#someone who the creature could snap in half yknow

[panthermouthh]

“Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?”

[rattlung]

i wanted to get this out for halloween but then it ended up getting (and taking) too long so i was like aight whatever i’ll split it and post the first bit so i know at least some of it will be in time for the spooky scary. not that it’s really spooky scary, but yknow

anyway the second i saw cowboy mirage and vampire crypto i knew i had to write a wild west au with them. if any of you knew me from my glory ovw days, you know wth im talkin about. 

so anyway, slooow burn, animal death, blood, blood drinking, and possible ooc-ness because i couldn’t decide on whether i wanted mirage to have a very thick southern accent or not so his dialogue may be a bit whack. also with it being an au, characterization probably got skewed to shit. sorry about that :^(

cross posting fucks up formatting, so to be safe here’s the ao3 link but if that’s not the jam for your bread, it’s all under the read more

=======

The sun had set hours ago, but Elliott remained at his post.

Crickets and grass were his only companions on his porch, not even a candle was lit to keep him company. He didn’t want anyone to know he was out there and the little flame would have given him away. Besides, the moon was high that night and the stars glittered from behind it thanks to the cloudless sky. His eyes had adjusted well enough, and the open fields of the farm didn’t provide enough shadows to cause much concern.

No, Elliott was confident he’d catch who he wanted tonight, it was only a matter of whether or not the little bastard would show up.

He sighed and leaned forward in his chair to rest his crossed arms on the railing of the porch, then placed his chin on them. He hoped whoever it was would show. He couldn’t afford another big hit to the stock again. In the last week, he’d lost three chickens - one of them was the hen he’d sank three dollars into earlier in the month. It’d been a good one, too, healthy eggs up until she went missing with two of her sisters.

It was like nothing Elliott had ever seen before. There were never any carcasses left in the coop or on the land, no blood and maybe only a few stripped feathers. Coyotes were never that clean - not in Elliott’s experience anyway. And to take so many at a time?

Then the marks started showing up on the cattle. Two clean little holes at their shoulders that Elliott would have missed had it not been for the blood that oozed out of them, staining their fur a rusted brownish red.

That changed things. The body-less crimes started making sense, because they weren’t being killed - they were being stolen. Chickens were easy to make off with. Just toss a few in a bag and be on your way. Cows, though, they were marking those. Maybe one man was sent to scope out the pens to pick out the healthiest ones, then send off a crew to look for the marks and round them up to bring them home.

Elliott fought off a yawn and the on coming sense of second guessing himself. They would be coming with a group. He hadn’t thought of that before. If they did show up tonight and they were armed, there would be very little he could do with his mother’s old rifle. Quickly he decided he wouldn’t leave the porch if he saw anything. Just fire off a few shots and hopefully scare them off.

All of the Witts had met unfortunate ends. Two Witt sons died in the war, one to the flu soon after his third birthday, their mother to the plague - and the last Witt, dead to a bullet wound received while defending the cow that sneezed on him that very morning?

Yeah, no thank you, he’d stay right there on the porch, yes, ma’am.

So sit he did, scanning the horizon, the treeline, the pens, and tried not to fall asleep. He wondered if Ms. Williams had any hounds she’d be willing to part with to do this kind of stuff for him. Growing up, he’d always wanted a farm dog and Anita Williams trained some of the best he’d ever seen. Elliott would be able to leave it outside to patrol the land, sleep out on the porch, and chase off any predators or thieves that might be lurking while Elliott was in bed. That would be better than suffering through the brutality of waiting for the sun to rise himself.

Elliott didn’t notice his eyes had closed until they snapped open at the sound of sudden rattling in the hen house. He waited a moment, wondering if he imagined it, but soon there was a murmur of cluckings and Elliott got to his feet. He picked up the hat he’d hung on the back of his chair and placed it on top of his head before grabbing the rifle, standing at the very edge of his porch.

Surely they wouldn’t be going for more chickens, would they? When the cows they had marked were out roaming?

Elliott stepped off the stairs and onto the dirt pathway. If it was chickens being targeted tonight, that means there was likely only one of them. He checked the chamber of his gun before heading off, getting onto the grass as soon as he could in order to dampen the sound of his approaching footsteps. By the time he’s at the fence, the clucking had shifted and grew into something louder, the few hens he had left squawking at whatever was in there with them.

