A Goodnight Tale

"Come on, Eliza, let's get you to bed now." Cylia's voice, soft but with a firmness consistent with many mothers speaking to their stubborn children, carried through the hollowed-out hallways of the home. As it reached the small neko upon whom it was intended, she jerked upright from where she had been sitting on the living room floor, casting about her head every which way in order to determine from where, exactly, the message had originated. Unable to determine this, the small neko stood, a malicious - yet childlike - grin spreading along her face.

"Come'n get me, mamma!" She squealed gleefully, turning on the spot and beginning a mad dash to the kitchen archway - stumbling into various effects around the room, such as her father's table and their family bookshelf. She did, however, reach the 'door' with reasonable speed, and gave a yelp of glee at her victory. However, the victory was short-lived; around the corner of the kitchen strode her mother, an exasperated but caring look on her face.

Cylia's ears, primarily orange but tinged with white, twitched as she spotted her daughter at the other entrance to the kitchen. Orange tail swishing back and forth in a casual way, she walked into the room and took her stern stance, hands on hips, imposing gaze directed at her target. "Now, Eliza," she said firmly, "get on up to your room. It's time for you to go bed."

Eliza seemed to deflate a little under her mother's stare, and took a few steps back, unable to meet her gaze. A few seconds later, however, she gave her mother a devilish (atleast what she thought was devilish; it really was more of a lopsided attempt at a grin) smile, and darted off to her left, up to the second level of the tree-house. "Can't catch me, momma!"

Cylia frowned, and sighed, as her daughter 'dashed' to her side, the small neko running lopsidedly and rather slowly. Shaking her head in a way that typical mothers might at their unruly children, she quickly crossed the kitchen and began to give chase.

    ----&----

Cylia sighed, dropping down into a chair in the middle of the spacious bedroom. The room had rather nice furnishings for a bedroom; a handmade rug of wool, depicting a sunset view of a forest from a cliff. Two armchairs rested to one side of the wall, both placed between a table with a candle for reading. A similar table rested beside the bed that took up about one-eighth of the room, the bed-frame furnished from the same dark wood as the rest of the furniture, and designed into simple but visually pleasing formations. It had, in short, a homey feel, despite being very primitive to other people that had more exposure to 'modern' gadgets.

Eliza had been put to bed, was laying on it, covers drawn to her stomach. She looked at her mother with a gleam of rebelliousness in her sparkling blue eyes, but her orange-furred twitched repeatedly. She had been defeated for the night. However, she still held a spot of play in her spirit, and was too excitable to simply fall asleep.

Her eyes darted from her mother to the other figure in the room, who was standing at the window of the bedroom, looking out to the burning twilight sky and its majestic beauty, as such it could hold. Her father was a calm man, his black-furred tail swishing idly to and fro behind him. His ears were calm, as they always were, and he never seemed to raise his voice; he simply had a solidity about him, a force of presence that could settle both Eliza and Cylia with little apparent effort. It had only been with his help that Eliza had eventually been put to bed.

Now he turned from his gaze at the window, and walked over to his wife, placing a hand on her shoulder as he looked down at her, his gray eyes filled with an emotion foreign to the child, but which the mother could see as nothing but affection. It was always like that when he looked at her. Often she wondered if the opposite was true; whenever she asked him, he would smile and answer "of course."

Yet here was the evidence of his love, staring her into the eyes and opening itself to her scrutiny. His thoughts were easily read to her, and she gave a slight nod, looking back towards her daughter, who was gazing at her parents, curious as to what was happening between them.

Upon the return of her mother's gaze to her, Eliza perked up, giving a faint smile and tilting her head quizzically to the side, waiting for her mother to speak. Adren, her father, quietly walked back to the window, and Cylia slowly stood up, walking to the side of the bed closest to the 'nefarious' child.

"Alright," she said, looking down at Eliza. "I'll go ahead and tell you one."

