#The quarter century rare I got was the dark magician one......

[ygoartreviews]

My store finally restocked the 25th anniversary cards and now that I’ve bought a pack, I’ll be making some reviews for some of the cards I got! Expect to see those starting next week :)

(In reality I should be spending time fixing my tags page, which is basically broken because tumblr updated how urls for tags work some time ago lol)

[mistressofmuses]

Must Have Been Some Magic

Laurel flicked the switch by the doorway on, and several small lights strategically placed around the main room came to life, illuminating overflowing bookshelves and wall racks and display cases.

Continuing in, she set her bags down on the kitchen table, one of the only clear surfaces in the small house.

Really, it would almost have been more of a museum than a house, if she ever let anyone else in for long enough to look at everything, or had any kind of organized system to display things, or even a formal catalogue outside of her own head. Fossilized seashells sat next to antique coins, delicate woven scarves draped over the hilts of weaponry spanning centuries, grimoires and other books of esoteric knowledge shared shelf space with miniature paintings, and fine jewelry sat between meticulously preserved flora and fauna specimens. Her collections were extremely eclectic, and she enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by the things she loved, with a story attached to every object. Some might call her a hoarder, but none of it was trash. She knew all of the objects, everything about them and the story behind each one.

It was always the stories that got her.

She took the silk tophat out of the box it had been stored in. It was fairly old, and made of silk rather than felt or fur. It appeared very well made, clearly professionally done, rather than something mass-produced as a novelty item or costume piece. Without some more specific research, she probably wouldn’t be able to discern its true age, though she was willing to place it as being something from the early 1900s.

She hadn’t been in the market for an antique—or at the very least vintage—tophat, but the man who ran the little second-hand store knew her weakness for an interesting story. Laurel had bought probably a hundred items from him in the past, and he tended to hang on to anything with a unique quality to it, especially if it verged on the supernatural.

This, he’d claimed, was the magical hat that had brought Frosty the Snowman famously to life.

Laurel smiled a little ruefully to herself, and she turned the hat over in her hands. Frosty the Snowman wasn’t even some kind of legendary holiday figure—he’d been invented in the 1950s as a character for a novelty Christmas song. He’d certainly cemented himself as a modern folklore character for the holiday season, but he hadn’t been inspired by anything older than that. Not exactly the kind of legend that could plausibly have any “real magical object” attached to it.

Still, it was a cute story, and seasonally appropriate, even if the mild weather of the last few weeks didn’t have anyone feeling the real holiday spirit. That reminded her to turn on her indoor Christmas lights, and she plugged them in. Several strands of delicate white lights lit up around the dining room window and the border between the walls and the ceiling, giving the room an even more enchanted feel to it, and Laurel sighed with contentment.

She considered putting the hat on and almost hesitated, but she told herself she was being absolutely ridiculous. She flipped the hat over and placed it on her head. She waited to see if she felt the urge to start dancing or singing, but nothing changed. She laughed at herself, and it sounded a little strange as the only sound in the house.

She turned on some Christmas music—fully instrumental, thank you, she much preferred piano or orchestra pieces and Celtic arrangements to yesterday’s pop stars—trying to hang onto some vestige of holiday spirit. She wore the hat for a little bit as she did a little cleaning up, but then left it on the table as she fixed herself a small dinner and read a few more chapters of her current book.

When it was time for bed, she glanced at the hat again and smiled, realizing she had the perfect place for the hat to go.

~

The Christmas lights in her bedroom were rainbow rather than white. The white lights complemented the bulk of her collection, but her room was her even more private space, full of more mundane treasures like modern novels and stuffed animals, and she was happy for everything to be rainbows.

“Hello Miss Terry,” she said to the figure standing along the bedroom wall.

Miss Terry was a… well, “doll” sounded too reductive, “mannequin” sounded too sterile, “sculpture” too stationary. She was all of those things, while none of those things really described her.

Miss Terry, a deliberate play on “mystery”, had been Laurel’s imaginary friend as a child, and then she’d had no figure to inhabit, but had simply existed in Laurel’s vibrant imagination as a playmate and best friend. She had been a magician for as long as Laurel could remember, inspired by the idea of the classic stage magicians that Laurel had been so impressed by as a little girl. “Knowing” a little girl like herself who could do all those things had been what she wanted most at that age. Oddly, she herself had never wanted to be a magician, even though she had remained forever enamored with the idea of magic, both as stage tricks and something more.

There had been a period of a few years she rarely thought much of Miss Terry at all, during the awkward stage between being too old for imaginary friends and too young to not care.

