PURE IMAGINATION

Wonka nods assuredly, enthusiastically, purposely contorting Willow's timidness into something that is not directly questioning his mental acuity: "It's insured." He begins combing through the crowd, cane wagging ahead of him, parting people like a rat tail comb.

Answer: yes and.

"Well, in that case -- " Willow is quick to follow behind him, finding the cane quite useful to weave through the crowd. " -- I'd be very grateful."

She of course is expecting a car, not a lift. A literal lift. Willow is a little too far behind to see that just yet, though. It also doesn't occur to her that it could be dangerous, following an eccentric stranger into a vehicle.

Now feels like a good time to admit my first crush was Willy Wonka.

so, horrible news for her, she's heard exactly what she'd thought she'd heard. and, so had the woman sitting nearby, who briefly looks up from the laptop worth more than fallon's entire life, net worth, and souls, both immortal and mortal, to throw a tight, disgusted glance at willy before returning to her typing.

Wonka watches her incessantly—assessing.

Fallon stirs drinks like God spins planets. Skilled and askew at the axis. Divine but routine. Years dispel and misspell craft into tact. Wonka can fix that.

Each and every latte—he double checks her work, peering into the latest downed cup—is pristinely empty. Not a single drizzling dribble of syrup sunken to the bottom.

Inspired by "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

Only Wonka's eyes move: tugged into the depth of the doorway, his and Redmon's gazes tangled together like two crossed, translucent fishing lines. His focus reels back in a moment after Redmon's.

(saw first?)

redmon makes a pained face. but this rowdy, gossipy bunch are his creations. they're all he's had, as far as company goes, as sad as it sounds, for years.

here she still stands when a how do you do would have been quite cromulent hobknobbing with full foresight of likely compunction with the facefront of un-capitulous capitallioration himself!

"MARCUS!?!"

In a crises, her pink cheeks pinken to pepto. Medicine is outside of William's airspace but just what can fly over that hat top?

His attention whisks around the chocolate room, slit coat tail flaring out behind as he turns and turns, looking for the stray child. Mary finds him. Rather, flitter-flocks to him. That innate guardian guidance honing in like a mother goose gathering her adrift gosling. Her umbrella handle is tucked under her armpit, the canopy end hidden beneath her black coat stumping her rump into a duck tail. Wonka hovers idly, half expecting a territorial honk, and when one does not come, he saunters over, supervising from the soggy edge of the marshmallow marsh (not cream).

Mary hooks her umbrella on a nearby peppermint tree branch, transforming, only superficially, into a human once more. Arms free, she begins unspooling her scarf from her neck.

When most grownups would squawk, Mary coos composedly. A rich stream of chastising advice Wonka would—often diabolic but atypically dazzled—stamp his 'W' signet ring on. (Comparatively, his natural inclination is to dunk the boy further down with a good swatting of his cane to the head; he is strenuously electing to dunk that urge instead.)

Not at all helping, to Marcus who is being yanked—unsuccessfully—out of the marsh by Mary:

"Glued in?"

Musing aloud:

"I thought I made that gluten free..."

Wonka hears petite musical notes—half notes, whole notes, double whole notes, some reminder sticky notes—flitting conspiratorially by his ears; he shoos them away like gnats. Instructively, to the thin air, hand a private partition hiding his mouth from view: "Come back in twelve bars."