"I won. Help me change back!"
"Oh, have some patience. I need to heal you first. Otherwise, if you return to human form, can you imagine how severe your injuries would be?"
The puppet on the upright Puppet Show stage muttered. As it spoke, green motes appeared over Puppet Shade's body, and the wooden body grew and healed as though it were living wood. Then, amid another cloud of dense white fog, Shade returned to human form and lay atop the tea table, even his damaged clothes restored.
He happily looked at his palms and jumped down from the tea table. Miss Benanis stared at him wide-eyed in shock. When Shade had been a puppet, the strange feeling had not been so obvious, but now that he had completely returned to normal, she immediately understood what had felt so strange.
Shade had already taken his cat back and finally had time to look at this local Great Witch.
Miss Vanessa Benanis wore a long red dress. Her golden hair reached her waist and curled naturally. Her golden eyes bore faint traces of jade-green light. She was beautiful in the most traditional sense of the phrase—a blonde lady of extraordinary beauty.
Though Shade clearly knew she was already in her thirties, she looked even younger than Miss La Ses beside her. Her fair face was neither too large nor too small, her delicate lips painted with lipstick. Her highly defined features currently held a girlishly bewildered expression, while the silver star-shaped earrings hanging from her ears further emphasized her charm.
All Great Witches possessed beauty beyond the ordinary. Though he had already met several, Shade had to admit that Vanessa Benanis, the Ninth Seat of the Witch Council and the Earth Witch, possessed a charm unlike that of the other witches.