Unicorn Farm - Susan at Home part 2

In June 2019 Elephant's Child is providing the prompts. I'm sorry to have missed last week's prompts, as EC's prompts always speak to me. But such things happen.  

  This week's prompts are:

Sleeping
Burnt
Broken
Undercover
Swallows
Universe
       And/or
Voyage
Heart
Diary
Falling
Star
Samurai

The story continues where I left off two weeks ago:

When she arrived at the old lumber yard, she placed her new, blue bike behind the old office building and carefully locked it.  As an extra precaution she cast a Do not disturb-spell on it. It did not make the bike invisible or unstealable, but it made people unwilling to look at it, or indeed notice it at all. She looked around, and as nobody was near, she waved her wand and greenish-white sparks flew. It was the signal she and Lis had agreed upon. After a few minutes, that felt like hours to Susan, Lis materialized below the giant walnut tree. They held hands, and again Susan felt the universe stretch around her. It felt like she was falling forever down an empty space, where every star had burned out. But after a short time, lasting an eternity, they landed softly in the green grass behind the Magician's House.
"Phew," Susan said. "Do you feel the same, empty feeling inside every time you teleport?"
"Yes, I do." Lis answered. "I feels like, oh I don't know ... like a big nothing, like I'm all alone in space or something. But it gets better, or rather shorter every time I teleport. In time, I might not even feel it any more." 

Heidi came running out of the house: "Oh you arrived, finally. I've been waiting since sunrise!"
"Dear Heidi," Susan smiled, "it is November after all. Sunrise was less then an hour ago. It's only half past 8."
"But I have so much to show and tell you." Heidi said, grasping Susan's hand and pulling her towards the trees hiding the Unicorn Farm.
"I've been practicing transformation every day since the Autumn holidays," Heidi said, breathlessly, when they reached the big bales of hay. She was fairly bursting with her accomplishments.
"Do show!" Susan said. Heidi needed no encouragement, she pulled out her wand and a pincushion. There were almost no needles and pins left in the cushion, and Susan wondered where they had gone. But when Heidi concentrated and swished her wand, she stopped wondering. The pincushion was no more. In it's place a perfect hedgehog lay, curled up and sleeping. "Hush, don't disturb it. It's hibernating," Heidi whispered. Susan felt bedazzled. Not only was the transformation complete, the hedgehog even followed the annual cycles. "Wow!" she whispered.
Heidi concentrated, her wand went swish, and the hedgehog was once more only a worn pincushion. "Now it's your turn, have you been practicing?"
"Yes, loads" Susan answered, "But I cannot get the hang of it." She opened her bag and pulled out her pincushion. It still had all of its pins and needles and looked brand new. She placed it on the ground, imagined a hedgehog in her mind, not sleeping, but standing on all four legs.Then she swished her wand saying the Icelandic words for hedgehog. Some of the needles twitched, a pin fell out and a snout momentarily showed on the pincushion. "See," Susan said. "That is what happens, every time I try."
"Let me think." Heidi said. "You're saying the right words at least, let me see you swish once again."
Susan picked up the wayward pin and put it back, then she grasped her wand.
"Stop," Heidi said. "You're squashing that poor wand, hold it loosely, with soft, easy movements. That's what you need."
Susan loosened her tight grip on the wand, started swishing again, and the wand flew from her fingers. "I think I need to hold it a bit tighter, though." Susan grinned, picking it up again.
"Imagine you're holding on to a live hedgie," Heidi said. "Tight enough that it won't wiggle and prick you, loose enough not to harm it." Susan tried to imagine that both her wand and the pincushion were hedgehogs, then she said the words and swished the wand. This time the pins on the pincushion turned more spinelike and four legs sprouted in the corners of the pincushion.
"See!" Heidi said, "You're getting the hang of it."
Susan kept on practicing, Heidi moved her fingers to the right places on the wand, corrected her swishing and generally cheered her on. When it was time to go home for lunch, Susan was able to make the pincushion look like a real hedgehog for more than seconds at a time.
"This sure is hard work," Susan said. "I am ravenous, I hope your parents will forgive my eating them out of house and home."
"You forget we're wizards all of us, they're used to it." Mum and Dad are the best cooks ever, I'm not sure, they do not use magic when cooking too."
Magical or not, the lunch was tasty and there were more than enough of everything.

