faun

[shesepankh]

Saturday morning sees Bella with her notebooks about magic all in her knapsack, her medallion safety-pinned by its chain to her bra just in case she trips the wrong way, waiting with Charlie for pickup for the Avalon trip.

Comments

[castmyown]

Darren's just going to stand here surprised for a few seconds before he goes back to reading.

There are actually several books worth reading! Most of them aren't very useful to learning magic, though. But there are books on various mythical creatures and their habits. It's probably quite useful for Bella to get acquainted with the critters that she's unfamiliar with.

[shesepankh]

Bella assigns herself a miniature curriculum on critters and gets on completing it.

[castmyown]

There are lots and lots of mythical critters. It will take her a while if she wants to learn all of them in-depth, but she can get a lot of the basics in a short amount of time. Darren's earlier analysis of 'if it exists in mythology just assume it exists' seems to be generally correct. There are exceptions, including unicorns and vampires, but everything else - they're probably running around. Somewhere.

[shesepankh]

There are also kinds of lots of things, which Bella at first assumes is a property of gryphons and tries to memorize just like the more general categories, then realizes are a feature of most of the more populous species - there are even kinds of perytons; Darren and Savannah are less birdy than some of these illustrations.

Bella tries to avoid looking like she's taking unusually careful notes when she gets to sphinxes. (There are kinds of those too. She's pretty sure she's "Grecian".)

Once she is pretty sure she won't be confusing fauns for satyrs or harpies for garudas, she sets about looking up things that aren't exactly critters in the same way. Angels. Demons.

Lava monsters.

[castmyown]

Angels are mostly undocumented; there are a few mentions of them here or there, but they don't seem to be the type of creatures that stick around and answer questions. They show up, they fix a problem, and then they go.

Demons have much more background information, though a large amount of it is conflicting. They come from hellmouths, they can possess people - but for a lot of the details of how, of why - those are lost. It's generally agreed that they're unkillable, and can only be banished to their home dimension. 'Killing' them or destroying hellmouths slows them down, but it doesn't stop them.

After some research, the lava monster is identified as a cherufe, from Chile. It's known for volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and general disasters. The book notes that it's powerful and deadly, but it's weak to large amounts of water and it's not the smartest creature.

Of course, that brings up the question of why a creature from Chile came all the way to Forks to come after Bella.

[shesepankh]

Bella goes looking for Darren again.

"Found something."

[castmyown]

There he is, in his sanctuary of too many books.

"Oh? What'd you find?"

[shesepankh]

She shows him the lava monster.

[castmyown]

"... Huh. Chile? That's - strange, how did it get here? I mean at least now we know, but still."

[shesepankh]

"There aren't really volcanoes around here, even if its limitation to Chile in particular were a fiction."

[castmyown]

"Right, that's true, too. It's still - weird. It seems like there would be better options to come after you with that isn't so - exotic."

[shesepankh]

"Such as?"

[castmyown]

"Well. Honestly? A gun."

[shesepankh]

"Assuming they don't know enough about who I am to follow me to the drugstore some afternoon and make it look like a holdup gone wrong, and they have to identify me by species, that'd probably take a sniper, who's probably more worried about getting caught than a Cherufe is and also is a kind of difficult skillset to pick up in a weekend."

[castmyown]

"True. But where can you go to pick up a Cherufe hitman on a weekend? It says a bit about whatever's after you that that's easier than a gun."

[shesepankh]

"Yeah, they had a Cherufe going spare or just consider that the go-to solution, I guess."

[castmyown]

"That is a terrible go-to solution. 'Oh I think I'll try to kill someone,'" says Darren, in a bad impression of a British accent.

Because everyone knows all villains are British. That's how the world works. (No it isn't, he is being facetious.)

[shesepankh]

"I mean, once they have decided to kill someone, a Cherufe - or possibly exotic nonsapient monsters in general - is their go-to. They have a knack with them, they have an exotic nonsapient monster handler on the payroll, they have no liquid cash to get an untraceable sniper rifle but they do have a garage full of Purina Cherufe Chow, whatever."

[castmyown]

"Right, yeah, I got that part - I just do not approve of them. So I suppose we should start trying to figure out who had at least one Cherufe at their beck and call at that time and could get one to Forks within a weekend."

[shesepankh]

"I think maybe we should check to see if there've been weird fires elsewhere in the general northwesterly area. In case the Cherufe has been camping out receiving instructions for a while before you splashed it and may have been succeeding at other tasks."

[castmyown]

"... Brr, that's a scary thought. I'll look up weird fires when I get home, that's important information to know."

[shesepankh]

"It was leaving a strange enough trail that it might have looked like arson, I can ask Charlie to see if there's anybody worrying about serial arson among the cops in case there's a pattern news reports wouldn't mention."

[castmyown]

Darren nods. "Sounds good. I guess maybe we could also ask Mrs. Adams about bugbear senses, and ask if she knows much about its habits or its route before it found us?"

[shesepankh]

"Yes, that's a good idea," agrees Bella, snapping her fingers, "and if there's any - I mean, it's more likely to be some kind of critter, right, than a human? If there's any critters around who aren't ruled out on account of obviously not wanting me dead."

[castmyown]

"It could be a human that has been made aware of critters and knows magic," points out Darren. "Or something to get a Cherufe to work for them, some leverage of another sort or something."