After a surprisingly undisturbed sleep, you awaken from your dreamless sleep and stretch your entire body, wincing slightly as your shoulders and arms protest slightly as they throb. You find that King has joined you again in your room, sleeping on one of the corners of your sleeping bag. Carefully you remove yourself from the bag trying not to disturb him even more and grab a change of clothes before getting ready in the bathroom.
When you exit the bathroom you hear the subtle shifting from upstairs and figure that Eda will soon be awake if she isn't already. You decide that today you'll be making a mixture of an American and Japanese breakfast. The first thing you do is unseal a bag of rice from one of your many seals and set about to cook it in a pot of boiling water since you have doubts that you'll find a rice cooker anytime soon. In another pot of boiling water, you submerge a couple of griffin eggs while also cracking a few more for omelets.
The boiled eggs don't stay in the pot for long, mostly because you're going for slightly less cooked soft boiled similar to poached, to make something called onsen, or hot spring, eggs. This however leaves you with enough time to personalize three omelets and scramble the remaining eggs for Hooty. You plate up the dishes before checking the rice and fluff it once before taking it off the heat. You figure you'll be the only one eating it with the meal, but figure you can turn it into either fried rice or rice balls for lunch today or tomorrow. You set the plates on the table along with your onsen egg on a bed of rice in a small bowl just as Eda and King wander into the room, both still half asleep by the looks of it.
You and Eda clean up after breakfast, and as you do you can all hear a knock at the door. After a moment the door swings open and you can hear Hooty speak a few muffled words that you cannot for the life of you make out. The moment he floats into the room you can tell why his voice was inaudible in the first place, in his beak is a picnic basket which you raise an eyebrow at. He sets the basket down on the table and you wave him over with his portion of breakfast allowing Eda to look over the basket. You scrape his food into his mouth as Eda seemingly reads a note from the basket, and you finally can no longer hold back your curiosity and ask what the picnic basket was for, while mentally wondering if Yogi was going to come looking for the thing, before you realize that Eda is looking at you with a raised eyebrow.
At that moment, King clambers up her shoulder and reads the note aloud. All you can hear are the words, 'child' and 'rewarded' and a chill goes down your spine. It's been years since you have had to take care of a child, and even longer since it was a child you actually cared for, and you can still remember how that ended. Carefully you start to scooch backward out of the room, eyes firmly locked on the basket where the child no doubt lies. Your eyes dart around you trying in vain to find something to get you out of babysitting duty, and as luck would have it your eyes land on a pile of books you had discovered the night before during your cleaning. You faintly remember Eda telling you they were library books, and your brain seizes the idea before another one can form.
With a burst of speed, you dart over to the stack before darting out the door, yelling back that you just remember you had something to do in town, and that you'll return the books while you're there. The front door slams behind you, and you get maybe ten feet from the door before an ear-piercing shriek fills the air. You finch, remembering, and book it toward Bonesborough feeling something settle on your back.
It takes you a few minutes to get into the city, and then a few more to actually find the building itself. As you make your way up the steps leading into the building you cross paths with the nose demon from the Conformatorium carrying a book just as if not bigger than she was, making you mentally clap your hands at the demon's strength before you wonder if she was that strong due to her species or due to a gym routine or something similar. The moment you enter the Library the stack of books in your arms loses all weight and starts to float over to a desk that you can only assume to be the check-in/check-out desk where they fly through a spell circle that beeps and flashes red with each book.
With each beep you finch, remembering the disappointing look (read glare) your old librarian would give you if you returned a book late or in terrible condition and decided to book it away from there before witch manning the desk could notice you. Since this is your first visit you decide to wander through the bookcases, look through both the first and second floors searching through the various book titles on display. You even somehow manage to find yourself in the Adult section, sectioned off in a corner on the second floor, your eyes land on a book titled Mistresses Of The Evening and you can feel your face heat up on the... suggestive book cover before you get out of there.
