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Where was it!?

Cheyna barreled through the living room, snagging her foot underneath the heavy, no doubt expensive rug that spanned the entire floor and nearly planting her face on the black, reds and golds that covered the wooden floor. Pulling the front half of her foot free, she stamped the rug flat, bangs obscuring half of her vision as she gazed about the room, chest tightening.

Oh gods, napping for five minutes and she lost the darn thing! Where could it have possibly gone? And why? It had never left her side before, not for a minute, and now all of a sudden she was searching everywhere and it was nowhere. She was certain no one in the household would have just up and taken it, especially since the only ones present the past few weeks had been her brother, her uncle and Tem. So then where was it?

Freaking stone!

Her small hands wrung the air in front of her oversized hoodie as she tried to think of where else it might have been knocked, fallen or flown to. She had searched the entire house, the porch, the driveway, the dunes and a good span of the beach... Ugh! She couldn't just give up! Even if it had been random, her being given the stone, it was now hers and she had to take care of it. Especially since it seemed to have some sort of conscious to it, that just made it worse that it was now lost.

Pressing her lips together and fighting down a moderate wave of panic, a small shudder raced through her wings as she stepped back into the kitchen, deciding to search the house again as nothing else was presenting itself in her mind. Wandering past the island set in the middle of the kitchen, the child suddenly froze mid-stride and did a double take that seemed so exaggerated it would have been comical had anyone seen it.

The orange stone, spikes and twisting shadows and all, sat upon the wooden counter, acting almost as a paperweight for a piece of heavy, cream-colored paper that had not been there the first time she had picked through this area in her search. Disbelief colored her young features as she reached out and poked the stone, making sure it was real, before snatching it off the counter and shaking it in midair.

"You... you... stupid thing!" She clasped the stone in both of her hands, staring at it with a mixture of relief and aggravation, as she watched the small curls of darkness glide along her copper skin and snake their way in between her fingers. It almost seemed smug in her hands just then; somehow, someway, she felt the snicker it produced at its clever little game of hide-and-seek.

Turning her attention from the stone to the piece of paper it had sat upon, she picked it up and read it over, smooth brow creasing as she went.



Cheyna puckered her full lips for a moment, not sure what to make of the short letter. She had no idea who this Athan person was, let alone what Twilight Designs was. It must have been a letter for someone else in the household, and that was why it hadn't been there before; they had brought it and set it down. But why her stone was here, she couldn't figure.

Slapping the paper back onto the counter, she turned to go back to her nap that had been interrupted, only to halt after going a few feet. Turning back around, her crimson eyes landed on the counter where the paper sat and, once more, the stone rested on top of it. Tilting her head in confusion, she stepped back over to the counter and picked the stone up; opening her hand, palm towards the ceiling. The stone happily hovered there for a moment before gliding right back to the paper and settling down. Its tendril-like shadows even seemed to calm a bit as it sat there, unmoving.

"What's with you?" She queried, as if the thing could answer her. She picked the piece of paper up a second time and poured over its contents, perhaps having missed something the first time she read it. Shaking her head a little, she couldn't figure out why the stone seemed so interested in this, until a certain meeting sprang to mind, and her mouth suddenly shifted into a large 'O'.

"Twilight Designs! That's the shop that one guy mentioned when I first got you!" She studied the letter one more time, finally realizing that the invitation was indeed for her. And well, she had been meaning to stop by there for awhile now, it had just slipped her mind. Obviously. And a party didn't seem so bad, maybe it'd be better to go there when a bunch of people were around rather than by herself and be faced with an empty shop. Still, she wasn't much of a people person, but it couldn't hurt, right? And who knew, maybe it'd be fun.

Cracking open her blood-hued eyes, she lay for a moment unmoving, confused, half-awake, attempting to get her bearings before taking any further actions. She didn't even remember falling asleep, maybe that was the weirdest part. No, probably not. She uncurled one small fist, both hands tucked away neatly beneath her chin and set her palm near her stomach, flattening it and sliding it up the comforter she was laying on towards her face, feeling the smooth, dark fabric beneath abrade softly against her skin, the way only velvet can when you go against the lay.

Her mother's room then.

Blinking once, twice, to try and clear away the haze of darkness that still clung to her, Cheyna slowly sat up and rubbed her eyelids with the meaty part of each palm, tail slowly uncoiling from around one leg and flipping across the bed. Her wings arched upwards behind her, lazily, as if they too had just awoken from an interrupted slumber and were having difficulty rousing themselves back to the waking world.

Interrupted.

The word finally rattled the young demon's brain into gear and she blinked once more, the slits in her eyes dilating to accommodate the darkness that occupied the room with her. Something had woken her up, whether she remembered falling asleep or not (or, for that matter, even coming upstairs to Rhiannon's bedroom) didn't matter at this point. She was here now, fine and dandy, fit as a fiddle, peachy keen, healthy as a horse and all that jazz. Her arm immediately outstretched and surveyed the flat expanse of blanket beside her, dark fingers searching for Circe and not finding her. Chey's crimson eyes flashed briefly as she swung her head first left, then right, finding that her constant companion was momentarily A.W.O.L.

