Omake Week 2019, Day 6: For the first time since 2007, I let an entire calendar year go by without writing a single GrimGrimoire story. Part of that might be that I was so stunned that someone else was writing one ("A Devil of a Job" by lacrimalis over on AO3. You should go read it right; it's good!). But this lackadaisical attitude on my part must not continue! Hence, Cress and Shuck!
~X X X~
There were many legends and stories about Black Dogs.
From Albion and Chernyakhov in the west, through Illyria and Lusatia, the Ancient East and Cathay, to the Isles of the Crimson Dawn at the eastern reaches of the known world, there were stories of demonic hounds, ebon in color, that stalked the night hours. There was something about canine imagery, particularly in that dark shade, that acted on the human mind and caused devils and ghosts to take that shape, to say nothing of actual fae creatures and other supernatural hounds.
One of the most common and persistent stories was that of the barghest, a demon hound that stalked the lonely moors. It was said that to hear the barghest's howl was an omen of death, though the stories differed in whom that fate would fall upon.
Cressidor Blan-Virgine could easily see how such stories could have started. The howl of the barghest was a mournful note, a dull yet soaring sound that echoed against the sky with a sobbing lament. It seemed to carry not only the actual pain of death, the fearful end and the fall into a darkness no human could truly know, but beyond that all the grief, all the pain of the living left behind in this vale of tears, to know that the Reaper's scythe had inevitably carried the fallen one away and they would left without their presence.
It was nothing less than a portent, she thought, a foretelling of inevitable and bitter death.
Which was why the ten-year-old girl shoved open the glass doors and marched into the garden.
"Shuck!" she snapped, Very Not Amused. "Stop that howling right now; you'll annoy the neighbors."
Cressidor's dog, six hundred pounds of slightly overfed barghest, looked back at her, then growled up into the branches of a spreading oak tree.
Cressidor sighed.
"I told you, Shuck; you're not allowed to threaten the squirrels!"
He looked back at her and gave a sad little whimper.
"I don't care if they throw acorns at you. You started it by chasing them. Besides," she added her final, crushing argument, "you know that Mother thinks they're cute."
Which at the least was thematically appropriate. Invoking Amoretta Virgine's name meant that the deathly omen of the Black Dog's howl had been negated by the intervention of an actual angel.