Eventually, you somehow manage to find yourself in the kid's corner of the Library, which is where you find Amity of all people. Sitting in front of her are some small children of various ages, though none seem to strike you as particularly young. For a moment all you can do is watch from the slide lines as the witchling you've slowly been getting closer to shows off a nicer side you had no idea she had hidden away, which when you think about it makes sense. For a moment in your mind's eye, you could just imagine the sight of a witchling, maybe around two or three, with slightly pointed ears, bright gold eyes, brown hair highlighted with red, and two faint whisker marks on their cheeks before you realize what you had been thinking. Tears form in your eyes before you stubbornly blink them away, today was not a good day for your memories or imagination it seemed.
As Amity reads to the children gathered before her you look through the various books, smiling slightly as you come across a book that reminds you of an old fairy tale from your original childhood. You listen to the tale of Otabin the Bookmaker, a story about friendship you believe, before coming across three books that pique your interest, Footprints In The Mist by Lance Seemour, Shadows In The Mirror by Gale Shepard, and The Witch With Golden Eyes by Dana T. Wilde. These books seem to straddle the line between books for kids and books for teens, and you figure if nothing else you could read them with King. The first two end up being mystery books, the first being a crime mystery while the second is a thriller/horror mystery, and the third is an adventure romance book featuring a sapphic love story which is the sole reason you pick it up in the first place.
You just barely manage to seal the three books away when you realize that Amity is no longer reading, just in time to turn around and have her standing mere inches away from you. It takes everything in you not to jump back like a scared cat and instead, you barely manage to suppress a flinch. You open your mouth to speak but the witch before you beats you to it, "What do you think you're doing here?" and for a moment you let that float in the air before you answer, "What everyone who comes to the Library for Amity, to find a book to read." The moment your words seem to connect in her brain you watch as she lightly blushes and mutters a faint "fair" that you have trouble hearing even though you're mere inches from her.
A moment of stillness settles over you both before you ask if she was working here or was just a volunteer, though you half expected her not to answer. When she mutters that it was only volunteering for now, you were only half surprised, you knew many bookworms, yourself included, that treated their libraries as their home away from (hell)home. You ask a few nonsense questions about different books here in the library through painful small talk as the two of you walk together out of the kid's corner.
The two of you barely get two feet out of the kid's corner when a cry of "Hey Mittens!" pierces the air. A blush settles on your companion's face as a look of disapproval settles on yours. Approaching the two of you are two green-haired witchlings that are either your age or a year older, and based on the similar features between the two of them and Amity you can only assume that they are siblings, with the two possibly being twins. The masculine presenting one holds out a pink rabbit lunch box, and says with a smirk, "Mom says to stop forgetting your lunch." Amity takes a step forward and snatches the bag out of his hand before turning on her heel and storming away from her siblings while throwing over her shoulder, "You can leave now," and you can almost feel the air around you freeze over from the iciness lacing her voice.
You watch as your... tentative friend walks away, and you can tell that she either has a strained relationship with her family or actively hates them, you have no idea which at this point. You turn your attention back to the twins and narrow your eyes at them as they lean in so close to you that you can smell what they had for breakfast. It takes everything in you to not punch their lights out, so instead you settle for pushing the feminine presenting one away, and right out shoving the masculine one when he winks at you. With a slightly pissed-off look on your face, you fold your arms in front of your chest and let out a soft resounding growl using a hint of Kuruma's chakra to lace it with a sense of ferality.
You watch as the smirks flicker slightly as a moment of unease flashes across their faces before they return to normal. The female softly coughs before stating, "You're the one that Mittens has been talking about." Despite it being posed as a question you can tell it's a statement more than anything. "If Amity has been talking about someone, I'm afraid that I can't concur if I'm the subject of said talks, I'm not that conceited." Before you push past them, making sure to harshly bump shoulders with both of them as you do so. You continue to wander around the library for a few hours, sometimes bumping into Amity as you do so.
Early in your wandering, you can hear the twins messing around the library causing mischief. Usually, you would be happy to help with the mischief-making or pranking, but what you see them do is downright malicious to not only the patrons but the librarians as well. The moment you see one of the librarians have a nervous breakdown you step in and help escort the man, named Gary if the nametag is to be believed, away from the fiction/non-fiction section. As you escort him away, you cross paths with Amity and the librarian from the front desk quickly walks past you seemingly on their way to deal with the twins.
