Gideon

The sound of thunder shook Gideon's body as he startled again. He passed a hand around his candle to calm down the flam. At this rate it was going to extinguish soon and he would be in the darkness. He progressed slowly and touched the door handle. It was there. He was still wondering why he was standing here in his pajama, why he had accepted Sedana's request. Maybe because he was new here and needed friends.

Would it finally possible to make friends? Could he really make friends this way?

It had never really worked. First he had blamed it on the traveling part. He never stayed in the same place for more than three months. He thought that people needed time to get used to others. But he knew that it wasn't the real reason. People were feeling it, that something different and strange about him.

This place could be different, at least he would stay here until graduation and people here were as strange as him. Maybe this was a test, something he had to go through to be accepted, or expelled. He took a deep breath. That was the reason Sedana had asked him to do it. He was going to get caught up in the middle of the night in a part of the school were he wasn't supposed to be. He could always fake sleepwalking, after all he used to sleepwalk every night, scaring people around and getting him expelled from so many dormitories. He wondered if they would expel him for sleepwalking here. Maybe not.

He pushed on the handle, it was hard, it felt rusty in his hand. As he pushed more it squeaked, he looked around wondering if someone else had hurt the noise, moving his candle in the distance but there was nobody to be seen. He pushed on the door. It was heavy and old, it smell like forest wood and it cracked as he pressed his shoulder on it. He sighed, this was not what he had imagined for his first day at school.

"Happy Birthday!"

The light suddenly went on in the room. Gideon startled again this time extinguishing his candle. His classmates were standing in front of him, Sedana and his sister in front of them, he noticed mentally that he still didn't even have time to memorize their names.

"Come on hurry! the candles are already melting all over the cake" Sedana said. 

Gideon is a character of Demon Soul, Attic Mirror and "Demon World".  




 

Fern

Faun Felicjan Fern was sitting on a rock above the lake chewing on a small branch. It was looking dirty with earth and dust and moss but that didn't seem to disturb him much. He was looking at the water intensely, as if trying to see something beyond it, trying to see something that nobody else would see.

He suddenly stood up, still looking at the water and threw the branch away with a theatrical gesture. He dived into the water.

"I bet you he won't get it", Kelpie said laughing.

"I bet you he will", Kordelius answered very seriously.

Kelpie sighed waiting for Fern to come back up. He had been in a long time.

Fern finally surfaced lying on his back. He was looking at the sky. 

The two little boys run down to the shore. Fern seemed washed out.

"What did I tell you?" Kelpie answered.

"Why do you always win?" Kordelius answered.

Kelpie smirked, he should have bet something valuable, he always forgot to bet something valuable.

"I better go home anyway", Kordelius said. 

Fern turned to look at him leave. He waited for him to be far away before getting out of the water holding something in his hand.

He threw it at Kelpie.

"I won't always do it, young master, you shouldn't be cheating the stars", he said shaking the water his hairy legs. He passed his shirt back on. 

"What tells you that the stars didn't mean for you to hide it?" Kelpie asked jokingly looking at the stone in his hand, it was shining in the sunlight with golden reflection.

"Because I read the stars this morning and this should be Kordelius'." The faun answered.

"You know what is going to happen if we don't change things now" Kelpie said.

"Yes but if you don't believe in the stars why should you?", Fern asked.

Kelpie didn't answer. He turned around to leave waving at Fern.

Fern put his hand on the nearby tree, he needed the energy of the forest. Of course he knew what would happen. Something that wasn't written in the stars yet, something that the Queen fairy was preparing. He wanted to protect Kelpie but he knew he couldn't. There was something wrong with this world and it was growing fast. He walk through the forest, trying to remember each trees, each smell. He was touching the trees as he passed nearby, they were part of him, just like he was part of them. He was the forest and he would die with it. Not now but later, in the future when all he needed and all he loved would have disappeared. 

