Stupor

 He crawled back up into his meat, struggling unwillingly out of the abyss of his drunken stupor. He wasn't even sure of being awake, but, without opening his eyes, the daylight coming into the room was already giving him a headache. He laid motionless on the couch as his consciousness eased into the steady ache of his body. After what seemed like hours, he opened his eyes and stared at the lazily-spinning ceiling fan.

Thought came sluggishly, coaxed and lured half-dead out of the same depths he'd just left. Screaming as loud as he could without opening his mouth, changing his breathing, making a sound or making any other outward effort, he turned his head toward the window. The sunlight burned, stabbing straight to the center of his head. Afternoon.

Memory crept sullenly out of the shrinking void, making it way through the lancing pain, the booze haze, the desperate disinterest. The room started to clarify into it's two-dimensional state. He raised his right arm, stared at the bright, skeletal metal lattice extending from his elbow, the wires and tubes and plastic and rubber. As with every other day, the same pieces fell into the same places as if in slow motion. He reached up with his left hand, tapped his right eye.

New agony sliced into his head as his artificial eye reconnected. He went blind in his good eye as the fake orb delivered white, undifferentiated visual data. He laid there, suffering again as the implant's firmware resolved its input. White pain resolved in a series of gradients into a recognizable rendering of his living room. The pain faded from it's pinpoint in his head back into his body in general, focusing vaguely in his eye socket and his right arm. He opened his left eye again and let it absorb his surroundings and readjust.

“You know, Odin, one of these days you're going to wake up dead.”
He struggled onto his side, his entire body objecting to the pain of movement, and focused on his visitor. The occupant of his recliner appeared human, but his body registered a much lower body temperature. Machine operation.

“So... what does the Company want from me today?”

His new friend frowned. “Interesting. You don't even ask who I am. Is this procedure all that common?”

“Well...” He sat up slowly, swiveling upright on the loveseat. “... After a couple of years of 'procedure,' the process begins to take shape. For instance, as often as they are destroyed, the Company sees fit to send the same model of android to assignments.”

Leandro stared at him for a moment, then stood up with inhuman grace. “Well, be that as it may, I am here, and I know you. We have work to do.”

Shadows to Life

A sudden groan from above them was the only warning Helix needed; he launched himself sideways into the wizard as a segment of the balcony above crashed down. The witchlight bounced off to the side and flickered as they both lost concentration, and for a moment, the remaining light grew hazy and unfocused. The chattering of the Hobyahs suddenly exploded into screaming chaos, like a storm wind, and Helix screamed as shadows drifted across his outflung arm. He lunged back in time to recover a stump; his arm just below the shoulder was gone.

“Hooooh... hoh... hoh... hoh...”

The sound boomed throughout the theater, deep and gravelly. I was almost below Helix's hearing as it rolled around the expanse of the room, but the Hobyahs became silent. He struggled up to his knees, trying to stop the blood pouring from his shoulder with his remaining hand. 

“Hoooh hoh hoh hoh hoh hooohhhh...”

It reverberated in Helix's skull, chattering his teeth, as he started to lose consciousness. Above him, he saw the Unbeliever, witchlight in hand, swing his arm around the room. Searching. The fae light faded with Helix's awareness.

“Hoh hoh hoh hoh hooooohhh...”

A Most Unexpected Ambassador

“Word cannot leave this room; I'll have your Oath or I'll have your head when we're done.” Helix nodded solemnly and the Ringmaster went on, troubled. “You'll find no end of surprise to know that word comes from the Dunters, of all people. Their augurs, such as they may be, warn of something that hungers more than they...”

“My Lord?” The Elf's brows rose the slightest bit, conveying great surprise.

“Yes, I know, I know,” the Satyr responded with a quick, humorless smile. “Traditionally, the Dunters are foes of all class and civilization. They're mad as a riot and thrice as destructive.”

“However, they DO claim to have a class, an order to their ways, and while they may be crude to our eyes, their laws are taken very seriously. Their seers practice haruspicy, did you know that?”

Helix shook his head, his face pale.