The 'one' was something that Cylia often did in putting her daughter to bed. Eliza was often too full of pent-up energy (being a child, it was only logical), and so seldom could just fall asleep on a whim. In order to ensure that she fell asleep, Cylia had had to find some way to slowly drain the energy from her daughter while keeping her occupied. The answer had come in the form of fairy tales.

Eliza loved the morale stories. It was the one thing that Cylia could hang over her head to get her to do anything with any certainty. To Eliza, deprivation of her nighttime stories was the the worst thing that could ever be done to her.

That possibility had been hinted at on this particular night, after a fifteen-minute game of 'cat in mouse,' in which Cylia was forced to play a winded cat unable to catch the scurrying mouse of her daughter. Finally she had decided to use her last resort, and threatened the child with no nighttime story. Eliza, however, had not believed her mother, and continued on her gleeful spree.

It had not been a few minutes after that, however, before Adren had intervened, and her father had swiftly put an end to her careless scurryings. Literally carrying her up to her room, he had placed her on the bed and covered her with the blankets, keeping a patient watch to ensure that she did not try to dash off while her mother returned and began to scold Eliza for her behavior (another almost nightly 'ritual').

Eliza, however, gave no indication of listening, or even caring, and halfway through the speech blurted out an excited, "Please tell me a story, mamma. Pleeeeaaassseee!"

Cylia had stopped her speech at the interuption, and looked to her daughter disdainfully for a few seconds before sighing and moving over to sit down on the chair, telling Eliza that she would "think about it."

Now, after being informed that her worst fear would -not- come to pass, Eliza clapped her hands together and released a loud, pleased laugh, looking up at her mother with wondering eyes as Cylia sat herself down on the bed next to her daughter. "YAY! Whatcha gonna tell me tonight, mamma? Whatcha gonna tell me?" Arden smiled to himself from the window, and Cylia sighed lightly, placing a finger on her daughter's lips to keep her quiet.

Eliza, taking the hint, immediately became quiet, though she still trembled with excitement at what was coming. Cylia, meanwhile, gave a little smile and, satisfied that she had her daughter's attention, removed her finger from the child's lips. "This is a story you haven't heard before. It's not very well known, so not many have heard it. You get to say you have." She paused, watching with a smirk as she saw her daughter's excitement grow even larger, before she began to speak, instilling a quiet blanket along the room with her voice: she had her daughter's absolute attention.

"Once, in Felarya, there were three travelers. Well, to be accurate, two of them were travelers; the third, a neko (the other two were humans), was a guide who took others through the expansive forest.

"Now, you're probably wondering how a neko could have such a business in this world, it being as hazardous as it is." Cylia paused as her daughter nodded vigorously, seeming on the verge of blurting out "How?!," and quickly placed another finger on her lips, instilling her to silence once again with a smile. "Well, the neko was himself a seasoned explorer of the world. He had spent most of his life wandering from place to place, living alone and evading the many various predators, and as a result was very good at keeping both himself and others alive.

"This neko, whose name was Kain, took many different people of various races constantly through Felarya. He had seen every character, every class, every breed of person that could exist, and in his tours he had observed that humans, in particular, seemed disposed to great greed, pride, and desire. So it was no surprise to Kain when the two humans who hired him on this day, named Valin and Weiralon, showed many of the signs he had come to expect from their kind; arrogance in their tone of speech, assumed superiority to their surroundings, and a general refusal to heed what their guide told them."

By this point Arden had moved from his spot by the window, and was sitting in the vacant chair that Cylia had left. His fingers were steepled together, and his attention was mainly on his wife as he listened to her story. Eliza, meanwhile, was clutching the blankets tightly, desperately fighting the urge to blurt out something or another. Cylia pretended not to notice, and continued on:

"The objective for today was to search an ancient, nearly-forgotten ruin - one of many that can be found throughout Felarya. This particular ruin was not well known to Kain, but he did know where it was, and so they headed off.