Once he had been in love, only once but he could still feel the pain in his heart. Females were a problem for him, their thoughts were so incoherent and confusing that they were making him feeling dizzy. Helping females to cross his forest was his worse burden. But this one had been different, it was as if she was thinking so little that he had trouble to notice it. They had asked his help to go from the Feron's cave to the fairy city. The forest had become so dangerous with new creatures coming from Morgan's dark magick, giant mantis near the cave were only one part of the problem, his forest was becoming poisonous and the insects were all growing bigger. But for him, it was safe. He had marked everyone of them at his, stroking his horns against their cheeks. When her turn had come, she hadn't complained like the other that is was itchy, as if she already knew that it was necessary. She was a nice kid, he had thought. Their thoughts had invading his head and they had started to walk through the forest, him counting the trees until he would one more time be freed of them, he was trying to find her thoughts but he couldn't. It was melting in the trees' voices as if she was part of the forest, part of him, for eternity. He had laughed at himself but before realizing it, he was standing below her window at night, waiting for her to appear. But the Fairy World is not a world of love, for that love is forbidden here and for loving you have to pay the consequences.

Fern is a character of "Demon and fairy".

Ethan

"This time it has too work", Ethan said. 

He was not the type to cross his fingers. He was looking fixedly at a piece of paper which had been multiply scratched out. He let escaped a big sigh shacking the tube in his hand. 

He had been working on that formula for a month hadn't been able yet to get the expected result. He  fixed up his plastic glasses on his nose. They were a bit too large for him and kept on sliding down. 

"This time is the one", he said as to convince himself. 

He started to poor the greenish solution from the tube in his gloved hand to alarger beaker. It was starting to make bubbles. Ethan frowned, he wasn't expecting the solution to get bubbly. He added a bit more and the bubbling intensified. It wasn't a good sign but he had to pour it all, he couldn't stop just yet.

He took a deep breathe and continue to pour the mixture, the bubbles were now getting out of the beaker dangerously, white smoke was formating on the top of it. 

He finished to pour the liquid and took few steps back. Of course there was a strong glass protection between him and it but he would never know for sure. He kept on looking at it. The substance was turning dark pink and bubbling more and more like his sister when she was chewing-gum. The comparison put a smile on his face. He could always give it to her as a candy if it wasn't for the heavy smoke going out of there and being instantaneously absorbed by the absorbing hood. He counted slowly in his head. He was now too far away to watch his stop-watch. There might have been twenty second at least. He wondered where things had gone wrong.

The beaker started to spit flames. It would soon be over. It was looking a bit like a dragon, it was totally wrong, again. The bubbling suddenly stopped and the fire followed. Ethan came closer there was only ashes remaining in the beaker. At least this time the temperature had been low enough not to melt it. Still it was useless anyway. He took a pen and crossed out something more on this paper before cleaning up.

"As Thomas Edison would put it, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work", well six in my case" Ethan said out loud, "Still this is becoming tiring."

He felt like he has already seen it all, the first time, the mixture have just liquefied everything even making a hole in the table deciding him to work under the absorbing hood for more protection. The second time it had exploded throwing pieces of the glass beaker everywhere in the absorbing box. Ethan had been grateful for the box, he was feeling a bit like the Étienne Lenoir when he invented the two-stroke engine and almost burned his house. The third time had been the most quiet of them so far. Nothing happened, the liquid he had pour in the beaker remained at the surface of the first without even disturbing it. The fourth time had also been spectacular. Ethan sight, he didn't need things to be spectacular, he only needed them to work out. 

He finished to clean up the rests of the experiment and walked out of the room. 

Time for a good hot chocolate with wipe cream and marshmallow and probably some piece of cakes left in the refrigerator. There was nothing better to make him feel better after hard work.

Ethan is a character of Demon Soul.

   



 

Demian

Demian was not yet ready to go to bed. He was trying to stay up longer by asking for a glass of warm milk. He liked to be spending the holidays at his grand-parents because whenever he asked for warm milk before bed, his grand-mother would never say no. 

His grand-father was looking tired. He had been reading the same page of newspaper for quite a while now, at first Demian was thinking that it was really interesting but now he was sure that his grand-father was also trying not to go to bed by pretending to be reading. 

He drunk a bit of milk really slowly knowing that he would have to leave the kitchen as soon as he had finished. It was warm and sweet in his throat, he really liked the taste of milk before bed.

He slide out of his chair forgetting about the milk and pulled on his grand-father's sleeve. If there was one thing that would make his grand-father wake up that was the one.

