Chapter Text
The night breeze hit her face, brushing her short hair— that she cut herself— gently. It was as cold as it always was on a december midnight, but she at least had to convince herself that the black jacket she bought with all the money she managed to save up was doing something. Her mom would never buy her something like that; despite getting used to her ‘shenanigans’ as she liked to say, she was set on not ‘encouraging’ her behaviour even further. Dess always wondered why her mom was so against any style that didn’t fit inside her small box of ‘normal’, but just brushed the curiosity off anyways. It wasn’t out of behaviour for the strict mayor of a religious town, with a church larger than their mansion. Speaking of which, there really didn’t need to be that many seats in that place. After all, it was only so many people that showed up to worship. Some people were obviously there only to have some fun giggling with their friends during the prayers, (shout-out, Bratty, that was a few years younger than her but still managed to look and act ‘older’ with the personality) and most didn’t show up outside of special events where they’d be able to get free stuff, like the infamous juice they’ve been using for years now.
Back on the topic of normal, Dess never was anything close to that. She wasn’t like Noelle, wearing christmas sweatshirts, collecting candy cane pencils like Magic: The Gathering cards, that drew all the attention from their parents. Not that Dess cared about that— she was simply concerned for her little sister, with how extreme her mother’s limiting could get when she spots someone that she can control and keep in an imaginary small cage. Maybe she would’ve also fallen victim to that if she just forced herself to be like the others when she was 12— bullied at school everyday, avoiding home and sleeping on the seats at the graveyard. In a town like this, it was impossible not to fall for her mother’s manipulation— well, maybe she was just being dramatic— as someone fitting into a certain set of standards.
With that, her only ‘friend” (Two if Kris counts, but does your boyfriend’s sibling really count in friend measuring? They were pretty much just following their brother’s tail, anyways.) wasn’t normal either. Azzy, despite being your stereotypical A+ student, with the brightest future ahead of him, was rotten to the core just like Dess. Maybe it was why they got along so well even though they were the exact polar opposites of each other in social standards. Asriel was just the type of person that would judge people like Dess, but he never did. When he first stood up for her against bullies in elementary school, she laughed in his face and told him off. It wasn’t quite easy to believe that the boy next door that went to church every Sunday, constantly earned awards from competitions with long, weird names that she couldn’t pronounce, was defending someone like December Holiday. It had to be another joke that her annoying classmates were playing on her. They were idiotic! How could she fall for something like this when they asked her if they were ‘friends’ every day, mocking her no matter the response she gave. She knew they were all dumbasses deep down, but they couldn’t possibly think that she was this obnoxious, could they?
..Well, maybe she was. Asriel’s behaviour towards Dess got weirder and weirder any day that passed, with him asking her out on lunch, glaring at her during class (Was he looking for flaws to mock her with afterwards?), and actually leaving chocolates and a note in her locker on Valentine’s Day, in which they shined as the only genuine gifts, because her locker was filled with weird joke notes to make a fool out of her. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t just leave her alone.
And so, there they were. The goat boy somehow managed to force himself onto her life, quickly becoming her best friend, before her boyfriend. They’d come to this forest often— whenever his parents would be arguing— lay down together and gaze at the stars trying to make shapes out of them.
But tonight, she was alone. That was alright. She didn’t care that much, she grew used to being by herself. She hugged her jacket tighter, sitting down on the grass ground with her back against the metal shelter doors, and pulling out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, and taking one out. Everyone in this town knew that things didn’t exactly go right with the law in here. None of the grocery store owners cared about minors getting stuff that they shouldn't, despite how much her mother tried to make them. They’d just lie and say that they weren’t selling any alcohol or nicotine to minors, but everybody knew that they were just chasing the amount of money they’d get from 16 year olds buying several bottles of liquor to ‘party’. Maybe one day, someone would go into an alcohol coma and die, and only then would the issue be resolved with the help of the capital’s law enforcement.
She struggled against the wind, covering the cigarette in her mouth with her hand to light it without it getting shut down. Winters were always like this in hometown, especially this deep into the forest. She was convinced that if she kept her ‘silly game’ —as Carol liked to say— going just a few months more, she’d be light enough to actually get carried away by the wind at least a little. Her mother had quite the reputation in her eyes for not taking anything related to Dess seriously, shutting it down saying that it was a phase that she would grow out of.
As she inhaled in, she heard a voice echo in the forest, like the screech of a cat in pain. She stood up, hugging her body with her jacket, and followed where the voice led her going further into the forest. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to do this late in the night, where nobody would hear her scream, but what did she have to lose?
In front of her, a cat climbing a tree stood. At the sight of her, it stopped it’s energetic movements, and turned to stare at Dess with the yellow and pink eye and creepy expression it had on it’s face. Different, very different compared to a normal cat. On it’s neck, there was a collar with a a metal piece hanging from it, with a name on it. Dess stepped closer, only a little out of fear. FRIEND. Behind the all-caps letters, there were faded symbols that Dess was sure she saw before in Microsoft’s font settings while messing with her computer as a little child. All she remembered about it was that she thought it was ridiculous when nobody could even tell what the letters were.
“Huh..” She stepped closer to the cat. She remembered the grin from the Cheshire Cat of Alice in Wonderland, that she read in the library as a child waiting for her mom to pick her up. It was quite creepy to see something like this in first person, but she wouldn’t put it past this town. “You have a collar. Where’s your owner, little one?”
Well, it was pointless to speak to an animal. Everybody did it anyways. She stepped further, reaching her hand out to the cat that was still frozen in place, petting it hesitantly. The rabies documentations she watched on Asriel’s TV creeped inside her brain in every moment of her interaction with the cat. “You must be hungry. Here. It isn’t much..” She pulled out the small bag of cat food she carried around to feed strays, and spilt it on the ground, stepping back to let the cat sniff it’s way onto it and start eating it.
“Poor thing..” She said, leaning down to stare at the cat, hungrily devouring the food. “I’ll bring more tomorrow. Don’t go anywhere, okay?” She stepped back, walking away slowly so as to not alert it. Despite how she tried to act, that thing scared her off badly. Was this just a baby monster? If so, where were its parents? There was no way it was an actual cat. Cats didn’t have a grin. Cats didn’t have multi-colored eyes— at least not in those colors.
Once far enough from the cat-like creature, she ran off. Angel knew she would come back tomorrow, anyways.