You bring Gary to the front desk and watch with great satisfaction as the twins are escorted out of the library. As Gray is 'handed' off to his co-worker(s) your eyes flicker over the front desk and land on a poster that states the library will be closing early this evening due to the Wailing Star tonight, which piques your interest. Not knowing if this was common knowledge or what you head over to reference desks, that had crystal balls on them that acted like computers. You quickly figure out that while these crystal balls act like computers, they are more akin to the dial-up era of computers rather than the computers of the late 2020s that you had when you originally died.
It takes a while to find a relevant page, and when you do all the article mentions is that The Wailing Star is an event that happens once every six years and that it affects books, though it doesn't mention what it does to said books. 'This explains the reason why the library is closed tonight, but at the same time it really doesn't. This might bare some looking into,' you think. It also conventily gives you a reason to avoid the Owl House until tomorrow if you're lucky, which is when you remember that you're not quite certain when the babysitting will be over.
With this on your mind, you start to scour the library discreetly looking for an area where you could hide until nightfall. It takes several passes, having to pause to peruse the shelves to not draw further suspicion, but you do manage to find a spot up and out of the way where you could hunker down for maybe an hour. You discreetly look around before summoning a clone and hopping up to your hiding spot for the next hour or so. The clone follows its mental orders and leaves the building, making it seem for all intents and purposes that you have left the building. Beyond that, you hope that it won't get into too much trouble while pickpocketing the locals while under a transformation of a plain-looking masculine presenting witch.
You lay up in your little hidey hole for an hour, then when nearing the two-hour mark, something happens, something has happened to your clone. As the clone from earlier dissipates your mind is assaulted by memories that are both your own and not your own. You hold a hand to your temple as the memories try to righten themselves. It takes a few moments but you manage to organize the memories. Your clone had only managed to pickpocket ten different people in the few hours that it had been active, and of the ten only one of them had actually noticed that they were being pickpocketed in the first place.
In another pocket, you had managed to pickpocket an item list that had the names of several potion ingredients on it, which you figured you could go over with Eda later and try to figure out what potion(s) they could have been trying to create just based on the list. In two other pockets, you manage to find a jackalope foot and a wooden whistle with gold inlay filaments carved around it. In three different pockets, you find three rings made out of wood, iron, and silver. Two other pockets contain two unknown potion vials. The final pocket your clone picks contains quite a bit of cash, which they manage to liberate 210 snails, giving you a nice nest egg for your music equipment. In the end, the clone leaves the city and heads back to the Owl House where they can hide the spoils within your basement base, scaring the other clones down there, which causes them to fling a kunai into your pickpocket clone, dispatching them. You can only hope your sealing clones will gather up the dropped loot and stash it for you but beggars can't be choosers.
You figure that the library has closed for the evening by this point since you can't hear anything, even when you enhance your hearing using Kuruma's chakra. Still, you engage a bit of caution as you pull yourself out of your spot, pausing whenever you think you hear something happening further within the library, but you realize that it's mostly just your paranoia kicking in rather than actually hearing something.
For the first hour of scouring the empty library, you keep yourself stuck to the ceiling using your chakra to ensure that no one, if there is anyone there, would get the drop on you. Once you're sure you're completely alone in the building you drop from the ceiling and land without a sound on one of the sturdy bookshelves with barely a sound, subconsciously cushioning your landing with chakra since that had long since become second nature to you in this life (this habit would certainly be a hard one to break in your next life, but for now you were enjoying your no fall damage 'hack').
You take a small break for dinner since you had somehow skipped lunch, making sure to eat far away from any books, you were a ninja, not a heathen. By the time you had finished, you had maybe an hour before nightfall, and you spent it wisely... mostly by picking the beast keeping shelves clean, and learning about the various wildlife here on the Isles. You eventually get suckered into reading a book about extinct species, and you could only hope that someone didn't pull a Hammond and bring these guys back to life, because looking at some of the species, you couldn't help but think that witchkind were fortunate that some of them were dead.