And maybe it was because their din was too loud, but Elliott couldn’t hear anything else. Nothing but feathered ruffling and the scrape of chicken feet.

A chill raised the hair on the back of his neck but he crept forward anyway. He wiped the palm of his hand off on his jeans and pushed open the gate, wincing hard when one of the hens in the coop got louder. The rest were a bit hysterical in their noise making, but this one’s panic was visceral. This wasn’t just someone walking through their nests and aggravating them out of sleep - these chickens were scared for their lives.

Elliott crept up to the wired entrance of the shed and peeked around. Small shadows flicked back an forth on the hay-filled floor in a frenzy. Hoarse, creaking noises spilled from their beaks and wings fluttered as they battled each other in their panic to press to the corners of the shed, close to the walls to get away from -

Now, Elliott wasn’t a religious man - which was an odd thing, when one lived in a small town like he did, where the person he bought canned goods from was the pastor’s brother, and the biggest building was the church which was always filled on Sunday. He never went to mass, not even for the holidays, and the Witt Family’s bible had been left in the bedside table’s drawer since he was a boy.

But he didn’t have to crack apart the thin pages of God’s Word to determine that whatever the thing was in front of him was bad.

Especially when it turned, a chicken limp and unmoving in its hands, and stared Elliott down with eyes that burned like indigo flames.

This isn’t a coyote, his mind helpfully informed him just as his mouth spit out, “Oh, fuck.”

The creature stood up fully and despite all its human-like qualities, there was still that electric energy that was just not right, uncanny and out of place. It showed off a human face, but its skin was so white it almost glinted blue when it passed through the moonlight that bled through the shed’s wooden panels.

Which is how Elliott noticed it was moving toward him. He raised the rifle up and pointed it square at the thing’s chest. If froze in its step, still as stone in half a second, but above the crying of his birds Elliott could hear the trill of something moving in its throat.

“Dro - Drop the chicken,” Elliott ordered, the stillness in his limbs compensating for his trembling voice.

To his surprise the creature listened to him. Its trill from before burst from its throat and its frown opened to let out a hiss, pitched low and piercing. The teeth it bared to him had a pink sheen, wet with blood, and its canines ended in vicious points - points Elliott was sure would match with the ones marking his cattle out on the fields.

“Oh, shit, okay - “ Elliott muttered, too panicked to remember that the creature could hear him.

It hunched down suddenly, dropping into a stance that made Elliott think it was going to lunge for him. Before he could really process that information, could even think to fire a shot at it to knock it down, to kill it, the creature spun around and crashed through the other side of the coop. Elliott blinked at the wire it split through like paper then hurried around the house. It was fast, already having leaped over the fence, a black shape that moved without sound, whispering over the grass in one, two seconds before it disappeared into the trees.

“That’s not a fuckin’ coyote,” Elliott said over the thundering of his heartbeat and the screaming of his chickens.

----=----

For a whole entire day, Elliott allowed himself to think that it was over. He let himself think that that was the last he’d see of the thing, that he’d scared it enough to retreat just from pointing a gun at it. Maybe the fear of Elliott actually using it would keep it away, whatever it was.

Truth be told, he didn’t really want to find out what it was. From the look he got out of it from the shadows, it looked human enough. A man as tall as him, dressed to the nines in black and red silks, slim with features Elliott might have tipped a hat at had he not been terrified the time he saw them. Human features. It looked human.

And yet, the bloodless chicken he’d been forced to get rid of proved otherwise. Once he’d been able to move, he’d wandered back in to examine it and found that it was little more than a husk, dried out and useless. It’s carcass was clean, feathers mostly untouched with no red soaked into them. On its breast were two, neat puncture holes.

The next day, one he’d used to catch up on sleep, he started feeling watched.

As he left the stables after shoveling out the floors, a familiar chill walked along his shoulders like icy fingers, eliciting a shiver from him. It lingered for a moment and slowly dissipated when he searched his surroundings, forcing himself to outwardly appear calm when he found nothing.

It would happen again - and often - in the following weeks. When he left the stables after milking, he’d feel it then. When he fed the chickens, when he lead the two horses out onto the pasture, checked on the hogs - someone was watching him. Waiting. And yet, as each night passed and he’d wake up, Elliott would set out to work and find that none of the livestock had been touched. The hens didn’t go missing. The puncture marks on the cows had scabbed over, and no new ones appeared.

