Willow sends everyone letters via owl, telling them she's got her house's fireplaces hooked up to the floo network, and that they could get there on that given day and is it a good day for everyone? They can bring their parents and siblings and whatever they want, the house can accommodate lots of people.

Karen is only allowed to come for a few hours and is not supposed to leave the house or talk to any uninformed Muggles, but she can come for a bit.

Miranda will be there, sans parentals.

Sadde will have to use Miranda's fireplace, and his mum won't be coming either.

Willow is bummed out a bit by the "only a few hours" part! But that's okay, she guesses, they'll have lots of fun during those few hours.

Karen apologizes; her parents are just nervous about her accidentally breaking the Statute or getting into some kind of trouble she's not equipped to handle.

Sadde arrives at Miranda's!

Miranda demonstrates the Floo. When Sadde follows after her, she will be picking herself up from the floor.

Here she comes! She sticks the landing.

"Wow," says Miranda.

Sadde doesn't say 'Wow' because she's too stunned to say 'Wow.'

Willow giggles. "Okay, so, what do you want to do first? I can show you around and we can hang out in the library and we can have tea and we can swim in the pool and we can ride ponies and we can play golf and we can play tag, oooh we could also play hide-and-seek, my siblings never played with me, they were always too busy being prodigies, my older sister and the twins are here though so if you want to meet them you can, and mum is too although dad isn't."

"...What's golf?"

"I'm incapable of tag played off broomsticks," Miranda reminds her. "But Karen has to leave soonest so she should pick first."

"Golf is a game where you have a bat shaped like an L and there's a tiny white ball and you have to hit it with the bat so it'll roll to a hole, and you win by doing a whole course of it and having to hit the ball less than everyone else!"

"You win by doing less of the thing? That's weird."

"It's because it's actually really hard to do it right, if you swing too hard you overshoot the target, but not hard enough and you don't quite reach it, and the hole is only big enough for the ball to fit so you have to be really precise. ...it's not actually much fun as a team sport though I just suggested it because we have a mini-golf course."

"I kinda want to go swimming," says Karen. "After seeing the house. If I'm picking, I mean."

"Okay! Let's go then!"

"Fine by me."

Their first stop is the kitchen, so she'll introduce them to her cook Ms. Hannah.

Karen is very alarmed to discover that they have a human, Muggle cook who is not part of Willow's immediate family.

"Er, I'm good for now I guess?" she says.

...Miranda stands near Karen and tries to look related to her or something. "We're not hungry but thank you."

"I'm not supposed to meet any Muggles who don't know about wixen things!"

"Sorry! There aren't any more—well except for Mr. Boris who minds the horses but I can get him to go away before we go play with them."

"My mum and dad might ask!"

"It's okay," says Miranda. "You didn't say anything to her. Just tell them you didn't talk to any Muggles who weren't in under the Statute."

"Why is that such a big deal, though?"

"They don't want me to get in trouble."

"...okay, but why would you get in trouble just by interacting with a muggle?"

"For breaking the Statute of Secrecy. If I said the wrong thing. They said when I'm older I could try going somewhere as long as people who know about Muggle things are with me but for now they don't want to risk it."

"They might not be assessing the risk quite right but it would have been pretty easy to ask Ms. Hannah for pumpkin juice, say, and she's probably already wondering why Karen is dressed like that." (Karen lacks Muggle street clothes; what she has on is not a school uniform, but it would barely be in-place at a renaissance faire, let alone out and about in a Muggle town.) "The risk is much worse for Ms. Hannah than for Karen, whyever her parents made the rule, anyway."

"I don't think she's wondering about that, my brother's brought people dressed, erm, differently before, and both mum and dad have varied guests—okay, I'm making up excuses, sorry, I just didn't think of it."

"Nothing happened. But maybe Karen shouldn't come over again anytime soon unless Ms. Hannah's having a vacation."

She nods. "Well, erm, want to see the rest of the house? No other muggles here." Pause. "Except for mum and siblings but they know."

"Your family are fine," Karen says. "And yeah let's see the rest of the house."

"I don't recognize most of it."

"Hmm, there are some board games in that closet but I guess you probably don't know them either... Are all your games magical?"

"Wixen do play chess but with animated pieces. The rules are the same more or less, though."

"And are all those games completely original to wixen? I guess when you have magic to animate games the possibilities expand a lot, huh."

"Well, some of them are probably inspired by Muggle games but chess is the closest match."

"Hmmm."

"Hi. I'm Miranda, that's Sadde, and this is Karen."

So they go and stop bothering her.

"Whoa." Karen goes and looks at the books to see what they could possibly be about.

Sadde definitely explores some of the magical ones. Having enough money to just buy books, just like that, must be so great.

"...Your cook doesn't go in the library, does she? If she spots the magic books someone may in fact show up at your house and forcibly erase her memory."

"No, definitely not, food's not allowed in here and she has little to do other than that. And when the cleaning lady comes there's this." She shows a little rolling door hidden in the upper side of the shelf that she can use to lock the books away. "We have lots of very valuable books here, hiding books is standard precautions."

"Okay, that's good."

They can stay in the library for as long as they'd like!

Karen reads most of the titles, but does not actually take anything off the shelf to read. Next?

"It doesn't look like it's made of light..."

Karen is fairly impressed by the TV!

TVs are fun! And because Willow is Willow, she removes her shoes, hops onto her bed, grabs one of the toy light sabers, and starts swinging it around in time with the duel.

Karen giggles.

Miranda looks at the movie titles in the collection.

