as fact.
"Speak on, mr. boss man."
"While, yes, magic is a strange energy, as you call it, manipulated via the usage of a wondertalian's "Mana Cells", you first must understand what the basic concept of Mana truly is. Mana is more or less a type of energy you take from within yourself. Mages when they first begin to learn of Mana Cells can essentially shape or cast their own life energy to cast a 'spell'."
He looked to Verity to see if she was comprehending. Indeed, as his hands moved and some spells were created for the sake of engagement, as a small ball of almost golden Mana was formed within the palm of his real hand, the basics were still new. She hardly picked up on much of anything involving it.
"Who decided something like that?"
Arthur tried to ignore this question as one of utter stupidity, yet his mouth moved nonetheless, as if his body moved on its own.
"All types of magic, as you may not have noticed through little other than your witness to young Khouma's Mana awakening, are more or less divided into five levels. You could think of them as a certain type of 'pathway' when trying to enhance your magic, but actually it's more a way of thinking in terms of self growth."
"So, I'm guessing that by that kinda thinking, Level 5s are always the strongest, and Level 1s are the weakest."
"Then you guess like a fool."
This comment made Verity nearly deflate as her statement was proven illogical. In all her time in the afterlife, why hasn't she been tested to a degree such as this.
"Some Level 5s could be the equivalent of fools who wrap themselves in the idea of genius, while some Level 1s could understand how to effectively whittle down Mana through pure strategy."
Verity raises her hand in the middle of this lecture as Stella also rocks back and forth, listening to her father speak as she continues to play with her toys. Verity enjoyed the smile, but she would never admit it.
"What about me?"
"What?"
"Can you give me a contract?"
"Yes."
"SWEET! Give me a contract then, something awesome."
"No."
"WHAT!? WHY?!" She asked surprised.
"NO", a simple word she had not heard in a while. She was a powerful ghost, afterall, if she wanted something, anything at all, she would simply go out and steal it for herself.
"Because I don't know you very much." Arthur said with a shrug.
"Well, what about her? What kind of contract did you give the kid? Surely you wouldn't want her to be in any danger, right?" Verity pointed to Stella with a stuffed horse in her hands.
Stella notices and smiles a little bit as she hugs the horse a little closer. Her smile still remaining
"Don't need one. Before Dad met me, I had already learned more than 303,101 magic records."
Verity was done with questioning the people around her. Realizing where her life had gone to with a simple decision, she asks the one question that could come to her head:
"Do I get to choose my uniform?"