A little bit long! Also, there's a bit of violence. But nothing that bad.
River sat at home, feeling a little down that Nora hadn't been able to visit that day. Adjusting her canvas, she pulled out her smartphone and snapped a quick picture of the painting. She typed in a text and sent it to Nora, praying she had her phone on silent.
Heyya Nora! Here's a painting I made of the farm.
River, 6:12 PM
What followed was a vast landscape with a river in the background, glimmering in the summer sun. Unicorns, black, dotted the canvas in the background, and one had his head on the left side. Trees, pink and white, lined the fence on the right side. It had a sort of charm about it, it was a truly beautiful sight.
Waiting until it was after 7;00PM, River went around and fed the cat, and the dogs. Her cat was a Yokai, a Japanese demon, and so were her dogs. It was common misconception (and myth) that Yokai could turn into humans. The most common Yokai could not, and were known as Yokai Spirit Familiars, like what witches had, and only the rarest type of Yokai were human: the demons, like what she was part of.
Witches were not born, by the way, they're made. Any monster could become a witch, with proper training, and it was something River was considering for a job. Her parents had laid out some career flyers on her desk, and she sat down to look at them and text Nora, who was off detention by now. River wandered what it was like.
What was detention like?
-River, 7:08 PM
I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Right now I'm riding the city bus home! See you tomorrow.
-Nora, 7:11 PM
River sat mulling over the job choices: witch, dragon tamer, unicorn-rancher, underworld guide, soul-guider, ghost-talker (aka psychic), prisoner-warden, and many others, mostly for the entertainment of the human population. She picked up the pamphlets and read each of them in turn, and their short synopsis:
Be a witch! Take control of the natural and supernatural elements and learn to make potions. Extra benefits to this job includes: unlimited access to both the human world and the supernatural world, and the underworld!, witching benefits, such as WitchCare, and other excellent life-plans, and also become a witchdoctor!
Be a dragon-tamer or a unicorn-rancher! Feed, care for, and raise magical beasts for meat, milk, food, silk, and other spoils! Extra benefits include: All access to the thousands of monster agriculture shops, stores, and many other places! Get a good salary and a partnership with many monster stories where these products are sold! Also take care of Yokai Spirit Familiars or open a pet shop!
I need a new familiar, River thought. The cat was her mother's, and the two dogs belonged to her father and sister. Her brother had taken his, a fruit bat, with him when he had married and moved out. She continued reading.
Be an underworld guide! Show newly-arrived souls and an occasional human or monster around the land of the dead, the world down under! Benefits include: Travel between the living and dead world without getting a passport! Take control of a particular section of the underworld, and even help keep up the ghost-sightings and other sightings shown on the internet to keep the traffic going!
Be a soul-guider or a ghost-talker! Lead souls to the underworld or communicate with them for the humans! Extra benefits include: Unlimited access to the underworld as a soul-guider or unlimited communication with spirts as a ghost-talker! Amaze humans or help souls, coupled with an amazing salary! These and more benefits for being either of these needed professionals!
Be a prisoner-warden! If you enjoy danger, consider watching the most dangerous inmates in the underworld or the human world: those monsters and humans with top dollar bounties on their heads! These prisons are what the humans call hell, complete with torture. But please make sure you have a heart of mercy before applying.
River rolled her eyes. Looking back, nothing interested her. She went to bed.
River didn't see Nora first thing that morning, they had agreed to meet up at lunch. As River walked across the hallway, the girl that had chastised Nora came up to her. "Amber Hano." said River kindly. "Am I right?" she tried to keep a straight, kind face.
Amber nodded than shoved her face in River's. "Yes. Where's your friend? I'm not done being mean to her."
"You're just jealous." said River quietly. "That she's prettier than you." River grinned, and Amber's eyes were wide. She was a pretty girl, but there was no doubt there were prettier girls in the school. Boys tended to go for the popular, unattainable women with the full package, which Amber had. She was a blonde, but not white-blonde like Angelica, she was more of a dirty blonde, and her eyes had a sort of blue tint. River thought she was a siren. It would make sense.
"Excuse me?" said Amber, but River shoved past. When Amber got back in her face again, River whipped around and looked at her, her eyes suddenly glazed over with a faint red shine. Amber took a step back. "You're part demon," she sneered.
River nodded. "So what?" she shoved past her again, but Amber seized one of her dark red wings, and pulled it out, hard. "Ow!" River exclaimed, and tried to take it back, but Amber had it stretched out. It hurt like your legs do when you bend down to touch your toes and haven't stretched in a while: it burned. River had only used her wings once, when she was a toddler, and her parents had taught her he basics of flying.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" said Amber with a snakey glee. Almost an evil glee. She shoved into her pocket and pulled out a small switchblade, and slowly began to cut into the tight flesh on River's wings. It bled, hot and warm all at once, and River made a screech: demon, and angel wings, were very sensitive, and their wings were very much like bird wings, thin and easy to break if you hit it correctly and if you knew how. And Amber obviously did.
It wasn't long before an earth shattering CRACK! broke the silence of the hallway. All the students in the hall glanced at River, to see her with a bloody shoulder and a wing tilting towards the ground. The other one was tucked securely behind her, but the hanging one was streaming with blood. A puddle of the red liquid was gathering at Amber's feet. She was grinning widely.
A teacher came out. River recognized him vaguely as the vampire history teacher, flanked by the werewolf assistant teacher and the angel health instructor. River felt nothing but pain and could only vaguely see Amber bringing down the blade on her shoulder again, and then on the stump that connected the wing to her back.
Like she was trying to hack it off.
"STOP!" said a teacher, and the werewolf assistant grabbed Amber before she could make another move. The witch doctor was called and River went with him, and before long, everything went dark.
River woke up all healed within the hour. The witch doctor bid her goodbye and told her to keep her mouth shut: if it came out that Amber did it, Amber's father would stop funding the school. A common story. That afternoon, she went to lunch and waited for Nora, clutching her bandaged wing. She forced a smile as she came, and asked her what detention had been like.
