In a flash the cloud was gone. The zombies were gone too.
"Phew." Nareen thought to herself. "It seems I got the magic formula right. Wasn't sure for a moment if this was really the spell to send them to the underworld..."
"You did it!" cheered the dolls behind her. "They are gone! Hooray! Thank you so much!"
"Thank you so much, Nareen!" LovelyLocks stood behind the necromancer, a broad smile on her face. "You saved us from the evil zombies!"
"So we're even now and you'll not call the police, will you?"
"As agreed, of course. The furniture is yours."
Nareen was happy. "Thank you, Lady LovelyLocks! I'll better rush home now before Eternia comes back from work."
Slightly exhausted Nareen returned home. When she entered the livingroom it was unnaturally silent in the dollhouse.
"Where is everyone? Akshi? Pete? Eternia?"
She heard a soft wail from the direction of her bed. "Uhm... Hello?"
Akshi and Pete were huddled against each other underneath her blanket. Akshi shivered visibly.
"Akshi!" exclaimed Nareen. "What's wrong with you? What happened?"
The hen just looked up to the ceiling and tried to crawl even deeper under the blanket.
"There's someone in the kitchen, is that what you're trying to say? Whoa, do we have a burglar in the house?" Cautiously Nareen sneaked up the stairs.
There were shuffling noises in the kitchen. "That must be more than one burglar." Nareen thought.
Her heart pumped. If it was a whole gang, how was she going to fight them off? "What irony. I help a burglar and promptly they flock to my house..."
She took a deep breath and jumped in the kitchen with a yell. "Get outta the house, you... you..."
The necromancer froze, her momentum lost when she saw the intruders standing near the counter. "... you... zombies..."
It was them! The same zombies she had just banished to the underworld!
"Ack! What are you guys doing here?! I sent you to the afterlife!"
The zombies groaned and stumbled towards her.
"Whoa! Stay back! Are you here to take revenge on me?"
The doll searched her memories for another banishing spell but couldn't think of any. When the zombies closed up on her she noticed a faint stench. "At least you're dry zombies. Ugh." It could have been worse.
Nareen prepared for an attack, but the zombies stopped two steps away from her.
"Huh? Now what?" Nareen was confused.
One of the zombies groaned.
"Soooo... you're not here for revenge?"
"HooooooooOOOOOommmmeeeeeee." said the pink haired zombie with a coarse voice.
"What?! You want to live here?!"
"AAAAAaaaaaasyyyyluuuuuum..." added the white haired zombie.
"Dear me!" A shiver ran down Nareen's spine. She had driven the zombies from their home but she had failed to send them to reincarnation. She had failed, so it was her responsibility to take care of the undead now.
"How am I going to explain that to Eternia?!"
"Yeah, I wonder about that too." said Eternia from the other end of the kitchen.
Nareen spun around and saw her friend leaning against the wall with a disgusted look on her face.
"Uh... Hi Eternia!"
"Nareen, it stinks. Who are these dead people? Friends of yours?"
I still have no clue how Eternia was able to hold this position! I expected her to drop sidewards but she didn't.
"No, they aren't friends of mine! They just came here and that is all because of you!" The young necromancer stomped towards the blonde and made an enraged gesture.
"If you hadn't brought this situation on us I wouldn't have summoned them to the wrong place!"
"Me? What did I do? It's news to me that I did anything to a zombie."
Nareen was at the end of her tether. Enough was enough!
"It's your fault! You stole from Lady LovelyLocks and even clobbered her! And just to help you and keep you out of prison I had to fight these zombies, and now they're here because I have no darn experience with banishing them! It's all your fault, you... you thief!"
For a moment Eternia just stared at her. Then she looked at the zombies, who slowly followed Nareen, and back to Nareen.
She fell into a heavy laugh.
"Wah ha ha ha! I stole, you say? And clobbered LovelyLocks? They were going to call the police about this? This is just too funny!"
Nareen was flabbergasted. "What's so funny about all this?!"
Eternia couldn't stop giggling.
"Listen. Eph told me we were going to get the furniture anyway, what with the dollhouse being a prestigious project and all, and since I didn't want to sleep on the floor I just went to get it a day early. It was dark and I knocked over a floor lamp or something. If she was clobbered, that thing must have hit her by accident."
"The newspaper says she was sitting on the sofa when you stole it!"
"Newspapers exaggerate! Always! You don't believe that gutter press, do you?" Eternia still couldn't stop laughing.
Eternia wears the eyes that I bought to make a Giselda doll one day. It was always slightly creepy to me, especially on pictures with the felted Giselda.
"I... I... don't know." In Nareen's opinion Eternia's story sounded very implausible. She hadn't seen any lamp at LovelyLock's place. Her head started to hurt though and she wondered if this was really worth fighting about. LovelyLocks said everything was settled, after all.
She didn't want to fight with her friend.
"Calm down, Nareen. So, basically you said the zombies are a free gift that came with the furniture? Then we have to live with them, I guess. Too bad."
"Just until I find a way to send them where they belong. I promise!"
"Hey, it's okay. Don't worry about it. It's getting late though, we should go to bed."
"Okay..." Nareen wondered why it was her who had to apologize. Eternia wasn't her first thieving friend though. She would just keep a closer eye on her from now on.
She went to bed, followed by the moaning zombies.
Dolltopia Archive 05 <-- # --> Dolltopia Archive 07