“Illandra!”

Illandra jumped at the hag’s shout, “Alright, Filomena!” she shouted back. She hurried to return her lock box to its rightful place atop the chest of drawers, knowing that Filomena would wait to eat until she arrived, no matter how long she took. She leaned in to give Bin Bin the instructions he was to follow during her absence. “Stay in our room! Frogs all look just about the same, so I might not be able to recognize which one you are if you hop off and I have to find you later on. Got it?”

Bin Bin chose not to dignify that with a response.

“Good.” Illandra scrambled out of her room and didn’t slow her pace until she had reached Filomena’s kitchen.

A difficult task, but well worth the sleeping mat, work desk, wash basin, and chest of drawers.

“Just give him a few hours in this position and it should go down, and for god’s sake, don’t try to touch it!”

Illandra glanced around her cozy quarters, the garden facing room in the home of the village hag. She paid only 20 black pieces each month, the unfurnished price for the furnished space, on the agreement that she refrain from ever looking directly at any of the hag’s three facial warts.

“What say you, Bin Bin?” She asked her companion, as she swept Gengrassen’s payment into her finely made metal lock box. It was her most treasured possession, one of the few family heirlooms to survive the tragic fire that left her an orphan so many years ago. “Can you live without your unicorn tail flies? No? And if I told you they were actually collected buzzing around the tails of Farmer Winstock’s draft oxen?”

“Ribbit!” Bin Bin replied.

“Just as I suspected.”