I don't care that I'm too late for a Christmas story, that was really good!

The underrated characters really are the best. Shame no Mystia though, but I can appreciate the best umbrella youkai around.

>>1944
<3

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-

The flat of my tongue licks the roof of my mouth. The meat didn't actually melt under my teeth back then, but I now had a craving for dragon that probably wouldn't be fulfilled. My method of cooking that kind of meat leaves it chewy. But it's still tender enough that it doesn't make your mouth sore. Mudo also had a way with seasonings that leaves the spice lingering in your mouth. It wasn't a hot spice, but a herbal spice that rises into your nose.

The dreams are becoming more vivid.

“So,” Lady Patchouli peers over her book at me across her table, “these are the books that might interest you the most.”

“Thank you, Lady Patchouli.” I take the book from Koakuma, who closes her eyes and smiles as she hands me several books. The pile isn't heavy, though there are easily over five hundred pages together.

“Seven hundred thirty three pages.” Lady Patchouli turns a page. “Of which, twenty eight are most relevant to your condition. If you'd like, I can have Koakuma show you.”

“Who is showing something here?”

I turn my head behind me as much as I can. “Milady Remilia! Excuse me for using the library in my spare time.” The words come as naturally as breathing.

“It's fine.” Lady Remilia sits to the left of Lady Patchouli. “The library is a place where everyone comes to learn. What they learn is their own business,” She eyes the books in my arms, “so as I'm a good mistress, I don't meddle in personal affairs.”

“Remi.”

“What is it, Patchy?”

Lady Patchouli remains silent, turning another page. Lady Remilia sighs while sliding down her chair. I walk to find a table somewhere else, with Koakuma following beside me.

“Meiling.” The mistress calls.

I pause, turning to her once again. “Yes, Milady?”

Lady Remilia doesn't face me. She doesn't speak for a moment, and I stand waiting for her to do so. And when she does:

“You are important to us. Remember that.”

----

Three months. Some time after three months, I lie back on my bed. Mudo has long since slept inside with me,

Magnificent. A really well written, bittersweet story, thank you for writing this.

That's okay... I just wanted to wash my eyes from the inside anyway...

That was great.

I didn't laugh that hard in a long time.

Absolutely amazing.
I demand more.

------------

The evening sun is beginning to set as two figures are walking into the forest. Near the edge of the trees, one looks back to the castle as a faint roar of frustration echoes about the grounds. "…Did you hear that?"

"I'm sure that one of the Merman are mad that their prize dabberblimps were lost." The blonde turns back and smiles at Harry as he follows after her. "They are rather aggrieved when they wander off to lay in the sun, after all. They have to let their sacks to dry out. If they're too soggy, they won't be able to float."

"…I'm sure that is all that it is." Harry shakes his head. "I'm rather sure it came from the castle."

"The merman is quite the ventriloquist."

"I'll take your word for it." Harry shakes his head and speeds up, catching back up to the girl. "So, where exactly are we taking your little friend, Luna?"

"Back home, of course. She did wander quite a long way."

"But how did you even find her in the first place?"

"Well, I was looking for records on the breeding habits of Moon Frogs when I was wandering around the Room of Requirement. Funnily enough, there was a lot of material on Moon Rabbits, but everyone knows that's pishposh."

"It is?"

"Of course it is. Everyone knows those ears are fake." Luna smiles and looks down. "So I found this little friend down here rolling about. It looked like it was teething, like it was trying to gnaw at my arms, so I figured I should help take it back!"

"But what does that have to do with the posters?"

"Well, I needed help bringing Sexy here back. That's why I asked." She smiles and pats the top of its head. "Isn't that right, Sexy?"

The round object in her lap turns up and shoots a glare at Luna. "I told you ten times already! My name is SEKI!"

"Such a sweet girl, isn't she?" Luna pats the disembodied head. "But as it was, I could hardly leave her here. Nearly Headless Nick was disappointed at the sight, saying that he was rather jealous."

"What a freak… You think that a ghost would be able to take care of that trivial thing!"

"…Aren't you just a disembodied head?"

"I'm a Rokurokubi, not some human. I'm a vicious man-eating monster!"

"Aww, don't say such things." Luna rubs the back of the head's head, right near the bow. "You're such a doll, so don't say things like that. You might give Harry a bad impression."

"I think she's already succeeding…" The head closes its eyes a bit as it gets rubbed, but the moment that Harry speaks it snaps them back open and glares at him. "So, erm… she lives in the forest? Is it wise to be going here at this time of day?"

"Well, not until we get lost. Once we don't know where we are, we'll be fine." Luna just smiles. "Besides, the Forbidden Forest does have a nice atmosphere. It helps the thestral's and their lovely coats."