"Please grand-pa, tell me the story!" he said.

"No again it's too late, and you already know it on the top of your head", his grand-mother complained.

But his grand-father didn't listen and picked him up to place him on his knees. 

"So which part of the story do you want?" his grand-father said.

Demian's eyes brightened.

"From the beginning of course!" he exclaimed.

His grand-father laughed and bent to bring the glass of warm milk at the other side of the table closer. Then he started.

"The most difficult thing you have to do when you are an explorer is to find a crew that will never let you down and will never go for mutiny. You need loyal people who would follow you to their death if needed. If one decide to act on his own it can put the entire crew's life in jeopardy. As a captain you need to stand firm on your ground and that's what I did. I knew the red Ylocs where around and nobody would tell me otherwise."

"But they started the mutiny" Demian said avid for more details.

"Oh they did, the poor men were starving", his grand-father answered.

"So you went on your own", Demian answered.

"Oh, yes I did", his grand-father answered. "And there are still people thinking I am insane for it."

"But you brought back the red Ylocs" Demian said with admiration.

"I would say that the red Ylocs brought me back. You see when I was on my own at the top of the mountain, the great Ylocs was calling for me. Several men had been lost looking for it before, but nobody ever found it before me and the reason is that it didn't want to be found back then, but it wanted me to find it." His grand-father answered.

"But why, grand-pa, why did the red ylocs only wanted to see you and not someone else?" Demian asked.

"I'm afraid that only the great yloc himself can answer this question" Demian's grand-father answered laughing.

"If you are done with your milk it's time to go to bed now", Demian's grand-mother said.

"I didn't finish yet", Demian answered as innocently as he could but his grand-father gave him the glass. 

"She is right, it's quite late already, I'll tell you the story tomorrow", he said.

He didn't yawn but Demian felt like he wanted too, he seemed so old and tired lately.

Demian finished his milk and stood up reluctantly, he wanted to know more about the red ylocs. His grand-father had told him the story again and again but it was not yet enough to fill his heart. He kissed his grand-parents on the cheeks and climbed the stairs to the first floor. He was sleeping in his uncle's old bedroom, his grand-mother would open the window everyday to get fresh air so it was still cold inside. He climbed on the unusually high bed, instead of throwing the old mattress, his grand-mother had put the new one on the top of it. He always thought that his grand-mother was strange somehow, nice but strange. She would always do strange things like that, and the milk before bed. He thought it was because she was old. He turned off the light. The moonlight was still enlightening the room, showing the ylocs drawn on the wallpaper. Some where originals, some had been draw by his uncle and his father when they were children. He didn't dare to draw some more, his mother had always told him that it wasn't good to draw on the walls. He started to count them. He had troubles to separate them. There were three sorts of ylocs, the blue ylocs which liked to swim, the yellow ylocs which Demian liked the less and the red ylocs, the ylocs from the mountain far away discovered by his grand-father. Demian liked the red ylocs the best, he wished to have his own yloc already but he was still too young. All he could do was to get ready.

He stopped counting them, he had done it multiple time but it always ended up making him feel dizzy so that he still didn't know how many there were. Once he had finished but he had forgotten the number the next morning. He closed his eyes a little dreaming about his yet to come ylocs and about all the places so far away they would visit together.

Demian is one of the main characters of Attic Mirror.

Clarissa

Clarissa would never listen to what Jason was saying. It was too bothering. Why did she had to stay put when they were all playing in the garden? It was easy. They were older and she would bother them. She didn't like to be a bother but she knew that she could run as fast as them. She knew she could catch the ball and score a goal as well as them. She really didn't want to play with dolls. But they weren't giving her the ball anyway, no matter how fast she ran. They were being unfair.

But now it was raining and she was running to the door. She was going to lock them out and that would teach them good. She was already laughing at the trick but unfortunately she wasn't the first to get to the door. What a bother again! She took her shoes of before entering. Her mum had already prepare towels for the kids to dry their hair. She sighed as her mum rushed the towel on her head. She was bid enough to do it herself. Why was everybody always treating her like a kid?