"The journey there took about five hours. In that time they had met very few obstacles; mostly just fallen trees or other such things that warranted a momentary correction in the route. Never did they spot a predator, which Kain found to be odd, and only twice were they forced to escape from the grabbing clutches of a voracious species of flora. To the humans, it was a good trip. To Kain, it was a cause for worry.

"After five hours they reached the beginning of the ruins. The buildings themselves, crumbled from hundreds of years of natural destruction, seemed inherently small, and the ruin itself was not very large. Immediatly, however, a large temple could be seen in the distance; both Kain and the humans figured it marked the center of the ruins and, thus, their destination. Without a seond thought Valin and Weiralon headed off for the temple, despite warnings from Kain that boldly moving in was very dangerous. Exasperated, Kain followed them."

Cylia paused at this moment as Eliza, no longer able to restrain herself, said in excited tones, "Why was it dangerous and Why did Kain follow them and Why are humans so silly sometimes and When does the good stuff happen?" Unable to speak further, she drew in large breaths of air, her excited nature working in Cylia's favor to keep Eliza quiet, placing her finger once more on her daughter's lips. "It's dangerous, honey, because old ruins are often visited by predators looking for people doing just what those humans were doing. Kain followed them to keep them out of trouble, and humans are simply silly by nature most of the time. And we're getting to the good stuff." She winked at Eliza with a smile, and slowly released her finger from the girl's lips. Eliza, taking the hint, kept her mouth shut, eyes once again rapt with attention towards her mother.

Cylia then turned to Arden, to see what he was up to. He had since moved from the chair to the other side of the bed, and was giving Cylia a light, knowing smile, inviting her to continue by some mysterious, unseen sign.

Cylia nodded, and continued:

"As they progressed deeper into the ruins, the sky began to quickly darken with the approcahing night. Finally, it darkened to the point that Kain took one of the torches he had packed and lit it, providing illumination in the darkness. He offered a torch to the humans, but they refused, insisting that they did not require one. Unperturbed by the lack of visibility, they moved on.

"Deeper and deeper into the remnants they progressed, until they finally came to the temple they had been searching for. By this time Kain had figured that the humans were after some sort of treasure hidden beneath the temple, and though he regretted taking the job, he resolved himself to finish it. It was bad for business, after all, if you left your customers behind. And so they found a secret door, and entered the temple.

"Inside, they were met by a long myriad of hallways that delved slowly deeper. Often, however, the hallways would branch off to separate rooms, and inside them were items of gold and silver as could not be imagined. As Kain expected, the humans took to those rooms right away, scrambling about and trying to snatch whatever they thought would hold greatest value. Only after stuffing part of their sacks or pockets would they insist on moving onward, claiming that the greatest prize lay at the bottom. Kain was increasingly unconvinced that it was worth it - places like this always had something to protect its hoards, and that no such thing had yet shown up made him very nervous - but he moved with them just the same.

"Finally, however, they reached a door at the end of the hallway. The door was carved from gold, and writing had been placed on it, leaving a message to those who would think of opening it. Kain, able to read the scripture, read it aloud: "Those who steal and those who take, shall just award be forced to make, while those who heal and those who heed, need not fear our deathly creed." The humans, unable to understand the cryptic words,s hrugged it off as a mere spook, and began to open the heavy door. Kain, however, sat back, trying to puzzle out the meaning. Something wasn't right.

"Finally, Valin and Weiralon managed to pry the golden doors open - and revealed a room far beyond what their imaginations could conceive. The round, cirular chamber was lined with golden vases and ornaments. Stacked along the walls were weapons and armor of such magnificence as would dazzle any  who gazed upon them. And in the center of it was a mound a golden items; goblets, crowns, scabbards, rings, necklaces - everything the two humans had ever dreamed of.

"Immediately the two ran about the room, crying out excitedly and grabbing whatever they could. Kain's attention, however, was solely on the massive statue at the other end of the room.