Worriedly, Elliott wondered if he were next, that he was the one being stalked - but why wait so long? He lived alone on the Witt farm, and no one had visited him in the time between then and the encounter.

The idea of a peace offering came to him when he had to put one of the roosters down. It was the older one of the three, the one that was always more aggressive and tried to start fights with the others. Apparently, it had to learn the hard way that all fights it started were not always ones it could win. Elliott should have separated it sooner, or maybe had done something, but his mind had been in other places as of late. He’d felt terrible - for the cockerel, for himself. For his family. The only thing they’d left behind was this farm, and he was making a mess of it.

So, out he marched at the first sign of dusk, right to the edge of the trees where he’d seen the creature dart off all those days ago. He planned on calling out to it until it showed, dropping the rooster at its feet and declaring, There, see? I’m doing just fine on ruining everything on my own, so why don’t you just take the damn bird and go?

He didn’t do any such thing. He just stood there for a long moment, listened to the robins in the woods and the huffing of cattle behind him, and stared down at the rooster in his hands. Eventually, the watched feeling came. Elliott was so used to it that the chill hardly even registered. It was just eyes on him, now, no longer threatening or frightening.

For a moment, neither of them did anything. Nothing jumped out to attack him, and Elliott didn’t say a word. He never actually did. Eventually, he dropped the rooster onto the grass and turned back to the house, not even waiting to see if the creature would show itself.

The sun was finally wishing the horizon a farewell, sinking just under the trees as he’s finishing up the last of his rounds. Elliott tested the locks on the doors of the stalls to make sure they wouldn’t swing open and cast a long look at a cow sitting on the other side of one. She stared back at him. The scabs on her shoulders were just about gone, now, and her fur had grown over the little pink marks that’d been left behind. The rest of the cattle’s marks were just about the same. Nothing fresh.

Inside the Witt home, it was dark. There was still washing up he had to do in the big metal basin sat underneath the kitchen’s window. He probably wouldn’t get to until the next morning, so he pointedly kept his gaze away from there. He moved passed the old dining table that hadn’t seen use in years - mostly it was just full of tools he hadn’t moved back into the shed yet - and made his way toward the fireplace. Soon, the cold blue glow of the darkening sky was warmed by the slow starting flame. Elliott poked at it until he was thoroughly bored of watching sticks crumble into ash and was sure it wouldn’t smother itself.

With a heaving sigh he got back to his feet but didn’t go far, falling onto a wooden bench close to the fireplace. There were bigger and more comfortable places to sit, like the large wicker chair right beside him or the stool that had a pillow sewn onto it haphazardly, but Elliott had always sat on the bench. Maybe tomorrow, after he was done the cleaning, he’d move all the extra furniture out into the shed along with the tools on the dining room table. No use in having so many if he wasn’t using it. He didn’t get much company - none at all, really.

Elliott found himself staring at the book left on the seat of the wicker chair and doubted he’d even get around to doing the washing up.

Over the crackle of the fire, something thumped right outside the front door. Elliott straightened, twisted around to look toward the noise, and thought how weird it was to be thinking about never getting any visitors only to have one stop by. Or maybe the word was ironic.

But then he remembered the time and he held his breath to listen. There was no shuffling of someone on his porch and no knocking on his door. If someone rode all the way out to the Witt’s Farm after sundown it’d be for an emergency, so there was no real good reason for the stranger to be quiet.

Slowly, Elliott stood. Avoiding the floorboards that creaked, he crossed the room toward the door and picked up the rifle he’d left there. The silence was deafening and ringing with the dreadful thought of how he might actually be going crazy. Then, the idea of Elliott opening the door and finding nothing at all was almost as terrifying as opening it and revealing the shadow from the hen house. Had he actually heard something? Was there really something in his woods? What if he went outside to the coop and all of the lost chickens would be accounted for? What if the marks on the cows had healed so fast because they’d never been marked in the first place?

Elliott put his hand on the doorknob, sucked in a breath, held it, then twisted it and pulled it open. The door’s creak seemed like a wail in the empty night - because that’s what it was. Empty. No one standing at his stoop, no shadow perched on his railing ready to strike.

Nothing but the rooster he’d left at the trees, untouched and dropped carelessly at his door.