You could have spent the entire night reading that book series, but as you're reading about something called a Long Clawed Dragon Ferret you start to notice that the book in your hands is slowly gaining a light blue hue to it. You just barely bring it away from your face when you start to hear something echoing around you, and it only takes a couple of moments to realize that the noise is coming from outside, and is rapidly approaching. Your eyes flick up to the stained glass window located in the middle of the library and watch as a shooting star races by, all the while the noise, that you now realize is wailing, grows louder and then quieter.
It takes a moment for you to realize that it was the Wailing Star before your eyes are drawn to the book in your hands as something rises from the pages. A face, roughly the size of a baseball, looks at you, and you realize that you are looking at an LC Dragon Ferret at the same time the thing tries to take a bite out of you. Instinctively, you slam the book shut, trying to squish the LCDF between the pages before, pausing as you realize that the book no longer appears to have something between the pages. Slowly it dawns on you what the Wailing Star might do to the books and you hesitantly open the book to a random page again. Only to slam it shut before an Imperial Spider can crawl even further out of its pages. A shiver of disgust goes down your spine, Why oh why did it always have to be spiders.
As the situation settles upon you, you look out upon all the books contained within the library. A smile slowly works its way onto your face before a large grin splits your face in half. You slide the Extinct Species of the Boiling Isles book back and turn your attention toward the other books on the shelves. Far above you, you find a book simply titled Ornithology of the Boiling Isles. When you get it in your hands you carefully open the book to its index and carefully scan it until you come across a bird species called Knee Owls, which you attribute to being a species native to the Titan's Knee. You thumb the pages until you come across the correct page and slowly open it waiting for something dangerous to pop out but all that does is a small white owl, much smaller than Owlbert. You extend a hand slowly before it and softly rub its forehead with your thumb with a small smile on your face. You stand there for a moment just enjoying, remembering an old friend before something unexpected happens.
Far away from you, probably closer to the entrance of the library you hear something, something the Knee Owl also hears if the tilted head and low cooing noise it makes is any indication. Your eyes narrow slightly before your hands carefully close the book between them, trying to make as little noise as possible. Carefully you reshelve the book before hopping on top of the tall shelf and sneakily parkour across the shelves until you get closer to the entrance. Laying down on the shelf below you, you peer over the side and watch as two familiar witchlings (at what point does a witchling become a witch, you wonder) strut their way along the shelves. With narrow eyes, you track their progress through the library and once they get a certain distance away you drop to the floor and stalk them through the library.
Despite the fact that you remember them wearing the same uniform as Gus, which you're almost certain that they're illusionists, they don't seem to be very good at picking up details of their surroundings. But you give the twins the benefit of the doubt since one, you're a ninja, and two, they are probably not expecting anyone here other than themselves. You watch as they carelessly pull books off the shelves and open them with a laugh before haphazardly closing them and shoving them back on the shelf. As you go past each shelf you make sure that each book is properly shut before continuing to stalk them.
Your hunt eventually leads you to the romance section of the library, where the masculine twin grabs ahold of a book and pulls it halfway off the shelf before the faint sound of grinding gears and shifting wood greets your ears. You watch in slight wonder as the bookshelf sinks into the wall behind it and slides to one side to reveal a secret room. With narrow eyes, you watch as the twins smirk at one another before entering the room. A pit of unease opens in your core as you approach the room. The twins don't seem like book lovers, but they are related to one, you can only hope that this is a misunderstanding.
Unfortunately, your hopes are dashed as you hear them talking about a diary, Amity's diary that is. The unease within you turns to a sudden hot inferno as a snarl works itself onto your face and without even realizing it your eyes turn red and the pupils turn into slits, your canine teeth grow sharper and longer, and your hair stands on end, as if you had stuck a fork into an electrical socket, before somehow parting into nine equal pieces near the ends. Before you can think twice about what you're about to do you slide into the hidden room. "What in Titan's name do you think you're doing?" Your voice reverberates through the room, the rough scratchy tone enhancing the upset in it.
