Episode 30: Eostre

What has gone before: Andrew Weazle, the owner of a failing coffee shop on the University of Alberta campus trades what he believes to be the final Friday night deposit in return for 'magic coffee beans' from a homeless man. After dumping the coffee made by the magic beans into a potted bonsai tree, a massive ash tree mysteriously grows overnight inside the shop. Following a series of dark adventures culminating in the near destruction of the shop, a group of leprechauns arrive, with the enigmatic request to travel the Tree to rescue the Easter Bunny...

This episode was originally published at MagikBeans.com on March 8, 2007.

Through a narcotic haze, she opened pink eyes and tried to focus on her surroundings. The room swam, the wall across from her receding and then returning, or at least, that's how it seemed. She was on a floor, laying on her side. There was some form of plastic wire tied around her wrists, bound behind her back and tied to her legs, judging from her inability to stretch her legs from their cramped crouch. She could move her head though, and it allowed her to assess her tiny, dark cell.

The walls were concrete, pocked and pitted, stained with various shades of red, earthy tones. Could just be paint...but she knew better than that. She had no sense of how long it had been since she'd been shot with the tranquilizer, no sense of where she was or how she'd gotten here. She could vaguely remember being thrown into the back of a vehicle, and the perception of journeying. Mostly just hazy memories.

The only thing she was sure of was the living thread that connected her to him. He was still alive, and so long as he was alive there was hope. There was an ache in her midsection, a cold and icy emptiness. It needed to be filled. She needed life to grow there, and soon.

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. Waiting to be rescued would never do; the situation was far too dire for that. She would take matters into her own hands, and then...come what may.
She wriggled further over onto her front, then pressed her face against the cold, hard floor and took a deep breath.

Then, swiftly, she pulled her head back and with all the strength, slammed her face hard into the concrete floor. She nearly passed out from the pain; stars spun in her vision, but she saw what she had hoped for. One of her teeth had broken off, and was laying there on the floor, a flat cream colored chip covered in flecks of blood and dirt. She could taste blood in her mouth, but no matter.

She rolled over and, ignoring the pain, bit down on the dirty blanket which had been shoved up against the wall. Then she rolled back and dropped the blanket in a heap over the broken tooth. Her exertions completed, her head lolled onto the blanket, and sleep overtook her.