And for reasons he couldn’t explain, Elliott narrowed his eyes down at it and felt angry. Maybe it was the sleep he was losing, the constant worrying, the loneliness - or maybe he actually was losing his mind. Whatever it was, it was enough to have him bend over, snatch up the bird, and stomp down onto the path toward the trees. When he got there, he still said nothing, but that time he didn’t even wait around. Elliott just tossed the bird back onto the grass where he’d left it the first time and turned to storm away, ignoring the petulant feeling that rose at the display.

He made it about four yards before something hit the dirt behind him. He froze without looking back and grit his teeth.

“Alright, you sumbitch.”

Annoyed, he faced the trees again, passing the bird on the road. That chill was back. Instead of stopping him, have him think twice, it only achieved in making the anger thrumming around in his chest burn defiantly brighter.

Two indigo flames held his gaze when Elliott noticed them, dimmer than the last time he saw them. They regarded him with disinterest and that alone had him nearly seething.

“I’m tired of playing this game you’re havin’ with me,” he snapped. The shadow might have raised a brow at him, but with how dark it was Elliott couldn’t be sure. It didn’t say anything, so the question - the one he’d been wondering since that night - burst out of him. “Why haven’t you just killed me yet?”

Now the eyes moved, turning in a way that told Elliott that the creature had tilted its head. But still, the silence. Slowly, it looked down at the rifle Elliott had nearly forgotten about, pointedly, then back up at him. Elliott heard it hit the ground in the next second, which is how he learned that he himself tossed it aside.

Something that was smothered by the heat of the moment whispered to him, You sleep deprived idiot, just what in the hell are you doing?

What he said out loud was, “Do it, then. Nothin’s stopping you, so do it.”

The shadow did nothing; not a sound, not a movement.

Elliott heard his own breathing over the gentle breeze and wondered why it was so slow. He’d seen the speed the creature had moved at and his only protection was too many paces away. If it wasn’t planning on killing him, the anticipation should have been. But he was calm, staring demise dead in its lightning blue eyes, fists clenched at his sides.

The thought of it being incapable of speech occurred to him, but with the way it watched him, Elliott didn’t find it likely. Despite how inhuman they were, there was sentience behind the shadow’s gaze. Maybe too much for something that fed on blood. It looked at Elliott and he felt that it was capable of telling him exactly what it wanted to with a stare alone - all that and more. It was a heavy kind of thing to know. Elliott realized he had a hard time looking away, so when he managed it he didn’t dare look again.

“Just, get - get out of here.” He started making his way back - and didn’t look at the damned rooster again, either. “Leave me alone and terrorize some other poor bastard’s chickens.”

Coward, he thought, but didn’t know who it was directed to.

----=----

The next morning, Elliott woke up to one less crowing and his rifle propped up on the porch railing outside.

Something in the woods still watched him.

----=----

A few days passed until he saw the shadow again. Elliott was leaving the hen house and had thrown a look up at the sky to gauge the time, sighed at the moon, and turned to shut the wired gate behind him. When he turned around, a figure that definitely had not been there before stood in the path in front of him.

He gasped and sent himself back in a fit of shock, back slamming up against the shed. He scowled once he realized what - or, rather, who it was, but that was gone in the next second, too. The shadow’s posture was still one of casual disinterest; hands in pockets, shoulders relaxed, and expression blank if not aloof. But it was different, Elliott was sure. The skin, while always having been pallid, took a different tone, now, one that was qualmish and almost sickly. And the eyes - the eyes hardly even glowed.

It looked more like a ghost than a shadow.

“What’s wrong?” He asked - and why was he even concerned? It hadn’t tried to kill him yet, sure, but it was responsible for taking out almost a quarter of his chickens.

True to a pattern, the creature said nothing, however, it did give a meaningful look into the shed behind Elliott. When its gaze returned, he could see how its throat worked around a swallow.

“Are - “ Elliott looked back at the hen house as if to check to make sure that was what the shadow had looked at. “Are you asking me to - “ He cut himself off again, but pointed into the house.

It narrowed its eyes at the incredulous inflection in Elliott’s voice but did not say no.

The whistling of grass is the only sound for a long moment as a cool night’s breeze moved over the fields, Elliott at a loss for words. As the wind washed over him, chilling him that much further, he could see the creature’s nostrils flare minutely, and this time when its throat moved it was around a rumbling noise. From the base of its chest it traveled up and out as that familiar trill. It filled Elliott with a sense of urgency, one he couldn’t really explain.