“It's true. They read the entrails of their victims. A Dunter Haruspex is horrifyingly violent at the best of times, and at the worst... well... lets just say I doubt it's the Dunters' Mob Bosses who inspire the worst nightmares. Haruspices are feared by even the strongest Dunter Lords, as it's the Haruspices who decide when and where the mob hunts, fights and revels. They kill seemingly at random, and it's forbidden to punish them. For their art, a Mob Boss is as good as any Elven princess.”

His guest, white as a sheet, rose hurriedly. “My Lord, I appreciate the lecture and have naught but the deepest respect for those of the Red Caps...”

The Ringmaster waved at him to sit down. “I'm telling you this to make a point. You can imagine my surprise to find a Dunter of fearsome renown down on one knee before my throne three mornings past, e'en as I returned from my morning bread.”

Helix could only stare at his lord as the Satyr continued. “Before I could summon the guard, my visitor rose and turned to face me. The look on his face surprised me to silence, for it is most unusual to see a Dunter of any stature look grim. They revel in their carnage and the fear they inspire.”

“He introduced himself, in a surprisingly courtly fashion, as one Du'Ergath Soneater, a name I recognize from many documents of war with the Dunters; Du'Ergeth's appetite is for the sons of mortals, especially the firstborn and lastborn... which made his presence and demeanor all the more shocking. He bade me sit and stated ornately that he had grave news to share.”

“'Lord Du'Ergeth Soneater, your atrocities are known far and wide in these realms', I stated. He smiled only slightly, which was horrific enough in itself. 'I have made great efforts to educate myself in the manners of Court for the sake of your precious realms', he replied. 'You can call your guards and I will have no choice but to render more atrocities before my death, but I bid you tend my words before you do so.”

“I had no choice. His bearing was a marvel. He was in the mismatched mortalskin leathers Dunters are so fond of, but his were clean, and ornately tattooed. He wore a great deal of human bone jewelry, including spine bracers, but they were cleaned to smooth ivory. He threatened violence, but had taken the time to try and learn the manners of Court. What else could I do? I listened. We conversed at great length, and he continued to astound me with his bearing. In the end, I could do no less than take heed of his concerns, and even I had one of our realm's greatest villains at hand, I let him leave freely.”

“Their Haruspices see something coming, something hungry. More and more of them across the realms are getting the same premonition, and it's getting stronger every day.” His Lord turned to him, his ruddy Satyr face drained of blood. “The Red Caps embody the hungers of the world, you see. They ARE all the hungers of all the rest of us, dream and dreamer alike. Not the lusts, the desires, the pleasures, but the elemental hungers themselves. What they see doesn't hunger because of the world, it hungers for the world.”

Scion of the House

Taken from the personal journals of one E. A. Poe, sealed deep within the vaults of one of his literary peers and correspondents:

"The horrors visited upon poor Roderick and his wife cannot be attributed to anyone else.

What possessed them to research the realms of Fear as a weapon, I can only hope was an outside influence of Diabolic nature. To cast backwards and forwards in Time in search of primordial Fears, elemental designs of undoing meant by definition to be avoided, as a means to oppose the Triat, is to go in search of madness, to seek unhinging.

Indeed, in the end, I believe his final, frenetic castings with his guitar were not a further attempt to find Fear... I believe, rather, that they had discovered more than they had intended. It is my reluctant opinion that something had found them, and quite taken her by the time of my arrival; his fantastic castings were no longer in the vein of Seeking, but, instead, final desperate attempts to escape what sought him, using the only means he had, and the only instrument he did not yet fear.

I had hoped to escape this encounter unscathed, relatively, and perhaps make this record unremarkable. Despite myself, however, I had to turn from my flight, back to those ancient and now purposeless catacombs. It is my damnation that my dreams have never been wrong, and, as a weak mewling and crying came to me from within, my wretched heart fell as I knew they had once again proven prophetic.

The child is small, underdeveloped. It was born premature, I expect, forced from it's terrified mother's belly at some point during her last convulsive revival. As we travel, everything seems to go awry, as though Fate herself has turned against us... and yet... nothing has harmed myself or the newborn. Any carriage offering transport has overturned, broken down, or, in one case, been taken by a desperate murderer, the weather would seem seem to herald Armageddon itself, paths disappear, wash out, or become untenable, and wolves... or worse... are ever just out of sight on each side. Nevertheless, the child is never ill, and, apart from a misery comparable to Damocles' own impending doom, I am, as yet, unscathed.

