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 Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 10:12 am
Kai Merha "Hey, how about one of you quiet guys tell us a story? Shad? "
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Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 10:28 am
Glen da West "You know, as family I was kinda curious as to how... you know..."Glen pointed at the 'cracks' on Rory's surface. "... that, happened."
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Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2013 3:58 pm
Rorrim Rory Bludworth "And I will tell that story...if Shad tells a story first." Shad called out immediately but Gryff reached around and snatched him by the arm and pulled him away from the shadow he had been creeping toward and wheeled him in full view of the other boos. "Pass! I call pass!""You can't call pass!" Gryff snarled with his familiar tone. "It's your turn!""What about you?" Shad called out but shrank back almost immediately under Gryff's glare. "Uh ... Kai asked you first.""Gryff is last!" Lin piped up. "You always save the beast for last!""Well, what about him?" Shad jetted a thumb at Rory. "He said he'd go after you.""Oh, right." Shad scratched his head. "Um... I don't know what I can dish to you werecats, y'know? The shadow trade is kinda secretive.""No it's not!" Glen da West called out. "Your family and normies work together to scare bad normie children straight!"Shad wheeled around and pointed an accusing finger at Glen. "Who told you that!?""Your dad." Glen reasoned. "At Career Day. Remember?""Oh right." Shad replied. "Where is my head?""You're asking us?""So c'mon! Tell a story!""Guys... c'mon." Shad tucked his hands deep in his pockets and averted their eyes, kicking an imaginary pebble. "I really don't dig speaking in public.""Shadowbro. Come down, man." Nero said. "I've seen you read your poetry onstage at the Krimson Dew Drop hundreds of times.""That's different. That's poetry." Shad said. "And it was dark. There was wiggy mood setting.""We're a group of teenage boos, sitting in front of a bonfire roasting martianmallows." Kai said, arms held out toward all the boos. "How much more 'wiggy' atmosphere can you ask for?"Shad just fidgeted as he looked at the others all lean in with eager, interested looks on their faces. Well, everyone but Gryff, really. "Well..." Shad started. "I guess I could tell you werecats about my first shadow job. Ironically it's also how I met my beast friend.""You met your beastie scaring a normie kid?"Shad looked at Kai and smiled, despite his anxiety. "My beastie is a normie." He looked at the others. "Her name's Lilith Van Helscream."
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Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2013 8:09 pm
"Whoa," said Nero, perking up at the mention of Lilith, "niiiice. I applaud you in your taste of beasties, although I don't know her super well so you should introduce us sometime."
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:00 am
"Okay, so it's like this..." Shad started his story, pacing back and forth from nerves. "A lot of monsters have told stories, tonight included, that sheds totally negative karma on the vibes between normies and monsters, but Sackmen are one of the only monsters out there that actually work with normies."
"Work with them, how?"
"I'm getting to that." Shad answered. "There's an art to telling these things. It goes back so long, we don't know when exactly it started. But normies and Sackmen have contracts with each other, y'dig? When a normie adult has a pup they can't handle, they hire a Sackman to scare `em straight."
Shad looked at Gryff and said, "You know the stories normie kids tell about monsters in the closet or under the beds? In the shadows and the like?"
Gryff simply nodded and Shad smiled proudly, pointing both thumbs at himself.
"Sackmen." He stated.
"Not a boogeyman?"
Shad turned his head sharply and surprised many by barking, "We are not Boogeymen, dude! Sackmen and Boogeymen are, like, two TOTALLY different castes of monsters! If anything, everything we get hired to do, Boogeymen try to UNdo! Anyway, to make a long story short..."
"Too late."
Shad continued, "My dad, THE Sackman, decided it was time for me to get some hexperience in the field, and fall on a normie kid. He had just been offered a contract by someone with a real way out there little one, total brat type. Spoiled. Loud. Real annoying."
"I hate that type." Lin stated and just about every boo nearby rolled their eyes.
Shad's tale went on, "So here I am, getting set to make my first job when I hopped in the closet ... and I kinda sorta took a wrong turn along the way."
"Noooo!"
"It's true!" Shad reiterated. "I thought something was amiss when I heard giggling outside the closet door, an' some flake singing an' soundin' like Justin Biter ... but girlier. Considering the little murgatroid I was hired after was a boo, er, boy. Turns out I was set to crash a normie ghoul, er, girl's creep, sleepover."
"You crashed a normie girl's sleepover!?" Nero almost shouted, his attention now fully alert. "Details, man! Details!"
"Well I didn't have TIME to try to peek through the keyhole! I guess I was making a little noise in the closet because the next thing I know, that closet door whipped wide open and there stood Lilith Von Helscream. Her girl pals were screaming and hiding, but Lilith? She grabbed me out of that closet and next thing I knew, she flipped me over to the floor and pinned me face down in a hammerlock."