She starting to have problems to breath. She had been running for a long time. It was happening more and more frequently lately. The pain in her chest as she was struggling to get her breath back. She didn't want to show that to Jason, he would laugh again and make it a point that she couldn't join them. But it was becoming harder and harder to hide it. She put a hand on her chest and staggered for few steps. She tried to hold herself to her mum but she couldn't feel anything in her left hand. It was as if her hand had disappeared. Soon I'll be able to walk through things like a ghost she thought, she wanted  to laugh but laughing was painful. A voice that she didn't recognize as hers came out of her throat like a grumble, she didn't know her voice could do that, that made her want to laugh too, she was sounding funny. 

She staggered again and fell on on knee before her mum could catch her.

"Clarissa, what's wrong baby?" she heard her mum said. Her voice was strange too, it seemed worried and very far away.

"Nothing, I'm ok", she wanted to answer, to make sure that Jason wouldn't laugh at her but her voice seemed stuck in her throat. 

 She heard her mum panicking and calling her dad. Jason pleaded to go to, she didn't now were they were going but her dad said no. She felt him pick her up, she couldn't see anything, only the ceiling. She had never noticed it was so white, in her bedroom she would count black spots when she was to bored to get out of her boredom. She was still trying to breathe, she tried to cough to make it better but she couldn't do that either. She tried to bring her arms up, she didn't know why they were hanging down like that but she couldn't move. It wasn't funny anymore. Her dad put her at the back of the car. It wasn't funny anymore, it was starting to be scary, she could feel her mum next to her in the car, she wondered what was wrong with her. She couldn't see anything it was all white. She could hear the voice of her mum so far away. She could feel the vibration of the car racing, her father was driving so fast. Suddenly there was a shock, a big noise painful for her hears, she felt herself flying through the car's glass. She was flying like a bird, she thought only for a second before her head hit the ground. Then it wasn't white anymore, everything had turned black. 

"This one is still alive", she heard a strange voice say. That guy either had a big cold or a really strange voice, she couldn't make out which. She felt something was forced down her throat. It wasn't agreeable at all, it was feeling sticky and disgusting. her tried to remove it with her tongue but she couldn't. Suddenly she felt her chest moving up. That thing was breathing for her. "I can breathe", she thought. She knew how to do it, how to get the air through her nose then out from her mouth like they had been teaching her in sport class. Once again she wondered why everyone was treating her like a baby.

"She seemed to have a heart condition", she heard the funny voice say. 

Her chest was painful now even more than before, that machine was making her breathe too slowly, she wanted more air. She tried to speak but she could only feel to big tube in her throat. 

"Let's take her to the hospital first", she heard the voice say. 

She didn't want to go to the hospital, her dad was taking her somewhere nice where Jason wasn't allowed to go. 

She felt someone pulling on her hair, it seemed viscous and wet. She was sure to have dried herself properly with the towel. Slowly the only thing she could do was to listen to the ambulance siren.

Clarissa is one of the main characters of "Rainbow catcher".

Brownie

Brownie half opened her eyes wondering what time it was.
She tried to find the alarm o'clock groping, her eyelid feeling heavy with sleep. She didn't want to wake up just yet, it was way too early even though the sun was already shining through her curtains.
She looked at the o'clock before putting it back on the bedside table with a sigh. 10.30am. How could she have slept so much without even noticing it? She pulled the blanket back on her face to avoid the sunlight and tried to fall back asleep.

There were noises in the corridor, she could hear them now. It was hard to concentrate on sleeping any longer. She turned around trying to forget about it but her slumber seemed to be gone. She tried to remember her dream but she couldn't. It had been agreeable, that's why she wanted to go back to it but it seemed to have escaped her memory.

