The Meeting

Wow, shocker I've got the next one out already? I know, it's a little soon for you guys to deal with, but hey I wrote it, and it's done. So I might as well post it.

I don't own anything from Hellboy, sadly enough. I'd love to have a Nuada of my very own.

The sunlight streaming through her window was what awakened Callie from her deep sleep. She hated to wake up before she wanted to, and it took her forever to roll out of bed and actually think for a moment. Yawning loudly, she stretched her arms over her head and smiled when her back cracked. This was the morning ritual for her. Get up, stretch, and lay back down. Get up, stretch, and lay back down again.

It was a tedious cycle.

But it got to the point where Callie realized that it could be time to get up. Her stomach was certainly a good reason for her to do so, its rumbling was going to wake up the entire neighborhood. That was something that her stomach insisted on doing and it annoyed her to no end. It had a habit of rumbling and groaning whenever there was dead silence and she was around a lot of people.

Placing her feet on the floor, she let the top half of her body lay flat on the body. It was a long time before she wanted to get up, even though her brain was yelling that she needed at least to get some food. "But I don't want to get up!" Callie said loudly.

But as soon as she raised her voice, she heard a racket from beside the bed and she finally remembered the little creature that she had discovered last night. Looking to her left, she nodded in conclusion. Yep, looked exactly like it looked last night, green, ugly, and totally out of her world. She was never someone to find things like this little bugger. Even in kindergarten when the rest of the kids were catching tadpoles and frogs and other gross slimy things she'd end up catching a couple weeds along with a beetle that everyone had seen before. So she wasn't the best person to get along with animals. When she was little she used to have a lot of animals. Dogs, cats, and fish were frequently in her house. But they always managed to die on her. The cats and dogs got hit by cars a lot, and the fish always boiled or managed some other means to escape her.

Walking over to the hamster cage, she tapped on the glass. "Good morning little one, did you sleep well?" But it seemed that the creature wasn't understanding her today, because as soon as she pressed her fingers against the glass it started to try and gnaw at her fingers. Quickly yanking her hand away, she stared at the creature that seemed totally engrossed in chewing its way out of the hamster cage. And at the moment, it seemed like it could succeed.

Starting to panic, Callie was ripped from her thoughts when the doorbell rang. "Who in the world-?" No one ever came to her house. Not even when she was still living with her parents did anyone come to their house. They would either call or send mail rather then come to their small house. And at the moment, she didn't know anyone but Mrs. Peterson that knew she was home, and Mrs. Peterson was in a walker, she wouldn't come over to Callie's home just to say hello. The old woman would rather call since it was rude to hang up on someone, but it wasn't as rude to say that you were busy and the house was a mess. Groaning, but realizing she couldn't dodge the old neighbor any longer, she made her way towards the door.

The stairs still creaked under her feet, but in the bright light of the day it wasn't as scary as last night. Shuddering, she looked around at the house as she made her way to the front door. It was a pretty freaky house to be totally honest. All the white sheets covering every piece of furniture looked as though they could hide some kind of monster. "Oh Jesus Callie, you've been watching way too many horror movies." Callie murmured to herself. And that was totally true, she was a slut for horror movies. Every new one that was out, she just had to watch. It wasn't as if she liked horror movies, in fact she hated them with a passion. She just had an addiction that was very hard to throw.

The doorbell rang yet again, and Callie felt annoyance start to grow in her chest. She hated it when people started to ring the doorbell more then once, finding it more then a little annoying and something that was extremely rude. "I'm coming!" She yelled, hoping that her voice would make the person stop ringing the doorbell.

Running her hands over her wrinkled shirt she tried to smooth down the fabric. Of course someone had to show up at the same moment that she wakes up from sleeping in her clothing all night and from forty eight hours of no sleep.

Opening the door, she plastered a fake smile on her face and said in a cheery voice, "Hello! Sorry I couldn't get here early I was just very tired from my… trip!"

Standing at the door was the last person in the world Callie would have expected to see, but was so impressed to see at this very moment. Liz, her oldest friend from the time when they were in kindergarten and eating glue together, was standing at the front door with a basket of muffins in her hands. "Liz!" Throwing herself into the arms of her friend, Callie knocked the muffins to the ground and stuffed her head into the neck of the woman outside. It had been so long since she had seen a friendly face, and the face of this woman was the one thing that she thought she could have only wished for.

