Cressidor Blan-Virgine was a big girl.
At least, that was what the six-year-old told herself as she huddled beneath the sheets in her dark bedroom. Six years old was a lot! She was even taller than Gaff now, and he was a grown-up! Admittedly, he was also an elf, but even so it was still something. And big girls, she was quite sure, could solve their own problems without running to their mommies. Being self-sufficient was part of growing up.
Right?
She crawled to the edge of the bed and leaned way over, keeping a grip on one of the posts just in case she were to fall. Hitting her head on the floor definitely wouldn't be a good thing!
Carefully, she lowered herself down, her head dipping even further until her eyes came below the edge of the bed's frame. She peered into the deeper darkness below the bed, straining to see whatever she could. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, but it was still hard to make out anything. There were her slippers by the side of the bed...and then, she saw it. A hint of something. A deeper shadow in the darkness, forming an outline, a shape. Something.
Gritting her teeth with the effort, Cressidor managed to pull herself back up, getting back into the bed without falling out. But what was she supposed to do now?
There seemed to be only one remedy. Her friend Marcia had mentioned it once, so that meant she'd be acting on sound, reliable advice and not just guessing. Cress turned to the sovereign remedy used by children since time immemorial and pulled the covers up over her head. She remained like that as several long minutes ticked by.
It didn't work. The presence remained, filling her awareness, and she could not fall asleep.
This was serious!
Cressidor threw back the covers. She might be a big girl, but wasn't part of growing up knowing when you had a situation that you could not handle on your own? Big girls of six were supposed to show good judgment that little babies lacked, right?
These arguments firm in her mind, she reached for a silver bell that sat on her night-table and rang it twice.
~X X X~
"Lillet," Amoretta Virgine said as the bell mounted on a wall hook beside their bed rang.
"Mmmrmph?" was Lillet Blan's reply. Usually, the Mage Consul's comments were a bit more cogent and insightful, but then, she usually wasn't making those comments face-down on a pillow and half asleep after a long day of work in her laboratory.
"It's Cressidor."
Lillet raised her head and peered at her lover with unfocused eyes.
"Why can' you go see wha'is?" she managed a few recognizable words.
Amoretta did not look up from her book.
"Because it's your turn."
Lillet sighed and managed to push herself up to a sitting position in the bed.
"The next time I marry an angel, remind me to pick one who considers compassion to be a higher virtue than justice."
"All right." Amoretta turned a page.
Lillet gave up and laughed.
"I'm not going to win this, am I?"
"Of course not, dear." Now Amoretta smiled, as Lillet started looking for her slippers.
~X X X~
It seemed like it had been an awfully long time before Lillet came into Cress's room, but Cress figured that she was tired and that might have messed up her perceptions, so she graciously decided not to mention it.
"What is it, Cress, honey? Is something wrong?"
"There's a monster under the bed, Mama!"
A lot of parents would have made reassuring noises or tried to convince their child that they were completely safe, that there was nothing lurking in the shadows but their imagination.
Lillet Blan was not most parents.
She knelt down, bent over, and said in a loud, sharp voice, "You! Come out of there right now!"
There was a kind of rustly-slithery noise, and a couple of scaled limbs extended from beneath the bed. Cressidor watched in fascination as the whole creature pulled itself out with obvious reluctance.
"What is it, Mama?"
"It's a cockatrice," Lillet said of the odd cross between a rooster and a lizard. "It must have gotten out of the secure room when they called me for dinner. But you don't need to be afraid, Cress; the wards I put on you would keep you safe from its petrifying touch, and they're not aggressive animals. They're natural burrowers, so I think it just wanted a quiet, dark place to sleep."
"I know that," Cressidor said. Did her mama still think she was a little girl who'd get scared of familiars? "But it was snoring so loudly I couldn't fall asleep, even with the covers over my head!"