Shad then shrugged like it was the most normal thing in the world.
"We've been beasties ever since."
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:14 am
"Hmmh." Kai replied, less enthusiastic about this story than the others. He hadn't had very good experiences in the past with Van Helscreams in general. One of them, Dr. Emmett Van Helscream, had pretended to be a fellow mad scientist to steal Kai's father's genetic research to unleash a 'cure' amongst all monster-kind, and there were still rumors about the one Van Helscream who tried to pit werewolves and vampires against each other at Monster High. The rumors said he was still living out his punishment as a statue down in the catacombs.
Still, if one of the Van Helscreams was really friends with a monster, maybe there was hope for all of them, right? "Great story, Shad! I'm glad you stepped out of the shadows and spoke up. I guess you're up next, right Rory?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:21 am
"Gosh, okay, um, er...*ahem*" Rory's voice cracked as the attention around the fire all turned to him. Glen had asked him about the cracks that ran up and down the right side of his body. And it was true, there was a story there...
"Well, I guess the first thing I should say is that story-telling is a very important part of mirror magic. If you have a magic mirror, you can ask it anything, as long as you ask the right way. And as a mirror witch, part of my magic is being able to ANSWER anything. I mean, if it's asked the right way. And if you ask for a story, then you get the whole story. The true story. The story that was reflected into the mirror when it happened."
Rory paused for a moment and swung his legs, the shiny surface catching the firelight and sending it around in fractured patterns as the light danced on the cracks.
"Before I tell the story the way it's supposed to be told, I should say that I wasn't always so cautious. What little kid is, right? And while this story doesn't exactly have a happy ending, it's also not exactly over yet. Even stories that seem to end 'happily ever after' don't end right then and there. There's always more to say."
Rory looked at Dashner, Ronan and all of his friends and worked up his courage to speak.
"Ronan was right about one thing...some stories DO have to start 'Once upon a time...'"
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:37 am
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a little girl. Actually, this girl was more than just a girl…she was a princess. The girl was very young and very lonely. In all of her castle, she was the only child, and her mother, the Queen, did not encourage her to venture out of the palace to find friends.
Despite her loneliness, the girl was kind, sweet and resourceful, and she understood magic. She was not a witch, but she had a magic power all of her own, such as princesses do, and she was just beginning to understand it. She loved to cast spells that turned flowers into butterflies, or changed the colours of birds. These simple spells kept her amused, and filled her time, as she was too young to begin attending school.
Still, the little girl longed for a friend her own age, someone she could tell secrets to and play with and show off her spells to. Her father the King indulged her fanciful stories, and her mother the Queen encouraged her magical skills, but it wasn’t the same as having a true friend. That is why, on one grey, dreary evening, the girl found herself playing in front of the Queen’s magic mirror. She could almost pretend that her reflection was another person, the one that she had wanted so badly to share her hopes and dreams with.
“Mirror mirror, on the wall,” The girl asked her reflection, as she had seen her mother do so many times before.
“Can you heed my sorry call?
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have a friend of my own tonight.”
Of course, at so young an age, the girl couldn’t realize that magic mirrors are for giving information, not for granting wishes. By all accounts, logically, nothing should have happened. But this time, this one time, events lined up in such a way that, for the first time, a magic mirror granted a wish. On the other side of the mirror, in the land where all other sides of mirrors exist, there lived a little mirror-boy. And, much like the little princess, he was all alone in his land. He could look out through all of the backs of mirrors, into a thousand thousand different lands, but his home and he were a part of none of them. And so, he too was lonely.
It just so happened on that one evening, dreary and grey, that the little mirror-boy happened to be looking through the back side of the magic mirror where the little princess made her wish. And when he heard it, he knew that he too had the same wish in his mirror-heart; a wish to have a friend. And so, in defiance of his mother, the little boy stepped forward, and passed through the magic mirror, right into the Queen’s chambers to meet the little girl.
The little girl was not as surprised as one might be when a little boy steps out of a mirror, after all, this was exactly what she had wished! The two were immediate friends, sharing secrets, learning about each other, playing like children do. And if the Queen or the mirror-boy’s mother had a problem with the budding friendship, they said nothing, for neither wished to anger the other. Such is the relationship between a Queen and the magic mirror.
And so the mirror-boy and the princess became the best of friends. Every evening, he’d emerge into her world, and they would play until dinner-time. They would wander through the castle, exploring long-locked rooms, or venture outside and swing on the amazing playground fit for a princess. He would tell her stories he’d seen from far-off lands, and she would make him laugh with her magical spell tricks. For many days, their strange friendship endured, two magical children in a magical land.
