The offense of someone handling your wand! Zora gasped with genuine shock. She jumped up, tore off her sunglasses, and flared her nostrils.

"Hey!"

Iona boasted triumphantly and swaggered away with Zora's wand. Iona deserved the brag. Zora would have done the exact same thing. She snatched up the wine and took a long pull.

"You want to do this, okay, let's do this! Been awhile since we sparred."

Zora scoffed. She recalled that time when they'd gone to that one Italian island for a getaway. Zora didn't know the name, but she did remember ending up with an invisible arm and the singed ends of Iona's fiery mop.

"Let's do this," she repeated with a smile. "Give me back my wand and I promise to go easy."

“Bullshit.” Iona grinned, slowing down as she stood in the centre of the small clearing. Zora wasn’t going to go easy on her regardless of if she gave the wand back, and Iona wouldn’t want it. Perhaps her own inhibitions and sensibilities had been puffed away with the gillyweed smoke, but she was feeling mighty confident about taking down the ancient auror.

“Please give me my wand back and I won’t arrest you.” Iona mimicked, a poor imitation of her wife’s Northern English accent that only came with her own Welsh twang. Iona couldn’t do accents because everything still sounded Welsh. “I bet they get on their knees for you. Absolutely terrifying.” The wine and gillyweed were clearly talking, because Zora only had to give someone the look to be terrifying. It was quite the skill, and it had worked well on Waverly until she grew up to know how to twist both of her mothers around her little finger.

Despite the fighting talk, Iona relented and threw Zora’s wand towards her. She, however, wasted no time in pointing her own wand at her wife and yelled “Expulso!” to hopefully catch her before she caught the wand.

Zora cackled fake laughter at Iona's terrible (okay, apt albeit exaggerated) impression of her.

"Ha ha ha. That's hilarious. Spot on. Absolutely nailed it," she said trying to keep a straight face and trying to strike a more dignified pose.

When Iona relented and flicked her wand over, Zora lunged for it. She'd fully intended to swipe it up and turn her wife's skin orange to match her hair and then pop her onto her very funny arse, but Iona was sneaky and nasty and didn't give away her advantage.

The explosive spell didn't need to hit square on to send Zora tumbling backwards, arse over teakettle. The grass was wet, and the moss and grass and clover didn't completely protect her middle-aged bones from the lumpy ground. Zora skidded to a stop on her stomach. Her robe was up over her head and her hair was everywhere and twiggy.

She slowly lifted her head. Ya ded nao. She pressed herself up and began waving her wand.

"Vertigio!!" Like for like! The one good thing she'd ever learned off Ed Pratt.

Zora, too distracted by the need to catch her wand, fell straight into Iona’s spell, the shockwave sending her slamming into the ground in a spectacular fashion. If Iona hadn’t been high on gillyweed and inebriated on cheap wine, she may have felt a teeny bit guilty as she watched her wife crash into the ground like a rag doll. May have. It wasn’t like Zora played nicely, either.

This mean play was clearly evidenced when, while Iona was happily watching her wife push herself back to her feet, Zora took her own advantage and started swirling her wand above her head, shouting her own spell.

“Oh @&#*!” Iona, even in her drunken and weeded state knew exactly what was coming. She gripped her wand tighter as things began to spin and the floor felt like it was moving beneath her. This spell had been used a couple of times before when the witches had chosen to duel, but every time before, both women had been perfectly sober. Now, the floor seemed to be moving at twice the speed. Iona, found herself staring down, blinking furiously to stop the spinning and focus on one spot. That spot moved. All the way around. Spinning and spinning and spinning. She needed to be on the floor. On the ground. Maybe then the spinning would stop.

So, the witch, clasping her stick, was suddenly lowing herself to kneel. The cane was dropped to the ground and she was on all fours, staring at the moving wibbly wobbly ground. She was going to die. She was going to die in a spinning vortex of misery and nausea.

Zora laughed as Pratt's sloppy spell landed true and knocked her Warrior Wife down a peg. Zora doubled over but gathered herself up quickly to prepare for the inevitable counter-attack. But it didn't come. Zora wiped her hair from her face and set up into a dueling stance.

"Come on," she said and wiggled her wand. "That's all you've got?"

But Iona wasn't getting up! Zora's giddiness dulled. "Hey, you alright? Finite Incantatum. Hey."

Zora approached Iona grumbling. "If you're faking that's a very dirty trick and I one-hundred percent approve..."