When she was a teenager she’d resurrected Miss Terry as a character she drew in her art classes and made up stories about. Sometimes the stories had been full of high adventure, and sometimes they’d been escapist wish fulfillment for an awkward lonely teen. Miss Terry had been the perfect friend, confidant, and even fantasy girlfriend.

When she grew up and moved out on her own, living in part off of a generous inheritance from her late grandfather and in part off of the piecemeal work she did at freelance art and part-time jobs, she hadn’t given much thought to Miss Terry at all. Until she’d turned around in an antique store one day, and she’d been there.

It had been the strangest thing, because the figure looked somehow exactly how she’d always imagined Miss Terry, while also being nothing she’d ever seen before. The figure was life-size, and made like a doll. She was stylized, made of a metal frame with poseable joints, with porcelain panels on her limbs, chest, and back, as well as porcelain hands, feet, and face. The porcelain was painted in a lifelike manner, the expression on the face offering a self-satisfied smile, like she’d just gotten something she wanted. She had hair, cut in a short, black bob. And she was dressed like some kind of eccentric stage magician, in fitted pants, shirt, and vest below a tailored jacket, all underneath, of all things, a silk three-quarters-length cape.

Laurel’s breath had been literally taken away when she saw her, and it had taken her some time to compose herself well enough to inquire about the price of the figure. The shop owner had looked at the figure and gave her a price that was steep, but not out of the question. Then he’d knocked it down some, saying the figure was bulky and no one had had any interest in it for years at this point.

Laurel paid, and took Miss Terry home, and got her cleaned up of all of the dust and dirt that had accumulated on her and her clothes. Laurel even repaired frayed hems and sagging seams, ensuring that Miss Terry could look her best. And she’d lived there, in Laurel’s room, for the last seven years. Laurel resumed their “relationship” with little interruption, talking to her, venting to her, and treating her like a quiet friend. She found Miss Terry’s presence there comforting.

No one else seemed to think so. The one time Laurel had gotten up the courage to bring a girl home with her and it had gone well enough to end up in the bedroom, the other woman had remarked that the “weird mannequin” was creepy. Later, she declined when Laurel asked her for a second date, saying that Laurel herself was just too weird for her. Her loss.

Laurel hadn’t brought anyone else home with her after that. Or at least no romantic prospects. And she’d been fine with that. She knew it was silly, maybe even a little pathetic, but she liked her life as it was. She was sure it would be considered some brand of crazy to have such an attachment to something imaginary, but Miss Terry gave her a sense of not being alone.

Now Laurel turned toward Miss Terry, holding the hat behind her back.

“Hello, my dear,” she said. “I have a gift for you. I know it’s a little early for Christmas, but I think you’ll like it. Don’t worry that you didn’t get me anything.” Laurel laughed. “I thought this was nice, and then I realized just how well it would suit you.”

She pulled the hat from behind her with a flourish.

“Here, I’ll put it on you…”

She settled it on Miss Terry’s head, where it fit like it had been made for her. It looked absolutely perfect with the rest of her attire, making her look more like a magician than ever. While Laurel’s old drawings of her friend had often included a hat, she wasn’t sure why she’d never thought to buy one for her before this. Ah well, this one was perfect.

“It looks wonderful on you!” Laurel clapped her hands and beamed at Miss Terry. “All magicians should have a nice hat. It’s perfect for you.”

She turned back to her dresser to change into something to sleep in. Digging through the drawers, she stood up when she heard a sound behind her. She thought she’d imagined it, until she heard it again; the sound of someone taking a step.

Her heart began to pound; she had plenty of value in the house, and she’d always known a break-in could be a risk. Still, she turned to face the threat.

And was nearly face to face with a woman. A very familiar woman, wearing a silk tophat. But she wasn’t made of metal and porcelain anymore. While the slightly crooked smile still graced her lips, those lips were soft and expressive. Her dark blue eyes weren’t painted on, but sparkled in the light of the Christmas lights around the room.

The woman offered her hand, palm up, bowing gently as if asking for a dance.

Laurel reached out hesitantly, until her fingers brushed the other woman’s warm, soft palm. The woman brought Laurel’s hand to her lips, pressing a gentle kiss to the knuckles, showing just how soft those lips really were.

When Miss Terry spoke, her voice was low and husky. “Hello, Laurel.”

~

@yourbookcouldbegayer

Prompt was: "You found the old silk hat that turned Frosty into a walking talking snowman. Turns out, the hat works on other things too.”

This one turned out very differently than I was first thinking, but I’m reasonably happy with it. And not quite as tight on the deadline tonight! (Tomorrow will be a struggle.)