Trees and boulders and clouds all spinning in a mad blur.  No sense of up or down, left or right. It was as if Summer Camp Island was a spirograph and Hedgehog the pen.

How high had she climbed before the broomstick snagged an air pocket and bucked her off? A thousand feet? Maybe more? High enough for the broom’s bristles to start sparkling with frost and the stick to get slick with ice.

And now she was plummeting head over heels towards certain death. Goodbye being a novice witch. Goodbye wand. Goodbye wide-brimmed pointy witch hat and buckled boots and casting spells and being alive and Oscar.  

Oh gosh… Oscar, Hedgehog thought miserably.  He’s going to be devastated! 

Even as she drifted in and out of consciousness from the G-force sucking blood out of her head and into her feet, Hedgehog was being bombarded with sad images of Oscar in a rented black suit, hands folded meekly in his lap, sobbing onto the freshly-turned dirt covering her grave with his parents flanking him on either side.

Dang… she was going to miss out on all the great food at the reception too!  That was always her favorite thing about going to funerals!  

A few hundred feet left to go.  Welp… goodbye cruel world!

“HEDGEHOG!”

There was a brilliant blue flash.  All of a sudden Hedgehog found herself falling much, much slower than before, now tumbling through the air at the same speed she’d normally roll down a hill.  But it wasn’t enough - the ground was still rushing up far too fast.  Fifty feet… twenty feet… ten…

THUD.

It wasn’t a great landing.  Spine first, limbs jackknifed at crazy angles, touching down on the leaf-strewn autumn valley with roughly the same amount of impact as the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.  

In an instant, all the G-force that Hedgehog had spent the better part of 10 seconds building up flashed through her muscles and skeleton and out through her extremities - but not before finding every single pain receptor in her body and switching them to ‘ON’.  A white-hot, almost euphoric pain flooded every inch of her, and then… darkness.

A sharp pounding on her chest - fists raining down on her sternum.

“Goddammit Hedgehog, don’t you dare die on me!  I am not getting sued!”

Pressure… pressure… pressure… like someone was trying to push her solar plexus into her spine.  Warm fingers at her chin, tilting her head back.  Something blocking out the sun… the sweet smell of perfume…

“Hedgehog, if you die, I swear to GOD I will kill you.”

And then…

Warm, chapped lips pressing down against hers.

In the pain-drugged Picasso painting that was Hedgehog’s mind right then, it was Max who came to her.  Max’s strong, calloused hands against her cheeks, keeping her cervical spine straight to prevent paralysis.  Max’s badly chapped yet oddly inviting lips barreling down on hers… his strong bat lungs forcing a massive gust of air into her chest, inflating Hedgehog’s cracked ribs to the point of agony…

Why, Max… I had no idea you felt that way.  Gosh, this is all so sudden…

Hedgehog’s lips parted as she let out a contented sigh.  Reflexively, she rolled her body up into the kiss, kneading Max’s lips between her own as she snaked up a hand to grip the back of his head.

The lips immediately stopped pushing air into her, which was a relief.  They remained pursed against hers, seemingly paralyzed.  Then… slowly… timidly… they began to kiss back.

Hedgehog felt a tickling, as if someone were running an ostrich feather over her cheeks.

That’s… odd.  Has Max’s hair always been this long?  

It was possible - he always kept his baseball cap on after all.  But Hedgehog was pretty sure that in all time she’d had a crush on Max, he had never smelled quite so… floral… before. 

“…Hedge… hog…”

Edge-hoG.  That’s how the voice pronounced her name - nonexistent ‘H’ sound, overemphasized ‘G’ sound.  

It wasn’t an American accent.  And it wasn’t in Max’s voice either.

Hedgehog’s eyelids unscrewed themselves.  Her eyes were still submerged beneath a screen of tears.  She blinked once, twice, three times to clear her vision.  When she opened her eyes again, she saw…

Pointy ears…

Coffee-black eyes with teardrops threatening to roll down from the outer corners...

A halo of wind-tousled pink hair...

Bold black eyebrows…

Fine feline features arranged on a blanched face… 

A fiery blush traveling from one cheek to the other… 

Susie.  

Not Max.  Susie.

S-U-S-I-E

Thankfully, it was at this point that Hedgehog’s brain decided to shut down, and she slipped away into inky darkness cradled in Susie’s arms, thereby avoiding the most awkward conversation ever.