"Get it." Midona stage-whispered in Anna's ear, before disapearing with a flounce of navy-blue skirts to see a beatiful light purple dress a short way away. She looked longingly at Hector.

Anna blinked uncretainly, then nodded to herself. She smiled as she paid for the dress, and even bought herself a brown hat to match. She went and got changed in a small booth.

When changed, she stood in the middle of the room, and gave a small twirl. Her skirts swayed, and something inside made a twanging clunk. She'd put her effects into the new dress. A sheepish but happy smile let up her face.

"What yez think?"

Midona grinned at Anna, "I like it. And seeing as you have money on you..." Midona pouted slightly, slender fingers trailing over the lavendar-colored lace that decorated her desired dress, "Please?"

Midona shot her a look that was filled with the allure of a gancanagh, a look that usually went with peat smoke and desire and pain and musty rooms filled with sex and addiction, not merely a dress.

Anna gave her friend a blank, calm, regarding look.

"That won't work on me, guv. I live with people who give out that vibe none-stop. But, yeh, I'll buy yez the dress. There were no need fer the spooky-doo-allurin' stuff." Anna shot her friend a grin, and purchased the dress.

"Here. And that's me funds gone." She didn't mind, though, as she had more than she could already ever wish for.

"Wh-why didn't it work?"

Midona's voice shook slightly; practically no-one could resist the type of glamour a gancanagh would give out, least of all a mortal girl such as Anna.

Midona didn't particularly like being a halfling, and she knew she was attractive enough to get whoever she wanted, and intelligent and well-spoken enough to convince anyone to see her point of veiw anyway, it was why she could last as a queen, but it had nonetheless always been her safety net.

Midona's hand went automatically to the bandage on her upper arm; the mark of Elissa's unfinished binding spell.

"The only one who could ever understand you."

That was what Elissa had said. But she didn't understand at all.

I always wanted to have a chance to be a normal girl...can I really do this?

Midona thought of the less-than-pleasant aspects of her life; of Tsubaki's druggie friends, of Alec's blackmail, of the unseelie court's attempts to get her to succumb to them, of the actions of the other demon regents which brought war ever closer.

She thought of facing those threats without her powers, and visibly shuddered.

They could kill me...so easily now. I am not fit to lead my people.

She tried to think of what was best for the demons under her command, but really, she was not a demon queen, not at heart.

She was a teenage girl, and she was scared.

They'd kill me..

Midona forced the worced of those thoughts out of her head, and gave Anna a beautiful, if slightly forced, smile.

"Thanks."