| Ever so carefully she
glanced down the hall to make certain no one was coming and put on the
clothes she’d carefully chosen the day before. It had been some time
since she’d left and she didn’t want to look a complete wreck, of
course she had realized that she didn’t want to dress up too much and
draw attention to herself given that she would likely be babbling to a
spirit here and there so after a long debate with herself she’d ended
up settling on a simple t-shirt. She glanced in the mirror and quickly
started to brush her hair.
“Really?”
Mischief groaned, and Fern could feel the spirit growing antsy as she
ran the brush through her hair again. Mischief was the spirit of a
raccoon and an otter or a mink, Fern really couldn’t quite tell
exactly what the spirits origins were given that she’d only seen her in
the spirit world. With no name of her own Fern had decided to call the
spirit Mischief, and she was the most vocal of the spirits which had
come to live inside Fern’s body. Mischief always complained when Fern
groomed herself, figuring there were more interesting things they could
be doing, so Fern had learned to ignore the often obnoxious little
spirit..
“You don’t have time to fix up your hair, lets just get out of here,” the spirit tried to reason as best it could.
Fern
bit her lip as she looked at her frazzled hair wishing that she could
spend longer with it but in this case Mischief was right, she didn’t
have the time to spend on her hair that she would have liked.
A
moment later dressed and ready to go Fern crept out of the laundry room
her feet, callused from the intense exercises her training required to
become a shaman, brushing gently against the wooden hallway floor past
Fletcher who was sleeping on a couch, Fern grinned to herself, he’d
been up studying vampires and house fairies all night so he probably
wouldn’t be awake for quite some time which gave her the perfect
opportunity to sneak out. She grabbed the cerial out of the cuboard,
careful not to ring the string of bells she’d hung on the box to keep
the domovoi away. The domovoi didn’t approve of such sweet food so he’d
hid it from her the first few times she’d had Fletcher buy it for her..
The ancient fairy reminded Fern of a grouchy old man who had turned to
mischief to cope with a lost childhood. Most mornings the domovoi would
creep off to the neighbors in order to cause trouble for their cat,
hide their keys, or creek the floorboards, which is probably why the
neighbors were convinced that their house was haunted. Fern had learned
quickly that ghosts were nothing like people thought they were, those
humans whose spirits remained behind became a fairies or a spirits such
as; banshees, domovoi, or even the spirits of some trees were humans
who’d passed on. She poared the cerial into a sandwich bag and didn’t
bother with the milk, she couldn’t chance eating it here and having
Fletcher wake up so she just grabbed a bottle of water to drink went to
the door.
|
