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<--Main <-Fan Art Bao-Hadir: A story by Project_Demise Part 5 Several hours have passed since Melissa fell asleep. It is now the dead of night, in the god-forsaken hours after midnight when nothing wishes to be awake. I have yet to claim rest, as I lay curled around Melissa. I tried, by Buddha I tried. However, my mind will not calm down. The same thought keeps playing through my mind. How had she known? Obviously, Melissa had known what I was from the moment I tried to help her. But how? That is the grand question. GAH! I cannot think about it right now. If I do, I will surely go mad. Relax...Allow your power to flow...Let it relax your mind into unconsciousness...As my mother's words come to me once again, I follow her advice, letting my power relax my body so I may sleep... Melissa shifts against me with a yawn. I snap alert instantly. Melissa snuggles closer to my warmth and I frown, a difficult thing for a fox to do. Why am I so on guard with this child? Perhaps it is because she disarmed me earlier with her pure innocence and her sweet nature. Yes, I would have to say that this is the reason... So...tired... My power flows once again and this time the sweet embrace of sleep catches hold of me... ... What's this? A scene is playing before my eyes. Horrific images of a sadistically evil nature. Why am I seeing these things? Is this some punishment? Or am I supposed to learn something from this? I had better pay attention... Hey, that's Melissa! What's she doing? Wandering through a dark forest with twisted trees and spooky noises? She looks afraid. No...now that I look further, this is no forest. This is her home through the eyes of a child...The entire vision I see shocks me to my very core. Melissa being thrown around my some shadowy monster...no...that being is her father, portrayed in a hellish light that makes him look demonic...What is he doing to...No...That MONSTER! I'll stop him! I build my power up, forming a spear of power to rip his soul from his flesh... I snap awake, my power rebounding inside of my body as I instinctively force it back. I growl in pain, forcing my power out, aiming it at a target that I know won't care if it is demolished. Azlan's corpse disintegrates in a flash of dark light. When the shadowed light fades, there is nothing left of the dog, save for a few hairs upon his bed. I do not feel regret for destroying the body. After all, it is only a hollow shell. Without a soul, a body is nothing but so much meat. I sigh, feeling relief from the pain of my spell. *Shift* Huh? Melissa is moving against me. She stretches out to full length and yawns. I can hear her bones popping as her body stretches to its limit. Her brilliantly green eyes look up into my own icy blues as I take in her scent. Strange. I cannot smell her emotions. Humans cannot mask their scents without the help of chemicals, yet she has managed to do so...Who is this child? What is this child? Though her emotional scent is gone, I can smell...something...about this child...something different...something inhuman...She smells of...Kitsune...And this is not my own scent either. She must be a half-breed. And since her father is not a kitsune, it must have been her mother...I must investigate this further. Forcing magic into my tongue, I lick her forehead roughly. The sleep spell in my tongue goes to work instantly. Though she resists for a moment, that resistance breaks down swiftly and she falls asleep again. Good, now... Pouring much of my magic into the tip of my nose, I arrange my body so that my nose can comfortably touch her forehead. Releasing my power into her once more, I can now skim her memories. Most humans consider thought reading or mind scanning to be an invasion of privacy, but we Kitsune consider it a necessary act. Now... Mother, mother, where is your mother...Ah...Like the folder icons upon a computer, I can see the storage places within her mind. I enter into a "folder" which I can hear within my own mind as being marked mother. And there she is. Wow...she's gorgeous. Not nearly as gorgeous as Miyo, but still gorgeous. She has long and shiny red hair, with a medium bust and a beautiful face. She isn't very tall, but she seems massive in that respect with her powerful green eyes. Definitely worthy at the very least of a dalliance. And apparently Melissa knew what her mother was, as there are many memories of her mother in Kitsune form. As I watch a memory play through, I see it through the eyes of Melissa on the day of her birth. Her first sight was of her mother, sweat-soaked and tousled, but still beautiful. The second person she sees is her father...who is not the man downstairs...interesting, yet that explains so much. Males don't like the idea of raising another male's pup. No wonder this child is abused. I jump to another memory. This one is cute. Melissa's first birthday, if I read the writing upon the birthday cake before her. A cupcake with a little candle is in front of that, the flame flickering pleasantly. She is clapping happily and grinning widely, flashing gums and the beginnings of teeth. Her mother is beside her, as well as her father. Like most babes when they try to blow out their first candle, she spits all over the cupcake, barely causing the flame to shiver. Her father leans down and blows the candle out. Now Melissa is clapping from watching the swirling smoke. Rather than watch her mash cake into her face, I move on again. Two years later in this memory bank, I find where her father went. Six feet under. This memory is of a funeral. She and her mother are in a church, during the human ceremony known as a "wake". Melissa's mother leads her up to the coffin, lifting her daughter to see the occupant of the coffin, who turns out to be the little girl's father. Melissa, according to the memory, did not realize her father wasn't sleeping. She leaned forward and kissed the dead man's head, crying out for her daddy to wake up. She giggled and yelled a few times, before realizing something was wrong. She looked back at her mother, only to find her face drenched by tears. Melissa was pulled back into her mother in a crushingly tight hug, her head over her mother's shoulder. From there, she could see the faces of the other people in the room. They all looked sad, with tears in their eyes, yet angry with her for smiling and laughing at a time like this. This was the first time Melissa had actually felt sad since her father died. She had no idea that he wouldn't be coming back when she struggled against her mother, turning around to beat on the man's chest, screaming for him to stop being mean and pretending to be asleep. Her mother was forced to carry her away from the casket and into a pew, holding her tight and begging her to be calm. When Melissa refused to stop, her three-tailed mother kissed the little girl's forehead, sending a sleep spell into her, the way I had done a little while ago. I push at the barrier between memory, searching for the link between mother and child... There it is...I grasp it with my mental teeth and tug, feeling it tug back. This is a good sign, as it means that the woman is still alive. Now...to follow it. Anchoring part of my consciousness to the link, I return the rest of myself to my body. I can now see the bond. It leads...downward...I have a sinking feeling. I enter Melissa's mind once more, this time detaching my entire consciousness from my body, leaving my empty shell behind as I follow the link. As the line leaves Melissa's mind, I can see the house clearly around me. I can see myself curled up against Melissa, while the child continues to sleep with my nose upon her head. I continue following the thread, which leads downward. Why it would do so I don't know. If her mother were on the other side of the planet, the line would loop around rather than pass through the planet. As I dive down I have a (pardon the pun) sinking feeling. This linkage leads straight down through the house. Following swiftly, I phase through the floor of Melissa's room, stopping in the living room below. The evil human is still asleep and I wish to slay him. But in my current form, I am powerless. I can only growl and continue on my way. Through the floor of the living room I pass, entering the basement. It is only now that I realize that the darkness that I had felt before is becoming stronger. Strong pulses of darkness had come from the man and his bedroom, but this is a whole enother level of darkness. I dread what I am going to find. Down and down I go, the distance passing in seconds as I stop following the thread and instead let it take me itself. And then I see it... The source of the stronger darkness within this household. A statue buried so deep beneath the earth. A Kitsune statue... To be continued...
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