Calder returned to his room in a floating haze, a completely different mood than the one he left it in. Shutting the door, he leaned against it and breathed a sigh. Calder, member of the Devon Clan, student of Amityville, was no long a bachelor. Well, technically, he hadn't been a bachelor since last break, but this was far more important than silly engagements. This was dating! Something that Calder fantasized about since those days as a cold, reading his first reign-rippers, sounding out the words for 'rippling abs' and 'glimmering horn' all those many years ago and making a face on a pile of rocks and imaging some lost prince had stumbled upon his humble home.

Drifting into his room as he held his hand over his heart, he moved over to his closet, rummaging through a chest tightly locked in the back. Looking about, he located Fragromp, a rather plump leech and squeezing the leech, made it spit out a slender key. Setting the leech aside, Calder fiddled with the lock and opened it to a small, more private stash of his most prized collectable editions of Hornz, but he didn't need these dashing boils today. No. Riffling underneath the pile, he pulled out a mangled, tattered, thick but very warped tomb of a scrapbook. It was decorated in pictures from various travel brochures he once picked up when his dad had been visiting in town when he was younger for supplies. He had grabbed them to look at the pretty pictures of far off places, and then cut them out to be his dream vacations and also the places his future darling would live. Added to this were hearts, realistic with bleeding arteries, flew by on bat wings. Happy spiders were draw on holding up bloody bandage banners that said things like "Love" and "4ever".

This was Calder's scrapbook of Romance. It was created when he learned how to write and be allowed to use scissors, and he had added on to it to this very date. They were packed with ideas and idle thoughts. Romantic poetry, names he might like if he met anyone with that last name he could take up, idle ideas of things he did like to mash up a boilfriend in his mind's eye to dream about - all of which never really succeeded as his moods changed as he grew. At first his boilfriends were nothing more than friends who could keep him company when he was alone - a state he was in often. This evolved more when he actually got the full extent of the stories he was writing and what the parts that faded to black actually implied.

Settling on the ground, Calder rested on his stomach and opening the book, he flipped through childish stick figures of him riding on a black stallion to a castle to being carried by a buffed up Minotaur to some lovely labyrinth for all time. Chuckling as the memories, he tried to keep on track, and turned further to the back where he had kept an ongoing list of places and things he liked to do with a boilfriend should he ever attain one. These were created in much of the same way a bride might make a scrapbook for her wedding, with clippings from ghouly magazines, drawing pictures, and even lists of places, events, and just everyday activities that might be fun or further fun-ified with someone you could be with.

Of course, these were all things that sounded great to him, but he now had to consider what Barth might like. They were dating, and he wasn't about to play around and just let them settle in some friendship hanging out zone. No. He had seen that happen with Malodore and he was NOT doing to let that happen. Nope. What he needed was to kick start their relationship was a date. There just happened to be certain ....restrictions in this case. Running through the woods, swimming, racing or exerting any energy quickly was out of the book. They weren't going to go exploring under water or running through the fields together was it would be short and probably involve Calder carrying Barth back. Certainly not romantic and not something the demon would enjoy. There was also the matter that going on lavish dinners in 5 scar restaurants were not even near his budget and he didn't even know how to get into them or....had ever been in one.Getting kidnaped by a hoard of werewolves was not even considered. Not after what they had been though. They needed something fun, safe, not something that would exhaust the demon to be miserable, yet not hanging out where they always stayed to make it special. He needed......He needed....

HE NEED MORE IDEAS! He had a whole flippin book and in no way felt as prepared as he should have been.

Ruffling his hair, Calder flopped his face in the book, ears flopping flat down as he thought. The problem was, he had been so unsure of who he'd ever date. Barth wasn't exactly the first idea to pop in his head before he had attended Amityville. Lifting his head, he held the book out and flopped through cutouts of various shapes and sizes of his future brides to be and all the boils weren't even close. Some were refined, some were aristocratic, some were even smart, most were donning on a lovely rack of horns, but if someone had pasted a picture of a slender sloth demon with a love of inventing and dislike for movement, he would have wondered how it had gotten in there.

Sighing, he shut the book, rolling on his back.

But still...

Clutching the book to his chest, Calder sighed. No. He wouldn't have changed it for any cutout of Prince Alarming he had mangled into the many pages in the book he held. It was time to get creative. Calder had work to do, and a date to plan!