When Susan helped Heidi clear the table, the twins protesting that it was unfair to have her helping, even though they had laid the table together, Cassandra suggested that Heidi and Susan did practice changing clothes pegs into swallows in the afternoon.
"I'm sure the hedgies are tired of being disturbed, and as the swallows have all migrated, you won't disturb them at all."

Heidi grasped a handful of clothes pegs from the bag and called at Lis and Tue. "Hey you two lazy bones. Don't you think you need to practice a bit transformation as well?"
Lis arose at once, "Actually yes," she said. "I think we're going to get tested when we return. There's no real exams, at least not yet, but we'll be tested in lots of subjects this winter. I'll come. Tue, you should as well. I know you're good, but practice never hurts."
"Oh, OK then." Tue said stretching and yawning. "Mum, are you going to bake one of your glorious cakes for afternoon tea?"
"If you can turn those clothes pegs into swallows by tea time, there'll be cake." Sandra said smiling.
The four children hurried down to the farm. Tue said: "Oh bugger, I don't remember the word for swallow in Icelandic.
Lis and Heidi hung their heads as they realized that they too did indeed miss this essential bit of knowledge.

"I think,"  Susan began.
"Don't think. Know!" Tue and Lis said as one, then they all began laughing. "That's what Birgitta  and Jon has been drumming into our heads ever since the very first lesson in transformation. But do tell what you think anyway, Susan," Heidi said still giggling.
"You know, I can't practice magic as much as I like to, but I can study Icelandic," Susan said, "and I think swallow is Svalur in Icelandic, I just don't remember the declension."
"Bother the declension," Tue said. "At least it sounds right. He grasped the biggest clothes peg, swung his wand in an elegant swish and said "Svalur!" The clothes peg twisted and turned on the bale of straw, growing wings, changing to a small man in red clothes, growing a cleft tail that shortened and turned red with golden buttons and finally it exploded.
"What .. who was that little man?" Lis asked.
"I don't think that was the right word, Susan." Tue said nursing his arm, where the broken spring from the exploding clothes peg had hit him.
"Now I know!" Susan exclaimed. "Svala! That's the right word. Svalur is Spirou, the bell-hop from the Marsupilami-comics. It was him, your clothes peg tried to turn into!"
"Yes," Heidi said, giggling. "I recognized him. Him and Fantasio are two undercover journalists in the Fart & Tempo* magazine Tue is always reading."
Lis stopped giggling and said with a very serious expression: "Don't you see. This is exactly why  Birgitta  and Jon have been warning us to KNOW the word, not guess. We were lucky it was nothing worse than a character from a comic strip and a clothes peg that turned awry. What if it had been a bale of straw and a dragon for instance?. We'd have been burnt to death most probably."
"I think we learned the lesson. Tue said. Let's just not tell mum."
"Now let's try to do it right." Lis said. She concentrated for a short while before she let action follow words. "Svala!" she said earnestly to the new clothes peg on the bale.  The clothes peg shivered, spouted wings, tails, and claws. Then it turned back to the clothes peg.
"Oh bother, Lis said. "I'm not that good at zoology. How does a swallow look?"
"I know," Heidi said. "And now we know that the word is the right one. Let me try."
Lis stepped aside, Heidi closed her eyes in concentration, then she swished her wand just so, and said "Svala!"
A sleek, black bird with a cleft tail, white breast and black pearly eyes sat where the peg had been. It tilted its head and looked at the children one  by one. Then it stretched its wings, preened its feathers, and sat still for a while. Heidi stood still, concentrating on the swallow, while Tue, Lis and Susan studied the bird to get an intimate knowledge of a swallow's anatomy.
When Heidi was tired, and her concentration failed, Tue and Lis were immediately able to reproduce her feat, and to her own surprise Susan did fairly well, making her peg look more like a swallow, and even stretch its wings on her first try.
"Let's get home and show Mum our proceedings. My heart will not be content, unless we provide Susan with tea and cake before she ventures forth on her voyage home."
"Stop it, Tue!" Lis said, "you're sounding like a pompous nincompoop talking like that."
Heidi ducked, gathered the pegs, and grabbed Susan¨'s hand: "Let's get away before these two explode."

                                                                                                


* Fart og Tempo (Speed and Tempo) was a Danish magazine (1966-1976) containing installments of several comics in each issue. For instance Asterix, Flash Gordon, Lucky Luke, and Michel Vaillant.(I'm not sure Spirou and Fantasio was ever featured there). I read my cousin's issues avidly - only not Michel Vaillant ;)