"Oh Callie! It's so good to have you home! Where have you been all these years?" Even though at this moment, all Liz could think about was that she didn't want Callie to touch her, she still returned the hug. True, they had been friends when they were little, but Liz didn't know the woman standing in front of her. She had been gone for six years! And those six years were the years that everyone grew up the most, and changed the most.

Pulling out of their embrace, Callie smiled into her friend's face. "Oh Liz it's been so long. I'm so sorry that I just up and left you all like that, I know it was probably the worst time to do that. But I'd graduated, and my parents died in that awful crash! I needed to get away!" Pulling Liz into the house, Callie grinned as she gestured to the house around her. "Awful isn't it? Exactly as the way I left the damn house."

Liz stared around the house with an odd look on her face. Walking into the living room, she stared at the couch where they had used to play. "Wow, it's so weird. It's like looking into a haunted house or something like that."

And it was, Callie realized. The house look deserted, which it had been for far too long. "You're right Liz," she said with a mischievous grin on her face. "It's far past time to turn this into a real home. Off the sheets go then."

Grapping the corner of the sheet in front of her, she yanked it off the couch with a theatrical pull. Brandishing the sheet next to her side, she then crumpled it into ball and tossed it over her shoulder. Liz, shaking her head, said quietly, "You haven't change at all have you?"

Callie shook her head slowly, and then grinned. When she grinned she showed her teeth way too much, Liz thought. It had been a long time since she had seen her friend, but it seemed that she hadn't changed much at all. Callie was wearing clothing that she had worn around her friends, jeans and a flannel shirt, but she still had the same face, same hair. Her forehead was a little too high, her nose a little too thin, and her mouth was almost comically too much for her head. But her mane of blonde hair framed her face in a wild tangle of curls that gave her a more exotic look then anything. When they were younger Liz always had wanted her hair, saying that there was so much that Callie could do with her hair that Liz couldn't do at all. But Callie would always shake her head, saying that it tangled too easily and it was always in the way. Their high school life had been spent being angry at one another, making up, and then getting angry all over again about things neither of them would remember the next morning.

As the two ripped the sheets from the furniture and piled them up in one big bundle in the middle of the room, Liz felt like she was being brought back in time. They used to do stuff like this when they were little, not exactly restoring rooms from their past, but crazy spontaneous stuff. But at the same moment that she was about to go back down memory lane, she heard a loud crash from upstairs and stopped what she was doing. "Callie? What in the world was that?"

When she turned to look at Callie, she saw her friend holding her hand over her mouth. "Callie?"

"Oh my gosh!" Callie shouted. "I can't believe I forgot about it! The poor thing must be starving!" And with that, Callie rushed up the stairs, taking the steps three at a time.

Liz tried to rush after Callie as fast as she could, but her legs weren't as long as her friends. Sure the girl would hide those legs at any chance, but the girl had legs that went for miles. Once she finally reached the top of the stairs she had a good view of exactly what Callie was trying to corner in the back of the room. "Callie don't touch that!"

Liz knew exactly what that was, and was more then a little afraid of what it could do to her friend. It was one of the creatures called a "tooth fairy". They were called this because they had an unusual taste for calcium, which is found in skin, bone, and the most concentrated area of calcium was the teeth. Hence the name tooth fairy. Liz and Red had gone through a rather unfortunate accident with the tooth fairies last year, they had lost two good men to the creatures' hunger. Liz could still see them being devoured. One man's face had been ripped off, but she could still see his teeth and muscles below the skin screaming for help. And she knew, this was the time when she needed to call for help. Even though she knew that it was not the time to bring Red out into the open again, but Liz also knew that he was probably out in the bushes or behind her car waiting for her to yell for help. He was always so protective of her, and this morning he had made it quite clear that he didn't like the idea of her going to Callie's house by herself.

"Red!"

Right on queue, she heard the front door be broken down, and the thundering of her love rushing up the stairs to help her. Even though she didn't need any saving from anyone, she still loved the idea that Red would still come rushing to her rescue with guns blaring.

