Stories from RhyDin & The Rings

(( 2012? Not sure. Also: contains content of hurting a cat. ))

“Suturi, come here, my dear.” The drawled voice drifted through the cave until it reached its destination, the monster-imp-childling. She looked up from the chessboard she had appropriated from her half-brother. The board itself was all that stood before her on the pedestal, pieces scattered on the ground about her. Stubby leathery wings perked up as she lifted both head and shoulders. “Coming, Mum!” she giggled, hopping off her backless perch and scampering through the swamp that canvassed her outer room, a design much sister to Tes’ forest.

She scampered into the living area, following the scent of the rainbow dragonelf. Dawn stood near the entrance, peering into the deep night that lay in wait just outside. “Your father and I have been conversing,” she began without turning around upon hearing the scrabbling of clawed feet to ground. “Perhaps it is time, my child, to give you lessoning of a more practical sort.” She turned then, garbed from head-to-toe in formed dusky leathers. “We have noticed your …. efforts … have perhaps not progressed as successfully as you would wish, and wonder if lessoning in basic anatomical study would be of some benefit to you. Would you be amenable to that?”

“Really, Mum?!” The imp bounced left foot to right foot in an excited stationary hop. “I wanna do it! When can we go? You look dressed already, are you going out with me? Are we gonna do it before you an’ Tes go off causin’ trouble?” She tittered again, small body wiggling and sending tiny wings flapping behind her in her comingled mirth and excitement.

“Teshid and I are not to be ‘causing trouble’, as you say, Suturi,” her mother scolded, wings mantling briefly. “We are to find a joint business venture and seek new opportunities.” She tilted her chin up in disgust at the very idea that she would be so gauche as to “cause trouble.” A snort followed before she continued. “Yes, dear, we are to go now. But perhaps it is better that you should find some manner of clothing before we venture outside for our lesson.”

“Aww, Mum!” Suturi whined, peering down with mostly-golden eyes toward her naked form. “Clothes’re boring and ugly and get in the way.” She stopped bouncing enough to stomp a foot. “Magic makes them smell funny and they itch!” She seemed poised to continue in a lengthy vein her denigration of clothing when Dawn raised a hand to forestall her. The girl’s mouth snapped shut in the face of her mother’s refusal to hear.

“There are some times, Suturi, when clothing has its benefits. For example, as this will be a messy lesson, clothing would grace you with the allowance of avoiding the baths you so detest.” It was truly a struggle to bring the impchild to cleanliness; oftentimes her mother needed to bind the girl before it could be accomplished.

Aha! The girl lit anew at Dawn’s reasoning and once more flounced with the excitement of the coming outing. “I’m gonna wear the guts and blood! That’s the best part, looking all smeared and gooey and darkly purple because of the stuff all over myself!” She snickered and patted her stomach. “Makes me look awesome!”

Dawn just sighed. “Suturi,” she tried again, feigning a patience she didn’t necessarily feel, “… some day you will need to understand that discretion is perhaps the more attractive avenue of action. Have you learned not that from your chess games with Teshid?” The child was precocious and not nearly as malleable and mellow as her other progeny – born or adopted. “If you wish to suffer tutelage under your father, there must needs be occasions where you cannot remain ungarbed, child.” Wings settled behind her as she lectured her daughter again.

Suturi’s head fell as she deflated, wings slumped behind her and limp, close to her back. “Okay, Mum,” she mumbled.

The elder of the two graced the top of her daughter’s head with a faint smile, relenting in her requirement that the girl be clothed. After all, she preferred the feel of sensuous sanguineous fluid across bared breast. Or, at least the fluid of the greater beings. “Very well, dear. You may remain as you are for this evening’s lessoning. However, it will not always be so. Do you understand?”

The younger peeked up between long black lashes, a monstrous grin crossing her lips at her mother’s allowance. “Yes, Mum!” Next time the battle would come again, and next time Suturi would win once more. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Her hands clapped in time with her chant and she spun in place.

Dawn sighed again, lifting a perfectly manicured hand. Fingers drifted in intricate patterns through the air between them and shadows drew from the walls, deepening as they neared the pair. They coalesced, misting over taller and smaller dragonelf, cushioning them as the mass lightened and shifted them as quick as thought.

The shadowed bubble took them to a windowless, spare room, shiny with the purity of new metal. Steeled shelves lined a wall, adorned with cages inhabited by a multitude of vermin and predators alike. The other walls of the room contained no shelving but rather instruments against the base sheeting and clutched by pipes and nails. A simple wooden slab held place of pride in the centerpoint of the room, a massive block ready and unsullied for the butcher.

“Mum!” Suturi screeched, skipping over to the cages. “Can we do the cat, first?!” She pointed toward the sole feline of the bunch, a common gray beast barely more than six months old. It mewed pathetically at the girl, extending its nose toward her in entreaty as much as the bars of its prison would allow.

Dawn strolled toward the creatures – daughter and animal alike – chuckling. “Yes, that would be acceptable.” She brushed a fingertip down the side of the cage and its entry sprung wide open. Reaching in, she grabbed the poor thing by the scruff of its neck and traversed the space from wall to block swiftly. She set the cat on the wooden slab with one hand while the other reached to a drawer beneath. Upon opening that drawer, she pulled forth several spikes and a thin, short knife. “Come, Suturi, I am in need of your assistance.” It wasn’t strictly true, of course, but the girl was meant to be an active participant in the activity.

Cackling with unholy glee, Suturi bounced to the center at her mother’s request and leapt clean onto the table. She crouched down, taking the animal’s scruff to keep it confined to the wooden block.

“Turn it over, dear,” the dragonelf instructed. The girl complied swiftly and Dawn drew the first spike into her grasp. “Hold it still,” was given next. Once the cat stopped squirming under the girl’s hold, Dawn drove the spike through the thing’s left front leg. She swiftly pinned their subject with the remaining spikes, eyes gleaming with the pained yowl the cat produced after being stuck.

She paused a moment, grinned at the daughter dancing in her squat on the wood, and lifted the knife. “This is where you start, dear.”

The knife touched the poor cat and the lesson begun.