Wild Saturday Night

All of Darcy’s ideas had been poo-pooed but she wasn’t offended in the slightest. She hadn’t even been enthused about her suggestions, let alone care enough about them to feel slighted at the ‘eh’ and ‘hmm’ she’d enthusiastically earned in response. “I’m an old fuddy-duddy. You’re just a baby still, what’s your excuse?” Darcy was only two months older than Sera but when it suited her she played up that it was a bigger age difference than it really was. If she wanted to pretend her added time on earth made her wiser, she’d joke about how young Sera was, and in this case it gave her a clever little out at having to decide what they were going to do tonight. They really were lame. They only had their newly found freedom for a few years now, Sera was even still living with her father, that was how young they were in reality, but as Darcy hung there upside down on Sera’s bed and literally watched her friend’s nail polish dry, she couldn’t help but feel as though they were 190 years old. “Yeah,” she said with only a little more energy than an apathetic centaur. A movie wasn’t a horrible idea, but it also wasn’t the best. It was very mediocre, as were all two of the suggestions she’d made. “Maybe we should just head down there and see if anything catches our eye?” It was better than bemoaning their old crone status in Sera’ bedroom all night, and the movie theatre was in Whimsic Alley which at least had a lot of variety to choose from.

Darcy was fine to go out in the dress she’d worn over here, but decided to knick a pair of Sera’s shoes instead of sticking with the thong sandals she’d slipped on as she was on her way out of the flat earlier. If there was a chance they would be wandering around Whimsic Alley aimlessly for a while – and it seemed that was likely to be the case – then she wanted something a little more sturdy on her feet. Sera waddled wet-painted toes over to her closet and Darcy watched for a moment, making quacking noises at her friend and laughing. “I’d have done a penguin but I don’t know what they sound like,” she remarked aloud, not really to Sera but not really to herself, either. She was talking as a stall tactic but it wasn’t working and soon enough Darcy had rolled over onto her stomach and then pushed herself up onto her knees. Kneeling on Sera’s bed, she announced, “I’m stealing your shoes.” Standing, she kicked off her flip-flops and squeezed herself through the doorway of Sera’s closet, rummaging on the floor until she found a pair of boots she thought would go well enough with her outfit. She wasn’t a fashionista in the slightest, but she knew enough not to put together a completely mismatched outfit. Grabbing a pair of heeled, lace-up boots, Darcy crawled backwards out of the closet and then plopped onto the bed once more, taking her time to slip her feet into the black boots and tie the laces taut as Sera did her thing. Finally, when the girls were ready, they said their goodbyes to Mr Devereaux and disapparated to Whimsic Alley.

As expected, the place was crowded with pretty people flirting their ways into bars, clubs, and each others’ pants, not to mention all the business owners trying to encourage the partiers to spend their money in their establishments over the others’. They passed one of the handfuls of nightclubs with loud music booming and multi-colored lights flashing through the opened doors, a queue of would-be patrons waiting eagerly to get inside. Darc couldn’t imagine standing in a line that long just to get onto a sweat-covered dance floor and drink overpriced, watered-down drinks all night while ignorant drunk men failed to accurately grasp the concept of a lesbian in their midsts. She’d done it before and enjoyed it all, sans the daft men hitting on her, but tonight it seemed like so much effort. She wasn’t looking for that, she just wanted a nice, relaxing evening out with her best –

“Hey! What are you doing?!” Darcy’s voice rang out loudly through the street, muffled only by the music of the club at their back. Separating from Sera without even a thought to it, Darcy marched over to a man standing at a street stall who’d been shaking the cage of a diricawl, trying to get it to perform. “That’s not a puppet for your bloody entertainment, you gigantic tit! You leave that poor creature alone!” Darcy began in on a long tirade about the proper handling of magical birds – “of ALL birds for that matter!” – and how cruel jostling the creature’s cage just to make him apparate into the empty cage on the far end of the man’s stall was. “What are you staring at? You think animal abuse is entertaining, do you?” She had turned on the passersby who’d stopped to watch the man’s vulgar display. “Shame on you!”

Scolding the passersby managed to move them along rather quickly, no one stuck around to stand up for the horrendous actions of the animal trapper. Who could possibly justify this sick prick’s “job” when it meant abusing innocent, defenseless little animals? The poor diricrawl looked frozen in its cage and Darcy turned back from the small crowd that had departed to continue berating the stall worker and educating him about how to properly handle magical birds. She didn’t seem to be alone in her attempt either as someone came up near Darcy’s right side and joined in the fight.

Initially, Darcy took the woman’s question to be rhetorical and she joined in with a “yea!” but soon her eyes widened as the man was suddenly standing in a large cage similar to that of the diricrawl. Darcy stood for half a second in amazement, her gaze shifting from the caged man to the attractive looking witch beside her, mouth slightly agape. “Yea…” She was coming to her senses rather quickly and had spent enough time in her short life as an activist to know that caging a wizard wasn’t going to go over well with the MLE. “How do you like living in a cage?” she shouted at the man.

Running towards the diricrawl’s cage and flipped open the latch. “Come on, lovey,” she said calmly in a soft voice, extending her hand toward the bird slowly in an attempt to coax the dodo out of the cage. “Come on. Let’s get away from the mean man, shall we?” Managing to get the diricrawl out of its cage, and stroked its feathers gently and set it on the ground. Dodos weren’t able to fly, but outside of the enchanted cage it had been kept in, it would be able to disapparate himself somewhere safe. The stall worker was yelling at the women but Darcy ignored him and squatted near the diricrawl, encouraging it gently to freedom. With a squawk and a flap of feathers, the bird popped out of existence. Darcy didn’t hesitate this time, before turning to the rest of the caged animals on display.

“Help me,” she said over her shoulder to the attractive witch as she began opening the cages and letting loose the creatures inside. “Everything but the purple toad. They sting. I’ll get him.” Darcy unlatched a cage with another species of magical bird which needed no encouragement to fly off as soon as it was given the option.

Whatever the man’s purpose was with this street stall, he thankfully didn’t have too many animals and nothing of any real harm. Not that that would have stopped Darcy. She’d take home anything too dangerous to set loose and find some responsible manner of freeing the poor creatures, but technically that was considered theft and they’d already accosted this man and created a disturbance. Darcy was not unfamiliar with the charges of disturbing the peace, but she’d never falsely imprisoned anyone before. Did this count? Would she be charged as an accessory to the crime even if her wand wasn’t the one who had conjured the man-sized cage around the arsehole, or would they be charged equally as co-conspirators. This was not the first moment of their short interaction that Darcy was well-aware that she knew nothing of this newfound partner in crime, but at the moment she didn’t care. The cages were empty, except for the stall owner’s and the purple toad had been levitated to a safe distance and then banished to a nearby creek where it could escape without injuring anyone.

“Come on,” she yelled to the dark haired witch as she grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away from the scene they had caused, leaving the man in his cage for someone else to deal with as she hollered “FASCIST PIG!” over her shoulder in the man’s direction. Darcy led them through the alley, weaving through the crowds as fast as her legs would carry her and then when they were a safe distance away, she ducked between two buildings and fell against the cool stone wall. She’d have to find Sera later, but her best friend was used to her shenanigans by now. This wasn’t the first time she’d disappeared to advocate for someone or some creature when they’d not planned for it. Doubling over to catch her breath, Darcy smiled through the stitch in her side and began to laugh as her breath caught up to her. “That was smashing,” she said between breaths. “ ‘Ave you done this before?”