All was well, and the princess was finally happy. Like all childhood distractions, though, it could not endure forever after…as the princess grew older, she began to discover that she was changing. Soon, she would be going to nursery rhyme school, and beginning her training to take up the role she had been born for – the role of her mother the Queen. The princess’s magic was changing. When she tried to turn flowers into butterflies, instead she watched in horror as they started on fire and burned to the ground. Her attempt to rescue the cook’s cat from a tree transformed the tree into a slingshot and flung the cat two kingdoms over. Although these things made the princess uneasy, she tried to hide them from her friend.
He still came over, every evening, and they still played. His cheerful interest in their games helped her to forget her woes. They explored strange rooms in the castle, though the princess was starting to understand the nefarious purposes of them, and they played out on the royal playground. They played their favourite game, ‘King of the Mountain’ on the cheerful spire at the top of the playground. One of them would climb to the top and dare the other to unseat them. The winner would be King of the mountain, and the loser would be sent slipping down the slide to the ball pit below. The mirror-boy was having a good day of it, and it seemed today the princess could do nothing to unseat him. She decided to try to entice him down with a shot of tickle-magic, forgetting briefly how her magic was changing…
The purple blast of magic enveloped the mirror-boy, but instead of tickling him, it swept him off of his feat, and sent him falling down the side of the spire, missing the slide and the ball pit. He landed with a shattering crunch. The princess remembered too late what her magic meant, and what her lot in life was to be. She would never have another friend with her on that playground again.
The mirror-boy survived; it’s hard to escape the gaze of a caring mother when she can see through all of the mirrors in the universe. She gathered up the pieces of her son and mended him, and forbid him from ever leaving mirrorverse again. He understood now how dangerous life outside of the mirror could be.
As for what became of the princess, the mirror-boy would never know. His mother took those mirrors and moved them somewhere he could not find them. And as he grew older, his fractured memories faded until he didn’t even remember the name of his first friend. All that remained was his hope that, somehow, she managed to find a way to escape the dark destiny that was surrounding her, and that someday, maybe, they would see each other again.
~The End~
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:39 am
Rory came to the realization, slowly, that he was standing up and speaking in a clear, uncracking voice. As his story came to an end, he looked around a little sheepishly, and sat back down.
"So, uh....yeah." He wasn't really sure what else to say. "That's how that went."
It was starting to dawn on him that really, Glen had asked him about something intensely personal, and his cheeks burned a bright red.
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:54 am
*HONK!*
Heads turned to spot a weepy Shadeaux wiping his eyes and then blowing his nose into a wine colored hanky. He looked at Rory and said through his tears.
"`S so sad! ... So inspirational! ... I gotta write a poem about that!"
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 4:31 pm
"wow.. "
was all Ronan could say, stunned to silence by Rory's very personal tale of woe. Hands folded across his lap, he seemed to be thinking hard. He felt guilty, but for some reason one of the normie children's rhymes his father used to tell him as a youngster ran through his head. "all the kings horses, and all the kings men..." He shook his head and asked bluntly.
"Did it hurt?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:19 am
"Oh....I don't remember." Rory lied dismissively, and then changed the subject. "Isn't it time for someone else to tell a story? Roswell, or JD, or Gryff, you know, someone who hasn't yet...
Rory really wanted the spotlight off of him. He leaned back from the fire and made a bit of a show digging around for just the right martianmallow in the bag.
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Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 5:31 am
"Yeah!" Lin piped up with sudden alertness and enthusiasm. He quickly turned to Gryff beside him. "Bring it to a close, Gryff! You got LOTS of cool stories to tell!"Lin started counting off his claws. "You could tell them about how we met! Or your first day of school! Oo! Oo! Or that time during Fangsgiving when Biff was supposed to make the toast and you made him shoot milk outta his nose on everyone! Ha! Ha! Ha! Oop!"Lin laughed so hard he toppled backward off the log.
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Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 8:36 am
"Scareful there, Lin." Kai helped the little gremlin back up to his seated position. "Hey, you go ahead, Gryff. I'll be right back."
Kai's werecat eyes gave him great vision in the dark, so he made his way back into the mansion to grab some of the creeping bags the guys had abandoned to head outside. It seemed like tonight they'd be fanging out under the stars, after all. Which suited Kai just fine.
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Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 1:06 pm
"Here we go!" Kai dropped an armful of creeping bags around the fire, and the boos sorted through them, each grabbing their own as Gryff regaled everyone with the story of the time there was this super-exclusive underground performance by a band so obscure they had never performed together before and broke up immediately afterward, and how he was the only one to really appreciate the true genius of the performance. Typical Gryff story.
Kai settled in, in between Nero and Lin and tossed another log on the fire. Even the boos he hadn't really felt like he knew at the beginning of the night now felt like old friends. It was totally clawesome. And really, the school year was only beginning. There was no telling what sort of gnarly adventures were awaiting them all in the days to come...
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