Callie meanwhile, was completely oblivious to the fact that Liz was so upset, and was still trying to get the creature to come to her while it was chewing on what looked like one of her socks. "Come here little one, what has gotten into you this morning? You were so nice to me last night and for some reason today you feel the need to chew on my stuff and ignore me?" Holding her hand out towards it, she wiggled her fingers. Shaking her head when it watched her swaying fingers with growing interest, she said quietly, "You need to come to me if you want me to get you something to eat. You've got to at least understand that." The little thing cocked its head to the side when she said eat, so she said it again. "That's right, eat, food. I'm going to get you all that you could ever want to eat if you will come with me. But you've got to come here."

That was when Callie heard her door being broken down and a moose coming up her stairs. "What the hell?" Her hand was still on the ground, and when she felt tiny pointed feet step onto her hand, she quickly stood up with her fingers supporting the creature. "Liz? What in the world is coming up my steps right now?"

She never expected what she saw when she walked out onto the stairs, and was shocked to a point where she had to lean against the wall to steady herself. A very large, very red demon was staring at her from the top of the stairs. And Callie couldn't stop the steady increase in breaths that she was taking. She felt as though her heart was about to break from her chest it was pounding so hard. The sight of the monster in front of her opened up way too many doors for her to want to understand right now. Was it possible that there was actually a hell? Was this the devil himself come to collect her soul? She couldn't die now, she didn't want to die! And how in the world was she dying right at this minute? Clutching at her chest, she gasped as she stared in horror at the beast in front of her. His horns were shaved down in an effort to look normal, but that did nothing to help him.

But for some reason, Callie had the feeling that the beast wasn't looking at her. When she followed his line of vision, she realized that he wasn't staring at her, he was staring at the creature she held in her hands. When he spoke to her, his voice was rough and deep. "Why are you holding that in your hands woman?"

The tone made her bristle, but she brought the creature closer to her chest and clutched it safely next to her heart. "What is it to you?"

Liz's voice interrupted her newly awakened nightmare, and the panicked tone in her voice made Callie's head swivel around to stare at her. "Callie, you don't know what you're holding. That thing is extremely dangerous, it could kill you!"

But when Callie looked down at the creature in her hand, she couldn't imagine it killing her. It was so small, so innocent! And it was staring up at her like she was the greatest thing in the world. There was no way that she could believe either of these two people who were trying to convince her that something so small would be able to hurt her. It wasn't possible that something as tiny as what she held in her hand could hurt her. It just wasn't possible. "You wouldn't hurt me would you little one?" When she whispered this to the creature in her hand, she watched its face look up at her. It stared for a moment, before nodding its head quickly, and then pausing and shaking its head just as quickly. Looking up in triumph at Liz and the beast next to her, she said, "See? I told you, it wouldn't hurt me even if it could."

The red demon stared at her in shock, and then looked at Liz. "Perhaps we should bring her to headquarters. And call in the fish boy, he'd know more about this then any of the morons there would be able to guess at."

Liz nodded quickly before walking towards Callie. "Callie, there's a lot I'm going to tell you right now that you aren't going to understand, but you have to believe me alright? All of this is true. And the proof is sitting down in your hands, in your ability to calm it down, and standing in front of you."

When Liz and Callie walked back into the bedroom, Callie quickly grabbed an old cuttlefish shell from her fish tank to feed to the creature. She figured it was hard enough for it to chew on for a while, and dusty enough for it to make a mess and have fun. Sitting down on her bed with the creature in front of her so she could keep an eye on it, Callie said to Liz, "Well then?"

Then Liz started to explain her and Hellboy's story. How he was born in Germany during World War II, and how she met him. She explained how she was able to make fire, even showing Callie the truth when she doubted it. The war and last year's events were also among the stories that Liz told Callie. At the beginning, Callie refused to believe what Liz was telling her. There was no way in the world that fairies were real. And there was no way that she happened to find one in her closet that she, and no one else they knew, could speak to it. But in the end, she did agree to come to the facility with Liz and the demon she now knew as Red. Why? Because somehow in her heart, she hoped to God that this was all true, that all this fairy shit was actually true and that somehow she was a part of it.

Callie had always wanted fairy tales to be real, and somehow her wishes had been granted.

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