Brilliant, white-hot light suddenly flashed from outside the bedroom window, piercing even her mother's thick, heavy drapery and causing the windows to become a dull, lifeless grey square surrounded by a border of white. For an instant the entirety of the large room was illuminated in stark light, a black-and-white photograph, like an image from a magazine. The girl's hand flew up to her mouth as the light faded and was followed almost immediately by a loud peal of thunder, the rumble seeming to shake the very earth beneath the house. The sound had been so abrupt and loud it had caused her heart to nearly jump into her throat, and for a moment she had trouble slowing it down, her breath coming in short, shallow bursts through her petite nose.

If only her brother were here right now, she wouldn't feel so helpless and scared, so alone. Cheylan had nearly begged Tem to escort him to the Shadow Realm, and the Fallen really had no choice but to bow his head in assent. With their mother gone (how long now? How long since their strong, beautiful mother had been gone?), Chey and Lin were more or less the rightful rulers, being the only heirs that seemed interested... hard as it was to believe that two parent-less children could own an entire realm full of demons. Chey herself had never stepped foot into the place, having heard enough about it from Rhiannon to never want to suffer the place in person. Lin seemed all too eager to take his place as the Demon King or Demon Lord or whatever it was they called the person that occupied the Shadow Temple. The shoes that their mother had left behind were far larger than Lin yet realized, at least that's how Chey felt, she just hoped her older brother wouldn't get lost...

Stifling a yawn with the back of one hand, she pulled her mind back to the present, finding the room was almost darker now, after the lightning, than it had been upon her waking. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and placed her small, bare feet onto the large rug covering the wooden floorboards. The ball of her left foot came down on something hard and spiky, light enough to not pierce her skin, but hard enough to tear a small gasp from her throat and have her reeling her foot back up. Craning her neck over the edge to see what it was she had stepped on, the bright facets of her little gem glinted with a keen orange light up at her, almost laughingly as they winked in and out of the shadows that curled around the surface.

What a weird little object it was, floating around the house, but never far from her side, never seeming to do much else but stick to her like glue. It looked odd as well, having both smooth facets and craggy spikes. Little dips and valleys between the flattened sides seem to sprout the little clusters of sharp, pointy spears. It didn't seem very threatening in itself though, just a simple little chip of some sort of gemstone (I should really look into what kind, maybe it's rare and worth something and I can brag about it!) that someone had just happened to give her, because.... why? Well, she really hadn't figured that out yet. She honestly did intend to wander down to that shop in Durem again one day, she hadn't been since that Halloween party she had been invited to, and that hadn't really shed any light on the how, what, and why of the thing.

Thinking back on it... she vaguely remembered speaking to someone at the shop, the day she was given the stone, about what it was and how it came to be and all that, but it was so long ago she was having trouble remembering anything. Dia, maybe...? She had such trouble with names, especially when meeting the person - or creature - in question just once and briefly. He'd said he was a Shadow, like the gem that she was charged with caring for, that much she remembered. She also remembered that Aunt Neko had something of the sort in her house as well, which meant perhaps she should make a call on her non-blood relatives that resided at the cat demon's home.

Having wound her thoughts around this far, Chey figured that taking a trip over to Neko's house would be a good idea, and decided to do just that. She would bring the little stone with her, of course, or it would follow, whichever the case turned out to be. Perhaps her cousins could even go back to the shop with her, that might be something to look into, especially if she wanted to learn more about what exactly this stone of hers housed inside its pretty casing.

Planting her bare feet on either side of the stone, she stooped low and scooped it off the floor where it lay, the hazy shadows that emanated from it snaking out from between her fingers and coiling around her hand. She couldn't feel the shadows, which made it a little creepy to see them writhe and twist about her coppery skin, but a dull contentment seemed to radiate from the little object at the moment, which she supposed was good. Better to get a positive vibe from it than a negative, oddly malicious one that she sometimes picked up... like whatever was in there was looking out and finding things a bit loathsome, or perhaps it was simply biding its time until it could do some real damage...

Absurd, really.

Sliding off the bed, she stood for a moment and stretched her wings, stifling another yawn before hurrying to the bedroom door and down the stairs to the first floor. Her small, bare feet gave off a dull thud with every step and the sound resounded through the silent house, or what she thought was silent up until that point. A soft, nearly inaudible thrumming was constant in the background, so soft and monotone that she didn't even notice it until now; it had started to rain. Her pointed ears drank in the sound for a moment and she slowed her steps, gently running her thumb across one of the smooth facets of the stone. Somehow the gentle rumble comforted her, and as she made her way into the kitchen to make a quick call over to Neko's house, her lips curved into a small smile, realizing that the sound comforted the creature in the stone as well. The call was just to make sure someone was there. And willing to welcome her if she decided to drop by for a visit. You could never tell with her own home when company was wanted or encouraged, and she knew from experience her Aunt's house was the same way.