Spanning nearly one hundred and twenty feet tall, the statue depicted a large succubus, wings closed along her back, hands down with palms facing outward, as if to say "Take it all." Despite it being a statue, Kain felt that something was wrong with it. He carefully walked up to it, observing it carefully, until he stood squarely before the massive structure. And his eyes ran over it, he noticed a faint crack in the otherwide perfect form of the stone. And as he watched, that crack began to grow.

"Knowing that this could not be anything good, Kain backed away several feet from the slowly-breaking statue, before he turned back to the two humans, who were still greedily stuffing their pockets. "We need to leave now!," he shouted at them, but they ignored him, and indeed everything else but the gold - until a playful female voice rang out over the room. "Leave? But I haven't gotten to play with you yet!""

Cylia paused again, looking down at her daughter to see her reaction. The child was still giving Cylia her utmost attention, eyes wide and excited, but she had slowly burrowed her way into the covers, and now gripped them to her neck as she listened. Her mother smiled, and went on:

"The two humans jerked upright, staring slowly up in horror at the statue, and Kain gradually turned around, afraid of what, exactly, he would see.

"When he finally saw the statue once more, he blinked several times to make sure what he was seeing was not an illusion. Instead of a statue, there stood a tall succubus, her pale blue skin reflecting the gold in shimmering, bright rays off of her body. She towered over them, and Kain began to feel like this was the end as she slowly lowered herself down onto her knees, and then lay down on her stomach, bringing her face to an almost-equal level with his.

""Hello!," she exclaimed brightly, giving Kain a playful grin (and showing off her teeth in the process). "Boy, haven't you guys been busy?" This was directed to the two humans, to whom she now looked, and under that gaze they slowly came forward to stand by their guide, too frightened to try and run for it.

"She simply giggled at their reactions and looked back and forth between the three. Finally she settled on the neko, as he was the oddball of the group for several reasons. To him she awarded a smile, and began to speak. "Congratulations on making this far! In accordance with the creed I set down here, you will be judged based on your actions." She then quickly scanned his body, making him feel like every part of him was being catalogued, and nodded to herself once she was finished.

""You, young one, have shown a respect for these ruins. You have taken nothing, and have disturbed nothing, and so I judge you to be fit for reward. You may take any one item from this room that you wish, and I will show you the way out in a moment."

"Kain continued to stare at her for several seconds after she had spoken, and only after a slight smile and a nudge from one of her fingers did he move, slowly backing away with a look of relief and amazement on his face. He turned, and began to look about the room, looking for anything that might interest him, though he could find nothing he wanted.

"Behind him he heard the succubus begin to speak again, addressing the two humans. "It is obvious that you two are blinded by your greed. You wasted no time in defiling this temple, pillaging it for you own ends. For that, there must be punishment."

A second later, twin human screams ripped the air, and Kain spun. The succubus had both Valin and Weiralon in her hand, and had rolled over onto her back, her free hand now resting on her stomach. The objects the two had stashed away lay in a heap where they had been standing, and it was obvious to Kain, as the succubus's stomach began to rumble, as to why that was.

He watched for a moment as she slowly raised Valin over her mouth, opening it wide and extending her tongue, while inside he was internally torn. He had always believed in doing the right thing, and had tried to live by making decisions that would not later come to haunt him. On the other hand, however, it could be argued that letting her eat them was the right thing, as they had pilferred from the temple, and technically his contract had ended once they entered the chamber. He internally debated his dilemma for a moment, all the while watching her get ready to eat Valin, before he finally moved to action.

"He quickly stepped forward, shouting to the succubus as he approached. "Please, stop!" She, in turn, paused, rolling over once more to face him, though keeping the two humans solidly in her grip. "Yes, little one? What is it?"

"Kain stared up at her as she addressed him, fear beginning to once again form in his heart. However, he shook his head, casting it away and steeling himself for what he was about to do before he spoke up. "Please, stop. I ask you to spare their lives."

