All this hair pulling just seemed to be aggravating little Winnie.

Ok not-so-little Winnie anymore. How did she get so big? Had she found some giant vat of magic hair growth elixir? Or was it just that, no longer constrained by the Hexen Zone, she was becoming her true, whole, if fearsome self?

I made my way through the smoke and wreckage of the Psychic Fair Grounds and headed into the massive locks of hair, squirming out of the woods like a mighty kraken.

"Here little Winnie! C'mon girl! Daddy's comin home!"

I didn't have time to get to my pre-assigned safety bunker containment unit so just hid under a table at the Spoonbender till the calamity was over and they gave the all clear. I walked outside and things weren't so bad. Aside from a tank or two that had been picked up and thrown across campus, the damage didn't look so bad. There were some big tendrils of hair still visible between buildings and along the sidewalks, but they were retreating--slowly retreating, retracting, pulling back the way they had come.

But the weirdest thing--and everybody says this who was there at the scene, right when it ended--was the purring sound. Coming from the other side of campus, past the fair grounds. It was so deep and rattly I swear it made the grass shake. But I swear it was a purr.

"There, there, my little murmuration."

I was deep in the woods, petting Winnie in my lap. She was down to about the size of a Bernese Mountain dog, but her hair continued to retract. Where was it all going? Maybe into that ring of barnacles where all her arms came together? It was an odd sort of space. I hadn't looked at it clearly before, but if I brushed the hair aside...

"DON'T LOOK AT IT!" It was @Minx Katrell, standing at the edge of the clearing. Frankly she was looking a little disheveled.

"Well, not without these." She tossed me the Hex Protection Goggles. I put them on.

"I guess little Winnie needs to go back to her Hexen biome," I said, stroking her arms lovingly.

"That's right," said Minx. "And there's a little more you'll need to do too."