"I know!" said Matilda, clapping her hands excitedly. "Let's have dinner and smoothe things over it!"
"Now, Matilda, this is not a bad idea," said Hilda with an approving smile. "Let us leave those two to their own. James, you can change your clothes in the bathroom. Christina, why not accompany him? Gilda just indulged in a silly joke that she assumed was funny, wrongly so. She ripped his garments and he to remove them. All of this is just a messy misunderstanding, I assure you. You two hop into the bathroom and we'll fix a hearty meal. How about chicken and roasted potatoes? We'll have delicious cakes for desert! We don’t have enough people over to dine with us, so it'll be a real pleasure for us to have you at our table!"
"All right, I guess," mumbled Christina.
She was half-suspicious and sensed something fishy about all this, but her good education made her feel bad at refusing the offer to eat from three elderly women whose delusions and antics brought her more pity than anything else. So she accepted with politeness, even though she would have preferred not to. But who knew? Maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding indeed and the food would be nice and these women were very nice, if just a little kooky. Delusional but harmless.
"Thank you, dear," gushed Hilda, pinching Christina's cheek, much to the latter's intense embarrassment. "You have no idea how much it pleases us to have a bit of youth around here! It is so very refreshing indeed!"
Christina mumbled a word of thanks and a compliment. She then went off to the bathroom with James who had hastily retrieved clothes from his suitcase. In the meanwhile, the three sisters bustled into their kitchen and waved their wands around to prepare a nice meal. Food and supplies and utensils flew about, while the oven roared to life.
"What was that all about?" accused a miffed Gilda to Hilda. "Are you planning to keep that idiotic strumpet around? Because I won't have any of it!"
Hilda sighed. Her sister had always bee so short-sighted! Always thinking about her own selfish little pleasures with no considerations whatsoever for the bigger scheme of things.
"Hush! We'll feed them. James will stay and we'll decide what to do with him. TOGETHER!" she added pointedly and forcefully to her sex-maniac of a sister.
"As for that girl," she continued. "Putting her into a state of trust will mean she'll come back and we can decide what to do with HER together as well. A new pet or a human being to trade to the other realms with would be very useful to have around. I'm thinking in the long-term, unlike you. Don't you think I'm right, Matilda?"
Matilda nodded and knowing she was outnumbered, Gilda huffed and went back to busying himself. She didn't care, she would do SOMETHING to have her own way. Couldn't her sisters see have much she wanted James and how much that obnoxious hussy was annoying? Well, she'd show them she was right and that her sisters should take her seriously! What she did not realize was that Hilda, undoubtedly smarter than her, no matter what Gilda could imagine about her own person, was already preparing her own plans. And those plans did not involve James becoming the sexual toy of her sister! Let her find another! Two humans going into their home was too good to pass and transforming them would help the three witches harness more power, whether by employing the new forms of these young humans for ingredients, like hair or ooze or trading them to beings of other realms, always happy to have malleable humans within their worlds and incorporating them fully afterwards into their worlds. Transformed humans gave more power to ingredients or reached very, very high prices when sold to other creatures. How could her idiotic sister forget all that? The problem was that she knew full well that Gilda would attempt making James her boy toy sooner than later, without warning anyone of course and just presenting them in front of the fait accompli. She'd dash all the promising and pecuniary plans Hilda had and that Matilda agreed with without a second thought! Well, that was not to be. Not if Hilda could help it. She'd show her stupid sister a fait accompli and what thinking long-term really meant! So she slipped a few discreet drops of a potion into the glass destined for James. She whipped it up inconspicuously and when they all seated around the table laden with mouth-watering dishes, no one was the wiser. James gulped all of his glass of wine and even asked for more. As for Christina, she picked at her food at first but quickly dug in as she discovered how delicious it was. Matilda watched over things carefully while Gilda shot simpering looks at James which she wrongly thought were discreet and heinous glares at the poor girl whom had done nothing wrong except being herself in front of a woman way past her prime. Luckily, the two youngsters were too absorbed by their food to notice anything much. It was after the desert, while enjoying digestives, that James started to feel dizzy... He stumbled and mumbled, while Hilda beamed inwardly. Time to get serious with spells!