"Ah, do you have claustrophobia? Or perhaps cleisiophobia? That's the fear of imprisonment, you know," he added. She was still frantically pulling and pushing at the stuff, trying to gather it in her hands to rip it, but it always bounced back to the way it had been before she messed with it. The cries for help and pleas for freedom were surely loud, yet they were completely silenced by the thin walls of the bubble, surely the deadening effects possible only with the magical nature of the substance. With a spark of intuition she started to push at it and rocked herself and the bubble from side to side. "Even if you manage to move it to the side in some way, it will only move with you," he deadpanned.
He stood still for a moment, curiously watching as she struggled desperately. "I suppose you`ll only get more upset if I leave you like this," he said. She looked at him with shining eyes, a ray of hope piercing her heart. His fingers suddenly danced through the air, and her bubble was filled with a whirlwind of sickly green smoke. She swayed, caught in the middle of her pounding on the flexible walls, and slumped on the bottom of the bubble. Her hand weakly raked at the sides closest to her, then all was still. The dark green smoke swirled more calmly, clinging more and more definitely to the form of the sleeping girl until they became a cocoon, becoming more and more substantial as more of the smoke clung to her. The stuff held onto her even while it gained the texture and substantial feeling of cottony. The girl slept on, snuggling into her imprisoning blanket. Each exhale was punctuated by the faintest of whistles, and he smiled fondly at her slumbering form. They both were caught in the fiery black blaze of his transportation spell, and they were gone.
He transported them directly to the guest room connected to his suite in the palace. The bubble hovered in midair over the bed, its occupant safely held inside. He released the spell, it floated over the bed, and popped, so she tumbled onto the soft covers. He rolled her to the side to flip the blankets down, and then rolled her to the exposed sheet area and pulled them back up to her chin. She slept on without even a flicker of her eyelids, so he left the room.
He went to a door in the hall and opened it to reveal several women dressed in maid uniforms. He gave the closest one orders to care and provide what was needed for the girl during her stay there, with an added warning to not let her leave or help her do so. The woman nodded her understanding and he returned to the guest room.
He pulled the sleep spell out from inside of her, but still it took a body time to wake up even after a magical influence was removed. He selected one of the spare chairs kept in the storage wall and brought it around so he could sit by her bed while he read his latest book. She didn't need to know everything that was going on, but he didn't know if she'd be alarmed when she woke up in a new place, so he thought it would be best to stay close by for now and be prepared to comfort her if the change had scared her.
She woke slowly, groaning as she clutched her head. Her eyes fluttered open, fluttering closed again as a ginormous yawn split her mouth wide open. She looked around and noticed she was wrapped in a fluffy, dark green blanket. In a fuzzy flash of memory unique to that state of being somewhere between slumber and wakefulness, she felt compelled to fling it away from herself. Her eyelids slowly drifted shut again, and she burrowed into the remaining innocuous white blankets and sheets. A man`s chuckle rumbled through the mattress. Wait. A man, in her bedroom? She opened her eyes with a snap, and there was Aeron, lounging in a chair on the side of what was definitely not her bed. The thought that it must be someone else's bed, maybe even his bed, made her pop up and tumble off her feet on the springy mattress until she rolled over to the other side.
"What are you...? Why are you... ," she sputtered.
He looked at her and tried to give a soothing gesture. "It's okay; it takes a bit of time for people to come back to themselves after a spelled sleep. You'll be fine in a minute. We just need to help you burn it off. Do you want to go for a jog or something to wake up your brain?"
"A jog?" She screeched. "Why the heck would you think I'd want a jog right now? What happened to me anyway, and why the heck am I in a bed with you next to me?" she demanded.
He shrugged. "It's simple, really," he explained. "You're here because I want you to be." His tone was patient, like he was explaining the obvious to a small child. It would have been enraging if she'd had her wits together. "You are in grave danger from forces you have no hope of withstanding, so I have done the good and ethical thing and brought you here where you can be kept safe by experts in the field."
"That's ridiculous. Ack!" She finally tumbled all the way off the bed and fell in a heap on the floor. She quickly picked herself up, though, and skirted around to the far side of the room. Once she was a safe distance away she did a once-over and seemed satisfied that she was in her original outfit and turned back to