"Hmpf. You don't need to take me back. I could fly there on my own! …If I could still. Stupid outside…" Harry looks down at the creature and it puffs up. "What? I can do it, to! If I just had my body, I could fly just fine."

"Don't lose your head, Sexy. You know how bad your temper is."

"DON'T LOSE MY… MY NAME IS…" The head lets out an anguished scream and shakes back and forth. "Just take me back home, please… I don't want to be with this madwoman anymore."

"So… What happened to your body in the first place?"

"I… err…" The head looks away as blood rushes to its cheeks. …From somewhere. "I do

After reading this, I'm not sure if I should drink more or less.

Good job.

Fighting scenes are one of the hardest things to translate to text, but it seems like you did a good work. I like it.

Descriptions are key and you have enough-but empty dialog lines are a pet peeve of mine. I'd say that they should be integrated to the story; at least with a short sentence explaining the tone and feelings that those words are trying to convey.

Boom! The sound of thunder resonates through the hospice room as I slowly open up my eye. Rain hitting the roof of the building with small thuds. Sitting in a chair not too far from my bed is the girl from earlier, Aya was it? It’s hard to tell from the rain but it appears to be nighttime outside and I don’t even know what day it...Is that a calendar? I squint my good eye to try and see through the darkness to the other side of the room where there appears to be a paper calendar situated to the left of the window. Bah! I can’t even tell what those symbols mean, I must be running low on spirit reserves. Sending a mental ping to check my power reserves they are indeed low probably spent making sure I didn't die, barely functioning in fact, however that isn’t the only reason.

A small gap in my spirit energies tells me one of them is made manifest around here. It's strange that one of them would manifest themselves outside of combat situations so this must have been important for them.

A small whimpering comes from the left of the bed. I shift slightly to get a closer look, and peer over the edge. Leaning against the bed huddling in a small ball is my dear Siara, my spirit of water, crying.

This girl is my manifestation of the water spirit, these spirits come in many different forms, depending on the relation between the elementalist and the spirit. For me, Siara is a small girl of eastern origin. She has long black hair that reaches down to her waist, and stands roughly a meter tall. She has eyes the color of crystal clear water, and wears an all blue dress with wave patterns riddled across its surface. You could say I treat her like a daughter. She is a real cry baby but I can’t bring myself to be hard on her compared to the other spirits because of it.

She continues to stifle small tears as I gently whisper to her and ask what's wrong?

She jumps a bit, as if not expecting me to even be conscious right now. Collecting herself she stands up, her head barely able to look over the bed and turns to look at me. "Well umm... The other spirits and myself were worried about your conditions. You seem to be taken care of rather well but we haven&

Post to another board

New thread is here; >>/others/62265

Today is not a good day.

...

I made it home.

It took me a long time to recover enough to pick up a pen.

Minutes, maybe hours passed while I just sat there and tried to breathe.

My heart felt like it would explode if I lost concentration for just one second.

My heartbeat felt too fast, more like a continuous stream rather than individual beats.

But, here I am now.

...

I don't know how one should write in a diary.

I've mostly been pacing back and forth, sitting back down to write a line every few minutes.

I can't bring myself to look upwards, at lines already put down. But this is why I'm using ink.

I need only to suppress my desire to rip out the page.

...

At some point, I remembered to take off my boots. Allowing my feet to breathe, preventing me from tracking mud around my house.

The forest gets so annoyingly muddy this time of year.

It's so annoying.

Cleaning up the mud is a chore. Taking off my boots is a chore.

An unnecessary extra "thing" to do.

Were it up to me, I could just sit in place and do nothing.

Like a vegetable.

But simply being alive brings with itself obligations and burdens.

Well, as long as you wish to be part of the civilized world.

There is always the option of... killing my mind, going feral.

But that too would be inconvenient.

Feral creatures do not live in cushy houses that shelter them from the elements.

They do not eat meals they prepare out of refrigerated goods that they didn't need to scavenge for.

Not that I need to eat, of course.

It's just that I'm too weak to give up these convenient aspects of life, so I must bear the obligations that come with them.

...

I went and checked on my guest.

Still asleep. Good.

The drugs seem to have worked well, providing a peaceful sleep.

Something I myself have not known in far too long.

And immeasurable unit of time.

Every night, lying down in bed is like strapping myself to a torture tab

The first time I encountered the snow maiden, I had just turned ten years old.

