Hopefully thevQueen didn't have a million questions to ask Trinity to ask them.

She tsked and shook her head. "Goat-girl," she said, looking at Trinity once more, "ask them this--would they prefer being a rabbit or a hart?"

"M-my lady?" Tansy stammered. Thorny briars surrounded them; there was nowhere to run.

"It is a simple question," Titania went on, her tone perfectly conversational. "What would they prefer I change them into--a rabbit or a hart?"

Looking like a trapped rabbit herself, Trinity turned and asked the girls the question. "M-my lady would like to know if you would like to be rabbits or harts."

" Neither. " She said to the girl.

"Depends." She replies simply. "If you're intending on killing us don't even bother. I brought formonitrille."

Titania's face glowed with angry triumph. "The creature dares to speak to me! Very well. She has chosen her fate." The faery queen raised a gloved hand, and lightning flashed overhead. "A hart it is, then. Set free the hounds. We will have a merry hunt!"

Her hand swept down, pointing at Isiea and then Lise, and spasms rocked their bodies. They could feel their spines lengthen and pop. Invisible pliers grabbed their faces and pulled, stretching their lips into a muzzle. They could also feel their legs getting longer, thinner, their fingers turning into cloven hooves.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. Their bodies snapped into the proper shape, like a taut rubber band.

Oberon was standing at the mouth of the tunnel, a pair of faery knights behind him, his arm outstretched. With his appearance, the lilting harp music ground to a halt. The fey girls surrounding the collared human flung themselves to the floor and bowed their heads.

Isiea blinks in surprise, but for the most part seems unbothered. She'd dropped her knife, so she calmly picks it back up and puts it back in her satchel. Or, tries to. She misses. Her contacts fell out, so now everything just looks like hazy blobs to her.

Lise shivered a bit from the half transformation. She might've been saved by Oberon, but at least she wasn't a hart. Whatever that is.

(A hart is a deer)

"Wife," Oberon said calmly, stepping into the clearing. "You will not do this."

Titania rose, her face a mask of fury. "You dare speak to me that way," she spat, and wind rattled the branches of the trees. "You dare, after you hid them from me, after you sent your little pet to protect them!" Titania sneered, and lightning crackled overhead. "You deny me a consort, and yet you flaunt your half-breed abominations in the court for all to see. You are a disgrace. The court mocks you in secret, and you still protect them."

"Nonetheless." Somehow, Oberon's composed voice rose above the howling of the wind. "They are my blood, and you will not touch either of them. If you have any grievances, my lady, cast them on me, not on the girls. It is not their fault."

"Perhaps I shall turn them into a cabbage," the queen mused, shooting the girls a look of black hatred, "and plant them in my garden for the rabbits to enjoy. Then they would be useful and wanted."

"You will not touch them," Oberon said again, his voice rising in authority. His cloak billowed out, and he grew taller, his shadow lengthening on the ground. "I command it, wife. I have given my word that they shall not come to harm within my court, and you will follow me on this. Do I make myself clear?"

Isiea is busy trying to find her contacts, mostly ignoring the argument. They were expensive and she hates wearing glasses, even though she did bring hers just in case.

Lise rolled her eyes and the entire scene. It was so... overdramatic. It wasn't their fault they were born.