Tricked Out | Nightmare Before Christmas

Chapter 6: A Scholae

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When Ivy woke up the next morning, the first thing she noticed was the dead weight on her legs. Blinking her eyes open, Ivy glanced down with slightly blurry vision to see Rosie curled up on her.

Ah haaaa...this is odd. For a brief moment, Ivy was blissfully ignorant of what had transpired the night before. Then the pain in her muscles hit her and she had to bite her cheek to keep from groaning.

Ivy was a skater, she was used to waking up sore. But the lightning seemed to have sapped every ounce of her energy.

She also seemed to remember explaining what had happened to her friends from the human world. There was suddenly a pang of hurt in her chest that had nothing to do with the lighting.

"Let's get something straight, human," A voice said from behind Ivy. She snapped her head around to see Helga standing there with her arms crossed. "My name Helga. Do not mistake me for one of your human friends again."

Ivy felt her cheeks heating up in embarrassment. "Sorry about that," She croaked, then cleared her throat and tried again. "I just got a little...confused."

Helga rolled her eyes and waved a hand at Ivy. "Never mind that now. Gretchen had forced me to help you heal from your...incident last night. I'd like to get that over with."

Ivy glanced down at herself and saw that while her hands were an angry red, she didn't appear to be hurt anywhere else. "I'm honestly more sore on the inside," Ivy admitted, rubbing her hands.

Helga made a grunt. "I'm skilled in many fields, Human-"

"Ivy," The girl cut in with a dark, warning tone.

There was a brief moment where black eyes met the brown, and an intense staring contest proceeded. The. Helga gave yet another noise of dissatisfaction and gritted her teeth, "Shall we begin, Ivy-girl?"

Better than nothing, Ivy thought as she rolled Rosie off her and hobbled over to a chair where Helga started feeding her a strange type of bread. At first Ivy was slightly hesitant to eat anything the witch offered her. But at Helga's glare she reluctantly ate some, and soon felt energy seeping back into her with every bite. Eventually Helga murmured some chants and started healing Ivy's burns one by one.

When it was over, the pumpkin sun was halfway up into the sky and Ivy was sitting on the porch with Rosie, chomping away on more bread. It wasn't the magic kind, and a little stale, but apparently that's how Halloween Town liked it.

"So tell me one more time," Rosie said, plunking her head into her hands and resting her elbows on her knees. "How do ovens work?"

Ivy shrugged, "It runs on electricity and you choose how hot you want it to get, and what type of bake it is and such."

"Maybe the Doctor can fix us up with one," Rosie said carelessly, then realized her mistake when Ivy flinched.

"Hey," Rosie said, turning her eyes to Ivy's in earnest, "Gretchen said you won't go back, so you won't! Nothing to worry about!"

Ivy snorted. She's found out that Rosie was much older than her- 193 years older, to be exact-but she still had the maturity of an eight year old. Ivy highlydoubted that her troubles with the Doctor were over just because she'd run away.

But most of all, Ivy was feeling a strange guilt for deserting Sally. She'd only know the women for less than a minute, but she felt a responsibility for what had happened to her.

And now the girl, who was all alone and still new to the ways of the world, would be stuck in that tower with Finkelstein.

On the other hand, there was no way in creation she was going back down there.