Before you, the twins spin around and freeze as they catch sight of you in your pissed-off state. Slowly you stalk toward them, circling them coming from the left when you notice that the books along that wall are slightly more colorful than the other. The room that you're now in is darker than the main library but is lit up by several glow-in-the-dark stickers, or whatever the BI equivalent is, and a candle that is half melted which tickles you as slightly odd. You keep your eyes on the twins as you approach, internally smiling as you watch them try to keep a large distance between you and them. Eventually, your places have been switched. You are near the desk against the back wall, and the twins are near the entrance.
A noise not far from the entrance catches your attention briefly before you fake lunge at them lips pulled back in a fierce snarl. You watch with a sick sense of satisfaction as the two before you scramble out of the room, tripping over each other before one stops not far outside the entrance, which in turn causes the other to slam into the first's back, knocking both of them to the ground. With a smirk on your face, you take one last look around the room making sure that nothing is seemingly out of place, nor knocked over, mostly because you rather not find out what would come to life from the books, finding nothing. Your eyes do however land on a set of books prominently displayed on one shelf. The colorful book cover is what catches your attention first, native red BI trees frame a gothic-style mirror that drips with red blood. In the mirror itself, stands who you could guess is the book's protagonist, a young witchling standing beside an older one along with an animal of some sort, or possibly even a demon. They stand at a desk piled high with books and loose-leaf papers. Across the top is the book's title, aptly named, The Blood Mirror, while the subtitle is written across the bottom Harmony of the End.
For a moment you think you recognize the book, but after a moment you realize that while this is the first time seeing this book it's not the first time you've seen the series. You remember finding a book titled The Blood Mirror The Blue Moon from your looting of the Conformatorium, which you think you still have on you actually. The only reason why you hadn't read it already was because you found that it was the fifth book in the series, and while you could technically read the books out of order you figured that you would at least attempt to find the other four before reading number five.
You rip your eyes from the book, after catching sight of books 2-4 behind book one before your eyes land on a slimmer book just next to the series, that somewhat matches the aesthetics of The Blood Mirror books. You pry your eyes from it and casually walk out of the room to find the twins currently getting scolded by Amity while they continue to lie on the ground. Her eyes snap up ready to turn her vitriol to you when she catches sight of your appearance. For a moment the library is silent as the two of you look at one another before her face flushes a light pink before she looks away in what you think is embarrassment. As she deals with whatever that is, you turn your attention toward the twins. A growl rumbles in your throat before you speak, "Do you wish to tell her what you two idiots were doing or shall I?"
For a moment the two stare at you, mouth agape before Amity focuses her attention back toward you, and completely dismissing the twins asks you to tell her what her siblings were up to. You explain that the twins had been looking for her diary within the secret room while keeping the twins pinned in place with a well-placed glare. When the twins try to deny their wrongdoings you snap at them, and then when they try to tell you it was for Amity's well-being, you can no longer handle it and (only, thankfully) verbally rip into them. You ask how going after her diary was ever a good thing, and when you hear their plans for it, you can no longer contain your rage.
Without a conscious thought your hands lunge forward and fist the collars of their shirts and pull them up into the air. But before you could do much more a hand grips the wrist of your dominant hand. Instantly your grip loosens, not enough to let the two go, but enough that they are no longer dangling from your hand. You only let them go after Amity tells you it's okay and she'll handle this. As you watch the verbal beat down, you finally manage to calm down enough that the features from Kuruma start to recede. The last thing to disappear is the red eyes and they only do so after you lock eyes with Amity after she is done with her lecture. You motion for her to enter her hidden room and without another look toward her siblings she does. Your eyes flick down to the twins and you speak in a soft, deadly tone, "If I ever hear about you bullying and gaslighting your sister ever again... well let's just say that you'll never see me coming, got it?" You follow after Amity only after you get two quick nods.