She finally decided to go out of bed, she pushed the blanket slightly but changed her mind and wrapped it around her body and sat on the bed. She had some time left before meeting Yue. She wondered how she would dress. He had refused to tell her where they were going.
She stood up her naked feet looking for her slippers. She stood up and walked to the window. She opened the curtains, it was early spring and the air was still cold outside. She looked around in the sky trying to find any traces of Yue but it was way too early. He was probably still sleeping. She walked to the bathroom for a shower. She didn't like to wait but it would take her some times to decide on her clothes and make up.
Why didn't he tell her where they were going? It was crazy.
"I'm not telling you, so that you don't go looking forward to it, just in case I can't make it back." he had said.
That was crazy, even if barely, he was always making it back. And she was already looking forward to it anyway. It was just making her life more difficult, as if she needed that. Dating a demon, she should have been prepared for it but she was still somehow expecting him to stop going to the demon world and to stay over here with her. It was too dangerous.
"I have a job, and I need to gain more powers if I want to survive and sustain my family." He had said.
She had argued that he wouldn't need powers in the human world and that she could sustain for herself. But there was no way to change his mind.
"I'm the man here, I need to be responsible", he had said.
She could sigh all she wanted, fighting in the demon world was more than a job for Yue, it was his way of life, the one he had chosen, it was fun. She knew that being with her he was probably feeling like a wolf in a sheepfold without being able to kill or torture anyone around. He had to be a nice demon, no fighting, no dealing with death. It was probably killing him, that's why he needed to escape so often and was coming back bruised and bleeding. But it was his choice and to be with him she would bear with it. 

Last night he was on a new job, something he had been waiting for quite a long time. He had talked about celebrating with her once it was done. She didn't know what it was exactly. At first she had been questioning him about his jobs but he would never answered. 
"It's not stories for little girls", he had simply said. 
And she had soon given up. All she knew was that he wasn't doing anything recommendable. Horns had been growing on his head. Demons' horns were growing every time they were doing bad things so when you were to meet a demon you knew exactly what kind of person he was depending on the size of his horn. It was a good things to know but seeing horns growing on Yue so rapidly was still scary. 
What if he was to bring his darkness around her. People had been talking about it over and over again. 
"Aren't you scared?" they were saying, "He is just playing with you, he is a demon, he is bad, he'll break your heart at best, if that's all he does to you." 
But she wouldn't listen. She knew that somewhere inside, Yue was a good guy, he had never even made her cry. 

"So celebration it is", she said joyfully getting out of the shower. She walked to her closet and passed several dresses in front of her body before discarding them. She opted for a light blue dress. It wasn't really warm enough for the season but it was Yue's favorite color and she could always wear a cardigan while they were outside. She picked up the shoes to go with it and opened her make up case. Today she would use paillettes even though Yue might call her glittering choco-cookie again. He liked to make jokes about her name, then she would get mad at him and he would try his best to be forgiven. It was almost a daily routine now. 

She was ready waiting in front of the window when the door bell rang downstairs. 
"Brownie! It's Yue" she heard a voice say.
It took her sometimes to realize that they were calling her. 
Yue would never use the door, it was too troublesome for him to have to face her siblings questioning looks. He was always coming through the window at the most unexpected moment.
Instinctively she knew something was wrong. She ran down the stairs. Yue was standing in the middle of the entrance, some people had gathered in the corners, looking at him. Normally he would have been dancing from one foot to another and rushing for her to get out of there. But he wasn't.
"Hi" he said, "Apparently I was supposed to come here but I'm not quite sure why. Is there any other demon in the house?"
Brownie walked to him trembling inside, his voice had changed, it was empty. When she looked in his eyes, they were empty too. 

Brownie is a main character of Demon Soul and "Demon World" and appears as secondary character in Attic Mirror and "Demon and fairy". 



 

Azazel

Azazel was running as fast as he could in the forest trying not to fall on the prominent tree roots. 

"This time she will never find me" he thought stopping in front of a very large tree with a lot of low branches so that he could climb easily. 

Every time before he had run as far as he could so that he couldn't hear his sister count anymore, then when she was finished, he didn't have any time left to hide. Now, he had learned. He was still close to her, he could hear her voice and the numbers, fifty-one, fifty-two. He just needed to get in this tree and to hide, as high as possible. He wanted to fly there but he knew that she would hear his wings flipping in the wind so the only solution was to climb, sixty-three, sixty-four, he was almost there. He needed a comfortable position, not to have to move. He was hidden in the leafs, she couldn't see him from the ground, if she couldn't hear him, it was done, he would be hidden forever.

The voice of his sister suddenly stopped. Azazel waited and waited but he never heard her say that she was coming, he listen more carefully wondering if he had missed it. It seemed impossible, he had never missed it before, his sisters would always yell as loudly as they could  because they knew he was always running too far away to hear them. They would always repeat themselves several times, just to give him a chance. 