Still, the child radiates inestimable power. I am almost certain forces are hunting for it by now, and am really rather surprised no-one has claimed him as yet. To my distress, however, he seems intimately tied to the strings of Fate herself... and I have seen glimpses of my own through him.

I am not certain as to the nature of my end... but I know I shall be fortunate to see more than another ten years. I look forward to passing this burden to someone better able to carry it."

Enter The Cycle

The elder stared, wild-eyed, at the towering figure before him, completely without understanding. He searched the Lord's blank steel eyes, his empty steel face, his spined, eternally bloody armor, hoping for some clue, some sign as to what he did wrong, why the Lord had chosen to do this to him.
He looked down as the Lord drew the spines of his gauntlet from his chest. It seemed an eternity; he could feel the thin shafts withdrawing from his lungs, his heart, scraping against his ribs. The wounds were precise... and fatal, beyond doubt.
His Advocate buckled, and silver-blue light licked and flickered from the wounds, trying without hope to heal them. New flesh would not form, existing flesh would not regenerate. The wounds were irreparable, responding to neither the flow of life nor the restoration of order.
It was an instinctive reaction. He'd already known as much.
"My Lord Destroyer... why?"
The Lord looked down at him, passionlessly, as he slumped to the ground. Lesser warriors, he thought to himself, would have died to that gaze. Or to these wounds already, for that matter.
"You have much to do, Father," the figure intoned. The voice wracked his body; he could feel his physical shell deteriorate from it's implication. At this point, only force of will held him from the Great Wheel.
"Yes, the Wheel," the Lord said. "You are far from done, my child. You have a great deal yet to learn; more than this life alone could show you. You will return, Son, and life will begin to teach you again. You shall be strong despite yourself, and learn many crafts."
The figure kneeled next to him, his armor barely making a whisper. The spined gauntlet came to rest on his ruined chest, and a new agony cut through him. Not spines, but a feeling of being ripped apart from within. As though a vital piece of his existence were being ripped away. His Advocate screamed even as he did, a thin wail cut short as he choked on his own lifeblood.
"This, though," the Lord said, quietly. "This is what makes you my child. You will discover that this is your instrument, your source, your fate. You must learn to hold this before you, wield it even as it wields you. By the time you take it back into you, by the time you become one again, you will become the instrument I need. Time is short, and the Balance is dangerously askew."
The Lord rose again, a dim blue-grey shimmer fast fading around his hand. "The realms of Creation are closed to you, now, child. The forces of change, of fate and chance, are your tools from here forward. You have learned to use them well as tools of assassination for the sake of balance, this time, and had you never called me in the first place, I still may have noticed. You must learn to make them your life; live through them and let them live through you. To do this, you must be reborn, and this may come to be several times. Each life will be a Hell of sorts; each life will be a lesson. Learn well."
The towering, spined figure turned from him as his vision faded. From the engulfing blackness, he could hear his Lord Shiva's last words to him. "Even as you return to the Wheel, Ruiner, your beloved wife flees beyond the Voivode's wrath. A child, four days conceived, is within her, and it is without a soul. Her time is short, but she will reach Spain. Then, her time will end, and yours will begin again."

The Hungry Dark

Helix turned toward the man, wild-eyed with fear. “Your Magicks will do you no good here, Wizard,” he hissed. He flung an arm toward the vast, ruined hall. “What waits in the shadows here will not run. They will not give way to anything but the light; everything else, they devour whole.”

The Unbeliever stared at his guide with renewed interest, as though noticing him for the first time today. His purple eyes burned into the Elf's for a moment, forcing him to glance away, before he spoke. “You make powerful claims, Elfish. However, my strengths aren't given to light, and here in the vast Unconsciousness of All, you know the darknesses better than I. Tell me, then... what are we facing?”

Helix met the wizard's eyes nervously. “Hobyahs.”

The Unbeliever's eyes narrowed. “Remember, Elf; I am here as your guest. Your Mysteries are largely unknown to me. Tell me, what are “Hobyahs'”?