After you enter the room, you can hear the sounds of squeaky shoes on the tile floor as they make their way out of the library. You stop just slightly out of the doorway and watch as Amity clears the shelf that you had noticed earlier. You're only slightly surprised to find that the thinner book is her diary but you're more focused on her emotions right now. You lightly rap the wall with a knuckle to let her know that you're there and she looks at you for a moment before returning to what she was doing. You lean against the wall just waiting, not wanting to leave her alone just yet in case she had a breakdown or something. It only takes a moment more for her to finish up and come toward you as she packs away her books in her bag. You have to fight the impulse to take the bag off her hands but you manage to stamp it down before she realizes.
You follow her out of the hidden room and wait as she hides it away again. As the two of you walk toward the front doors you're barely half a step behind her scanning the library for anything out of place. You just barely manage to catch sight of something quickly darting toward you both and without a thought you throw yourself at Amity and tackle her to the ground as something skims your back and nicks your left shoulder. A muffled grunt of pain escapes your lips as you land half on top of the green witchling. You track whatever had attacked you and you realize, with a sinking feeling in your stomach, that it was aviary in appearance. The bird was roughly the size of a bobcat you think, with bronze-colored wings and talons that shone in the artificial light of the library.
You have no idea what this thing could be or how deadly it could be but you did know that it would have to beat you before you allowed it to harm Amity. You carefully get off the ground keeping your eyes locked on the creature, pulling Amity up with you as you do. You know the moment her eyes land on the creature because she tenses in your arms. Once you know she's acknowledged the beast you place yourself in between her and it, not because you don't think she could handle it but because you were the tank in this scenario while she was either the summoner support or a mage.
From your arm drops one of your kunai, this one without an explosion seal attached to it, mostly because you would rather not bring down the ceiling if you could help it. As the bird rises slightly in the air you ask Amity how likely this creature was from one of the books in the Beast Keeping Section of the Library, to which she replies that the bird, which was apparently a Bronze Sting Hawk, was rarely seen outside Palm Stings, which based on the name is on one of the Palms of the Titan, most likely the one on the other side since you were pretty sure that the Owl House was located on one of the forearms.
Just as you're about to ask another question the bird dived bombed the two of you. You tell Amity to head to the Beast Keeping Section while keeping your eyes on the bird that is quickly approaching. You pull back your arm that has kunai in hand as you listen to Amity's footsteps race down the hall. You throw the knife with all your might, aiming for one of the wing joints, where the knife sinks into the bronze wing with a clang of metal on metal causing the Hawk to let out a screech of pain. But that doesn't stop the creature from continuing to dive and before you know it you have a face full of bird as it tries to scratch your eyes out.
Thankfully you managed to duck out of the way last minute. You spin around to keep it within your sights at all times. You place your dominant hand on the storage seal inked on your opposing bicep and pulse your chakra to unseal the object hidden away. From a poof of smoke reveals the Uzumaki Clan Katana, you still hadn't gotten around to fixing the baldric but you had managed to sharpen it since you had gotten here, or you got a clone to do it, semantics really. With a flick of your thumb, the sheath is pushed away allowing you to use the blade. You grip the sword just below the guard and swing at the creature. Your blade carves a line through the back of one wing before you try to kick the creature further away, which sends it flying into one of the shelves.
With some distance between you and the bird, you make a hasty retreat following after Amity, picking up the discarded sheath along the way. From behind you as you seal away your kantana, you can hear squawks of pain and anger, alongside a few flaps of wings before something hits the ground before repeating. You assume that the wounds that you had given the creature had temporarily caused it to become grounded, which means you have plenty of time to find the book it came out of... or that's what you hope.
You slide around one corner and almost run right into Amity who was hiding behind a bookshelf. You have to windmill your arms slightly to bleed off your momentum but you manage to not ram into her or send her sprawling so there's that. You carefully lean past her to see what she is looking at and find a monstrous form lumbering around, maybe 50 feet away. A being seemingly made of cloth wanders around sniffing this and that, and after a moment of analyzing it you realize that it shares some similarities with Otabin, the character that Amity had been reading about earlier that day. Since it hasn't yet seen either of you, you pull back and tug Amity to follow you. You whisper that the Hawk has temporarily been dealt with, but it may show up at any point, for now, the creature that was maybe Otabin was the focus.