I had run away from home. In the excitement of my younger brother being born, and the anger of my older brother being caught stealing, my parents had forgotten about my own birthday. I had been replaced, I thought, and this time I decided to run away for real. Not just to the shed out back, or to the school where I played hide and seek with our friends. I packed myself two meals, a change of clothes, and I left my home. I walked until the village gates, and then walked some more. I walked past the farms, and away from the trails to the shrine or mountains. I walked far away from the safety of the village. I walked into what I knew was the domain of youkai, but I didn't care. I just wanted to run away, as far as I could go.
By the time the sun began to set, I was already hopelessly lost. I had no idea where I was. I didn't know of any landmarks or features I could use to get my bearings. All I saw around me was short grass, tall trees, and great mountains. I sat down to eat the food I had brought, and as the sun set and the winter night began to replace it, I grew cold. The clothes I was wearing were too light. I took out the spare clothes I had brought and wrapped them around myself to keep warm. It was then that I started to panic. With the night came darkness, and with the darkness came fear of what lied beyond the pale moonlight. My imagination ran wild with tales of youkai, and the horrific fates of those who encountered them. I began frantically running, searching for anything that I might be able to use as shelter before the last glimmer of light faded. To me, in that moment, a hollowed tree trunk looked like the inviting arms of my mother. I regretted running away as I holed up inside it, and slept through the night unharmed.

The next morning, it began to snow. The cold winter didn't care that I was out here. As the snow began to blanket the ground, I was no longer able to even tell what way I had come to get here, and my mad dash the previous night cost me all sense of direction. I finished the last of the food I had brought, and left the comforting shelter that the tree hollow provided. A

She hefted me to my feet, and I'd be a liar if I said that lying there on the ground was good for me. But standing was worse.

“You're not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?” She brushes the broken glass off my shirt, and I groan. I'd jumped through the window after breaking it with a convenient rock, tripped, and landed on the broken glass face-first. And thankfully I missed the broken glass with my face.

“So. Sit down and let's do something about that glass in your arms. Then you will explain things to me.” I'm frogmarched to a chair by a surprisingly strong girl with rabbit ears, and she sits me down.

While she plucks out the glass from my arm and applies (probably-deliberately) overly-stinging peroxide to the cuts, she prompts me to explain what made me break into her pharmacy. During the middle of the day. When she was just in the back for something.

“I, I, got a problem.”

“No shit,” she replies.

“I needed my fix.”

“Fix of what? Aspirin? Sulfa drugs? You get high off beta blockers, kid?”

“D-don't you have any of the hard stuff, like opium, or cocaine?”

She snorts in derision as she continues to clean my wounds. “What is this? The nineteenth century? Look, there's maybe a bit of morphine, but we haven't done straight-up opium in like, a century here.” She stops, and looks into my eyes. Hers are red, sparkling, beautiful, and angry. “What are you going to do when I call the cop on you?” Cop, singular. Kotohime's still the only one who takes on that 'job'. God knows I don't want to have to deal with her again.

Reisen raises my arm, and turns it underside-up. I blush and turn away. “Track marks,” she says. Of course she'd notice. “You know, kid, the world's gonna roll you one of these days. Look. I'll make you a deal, I don't want to see you waste away your life. You work here now, for me. And I won't report this crime to the authorities if you make something of it. We got a deal?”

I nod, knowing that I never planned to show up here again.

“Good,” she says, finishing up

Isn't it sad, THP? ;_;

It seemed like the perfect break. I had to get out of my city; she had a job nobody in hers would take. I’ll admit, I’d have been suspicious of the payout, too, if she hadn’t paid up front for a business-class seat on a flight there. The job itself was simple enough: break into some old bat’s retirement home and scan some research notes from its library.

There was a catch, of course—there’s always a catch. This one’s was ‘old bat’ being more literal than you’d think. In the sense of ‘centuries-old vampire’. Because vampires are real things that exist and own opulent, non-Euclidean lakefront properties, and so are wizards with wizard libraries and wizard research notes and very strong opinions about intellectual property.

And that’s not even getting started on the neighbourhood.

The upshot is—the client stuck my phone with some sort of magic red metal, so now I can Crosslink magicrap just like regular circuits. Not sure on the utility of that back Outside, but you never know. I mean, I didn’t when I took this job, and look where I am now.


Uh, and that would be hanging from the ceiling, having narrowly evaded a giant laser-turned-breaching-charge out of sheer luck.


A pointy black witch’s hat flies in from the rain, on the head of what is presumably therefore a witch. Shaking herself off from her stint outside in the dark-and-stormy, the witch immediately takes to raking books off the shelves and into a sack of the kind that would have indignant burglars crying about ‘reinforcing the stereotype’.

Observing for a moment, I decide the wisest course of action would probably be to get the hell away before the librarian shows up.

As I clamber—still on the ceiling—towards the newly-installed egress, however, one crucial difference between East Point and the Eastern Wonderland makes itself apparent: back Outside, people don’t bother looking up, because back Outside, flight is not a common personal ability. So the witch’s gaze sweeps in three degrees