Azazel sat on his branch feeling that something was not quite right.

He waited in his tree for a very long time. Soon the night was there. He thought that he would be happy not to be found but he wasn't. They should have been looking for him and calling him for diner now. He pushed the branches in front of him to look at the ground. There was nobody to be seen. He flew down slowly. He didn't care about making noises anymore. He could reuse this hiding place later, maybe, but for the moment he was just worried.

He flew back to the house, not straight, he was hiding behind the trees as much as he could. That's what his dad had said they must do if they didn't feel too safe. His dad was teaching them to hide, that's why they had been playing hide-and-seek everyday now. It was silent, too silent to be real. He smelled the blood. He had seen a lot of blood before, the night they had first come here, he remembered the smell too well. He landed on the ground lightly, trying not to make the branch crack.

"Azazel run away!" He heard his father said.
His father would always hear him approach, always. He turned around ready to take off and go back to his hiding place but he heard his mum yell.
"You better come here if you want to see your family again" he heard an unknown voice say.
He hesitated, just a little but that was enough. They were out of the house holding his sisters and his mother. They were wearing the same black robes with this bleeding cross on the front, they were the same who had come the day they had escaped. The one his father had called "The Watchers". He wondered where his father was. His father was strong, he could have taken those guys on easily. He wondered where his father was before realizing that the blood on those demons where not theirs. It was the reason why his mum had yelled.
"Run away Azazel, and never come back", she said weakly.
He was already feeling the anger feeling him.
"If you come over we will let them go", one of the demon said stroking the cheek of his older sister. He could read the disgust on her face at the touch.
"Run Az, run!" she said.
The demon leaked her neck.
"You have such a nice sister. Don't you want to protect her?" he was smirking.
Azazel already knew that there was no way they would let them run away. If they were freed, they would attack. He didn't know how they had come to be captured, it just seemed unreal. He took a step toward them, slowly, trying to see where the danger would come from but it was impossible. If he was to attack one of the demons, the other would kill his family, it was desperate. They would die if he ran, they would die if he stayed but he couldn't let them like this.
The first demon jumped forward to get him. It was big, it was easy to avoid his arms, Azazel had always been small for his age. He threw a fire ball at him while moving forward but missed. The other demons laughed. They were going to play the mouse and cat game with him. Letting him get tired before catching him for real. He was not strong enough to fight them. He wished he could make a big earthquake like his father had done the night they had escaped but he couldn't. He was weak. They continued to play with him, they were enjoying themselves and he was becoming more and more desperate. He couldn't see the way out.

They finally caught him.
"So you think he is the one", one of them said.
"There is no doubt about it", another one answered.
"Show us your power of Chaos", the one with the larger horns said holding him by the chin above the ground.
"Azazel", he heard his mother said.
The demon smirked.
"Let's begin!"

They started with her. They hold him tight so that he couldn't move and forced him to watch as they cut into her skin, deeply. Soon her entire body was blood only.
"Show us your power kid, show us the Chaos", they repeated every time they added more suffering to her body.
His sisters were yelling for them to stop. Azazel was yelling at them that he didn't have that power, that he didn't know that power and they would only laugh. When they were finished removing her skin, they attached her to the lower branch of a tree by her wings, piercing two large holes in them for the heavy chains. She had already lost consciousness. She wasn't debating herself anymore, so they took his older sister to inflict her the same treatment. Azazel was desperately trying the find a way to stop that nightmare but he couldn't. He was trying to find that power of Chaos inside of himself but it wasn't there.
When they were done late the following morning, the demon with the largest horns turned to him again. He was holding a piece of metal turned red by the fire. He pulled on Azazel's sleeve and applied it on. Azazel thought it was his turn, that he was going to die too, the sensation of burning and the smell of his own burning skin suddenly overcame the smell of blood. He closed his eyes ready to finally die. He felt his arm changing into a wood piece for the first time.
"Take him away! And make sure the others are dead!", the demon said.
He didn't turn around for a last look at his family, he didn't have too, the horrible image of their skinless body was engraved forever in his memory. He wondered if he would ever remember anything else from them.

Azazel is a character from "Demon and fairy" and "Demon World".