Spawn of Satan

Part IV: Bedtime

Being hell-spawn born and bred, Bambi had believed that he had seen, heard, and smelt every horrendous torture and paralyzing fear known to all god-kind: Now that he was being chased by a strange, humanoid creature who insisted on calling him 'Squeak', he was forced to reconsider this position.

The creature—the girl—was terrifyingly quick; more than once he felt her fingers brushing against his leathery wings, which trailed behind him, fluttering in spasmodic panic. With another yelp of fear, Bambi dived around another corner, silently crying out for his mother.

"Bambi!" came a woman's voice, sudden and alarmed; with a spurt of speed, he hurled himself into his mother's arms, clutching at her neck and whimpering in fear. "Oh darling! Oh, my dear little Bambi; whatever's the matter?"

Bambi simply screwed his black eyes shut and, in small, quiet tremble, whispered, "It."

"'It?'" his mother queried, just as the girlish creature whom he had never seen before shyly enquired, "Si-Si—um—Your Imperial Majesty?"

For a moment, Her Infernal Majesty merely looked from one child to another; and then, to Bambi: "Darling, don't you recognise your own sister?"

Bambi's head snapped up, eyes widening in shock at his mother's words.

"Sister?" he repeated, twisting in her arms to look back at the confused creature now standing before them. "Sister?"

"That's right."

Bambi leaned as far out from his mother's embrace as he dared, until he was hanging upside-down, peering closely at this confused, uncertain creature.

"That's not Melusinë!" he yelped, and bared his teeth in a snarl at the impostor.

"Bambi!" his mother scolded as the girl whimpered and backed away. "No no, darling, come here, come here; Bambi won't hurt you…"

"That's not Melusinë," Bambi was insisting stubbornly.

"Bambi!"

"I am Pearl!" the girl squeaked indignantly, at which point Bambi pointed a triumphant finger and crooned victoriously, "See?"

Pearl merely fluttered her lashes in a silent bid at conveying her confusion; her jaw dropped open when she realised that her bewilderment went unnoticed by Her Infernal Majesty and Squeak. This had never happened before: in her short life, Pearl had been a great many things, but Ignored had never been one of them. She was at a loss of what to say.

"Oh, Bambi," Her Infernal Majesty continued to scold, "Really, you ought to show a little more respect—Not now, Melusinë," she dismissed just as Pearl was opening her mouth. This reaction only caused Pearl's blue eyes to widen further; confused, she stepped hesitantly towards the mother and son, looking up to see Her Infernal Majesty pull Squeak into a tight, loving embrace.

"Did she scare you? Hmm?" Her Infernal Majesty queried, rubbing her nose affectionately against her son's. Furrowing her brow, Pearl reached up and pulled at Si-Si impostor's skirt.

"In a minute, darling," the empress waved away, pulling the red material from out of Pearl's slack grip as she balanced her baby on her hip.

"W-W-W-What?" Pearl stuttered weakly, only to once again be Ignored. The girl didn't understand this at all; she was uncertain of how such a crime against nature could have ever occurred—until, that is, she looked closely at the Squeak held in the empress's arms.

No! she thought, startled at what she had seen. It can't be! Blinking in bewilderment, she reached up with a small white hand to rub first one eye, then the other; with this ritual successfully concluded, she looked again.

NO!

But the evidence was irrefutable:

Squeak was smaller than Pearl;
Squeak was sweeter than Pearl;
Squeak could also, quite possibly, be bouncier than Pearl.

NO!

And with this last conscious thought, Pearl's big blue eyes rolled into her head as she abruptly fainted.

"Oh dear," Her Infernal Majesty hummed, gently placing her small son on the ground the better to scoop her unconscious daughter up. "Poor little Melusinë; I was wondering when this would all catch up with her."

"That's not Melusinë," Bambi continued to insist as he watched his mother cradle the impostor in her arms. "She's too small to be Melusinë."

"Oh stop it, Bambi," Her Infernal Majesty brushed away, gently nudging him forward with her toe. "Come on, it's high time you were in bed."

Bambi expressed his disappointment with a snarling pout.

"I'm not sleepy," Bambi was whining half an hour later as his mother tucked him up in bed beside a still-unconscious Melusinë. "And I don't want to have that next to me," he added, nodding at the black-haired girl beside him.