He was torn. It was strange to be asked such a thing, but he supposed he should be grateful of the fact that it was asking at all. But how was he even supposed to answer? As far as Elliott knew, none of his chickens survived. He’d never found markings on them, they would just disappear. With the colder seasons approaching, he really couldn’t afford to lose any more of his livestock.

The cows, though, they’d apparently survived a few run-ins with the shadow.

Elliott looked over to the stables and felt shameful the second he did. Was he really considering it? Other than the fast healing punctures on their necks or shoulders, there had been no real changes in their behavior or health. The morning he’d find the marks on them, they’d appear nonplussed. But what if it hurt them? What if the experience was traumatic in a way Elliott couldn’t see?

Then again, could he really afford to deliberate on this? In that moment, with the shadow looking at him expectantly, it seemed to be between Elliott and the cows. Really, the choice was an easy one, but he was still allowed to feel guilty.

“Follow me,” he told the shadow.

As the temperature steadily declined throughout the days, Elliott had started rounding the cows up into the stables more often. It got too cold at night , and he didn’t want to give the cows a chance to catch an illness. It meant waking up earlier to give them more time to graze but it was safer. While he was unlocking the paneled door to the stables Elliott thought that maybe that was the reason he was losing more chickens. It was harder to get through a locked door without raising suspicion than it was kidnapping a few birds and letting the farmer’s blame fall onto coyotes.

The shadow didn’t make a noise but when Elliott turned, it was standing right behind him, nose wrinkled a little at the intense smell of animal and dirt. He didn’t jump that time. He picked up the unlit lantern he’d left behind on the stacked bales of hay, lighting it fast and hung it on the rung in between two of the stall doors. Inside one of them, the dull eyes of a cow shimmered and regarded him blankly. Elliott drug the door open and stepped inside next to her, touching at the glittering wet nose and felt her hot breath huff against his hand in recognition.

“It doesn’t - there’s no - it - it’s not gonna hurt her too much, is it?” Elliott couldn’t help but ask. Now, he expected a nonverbal answer so he looked back to shadow for it, finding more whites in its eyes and the stoic expression looking cheaper. It wasn’t watching him anymore, purely focused on the cow Elliott was petting at nervously.

It stepped closer, into the stall, and Elliott watched as the cow’s head tipped up apprehensively. The huffing of her breathing got a little bit faster and Elliott heard himself shushing her lowly, scratching around the longer scruff by her ears. He couldn’t imagine he was helping too much, but the only thing she did when he saw the shadow disappear around her other side was let out a small grunt of displeasure.

Time passed; the only sound came from his and the cow’s breathing and the brisk wind rattling the wood of the barn. Elliott kept up his attempt at comfort, watching her face intently, and was surprised to find her calm once again. Slowly, he stepped away, gauging her reaction at the movement but didn’t get one.

He moved back into the base of the barn and heaved up one of the metal buckets he’d filled with grain. It was a favor he’d done for himself that night to save himself some time when he woke up to feed them, but he figured that the cow deserved some special treatment. Elliot brought it over to her front and held it right under her nose for her to sniff out, knocking the handle out of her way and hugging it to his stomach due to the weight of it.

The cow’s ears twitched back and forth in contentment, dipping her snout into the grain and eating it by the mouthful. Relief coursed through him like the blood in his veins and Elliott felt himself smiling a little.

“Good girl,” he told her, to which he got very little in the way of a response.

The shadow straightened in a fluid movement, one Elliott watched with rapt attention. Even in just the few short minutes, there was an excruciatingly apparent change in the creature. The intensity of its eyes returned, their brightness amplifying its now fuller features and adding more color to the porcelain-looking skin - it was the most human Elliott had seen him.

“You were starving,” Elliott muttered with a voice awed in his realization. He thought back to the look the shadow had given the cow before and identified it now as a pained and feral sort of hunger. “Why didn’t you just take the damned rooster?”

The creature wiped the cow blood off of wet lips and had the audacity to look at Elliott like he was the disgusting one. Before he could remark on that, prove to the other how backwards that was, the shadow’s mouth opened and for the first time, he spoke. In a voice that was low and smooth, with layers upon layers of something deep and new to Elliott threading through the syllables, he simply stated, “It was dead.”

Elliott sputtered, a little dumbstruck. “So?”

