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Catcall Page22

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If you're following this series in order, click here next . For more information on the entire series, read the "'Demon's Due' Defined" journal entry here. faile35.deviantart.com/journal…

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The first time she heard the Cat Shade's call she had been a little girl of five years, fleeing with her mother through the Merwood, their footpath to Dernhem lit by moonlight. Each year thereafter on her birthday, Annalae had heard it again, calling to her from the distant woodlands, awakening her in the middle of the night. Each time, she came awake instantly in the small bundle of blankets on the floor of her closet-space, hearing the Cat Shade's hollow mewling over the sounds of cheap, lustful gratification in the adjoining room where her mother worked to give them bread to eat.

Then, three days after her thirteenth birthday, on the night her mother was murdered by a drunken patron, Annalae had heard the call again when she had fled the brothel into the city streets. She had followed it for days by that inner sense, stealing outside of the city walls and traveling alone back into the depths of the Merwood. Her bruised and bleeding feet had known where to take her, and the Cat Shade's mewling call had grown constant, enfolding her thoughts in warm hope and security.

Until finally the youthful girl had stumbled into a clearing in the wood where only a thin beam of moonlight pierced the trees above to illuminate a place of death. Bones and decaying corpses lay strewn among the exposed roots of the ring of trees surrounding a small patch of bald earth. A circle had been drawn in that earth, dug deep in the dirt and filled with a stiff, crusty substance that shown black and slightly glistening in the moonlight.

In the center of that circle lay the skull.

Reverently, Annalae had stepped over the circular boundary, caressed the skull's empty sockets, hefted the smooth whiteness in her trembling arms, and clutched it close to her chest until she fell asleep there. And in her dreams, she felt the hollow mewling fill her soul and become a soft purring that sounded deep in her throat and rippled down through her toes.

Upon awakening, she had found the discarded scroll stashed beneath the skull's former resting place, and she had taken it without knowing how to read the strange writing it held. Later, when she had learned to speak in the Cat Shade's purring voice, the scroll's message had suddenly meant something to her, enabling her to give the Cat Shade form and strength through the merging of her own shadow with those of other felines. She had kept the skull with her almost constantly from that time on, and when she returned to Dernhem to take up the quest for survival that had been stolen from her mother, it had been with the Cat Shade at her side. Only a few years later, she had risen in status to the prominent courtesan in Dernhem, and soon thereafter to one of the wealthiest women in the city.

Now that the meddlesome scholar had disrupted her connection to the Cat Shade, Annalae could only hear its calling very faintly, as if it were again back in the Merwood and requiring a journey on foot to find it. But she knew that all it would take to restore the connection this time was a simple catnap in a dark place, the skull clutched to her chest. The quasi-death of sleep would restore the connection, and make both of them whole and together again...

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Probably more information than people were expecting here, but I think it's time everybody had some idea of why this chapter has been titled "Catcall" (well, one reason for it, anyway). :plotting:

Again, Lindsey provided the stock photo for Annalae. You can see by these pages the awesome variety of good photos she's given me. Thanks, Lindsey! =)

And the Cat-Demon skull is something I created from looking at skulls of sabre-tooth tigers and prehistoric lions--the forehead is slightly larger to account for some kind of increased brain capacity, even though, if Annalae is representative of the creature's temperament, instincts, and lustful drives, it was still very much a "bad guy" in the animal world. ;)

Enjoy!
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Collon28's avatar
That certainly is a lot of info to digest in one, "simple" drawing. And yet, I can envision her flashbacking to all of this, looking at the old friend of a skull. Good time if any to explain all of this, unless you went so far as to draw the entire scenario of her childhood. It certainly is refreshing to have all sides of this conflict to have fleshed out back stories.