Lou blushed.
“I never thought about that!”
“I understand you,” said the curly one. - As a child, I managed to fall in love with a teacher, but somehow I saw her at a bus stop with a young man. Oh, and I got angry! The next day, she pinched the tip of her braid with a door and did all sorts of nasty things until the end of the school year.
“Like Vika, to me,” Lou said. - Only she does not love me, but she hates me.
“One step from love to hate,” the neighbor philosophically remarked.
Could say something not so commonplace, Luna thought.
Then one of the twins threw sand at another, and the victim shouted indignantly at the entire yard. The neighbor was distracted by the children, and Lou decided that this was an excellent occasion to end the conversation, and it was time to go home. Just from the next entrance came her unloved aunt with a pugnacious red dachshund. The fox pinched its tail and rushed to the porch.
The girlfriends returned home. Mom looked out of the room, looked to see if the girls were in order, grunted: "Hello from dad," and again disappeared behind the door.
It can be seen, and for dinner today, too, only Alice's nasty pumpkin cookies. Then it’s better to go on a hunger strike.
Luna went to the bathroom. A beautiful box lay on the sink. Lou turned it over and read: “Soap with healing mud.” Yes, a gift in the style of Alice.
The moon opened the box and shook a dark bar on her palm.
- What a nasty thing! She informed her reflection. “And how do you order to wash the dirt with soap and mud?” Fight fire with fire? Some nonsense!
Lou snorted. Alice is a witch. Only not like her, but angry. Even washed with dirt.
Lou brushed her teeth and washed with the Rose Petals shower gel, not a dirty soap. She rubbed her arms and legs with a washcloth and reflected on how terribly the day of the autumn equinox had passed. I didn’t collect the mountain ash, I didn’t find the stones for luck, I didn’t cook the pumpkin soup, I had a falling out with Artair and my mother, I lost the grass diary. She had not had such a nightmare yet. Yes, here I met astronomical autumn!
Well, you need to at least light a candle. Driveaway evil spirits.
Lou wiped herself with a fluffy towel, put on her pajamas, took a lighter, which lay next to the aroma lamp, and returned to the room. She looked at her shelf with candles and chose a yellow wax. It was an unusual candle. It seemed to consist of bee honeycombs and, when burned, liquid wax flowed down with honey.
Mom said that when such candles burn, harmful microbes die. Lou thought: spirits are creatures like microbes too. She put a candle on a saucer and was just about to light it when her mother came in, grabbed a lighter and shouted:
- Sleep well! You are punished! No midnight seats, especially since you’ll go to school tomorrow!
“Anyway, I get up early for a walk with Chanterelle,” Lou protested offendedly.
Mom silently left.
Lou sighed and climbed into bed. Oh and great mom got mad! Lou herself was not glad that she had not met Alice. Well, I’d sit for a while with this witch, eat her cookies. And so the whole day is spoiled. And also tonight she is defenseless before night spirits.
Lou sobbed. The little fox whined, jumped onto the bed and curled up in a ball.
No dairy, no amulets. This year she cannot be a green witch.
Lou looked at her room in the soft light of the night light. All the shelves in the nursery were filled with books, vases with dried flowers, jars of nuts, shells, pebbles, dried pods, and peppers. There was also a box filled to the top with bloody fingers - belemnites from the Northern Dvina, and in a small wicker basket lay a collection of fungi-tinder fungi.
Different candles completely occupied one shelf: large and small, simple and curly, wax and paraffin.
On the bookshelf was a whole collection of dragon figurines. And if the grandmother knitted hats and mittens to the moon, dad chose books, mom looked for the most interesting socks for shopping, and relatives brought from travels finds from walks and candles as souvenirs, then Artair always gave her dragons. He brought them in wooden chests (Lou then kept her herbs in them). She did not open the gift right away, at first she sat and held the chest in her hands. What will he be, her new dragon? Green, blue or red? Evil or kind? Will he have wings or two heads, horns, spikes on his tail?
Artair always put a few coins under the figure - dragons do love treasures! And for ten years, the Moon discovered under a white dragon a small silver pendant in the form of a lighthouse.
- What is it? She asked her uncle.
- This is a lighthouse. I ordered it specifically for you. You love amulets, - Artair explained. “The lighthouse is the light in the night that helps the ship return home and avoid reefs.” This is a symbol of support. When you need to solve a problem or find a way out of a difficult situation, remember the lighthouse. I want you to know, Lou: you can always rely on me.
Luna hugged her uncle and promised that she would always wear this pendant.