Helix spoke hurriedly as he turned back to the hall. “Hobyahs! Grue. Langoliers. The Hungry Dark. They're a nightmare that ends nightmares. Everything that is forgotten, they devour, to make room for other phantasms. The problem is, they don't see it that way; they just know they're hungry. Always. So, rather: everything they devour is forgotten.

“They avoid the light, any light. In the light, they are seen as beings, small and furry, and can be killed easily. In the dark, as best anyone can tell, they're a sea of teeth; untouchable and all-consuming. The end of all things imagined.”

“Then I suppose,” the wizard muttered, gesturing towards Helix's witchlight, “that your toy is our salvation.” His voice hardened; “Elf, I suggest you keep a steady hand for both our sakes.” He swept his arm forward, indicating that they should proceed.

Helix stared into the hall, his eyes and ears straining as he tried to pick out the Hobyahs. The air whispered around them, an incomplete silence as the shadows waited anxiously for their prey. After seconds that seemed like hours, he stepped forward.

His conjured light shone forth weakly and his nerves stood on end, but everywhere he looked he saw only the debris of the concert hall, long moldered with time. What few seats remained were slashed and marked with graffiti. The retaining walls of the balconies above had long since collapsed... or been forced... to the floor below. Peeling paint and patches of mosaic tile covered the walls. Within the globe of his “toy's” light, a run-down, long-forgotten opera hall displayed it's last remaining treasures; the tatters of a building once bustling, fallen to time.

“Tell me, Elf, if they eat what is forgotten, but also what is forgotten out of hand, why is the world itself not consumed?”

The wizard's sudden question startled Helix out of his skin. He paused for breath as his skin crawled, swinging his light around to see what else might respond. After several long moments, he turned back to his guest and motioned him forward.

“I don't mind answering your questions, but we don't have time for a conference in the middle of a roomful of Hobyahs. If we can keep moving, I'll tell you what I know.” Upon seeing the wizard nod, he turned back and started moving forward.

“Hobyahs are a forgotten force; few things remember they exist, and as such they're largely stuck living in forgotten places. Most dreamers don't think of them except as the phenomenon that occurs after waking; that vivid dream gone grey, details that seem so important quickly forgotten. They also live in the echoes of dreams long forgotten, the kind of things dreamers used to dream about but not any longer, archaic ephemera such as night terrors of sabre-toothed tigers, bubonic plague or drowning while chained to dozens of others... “ the sound of his voice comforted him as he made his way through the debris.

“Hobyah!”

Helix almost leapt into his ward's arms at the sound. One tiny whisper, so slight he could almost convince himself he had imagined it, reached him from the far recesses of the hall. He froze for a moment and swept the witchlight around. The tattered furniture and faded walls answered him back. After one interminably long, tense moment, he continued forward.

“The line between the eating the forgotten and what they eat being forgotten is almost... well... quantum.” He flinched at exercising his scientific knowledge in Elfin guise. “They consume indiscriminately if you find them, and if they eat you, you are forgotten. However, it seems that most who are forgotten are generally the ones to encounter the Hobyahs and be eaten.”

Helix finished his nervous explanation with no response. Seconds crept on like minutes, minutes crept on like hours, as the pair crept through the theater. His nerves frayed as his ears strained; his eyes ached as he searched the shadows desperately. His willpower stretched thin as he searched for Hobyahs while willing the witchlight forward. He felt faint.

“Hobyah!”

The Elf froze solid. The Unbeliever stopped short, studying him with vague interest.

“Elf, I think I hear the hungry dark.”

The Wizard's voice barely registered. Helix could not move. His eyes ached as he scanned every inch of the shadows around them. He struggled to hear anything over his own racing heart.

After long moments, he moved forward again. One step at a time, as he swept his light around; back and forth and back again. He inched yet again, another step, and his charge moved with him. Seconds turned to minutes as he stood there yet again, ears aching to hear something. Anything.

“Hobyah!”

Almost a whisper, a tiny, squeaky gremlin-voice came to them from somewhere toward the back of the theater. Before Helix could even start sweating, responses rolled back from all around them.

“Hobyah! Hobyah hobyah hobyah! Hobyah HOBYAH!!!”