You ask her if she would rather try to sneak past the creature with you, or if you should cause a distraction pulling his attention away from everything else. She thinks for a moment before forming a spell circle that after a moment coats your feet and hers in a shimmering field of stars before dimming to almost unnoticeable levels. You raise an eyebrow at her action and she tells you, that in a family with the twins and her parents, she needed all the help she could get sneaking around when she wasn't supposed to. You swallow slightly at that statement and ask if this spell was a sneaking spell of some sort to which she nods her head. You tell her that you'll go first just in case, ready to pull the creature's attention before it can spot her, to which she reluctantly agrees.
You stalk down the halls of the library, using your inborn ninja sneakiness to duck and weave without the creature ever noticing that you're there. You eventually reach its blind spot and stay within it ready to pounce upon it at any moment. You track Amity's progress and have to smile as she does much better than you had expected, but since she was a magic student who only had to sneak around her own house, you think she did quite well all things considered. Once she enters the Kids Corner you follow leaving the blind spot but the figure doesn't even bother to turn around, seemingly listening to something happening elsewhere in the library.
Once in the Kids Corner, you find Amity picking up the opened book, and you stroll up to her and peer over one shoulder to find that Otabin has been given angry eyebrows, just as you hear something squawk in rage before a loud growl echoes through the library. You peer back and see that the Hawk has made a reappearance and Otabin has taken offense at the noise it's making. Your eyes widen in shock as the Hawk rips two big chunks out of Otabin pulling a harsh scream from his mouth before he retaliates. With four quick punches and stabs with a giant needle the Hawk is sent sprawling to the ground still somehow still alive despite the beating it has taken from not only you but as well as Otabin.
As Amity fumbles around in her bag she pulls out a pencil and quickly erases the angry eyebrows, making a popping noise echo through the area. Looking back you find that Otabin has returned to normal and is now looking at his previous opponent with horror. You dash over to the bunny creature and yank him away from the Hawk just in time to prevent it from ripping out a chunk of him before dashing back to Amity. You hold him out to her and she takes the shaking rabbit from you before you turn your attention toward the bird hobbling its way toward the three of you. You can hear Otabin ask if they are still friends before you focus entirely on the bird.
At a glance, you can tell that the creature is on its last legs, one wing is bent at a weird angle while the other is being dragged along the floor. It looks up at you with pure hate in its eyes as you slowly approach it. It tries to make itself appear bigger but you aren't having it. Your hands dart forward and one wraps itself around the beak while the other is around its neck. Using your knees and legs you manage to pin the creature to the floor. not wanting to cause any undue hardship despite it trying to kill you a few minutes ago.
You call out to Amity asking if she could quickly find the book the creature had come from, and after she closes Otabin's book she does just that. It only takes another minute or two before the bird underneath you disappears from existence. After another minute Amity is walking back toward you. Around the two of you, you look at the damage the two creatures have created. You let out a sigh and turn to Amity and tell her that if she wanted you could handle the cleanup, not wanting to put more on her plate if she didn't want it to, but she declines your option and tells you that she would help, whether you liked it or not.
Despite trusting her to know her limits you preemptively take on the job of rightening and straightening the shelves, making sure to lift with your knees and not your back not wanting to injure yourself in front of Amity. The two of you manage to fix everything just before sunrise, leaving both of you knackered, though you don't show it as much as she does. When you're both outside the two of you catch sight of the sun rising off in the distance. With Amity's gaze locked on the rising sun, you sneakily pull out your storage scroll and carefully unroll it until you come across the seal that contains the 'The Blood Mirror The Blue Moon' book before stuffing the scroll away.
When Amity turns to look at you, you're holding the book out to her with a small smile on your face. When she catches sight of it you can see her eyes widen slightly. "I noticed books one through four on the shelf when I was dealing with your siblings. I was wondering whether or not I should read the book or look for the previous ones in the series but I now think that you should have it." For a moment the air is still around you before she carefully reaches out and takes the book from you and holds it like it was a priceless treasure, which since she was most likely a bookworm it probably was. She slips the book into her bag and thinks for a moment before pulling out Harmony of the End, and looks at it before handing it to you.
