Sometimes in life waking up can feel wonderful. Other times waking up really sucks. Then there’s the third kind, when you wake up and are surprised it happened. This was one of the moments for that. Though as the twinges of a crash wore off it slid rapidly back to the second option.

Puppy hovered over her anxiously, as with a groan Mibbet got to her feet, immensely grateful for her pointy hat.

“Why hello dearie,” came a cheerful voice from somewhere, now usually in this situation it would be time to freak out for most folks. Mibbet of course not being most folks, (and having rather more experience with disembodied voices than your average girl) just calmly started looking around for whatever the hell it was this time.

She could at least scratch Gods from the list, Wannashowa never really called her dearie, and had less of a feeling of an old lady inviting her in for tea and crumpets, as for the other gods? Well she figured they tended to avoid talking to individuals with the capability to create the competition. Partially in case they accidentally gave them new ideas. Gods as a whole tend to really dislike competition. (Except fate who is more than happy to support a plucky under-God.) So she kept looking, hoping that whatever it was this time was not visiting from downstairs. So far the only things from hell she had met had been bailiffs, lawyers, and a creature whose litter tray she had to clean. Not exactly a sterling recommendation.

Speak of the Hellcat, where was Rascal? Oh over there munching on a bowl of food, best not to ask where that came from.

“Up here dear,” came a friendly voice, and as Mibbet gazed slowly upwards she was confronted by an overgrown stone face, which had a rather unique look given that their were several occupied birds nests in their hair.

Mibbet pondered this for a few moments, considered the possible situation, and finally just asked. “You’re the maze aren’t you?”

“In a sense I suppose you could say that, at least I created it, little Labbie here decided to help me stick around when my time came.”

Mibbet mentally rolled her eyes at this, did anything in this gods damned kingdom stay dead? Because right now it felt like the mortal coil was more of an Ouroborous, but with less eating bits of oneself. (Well except maybe in smile town, but best not to ask about that, lest somebody actually answers you.)

“So who exactly are you.”

“I am Enola,” came the unsurprisingly unhelpful answer.

“That would be a hell of a lot more helpful if I had a clue who the hell Enola was now wouldn’t it?” Mibbet said with a sigh.

The response though was just a chuckle. “Would it?”

Mibbet at this point gave up on the possibility of getting a straight answer out of the maze, person, whatever. Wishing she had packed some headache treatment for during the race. “So why exactly did you bring me down here?” She asked, pretty sure she wasn’t going to get any helpful data, but sometimes in life you have to keep digging.

“Because it amused me? Or maybe I just decided it was time for some company and you seemed to be another dual soul. Never really seen one with a generational curse before though.”

“Multi-generational curse?” Mibbet asked, while inside her head Rosalind facepalmed, suspecting that yet again her mother was involved here, she always was. When Rosalind got out of this she and her dear mother were going to have words.

“Yups, I’ve written a few theories on it back in the day, but I’ve never actually seen a living example. Plenty of non living of course, but there’s only so much a dissection can tell you about things isn’t there?”

Mibbet as you would expect from a frog had a slight aversion to words like dissection, according to what cousin Grarp had said they didn’t put you back together afterwards. Mibbet really didn’t like the sound of that, she liked her innards to remain well.... INnards, it’s right there in the name. They weren’t called OUT-ards were they?

“NO DISSECTION PLEASE.” She squeaked, she wanted answers but not that desperately.

“Of course not Dearie, nothing good comes of dissecting a conscious specimen, with the kicking, and the screaming, and the mean mean words. Why would I want that, cup of tea dear?”

A branch extended outwards holding a cup of steaming tea......... wait not tea, and Mibbet really figured drinking it would be a very bad idea, so she pretended to drink and quickly tipped it out, ignoring the disappointed expression on Enola/Maze’s face. “Thanks for the offer, but what can you tell me about this curse that doesn’t involve me on a dissection table? I quite prefer to keep all my bits where they are thank you very much.”

“Not a lot, whatever it is it is powerful, and seems to have transmitted during pregnancy, meaning you only got a mild form, it was probably aimed at your mother.

In her head Rosalind seethed, of course her mother was involved, and who knew what the random effect would be?

“Well dear it seems I can’t keep you too long, your little friends are trying to reach you, and they are so impatient. I’ve had to rebuild over twenty walls, and poor Labby is getting rather tired of their little games. So stay here for the night, and we’ll see about getting you to our guests in the morning.

Mibbet bit back her natural response, yelling at something controlling a mind able to trap you in a privy for eternity did not strike her as a good idea. So she pretended to sleep, keeping one eye open the entire time.

Enola watched with a sigh, she liked being alone most of the time, but every once in a while it made a nice refreshing change of pace to have company.