Iona barely heard her wife’s jibes because she was too focused on willing the floor, now an arm’s length from her face, to stop spinning. But there was no let up, and she was fairly certain that she would be reminded what wine tasted like on the way back up as well as down. The sky was coming in, threatening to crush her, and the ground under her hands wouldn’t stop moving.

“Finite Incantatum. Hey.” Zora stopped the spell, but as Iona stared, wide eyed at the mud a foot away from her face, she didn’t feel like anything had stopped. Her stomach was doing flips and she was quite convinced that she would be seeing the wine once more.

Her wand was in her hand, and her cane cast away to the floor besides her. She managed to summon a weak willed jellyleg jinx which was silently shot in Zora’s direction before her arms buckled and she rolled onto her back.
“Uuurrrrgh.” Now that was worse! The spell may have stopped because the sky didn’t feel like it was going to crush her anymore. The floor even felt stable. But the spinning didn’t stop. So, flat on her back, hair in the damp cold mud, Iona shut her eyes and deeply regretted the wine and the stolen weed and giving her wife any incentive to use that dreadful spell.

“New…new rule.” They didn’t have any rules other than the perhaps unspoken one about now casting anything at her leg. “That spell is banned. Uuuuuurrrgh! I think I’m going to die.”

A sly Jelly-Legs Jinx, and Zora crumpled to the mossy floor. The heel of her hands smarted from the impact.

"Was trying to help you, ye hag," she said but knew she deserved it. Bother they were getting old, two middle-aged witches on their bums in the woods with bumps and pains they'd complain about in the morning. Zora scooted to sit next to Iona while the sharp little hex that had rendered her knees and ankles useless wore off. Iona looked positively green in the dim light of the clearing.

"No you're not," Zora said with a pout, and moved some of Iona's curly red hair from her face.

With a happy grunt, Zora laid down. Stars peeked through the tree canopy. It was nice to be out of the city. They didn't do this enough. When Waverly was little, during the war, they'd hid out in the countryside. Why hadn't they ever gone back?

"Many have tried..." she said pensively. Then she gulped out a foul-tasting burp.

Iona didn’t see her hex hit her wife because she was busy squinting her eyes shut and willing the world to stop spinning. She’d been hit with this spell before, and it had been rather debilitating. But a quickly drunk half bottle of wine and half a spliff of gillyweed had certainly made her defences extremely weak.

"Was trying to help you, ye hag," Zora grumbled, eliciting a chuckle from the witch on her back.
“Pah!”

Several moments later, Zora was lay down beside her, their arms touching. Iona was very conscious of the fact that her hair and arse was currently soaking into the wet mud, but she made no move to get up. Especially when Zora suddenly let out a gillyweed beer burp.

“HA!” A delighted and loud laugh came from the red head. “You made the earth move!” She continued to laugh, deep from her belly. It felt like the earth was still moving for Iona. Once her laughing had calmed down, Iona rolled over onto her side, putting an arm over Zora, propping herself up on her other elbow, and looking down into Zora’s spinning face. “Did the earth move for you too, babe?” Another laugh before she closed her eyes. “Many can try. And you know what I’ll say, Zo? Watch your back! My missus cheats at duels.” Ironic considering Iona had been the one to duel dirty.

Iona found herself blinking ferociously when she reopened her eyes and tried to fix them on Zora’s face. It kept moving in and out of focus, like she’d just fallen off a merry-go-round going super-fast. “Stay still!”

"No such thing in cheating at dueling," Zora said with a laugh, parroting their spell-fighting instructor in training. Of course, there were plenty of rules in proper dueling. Where did wife-fighting coming in? Somewhere between stuffy stances and murderous maniacs? If Iona was going to die, she was taking her time. For the moment, they were both enjoying the illusion of warmth. Iona rolled over and snuggled in. Zora took her face gently in her hands and kissed her on the forehead, then the corner of her mouth. He let go and but kept her arm around her.

"I'm not going anywhere," Zora insisted with a grin, happy to just look at Iona in the dark. The dim light of the night made her skin glow, even with the mud on her chin.

"Better?"

As Iona lay curled up to Zora, the world around her slowly stopped spinning. Once the spinning, dizzy sensation finally subsided, it just left behind the warm feeling from the wine and gillyweed.

“Better.” Iona agreed, resting her head back in the mud. She was quite content to just curl up and close her eyes next to her wife’s warmth.  “Bad news, Zo. I think we’ve got too old for this.” Perhaps witches in their 40s shouldn’t be smoking gillyweed and duelling in the woods. “But congrats, senior badass. I think I just got more attracted to you.”