"How many times must I explain it, Bambi?" Her Infernal Majesty sighed, ruffling his hair affectionately. "This was what your sister looked like when she was younger; she wasn't always a teenager, you know."

"But she was never a child neither," Bambi continued to undermine, and his mother rolled her eyes.

"She was a child long before you were hatched," Her Infernal Majesty stated in a tone that brooked no arguments, "And she's very confused right now; she still thinks she's human, the poor dear."

"She probably is human then," Bambi sniffled in disdain, wrinkling his nose when his mother reached up to scrub his horn clean with her embroidered sleeve.

"Oh no Bambi, she's very immortal; Melusinë simply can't remember anything of her previous life, that's all. Did you know that she sees and hears whatever she wants to see and hear? Why, whenever your father and I call her by her name, she thinks she hears us say 'Pearl'—"

"Pearl? Why Pearl?"

"Because that was her name, darling, when she was human. And did you know that she sees neither your father's nor my own true form?"

"No…"

"It's true, I swear it! Which is such a pity," Avie sighed, looking down at her long, aristocratic hands for a second before her eyes slipped closed in pleasure at the feel of her son stroking the blood-red feathers of her left wing. "She sees you in your true form, though," she purred contentedly as Bambi's fingers buried themselves in the small, fluffy mound from whence her powerful wings sprouted. "Which is very lucky for you, you know, considering how you have your father's horns and my wing structure."

Bambi giggled, flushing happily at the compliment.

"Do be nice to her, won't you? And remember, she will hear you addressing her as 'Pearl', for the time being; so if she says something like, 'Pearl is very sad', she's referring to herself, understand?"

"Why would she refer to herself in the third person?" Bambi quizzed, still gazing upon the girl with distrust.

"Because that's what she did as a human, and we think that it's a little quirk that will unabatedly continue. Now will you promise to look after her for me?"

"Only if she's my pet."

"Bambi!"

"She wanted me to be her pet," Bambi defended, widening his eyes in a way that he knew was endearing. "The first thing she said to me was, 'Pearl's little Squeak.' Mummy, she called me Squeak!"

"Aw, poor Bambi," Avie cooed with a peck on his forehead. "Don't worry, I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it. Night-night."

"No," Bambi firmly expressed, reaching out to grab her arm. "Me want a story."

"Bambi, I—"

"Story! Or Bambi will cry," he pouted.

"I thought that only Melusinë spoke in the third person," his mother teased. Bambi simply pouted and crossed his arms in a huff.

"See?" Her Infernal Majesty giggled. "She is your sister."

"Story! Story! Pout." The mother and son were so engrossed in their conversation that they didn't even notice the way little girl's nose wrinkled; they certainly had no idea that she was thinking, Oh God, how nauseating. (The hypocrite.)

"Alright, but your father will certainly be irritated; he thinks I dote on you far too much as it is, you know."

Bambi giggled, and grinned victoriously; he had no qualms about pushing Pearl to the edge of the bed in order to make room for his mother, nuzzling up to her once she had settled in.

"Can you tell me the one about how you and Daddy met?" he requested sweetly.

"Again?"

"It's a fun—interesting story," he justified, curling up in her arms.

"Where should I begin? Once upon a time…"

…paradise, heaven, whatever you wished to call it, was overrun with homosexuals. It could literally be dubbed a Gay Paradise, with all connotations of the word accounted for; for in the Early Days, homosexuality was the norm, rather than the exception. And presiding over these Cyprian, Bacchanalian delights was a swarthy, handsome, well, god who would later become known as Satan. (Or the Devil, or Lucifer, or Hornie, depending on personal preference.) The Ruler, as we shall dub him, had been elected as Supreme Master of the Universe due to his ability (attributed to his Supreme Divinity) to rise above such earthy, carnal lusts. (The reality, however, was simply that he was the First Heterosexual Male, and given the complete lack of females in the early universe…)

In the early days of his reign, the Ruler did not allow such small, petty differences between him and his subjects to interfere with his rule, or even his overall contentment; he was perfectly happy to dedicate his life to government administration and smaller pleasures, such as destroying duck habitats, shooting monkeys, admiring his image in looking-glasses, and the like. But as time wore on, something, at first just a gnawing, niggling thought, took hold; something which slowly infected his body like a cancer, leaving him a melancholic, sullen wreck.

