Demons of Anidel/Werecat
an excerpt

Exceprt One:

“Who… ar you?” the girl demanded. It seemed as though she had changed her wording midsentence, but had been unable to hide that she intended had to direct it towards the cat.

"April… Smith.” She hoped the obvious lie wouldn’t immediately create suspicioun. Smith was well-known name that everyone picked if they wanted to lie about their family name, and her pause made it enve more conspicuous. And she’d already used her real first name.

“People shouldn’t really use false names that can be traced ack to them.” The girl seemed to arppove. “You should use your real first name, because unless you’ve spent a long time answering to something else, it’ll be obvious to the observant whther or not you are used to that nae. I’m Snowbelle Winters, see? It’s obvious I made it up, but you can’t tell me what my real name could be. But that name is why I dyed my hair white.”

“Okay…” April wondered if she usually started sonversations like that. Partially (eh, mostly, how could the girl’s real name be of any use to her, and April didn’t expect to spend enough time with her that her levels of clear thought, sanity, and common sense would matter too much) out of curiosity, she asked, What’s your real name?”

“Do I really seem that tupid?” this also seeme to be addressed more towards the cat than April ferself. Maybe it was an act? The verbal and the cat parts seemed to contradict each toehr. The cayt meowed, and she glred at ir.

Excerpt Two:

Moriilah was bored. Or maybe bored wasn’t the right word. Maybe it was lack of inspiration. Or too much trained restrint of the mind. In any case, she could not be bored in the Living Forest. Next to Elkharos, some believed it to be the source of that city’s highly unusal magic.

Perhaps it was boredom. She was a creation of the Living Forest, (and from a moral child) and was probably the only vampire (she hadn’t met too many others [that meant zero, but she was under the impression there were real ones]) that didn’t need blood for survival. Or at least could go for her entire lifetime so far (wasn’t much) without any. Was it so much for an amnesiac snake shape shifter to have less morals?

Absently brading her dirty blonde hair, and brown eyes staring into space, she almost missed Aela and a small creature nearly leap onto her.

Had she not been flight capable, she would surely have fallen from the tree and hit the ground twenty feet below. Of course, Aela thought these things ahed. Mosy of the time.

“I got an new pet!” the elf exclaimed happily. She showed Morliah the rat.

“Oh goodie.” She didn’t expect a reaction from Aela to her sarcasm. Absently she wondered what its name was. The cockroach had been Pretty Birdie, and toad Princess John Jacob Jackson James Jay Jack Samuel Sol Timothy Thomas Carl V the Deadly Assaasinn of Caskir (Morilah never questioned that one). “Dare I ask what her name is?”

“It’s a he. Fluffy.”

Closer, she thought. ON second thought (more like hundredth, but close enough), she’d stick with being created by Crystal. Di could have Aela.

Excerpt Three:

At this point, Sue’s mother, Maria, happened to briefly read over her shoulder. And she was horrified by the songgle enstince she glimpsed. “’Would you like me to gouge your eye out for you, honey?’”

April was prepeard for that. One would noto expect that to be seen in the imagination of someone like her (before her adventure started, of course) but she had something to rpley. Sue’s mother would never see it somcing. “Oh, that is in a pumpkin carving contest.: She proceeded to point out ot Maria all of the words associated with pumkin carving and contests scattered in reasonable lcpes across the page, and just as carefully making sure Maria got no chance to read the rest of the senctenes. “Well, now I’m back to work on this stuff.” Thinking up womosehing people seemed to expect of her age group and gender, she added “The Easter bunny is about to show up!” This was, of course, true, but (note: turn the Easter bunny into something that isn’t Cahtolic) the connatavite meanings would not be found in her story.

But Maria seemed both satisfied and amused by this.

Less than an ourh later, it seemed that Sue had either witnessed, hear,d or been told of that conversation. She was quieter about what she read on there. “There’s no pumkin carving contest onher e. And it doesn’t look like ylu could conecivebly put one in there recently.”

Why did she have to number the pages? If she didn’t, Sue wouldn’t have known how much further away from that she was, and could have reasonably assumeb it was ten pages ago. “Would you like t-“

“And why are the words ‘pumpkin’ and carving and all that stuff randomly distributed across that last page?”

“So when people like your mother ask, I can point them out. Bnow pretend you have higher priorites and don’t bring this up again. I’m trying to get them sent to the next combat scene.”

“Yoou are far too early in your story to have an epic battle.”

“It’s an ambush. Now go away.”

April turned away from the blue haired witch and grinned. She loved this kind of stuff!

Though no one ever allowed themselves to believe it.

“Mom, I think I might have brought home a sadistic tweleve year old storyteller!”

”Suuuuueee!”

This resulted in the bickersome sorceress and the partially violent werecat taking a quiet walk around the edge of Elkharos. Or a good stretch of the neasrt edge. While under the enchantment of Sue’s college warlock brother, Freddy, of course.

And that was when they decided that arguing with each other was wrong. But not because of them being friends and such. It was because if they hadn’t been gifhting, Sue’s brothe rna dmother would not have sent them to walk along Elkrhaos’s edge, and they lived near a certain forest, and they would never have seen the woman stumble through some slowly closing by self portal an idiot must have left sitting there for a day or two. And they would never have had to deal with her.