The shadow’s eyes narrowed into a disbelieving glare. “It was dead for a long time.”

“You’re gettin’ partipu - pertil - picky about what blood you’re drinking, now?”

If he were being frank, Elliott wasn’t sure why he was antagonizing the shadow. He’d been merciful so far in not maiming him. And Elliott couldn’t exactly say that if he’d left something out for the hours the rooster had been sitting, he would drink it, either.

But surely drinking blood wasn’t enjoyable in any sense.

Elliott pulled the bucket out from under the cow. Some feed stuck to the wetness of her nose which she cleaned off with a few swipes of her tongue. “I guess we’re done here,” Elliott said to her, but mostly to the shadow.

The shadow that had since disappeared from the stables.

Sighing, Elliott replaced the now three quarters filled bucket with the others as he shook his head. “Guess we are.”

----=----

They weren’t, but Elliott had expected that much.

Every other night, now, when Elliott was finishing his rounds he caught sight of the shadow leaning against the barn doors like it was an arrangement they’d agreed on. He’d finish locking up and meet him there where he’d open the doors and wave the shadow inside, direct him to one of the seven cows, and pretended it wasn’t abnormal. Every farmer had an odd case; a pair of horses that only fed at a specific time of day, cattle that grazed exclusively on the left side of the pasture, a herding dog that befriended and mothered ill lambs.

Elliott’s odd case was a vampire, but it was fine. Every farmer had an odd case. Some odder than others.

Things started to change on the evening Elliott had just left the stables unlocked. One of the pen’s posts had crumbled from age and the fences around it sagged too close to the dirt. It was a reminder that he’d have to put work into replacing them before the winter, or else he’d have a lot more work come spring. Like the dishes in the basin and the extra furniture still in the front of his house, that was a problem for tomorrow’s Elliott. He’d just repair the broken one for now.

He was just testing out the sturdiness of the new post when he noticed that the shadow was standing behind him. By then he was so used to the minor jump scares that he only just barely lost the hammer in his grip. It thumped onto the old, rotten fence post he’d left laying there and landed quietly in the grass.

“Lord - Jesus - Chri - you gotta stop doing that,” he told the shadow, hand over his heart.

Silence from the shadow. He’d gone back to his quiet pledge, not having spoken since their very short conversation in the stables.

Elliott was used to that, too, so shook his head and leaned down to pick up the hammer and the post. He could leave it to dry out on his porch, break it apart further and use it for tinder later. “I left the barn open,” he said when he saw that the shadow was still standing there.

“I know,” the shadow responded. Something flashed in his eyes, probably on account of how fast Elliott snapped up to look at him, not having expected an answer. It was some kind of struggle, Elliott imagined, because his mouth opened a second before he said anything. “Thank you.”

Elliott’s eyes widened. “I - uh. Y-yeah, you’re welcome. It’s fine. It’s - y’know, it’s better than you killing my chickens.”

That flash of something struck again. Elliott wanted to apologize. He genuinely didn’t want to offend the shadow, and he might have actually done it if he didn’t speak before him. “Why haven’t you told anyone?”

And that would have been smart, wouldn’t it? Letting the town know about the blood drinker in their woods. They could have helped Elliott a few dead birds earlier, rounded up enough of them for a search party - if they even believed him in the first place. But that would have involved killing the shadow, or running him off, and Elliott didn’t really enjoy the idea of that. In some kind of morbid way, through all of the heart-pounding meetings and stress-induced nightmares, he kind of liked the company. He’d probably miss it if it were gone.

Besides, the nightmares were really nothing new.

Still, he decided he wasn’t going to tell the other that. He just grinned, leaned up against the freshly repaired fence - very sturdy -  and said, “I think I’ve got you handled.”

The shadow’s brow rose and he looked Elliott up and down, then finally back up again. “No,” is all he said.

The smile dropped from Elliott’s face but he didn’t say anything more on that, because, unfortunately, the shadow was being very fair. “Right, well,” he muttered, pushing off the fence. He was ready for bed. “Have a good night, then.”

“Are you Witt?” He was asked after a few paces.

Elliott paused, turned around slowly. “How’d you know about that?”

“I listen,” the shadow stated simply.

Looking around acres of empty land, Elliott wondered, to who? “Yeah, I - well, I’m one of them. Witt’s my last name, so there’s… Well, there’s been a few Witts.”

The other’s head cocked to one side. “Which Witt are you?”