The disease was called Loneliness. ("Aw," Bambi cooed on cue, whilst Pearl thought to herself, He should get himself a Si-Si, clearly unwilling to accept that the Ruler had claimed for himself the First Si-Si.)

But still, the Ruler continued with his imperial duties, although close friends and admirers (of whom there were plenty) had offered to, ah, 'relieve him of his loneliness.' ("How?" Bambi queried; although he had heard this tale a thousand times before, not once had his mother imparted this niggling little detail; she deemed it as insignificant.) Alas, the Ruler was far too strai—noble to accept such offers, much to his subjects' mass disappointment. And so he continued his lonely existence until, one not-so-special evening, as he laid in bed reflecting on his never-ending loneliness, something strange and entirely unexpected occurred:

It happened at that point where one dwelled on the brink of perfect sleep and perfect consciousness: the Ruler's eyes were closed, his lashes resting gently on his high cheekbones, when something soft and solid, of a decent weight, abruptly landed on his—on him.

The Ruler's body immediately stiffened, his jaw tightening as his hands gripped the exquisite sheets that covered him and acted as a barrier between him and this… foreign object. His first thought was that it was one of his swooning attendants, though how any of them could have entered his charmed chamber without his knowledge was beyond him; but then he realised that there was something… amiss with the creature. He supposed that it felt like a man's body in that it had two arms and a pair of legs; and yet there was something wrong with the creature's, um, torso; and now that he was fully awake, he realised that a little lower, there was something of extreme significance missing. ("What was missing?" Bambi piped up. "Oh shush, you.")

Slowly, the Ruler opened his eyes, and gazed curiously up at the bewildered face that peered down at him.

The creature's face was, he found, an attractive one: it looked very much like a man's face, and yet, not so. He saw that the face had in it all of the characteristics he had found attractive in a select number of his subjects'; a smaller forehead, large, (and rather bewildered, in its case) eyes, a small, gently-rounded nose, and full lips tinted a pale red.

However, the creature, charming though it undoubtedly was, would not spend another minute in the Ruler's bed; faster than either could blink, the trespasser had found itself thrown on the floor, where it immediately curled up in pain, its shoulders shivering as thin, plaintive bleats spilled forth from its lips. The Ruler, now firmly on his feet, disabled the charm he had placed on his chambers for his own protection from his more, ah, ardent followers with a resolved click of his fingers, and swiftly summoned a handful of slavering slaves.

"By the grace of—" cursed the first of the attendants, falling back as his eyes landed on the slender creature that laid whimpering on the floor, "What is that thing?"

The Ruler knew not, and told his servant as much; he knew only that it was late, that he wanted to sleep, that he would have the creature taken down to a cell, and that he would investigate the matter of its sudden appearance as soon as he'd finalised the irrigation plans.

"I think it's harmless," he added, eying the creature warily; it started at one of his attendants' touch, crawling away on weak, unsteady limbs; the creature was easily overpowered, its struggles futile and ineffectual as it stood precariously balanced on two shaky legs, snarling and whimpering as it fought for its freedom. Not once did he hear it utter a single word as it…

And he's sleeping, Avéralia noted with a fond smile, gently disengaging her youngest child's small, grabby hands from her wings. It never ceased to amaze her, how easy it was for her young son to fall abruptly asleep; it was a nightly miracle that never failed to thrill her.

"Sweet dreams, my darlings," she whispered to both children, carefully reaching over Bambi to caress her daughter's sleeping face. She started when she felt the girl's muscles flex, felt the head turning towards her.

"Pearl?" she asked softly. It was quite a nice name, really; short, simple, sweet… "Are you awake now?"

She felt the girl nodding against her fingertips; hesitantly, she pressed, "Are you alright? I know we gave you quite a fright a little while ago."

Pearl nodded, turning in the bed so that she was sitting up and facing Her Infernal Majesty, her expression sad and wistful.

"And what happened next?" she asked softly. "After the Ruler finds the 'creature', that is…"

The mother smiled and, climbing carefully over Bambi, settled herself comfortably between both children, gently hugging both to her. "Well…" she whispered softly, so as not to disturb her son, "The Ruler passed the rest of the night quite uneventfully, and when he awoke…"

TBC

AN: The updates may be few and far between, but I honestly haven't given up! Oh, and sorry for any inconsistencies, spelling, typing, or grammatical errors; I haven't really had time to read over it…