The susurrus rose to a din in seconds. The Unbeliever pulled his coat tight around him as he looked around, while Helix cupped his hands around the witchlight, willing frantically on the edge of panic for it to be brighter. The light flickered.

Something flew past Helix's head, crashing behind the Wizard. Part of a theater seat. “Hobyah!” came to them from all around, an ocean of frenetic chattering that ran together like the ebb and tide of an ocean. Something else hit him square in the chest, knocking him to the floor. “They're trying to kill the light!” he yelled back. “If we have no light, we're finished!!!” The witchlight pulsed as his fear distracted him.

“ENOUGH!” The Unbeliever flung his coat open. Arcs of power stretched out into the shadows as far as Helix could see, like an afterimage of lightning in the darkness. Tittering erupted all throughout the theater, mad giggling from tiny creatures. The Elf's heart sank as the Wizard's efforts proved futile.

The Unbeliever pulled at the darkness as he stood, then swept his arms in and pointed directly at the witchlight. Nothing happened for long moments as the giggling and whispering continued. Helix began to wonder what is was like to be unmade as he got back to his feet.

Shadows crashed in around them without warning. The darkness of the theater coalesced into pitch blackness. Glowing grey arced back from the shadows into the Unbeliever and out of his fingers as he stared at the witchlight, which suddenly flared and pulsated with radiant grey-white. Helix looked around, confused, at what appeared to be a solid bubble of light, a stark delineation between the witchlight's glow and the complete blackness around them.

The giggling stopped. “Hobyah hobyah!” came back to them from the pitch blackness as their unseen foes whispered among themselves.

“Elf, I suggest we move while we can.”

Helix nodded nervously at the wizard's suggestion, and began to creep forward again. The doors of the old Sanctum seemed miles away as they inched across the theater. “Wizard, I thought light was beyond your power...” he muttered, the question apparent.

The Unbeliever chuckled distractedly. “It is cheating, Elf. I am not creating light, I'm simply directing all the ambient light from a certain distance around us back into your cantrip. Everything I'm using to protect us already exists.”

“So there's no actual bubble? No... force field? No shield?” Helix stared at the sharp difference between darkness and light around them as he moved forward. He put a finger out to poke at the demarcation.

“Helix, I would strongly recommend against that.” The Wizard stated flatly. “There is nothing there. If these things are as quick and as ravenous as you say, you could lose your finger as quickly as you put it out there.” With that, Helix pulled his hand back and began to look for the doors in earnest. Sweat dripped down his brow and he wiped it away.

Realizing that this had been the first time the Unbeliever had used his name, Helix felt bolstered. He moved forward nervously, but with renewed purpose. As if to offset the ebb and whisper around them, he continued lecturing his guest as he searched.

“There is literally no discernible body when they are in the darkness. You can hear them, whispering and giggling amongst themselves, but there is nothing to act against out there. Were you to enter the darkness, you would not merely be eaten; you would be torn apart. Destroyed. Yet, in rare instances throughout legend where Hobyahs face the light, they appear as tiny beings, a foot or so in height, with large mouths and eyes, and fur all over, standing upright. Details vary past that.

“Reports are exceedingly sparse throughout history even in the realms of dreams. However, it seems that many agree that the terror exists not in the individual, but in the many. Nor does it exist in the known, but in the unknown. A Hobyah unseen may as well be a tornado in the night, but nobody to my knowledge has seen a Hobyah alone. The strength of one is unknown...”

His eyes and ears strained against the darkness as he searched throughout the remains of the opera house. His nerves were frayed and he longed for nothing more than home, like some Halfling in the rain... but he could do nothing but move ahead in his task. His Oath had been given and, even were he better given to computers than cantrips, he would sooner die than give up. His chatter soothed his nerves in the quiet...

(Obviously, this is just a fragment. I'm yet to figure out how to get here, and I know what will happen next but I'm still working it how to tie it together.)

Rudy

It was a strange, new world. Familiar, though.

She used to have such flights of fancy as a small child; elaborate games with her imaginary friends, adventures and romps and games of hide-and-seek. Her parents, both doctors of one sort or another, were uniformly alarmed when she came out of her room talking excitedly about her adventures with her imaginary friends… she didn’t really have any normal friends, beyond the family cats. She hardly even played with her toys, except a favorite few. She was such an intelligent child, but it felt like she was slipping away, even as she was advanced a grade at age seven, from second grade to third.