The only one, really. “I’m Elliott.”

The shadow nodded, looking him over once more. “Good night, Elliott.”

All he did was stand there for a moment, blinking, too caught up on how his name sounded in the smooth whisper of the other’s voice. He’d never heard it be said like that before.

Then, finally, his brain caught up.

“Hey, wait,” he called, despite the shadow not having moved an inch. “That’s not very fair, now is it? I don’t get to know your name?”

He wouldn’t exactly say that the shadow was the teasing sort, but it did take numerous weeks to get a decent two-sided conversation out of him. Mostly, Elliott expected the same response from before. Another ‘no’ before he disappeared for a few nights again.

“Tae Joon,” was what he got, though.

Elliott tried it out for himself. “Tae Joon.”

The shadow’s head tilted further.

Elliott smiled, tipped his hat. “You have a good night, Tae Joon.”

He shifted the wooden post around for easier carrying and put his back to the shadow, knowing that if he turned around now he probably would find empty air. It was fine. Elliott knew he’d see him soon.

=====

yyyyeaahh this is what i’ve been putting off prompts for BIG oof :^(((( 

not sure when i’ll finish the rest of it tbh but here’s this for now i guess 

[tumblunni]

Some more random thoughts and stuff for Completely Undeveloped Monster Petshop Game/I might end up calling it Moncrafter but I still don’t know if that sounds dumb or not. I NEED MORE NAME IDEAS!

* Monster Artisan? Monster Studio? Maybe try and think of other stuff that’s related to the alchemy crafting factor...

* And maybe there should be a catchy name for the monsters, rather than just calling them monsters? It kinda strikes me as something that’d make it TOO much of a Monster Rancher spiritual successor, yknow. That game kinda stands out in the genre for not having a name for the monsters! XD And I’ve decided that the origin of these guys is that they’re alchemically created familiars invented by rich folks with too much time on their hands. So maybe I should try and think of a more catchy way to say ‘homunculus’? Holms? Collect your holms! Craft your holms! Holm shop! Holm hugging! It could work! Also it’d kinda have a bit of sentimental attatchment for me, cos one of the hostels I used to live at was in Holmsdale Street. Homeless to holmfull! That place seriously saved my life. Alternatively, maybe ‘poppets’? Cos that’s cute sounding but it actually means the thing that pop culture calls a ‘voodoo doll’. They don’t really exist as part of vodoun religion, it was just a stupid stereotype that’s ended up engrained as common knowledge. Poppets were actually part of european and british superstition, so it sucks that nobody remembers this and you have people in those countries thinking of it as a big ol scary thing of someone else’s religion..

* I’ve been thinking about the creation methods for the holms, and thinking about it, and thinking about it SOME MORE, and seriously i’m practically writing actual petcare books in my head about these fictional critters!! I’m a lil grumpy tho cos we developed stuff a bit more and decided the plant dog would indeed have to be grass type, it’d be better to have something else be the main water type and just use the seaweed variant of the dog as the dual type crossbreed. Because it was REALLY CUTE imagining that idea of how you create them! Stirring a cauldron of magic potion until it clumps together into moss, and then refining and sieving it until you have a tiny barking marimo~ I can imagine that just a more traditionally elementally aligned version would be less endearing. Like a water type just pops out of the water and the rgass type grows in a regular plantpot. It doesn’t seem as fun as having to grow a sentient plant in a lil aquarium for dogs. ITS TWO THINGS! ITS TWO GREAT THINGS! So actually this makes me think about maybe if we make more of the creation spells involve different elements? And that could be like a positive set of elemental matchups, opposed to the negative ones in battle. So you could use your monsters to help make new monsters! And maybe the new baby dog picks up a good influence from its water type godparent, even though they don’t have any direct relation. Like, if you add fragments from parent monsters to the mixture, you get a fusion monster, but then the godparent could maybe add one extra skill inheritance, or maybe influence the stat build or personality values...?