Satisfied that this is pretty much a kind of swordfight, Karen goes and gets a lightsaber too and joins the battle.

"Vwoom," attempts Karen, copying the video.

Willow is overtaken by a fit of giggles when Karen starts doing it, too.

Sadde uses this moment of distraction to strike!

Karen swats Sadde on the leg while she's attacking Willow.

"Um, no, I would die, remember?"

"I wouldn't have any fun because I don't like being terrible at things and I would still die."

"Kyah!" Willow says as she charges at Karen as well.

"Fffiiine," Sadde says, going two-against-one on Karen.

Miranda waits patiently, idly watching Star Wars.

It's pretty neat stuff.

Right?

Willow's not gonna get tired of this anytime soon.

Karen gets worn out before she gets bored, and flops dramatically to the bed. "I am dead," she announces.

"I am victorious!"

"Queen Lightsaber Lady."

"My sister would probably still wipe the floor with me."

Karen hangs the lightsaber up. "Well, you beat us."

She giggles. "Okay, what next?"

"Let's see the rest of the house and then swim."

Sadde quietly admires everything she sees.

"So, I brought my bathing suit, did you guys?"

"Yeah!"

"I have mine! Do you have to have two bathing suits, Sadde? In case you feel like swimming on girl days and boy days?"

"Mmhm, yeah."

"Oooh, this is a nice pool."

"Very nice!" she agrees.

"We can change over there," she says, walking towards the locker-room-of-sorts.

Miranda's suit is red and Karen's is blue. Karen's has sleeves and little shorts extensions; Muggle bathing costumes are more daring than wixen ones.

Willow's is yellow with pink flowers on it, and Sadde's is black with a skull in front of it.

"Fashion statement," Miranda remarks of Sadde's.

She grins. "Did you expect anything else?"

"CANNON BALL!"

Well given that Sadde is completely and thoroughly drenched now, she might as well dive in too.

Karen laughs at the look on Sadde's face.

Sadde splashes Karen!

Well, now they just have to splashfight.

SPLASHFIGHT!

SPLAAAAAASHFIGHT!

A form of play combat Miranda can participate in!

Willow swims away from them a bit so she can float belly up and start splashing them with her feet. They are much better at splashing than her hands.

That means she will have a harder time seeing people sneaking up on her to splash her, a fact that Karen takes full advantage of.

She eeps and seeks protection underwater!

Sadde decides that playing fair is for the weak and now her fingers are webbed together and she is splashing much more effectively!

"Cheater!"

That comment earns her some extra splashing!

Which earns Sadde a flying tackle leading to a dunk.

Well, then she could certainly escape from her assailant. Who laughs.

"Bluegh!" She looks around for the underwater shape that is Sadde, who is swimming much too fast.

"Cheatiiiiing," sings Miranda, but she dives underwater and gives chase.

Sadde swims around the little island so that she's hidden from Miranda and quickly slips out of the water, morphing back to fully human shape and waiting for Miranda to have to breathe.

Karen grabs her foot and hauls her back into the pool.

Ack! Her plan has been foiled!

Karen really shouldn't have gotten distracted by that! Her punishment is a tackle-dunk!

Oh nooooo!

Late to the party. But splashing Willow, since Willow was not being splashed enough.

Ooh, Sadde can agree with that! She abandons her pursuit to splash Willow as well!

Oh no! Her foes are banding together against her! Time for a tactical retreat! Blublub!

Karen dives too in case she's next!

Miranda helps chase Karen, although she can't catch up.

When Sadde catches Karen, she pulls her feet to slow her down so Miranda will catch up and then goes after Willow.

Miranda, of course, splashes Karen, gets splashed back, and then leads her back to the other two.

That's okay. Much splashing can be had by all.

So much splashing!

After they're tired of swimming they go ride ponies, and Karen then has to go home, but she hugs everybody first.

Hugs are nice! Ponies are not. Not even Minnie likes Sadde, though at least she only expresses that dislike by making displeased whiny noises and refusing to stay still for long enough for Sadde to be able to ride her.

They don't have to ride ponies for very long, since Sadde is sitting out. Although Miranda does like being able to travel rapidly overland without tripping.

Sadde doesn't much mind. Brooms are way better.

Miranda agrees. Horses are just novel.

Not to Willow they're not, and Sadde herself never expected to be able to ride one anyway so not much of a disappointment.

Well, what's next after horses and bidding Karen goodbye?

Well, whatever they want, really! ...within the limits of what the house actually has to offer. Since most sports involving feet are out of the question, there's: food ("I bet Ms. Hannah baked us muffins!"), board games, card games, hide-and-seek, lots of movies, and a bunch of PlayStation games.

Miranda would like to try some PlayStation games; she knows what they are but has never actually tried one.

Sadde's in the same boat.

Rad! How about BomberMan? It supports up to four players!

Miranda will defer to Willow's recommendation.

Cool! Lots of pixel explosions ensue, and Willow's familiarity with the game definitely gives her an edge.

Miranda's not especially playing to win, considering.

Why on Earth not? Exploding other people (or AIs) is so much fun!

Because she just wants to get familiar with the game and that doesn't mean taking the tactically optimal move at every moment if there are other things to investigate!

Well, not much to get familiar with there, once you'd seen all the items and terrains it was down do trapping everyone and exploding them.

BOOM!

Miranda gets up to speed once she knows what she's doing.

Now that's better! Willow ups the difficulty of the AIs to give them more of a challenge.

Boom.

BOOM! Giggle.