She didn’t stop seeing her adventure friends, but, after a long battle with her parents… mostly her father… she learned to pretend they weren’t there. She learned to at least pretend to sleep quietly in her room each night rather than go off with them and come back with a head full of stories. She learned to not look at them when company was around, or talk to them when others could hear. She learned to “play with others” and “chew with her mouth closed” and say “yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

Eventually, she learned to just not look at them. One day, years later, after a night of wild dreams, she tried… and they were just gone. She was fourteen.

The next few years were hell for her parents. She saw to it. She went through a dark period in her life, dressing in black, torn clothes, writing dark, sad poetry, listening to groaning, angry music. Her mother called it her “Goth phase,” and she got angry every time she heard it.

The only reason she didn’t drop out of school, eventually, was because of her cats. When she was eleven, a schoolmate’s dog died. She’d seen this dog just about every day for years, on her way to school… a great, noisy Rottweiler, in a yard she’d always felt was too small for him. The child who owned him disliked her greatly, but the dog… the dog just adored her. He’d wait for her to pass and go nuts, bounding and slobbering alongside her down the fence, just waiting for her to pet him. The moment she did, he’d just stop and lean in, gazing at her with adoring brown eyes for as long as he could get “scritchins.”

The boy, once, spent an entire year trying to get the dog to hate her on sight. For a while, she’d see them on the porch in the morning, the dog with welts on his hide and the boy holding his head pointed at her, yelling and snarling at the dog to “get her!” He never stood a chance; the few times the dog would bolt at her during this dark time, he’d still just cavort at the fence, looking desperately for love and scritchins. The boy finally gave up, and they returned to their normal routine.

The boy announced that the dog had died, one day, at recess, the first day of school. He said it casually to his friends, where she heard him. The dog had gotten into some pool chemicals and gotten sick. It had taken him two weeks to die under the back porch, over the summer. Crying, she went up and asked him what the vet had tried. He just looked coolly into her eyes, even smirking a little, and said they never took him. He just let him die, suffering, under the porch. He told them the dog had run away.

Her cats had been the only ones left in the house she could build any kind of imaginative relationship with. Of the three, “Owl” was, by far, the oldest, having been a household fixture five years before she was born. Of the three, Owl was the most patient; indeed, there had been times when the girl had seen Owl looking at her with what she thought was a mother’s love, even as she dressed the long-suffering feline in outlandish outfits to have tea. A majestic seventeen-year-old “silver tabby” Maine Coon, Owl had been showing her age for the last year or two; slower to get up, slower to get to food and water, sleeping more and more. Neither of the other two… Anjelica, a smallish black-and-white “jellicle cat,” as the girl’s mom called her, who was eight and a prim kitty who would still “dance” with the girl in her bedroom, and “Grimmy,” a crafty six-year-old Mackerel tabby who spent most of his time either trying to get out of the house or trying to steal her toys and hide them away, like he thought he was some sort of ninja…  showed any signs of slowing down, but Owl had just about become a throw pillow, as the girl’s mother put it.

She wanted to make a difference to those she loved dearest… she finished high school, surprising her parents, her teachers, and every schoolmate who made fun of her attitude, so she could be a veterinarian.

Owl lived for a surprisingly long time, surprising to everyone except the girl. She finally died, comfortable, happy and sedated, on the girl’s lap, when the girl was seventeen. Owl was a venerable twenty-three years old. The girl had doted on her above the other cats… not neglecting the others, as they still required occasional feeding, litter duty, dancing and toy finds now and then, and a little loving every day… and convinced her parents to do well by the geriatric queen, nursing her and encouraging her at every step.

Something changed after that. She laid Owl to rest next to the garden, in a lovely little grave with cat toys and a small headstone the girl had made herself, with her father’s tools and advice. She went to her room, threw away all her black clothes, and asked her mother to take her shopping. By the end of her last year at school, nobody recognized her, with her ready smile, her slightly silly quips, her colorful clothing and a sudden interest… and talent for…  little pranks and jokes. For those close to her, every day with her was an adventure… you could never tell what little jokes she might make, what pranks she might play on who, what outlandish stories she might tell to tease your wits. Her mother half-joked that she was possessed by Owl, but nobody could argue with her scholastic achievement or drive.