You take the book with both hands, you doubt that she would realize the meaning behind the gesture but this was probably the first gift you had ever received that you had taken with both hands, since in Konoha taking a gift with only one hand was seen as either impolite or that you saw the gift as lesser than. You don't have a bag to slide the book into, and you don't want to reveal the presence of sealing to the witchling before you, so you hold the book close to your body as you thank her for allowing you to read the book, and that you'll have it back to her soon. You offer to walk her back to her place, and after insisting that you're quite sure, the two of you walk through Bonesborough as it awakens around you.
The walk through town is silent between the two of you, but it's not an awkward silence. You end up stopping a dozen or so feet away from the entrance gate of Blight Manor, wish Amity a good morning, and watch as she enters the manor grounds without issue. You spin on your heel and walk away with a small smile on your lips. Once you're sure that you're far enough away from the manor you temporarily seal Amity's book away before jumping onto one of the tree branches high above you. Pausing momentarily listening for anything out of the ordinary before hopping from branch to branch toward the Owl House. Using the tree highway, the normally half-hour walk passes in less than five minutes.
When you drop to the forest floor not too far from the house you find that Hooty is asleep in his door. With a faint smile and a shake of your head, you carefully ease the door open and slip inside. You peer into the living room to find Eda, King, and three small bat-like figures asleep on the couch. With a raised eyebrow you figure they are the children that had to be babysat. Your eyes scan them and you figure that they probably wouldn't cause a flashback in the future. Just as you think that the door swings wide open as Hooty loudly proclaims, "Ding-Dong!."
Your eyes snap over to him, reprimand on your lips, when your words die right there as you watch a larger, much larger, bat figure forcing its way into the house. You weakly stammer out a shaky 'hello' before the bat asks about their 'snuggle dumplings'. They whistle a short tune that catches the sleeping bats' attention from their dead sleep. The three quickly leave Eda's grasp, somehow not awakening the woman, and they fly over to their parent and settle into their hair... which is when you realize that you're going to have to look through your hair every once in a while making sure nothing small has crawled into it.
A noise startles you, and despite not hearing for several years you already know what was about to happen. Similar to a cat throwing up a hairball, the large Bat gags slightly before a large treasure chest is upchucked onto the floor. The lid opens unprompted, showing off piles upon piles of snails covered in spit. Another gag later, a skull whistle, not too dissimilar to a shrunken head, lands on the piles of snails. The bat turns to you and says 'Eda is owed one' in a slight feminine tone before crawling out of the house. You peer out the door and watch the bat take off for places unknown, before stepping back once the bat family is no longer visible allowing Hooty to close the door.
The slamming of the door startles Eda awake, and when she notices that the bats are gone she frantically searches for them, waking King in the process. She finally looks up and finds you staring at her with a quirked eyebrow, causing her to cough slightly before she tries to play off her worry. After a moment of staring at one another, you ask if she was willing to act maternal for a bit longer because you could use a bit of help if she didn't mind. When she raises an eyebrow at your question you turn around and pull your hanten up over your back to show your shoulder, the bleeding had slowed and had scabbed over somewhat, but you had no idea if your immune system could handle the germs of whatever was on the hawk's talons.
You settle down in front of the couch when she tells you to sit down before she moves over to the kitchen. After a minute of metal banging around she reappears with a bowl of something steaming along with a potion. She carefully washes the area around the wound and asks what in Titan's name did you get into, and with a sigh, you begin to recount what had happened the day before after you had left fled the house.
Once the story is told she tells you to take it easy before going to prepare breakfast. You crawl on top of the couch being careful of King before flopping onto your belly on it, your eyes fluttering as you try to put off sleeping for just a bit longer. That plan goes out the window when King crawls on top of you and while he avoids your shoulder that's all he does. Soon your entire back is pinned to the sofa by a tiny demon. Then and only then do you allow your eyes to close as your fatigue finally consumes you.