* I was thinking that the maohs/whatever else I decide to call the grumpy fire fairies, well duh they’d be created from fire. So the alchemist crafts a candle with a special recipe, or maybe you have to write a spell in super small print on the wick? Yeah, that’d be cool, it’d be neat if they all had wildly different creation spells that all require different skills outside of just being good at magic. Hire a wandering calligrapher to assist in your pixie baking! Oh, or maybe with the positive elemental variations thing, perhaps light type monsters have really good calligraphy cos they’re the most Intelligence-specialized breed. Oh, or perhaps they’re good at helping to create dark types, cos they can cast more powerful shadows? BUT YEAH I imagined the fairy holms hatching in a weird cute way! The flame on the candle would burn continuously for several days, with the shape of the fairy growing in the centre. It would remain microscopic for 99% of its development, and then in the last hour or so the fire would blaze up to it’s full size! Keep sure to protect the workshop from this three minute doom bonfire, while also stoking it with coal so the baby grows up big and strong! By the time it subsides, you’ll have a fully formed child-sized monster, and probably half of a table left. :3 Also: imagine them chewing on logs instead of pacifiers!

* I had the odd idea that light types are created through song. Usually the holms require physical ingredients and some sort of recipe, but these ones get their reputation as holy creatures from the fact they come from nothing. There’s special hymns to summon them, and they have to be sung with enough skill, conviction, and purity of heart. So it still takes as much effort as other methods of alchemy, even though theoretically anyone could do it. Its even theoretically possible that you could summon a holy homunculus through ANY song, not just the special ones designed for that purpose. There’s tales of singing priests that’re just SO GOOD that holy beasts appear whenever they open their mouth! So they hold a vow of silence and only use this power in times of need. Though it could be considered a curse in other places, it’d suck to be a random opera singer and suddenly lose your career as a swarm of monsters divebomb the audience! And the even rarer ultimate tier legend is of the man who spoke words of such beauty that an angel appeared without even the need for song. Nobody has any record of this really happening, but it’s an enduring myth. The idea of finding that one perfect sentence that convinces gods to bend their will to you...! Or, on the other side of things, there’s the thought of someone whose intentions were so pure that even their most humble, inelegant plea for help could make the heavens cry. So yeah, a lot of potential in this idea of musical monster making~!

* Oh, and I think that after your song actually summons a light monster, they still go through the same ‘kinda like an egg without the egg’ phase that all the others do. Instead of being inside a candle or a cauldron, they’re just kinda... slowly phasing into our laws of reality. You can tell when a song summons a holy beast cos there will be a little glow in the air, like a snowflake frozen in mid-fall. And then it’ll slowly turn into a translucent outline of the monster, and then it eventually gains solidity and becomes fully aware. So they can be a little annoying because it’s completely impossible to move the egg once it’s appeared. You’re just stuck with this intangeable glowy blob that gets brighter every day- sucks if it appeared in the middle of your office! And it also means that it’s easier to accidentally create a monster. You might just not notice a speck of light that happened to land in an awkward place after your seemingly failed summoning. Then the poor lil thing hatches under the floorboards or something, and ends up wandering out all confused and becoming a scary stray monster in the woods! Homunculi aren’t really designed to be independant in the wild, they’re not merely domesticated but literally CREATED to serve humans... T_T

* OH and also the purpose of holy type holms is to be a ‘guidance’ familiar. They were crafted to be like an artificial computer that could potentially grow more intelligent than humans, and answer the great questions of the world. (Though, I mean, the equivelant of computers in an ancient magical civilization that has no idea what computers are!) These manmade angels are meant to be able to see into the future, and commune with the will of the real gods, and calculate things that aren’t humanly possible. They would be given seemingly high roles in society as advisors to great kings, with their opinions valued higher than any human in the country. But they had no real freedom, living their lives in cages with their only exposure to the outside world being their extensive programs of constant unceasing lessons in every discipline imagineable. Many of them would eventually snap under the pressure, leading to a reputation of the species as fiendish tricksters that live outside the boundaries of human morality and NEED to be restrained or else they’d be dangerous. This is likely why the rumours started of them being able to be summoned any time anyone speaks ANYTHING, with the implication that they might have existed forever and humans never really created them... So... yeah, they’re one of the few species of monster that’s actually seen some benefit from the art of alchemy becoming a hobby of the idle rich! Nowadays they’re just one in a million monsters that’re bred for status, with both their ‘holy’ and ‘demon’ reputations being long forgotten. And they get to see what it’s like to be pampered pets ^_^ Unfortunately, holy types are one of the longest living homunculi, so some elderly ones still remember those bygone eras and hold resentment towards humanity. Their secondary purpose of acting as living relics to the past... its kinda backfiring... (random idea for a boss battle, lol!)