"The succubus blinked at him a few times, and then smiled. "Why would I do that? They pilferred from this temple. And besides, I allowed you to leave. Why do you care what happens to them?" Kain swallowed, bands of sweat beginning to form along his forehead, and then spoke again. "I can't just sit by and let you eat them. We may be two separate species, and different people, but we are still people, and I don't want to see people needlessly die. You said I could have anything in this room, and I asking you to release them this once. If that is not enough, then... take my life instead. I would rather die than see them suffer harm.""

"Why'd he say that, mamma?," interjected Eliza through a yawn, her eyes half-lidded, evidence that sleep had begun to exert a hold on her. Cylia smiled down at her and said, "Because, to him, their lives meant more than his. He was doing what he felt was right - turning two deaths into one." Eliza nodded, too tired to speak again, and Cylia spoke on:

"Kain bit his lip as he stopped talking, waiting for the succubus's answer. The woman herself studied him for a few moments before finally giving him a light smile and, unexpectedly, lowering the two humans to the ground, releasing them. Once they had regained their footing, and stood safe from harm, she directed her gaze back to Kain. "You are very interesting, young one. Never before have I met one so selfless as you. It has touched me, and for your willing self-sacrifice, I will grant you any one thing you ask."

"Kain blinked at this statement, unprepared for it. However, he was happy that nobody had had to die, and so gave the succubus a genuine smile before he began to ponder his request. In a moment, however, he had figured out what he wanted and, looking up, said "I would like a small ruby, please."

"She smiled to him, and nodded, extending her palm towards him, upon which rested a small ruby that had not been there before. He accepted it graciously, and gave her a nod of thanks, which she returned before she stood up and, in a flash, reformed herself into a statue.

"Afterwards, Kain and the two humans emerged from the temple. They went their separate ways with very little said, the two humans returning to their own world, and Kain returning to his home. Before he arrived there, however, he stopped by a jeweler's and had the ruby fitted to a band of silver that he had been saving up to buy. He then went home and presented the new ring to his beloved, who excitedly accepted it. They were married in a year, and had a child.

And they lived happily ever after."

Cylia finished the story with a far-off smile, and then looked down at her daughter. Her smile grew as she saw that Eliza was sound asleep, and looked around for Arden, though he was nowhere in the room. Wondering when he had left, she turned back to her daughter, leaning down and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"Good night, dear Eliza," she whispered as she slowly withdrew from the bed, and gave the sleeping girl a last smile before leaving the room.

    ----&----

The night air was cool on Cylia's skin as she walked out onto the tree branch, taking a seat on the hard wood and simply letting herself relax in the serenity of the nighttime. The leaves rustled faintly around her, and the air was crisp and cool to smell, making her smile.

From her left side came Adren's voice, followed by quiet footsteps that indicated he was approaching her. "I wasn't expecting you to tell that particular story."

"Really?" was her teasing reply, as she leaned on him once he had sat down beside her. She placed her head on his shoulder, looping her arm through his, and just holding onto him as they sat down in the night together. "I thought you would have been flattered."

He gave a soft chuckle, placing his other hand on top of hers. "You made me sound more amazing than I was."

"Oh, nonsense," she purred back, leaning closer up against them. "You're as amazing as they get." She chuckled, looking down to her right hand. Despite being in the branches of a tree, there is not enough cover to filter out the moonlight. Stray bands of silver glow down past the leaves, and one idly strikes her right hand as she gazes down at it, illuminating the silver ring on her pointer finger, the ruby embedded in it shining like something alive.

She smiles idly to herself, and then closes her eyes, laying her head back on his shoulder. Around them the night blew by, rustling the leaves and cooling their skin. Their voices, too, were carried away, most too quiet to be heard. One, however, prevailed through the night, both in memory and in number:

"You're the best there is."