Twenty-one years of age found her hip-deep in the University of Chicago’s DVM program, a program she’d had to extend to the full four years due to time constraints. She was already deeply involved with the Chicago Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Center, which not only fulfilled the field-work portion of her education requirements but guaranteed her a place to work upon imminent completion of her degree. Her graduation drew near, but there were a great many animals in need of care and those took priority.

She was nonplussed when a small, quiet young woman walked into the exam room where she was caring for a sneezing, lethargic chinchilla named Gulliver. An unusual creature that was outside the scope of general veterinary medicine as yet, she was charmed by these lively, delicate, soft, surprisingly intelligent and funny animals and made a point of knowing as much about such exotic pets as she knew about any cat, dog or goldfish. As she administered the first mild dose of medicine to the poor thing, the woman eased in and said “hello, Rudy.”

She could only stare for a moment, absently petting the distraught rodent. The girl looked a little nervous. She was on the small side, maybe 5’2” at best, perhaps 20 years old, wearing a rumpled black button-up two sizes too big for her, hanging open over a white T-shirt, black jeans and white socks… but no shoes. Short black hair framed a round, pale face with big, black eyes. She stared at the girl, nervous and excited. “Hi, Rudy. You are Rudy, right? I think I’m right. Do you remember?”

As the girl stared at her, she thought she could see light reflect back from her eyes. Like a cat’s. Suddenly, it clicked, an excited, almost audible click, as it all came rushing back to her. Wide-eyes, one hand on Gulliver, she could only stammer “A… Anjelica?”

Now, I spend all my time split between my waking job as a successful veterinarian at the CVE&SC and my time as a Pooka at a set of lofts near Hamlin Park, goofing off with other Pooka, Satyrs, a particularly invectively-inventive Nocker called Canter Maloney, one patience-strained Walden Proudfoot the Quick, a Boggan, and the occasional visits from a large, surprisingly patient troll Knight named Arden Peterbilt (usually on business from the Duke Damian Lightwalker of the Seelie Court of Chicago Summer), whom I pick on mercilessly when he’s in town, and an unsettlingly whispery Sluagh who calls herself Elizabeth Marie Coombs, Underseeker Of Conspiracies. Apparently, Elizabeth likes to keep her hand in on undertakings across the realm, especially… well… conspiracies. There’s an Eshu around here, I’m told, but I’m yet to meet her. They travel a lot, I guess.

A Baron Gregory Hammerwalker sees over the freehold here, as well as the realm covering everything east of the river from Graceland Cemetery to Old Town, but not Cabrini Green. He’s an old Grump of a Satyr with horns so great I wonder he can keep up his head! He still likes his fun, and you can always see a glint in his eye even as he imparts his baritone wisdoms and flirtations. He’s fond of saying his “trago” isn’t going to “take him to the party for a long time,” whatever that means. Lakeview, and especially Boystown, provide a great deal of Glamour for those of us so inclined… and we Pooka and our Satyrs are so inclined, believe me!

I’ve spent the last year reacquainting myself with the Realm, relearning Chicago as Anjelica and I used to see it. The Seelie Court of Summer and the Unseelie Court of Winter trading roles with the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes. The roles of the Kithain and who best… and worst… to play our pranks on and tease. The nature of Dreams. We’ve also talked about the plague of the Shadow Court with Gregory, but I’m not all that worried about them.

Anjelica still lives with my parents; she has them believing she just likes to hide in obscure places in the house when she wants, although they suspect she’s getting out. Grimmy doesn’t stick around much anymore… he still stops in there for a meal and a warm bed, and maybe to hide a spoon or a dishrag, but he has other, more interesting dreamers to tease.

Owl died trying to make sure the dreams didn't die in me. I'm yet to meet Kith or Kin who knew her and didn't have great respect for her, which is saying something for a Pooka. I don't know why she did what she did, but, even as I can feel my Pooka mein coming out more and more, I'll always be grateful, always love her.

-Rudy Tabootie, Edited by Sir Walden Proudfoot the Quick