fuck me and fuck titles

Anyways while I can't seem to start Extraordinary or get enough concrete worldbuilding to do a legitimate plot the genre of urban fantasy has always fascinated me so I've continued to write stories about background characters in the world for quite some time now. I figured I'd share a few here because I have nowhere else to put them.

There will be background.

1) This is a quick one I did about Maria Randolph, the mother of Timothy Randolph, a character who becomes part of Ylva and Emily's group later in the book. (The whole family are werewolves (it's recessive) which works a liiiittle differently in this world? Basically their forms are more wolf/doglike when the moon is further from full and more feral and uncontrollable when it approaches fullness. Harvest moons and blue moons, as well as other lunar irregularities, also have their own set of effects.) Anyways there's a shifter bias in this world, not as strong as most non-humans but stronger than that towards non-Eugaeans. Maria has worked her whole life to get where she is, in a good neighborhood with a good job surrounded by people she can at least tolerate, but the past and her volatile youth refuse to leave her behind.

(This is about five years before Extraordinary.) 

---

The children were bickering again.

"Am not, am not, am not!" sang a playful and furious voice as the ten year old David ripped through the halls, his younger brother Timothy ahead of him, whining and crying with mock fear. "Take it back!"

"No! Leave me alone!"

While this was not an uncommon event in the house, it became a slightly more peculiar one, at least to an outsider, when the younger of the boys turned into a large, gray canine resembling an Alaskan Malamute and the older brother grew claws and fangs. Even in his new form, the younger of the boys couldn't outrun his determined older brother and was set upon by him, now in full wolf form.

There was a distinct slam as Timothy fell against the furniture and the rattle of a vase could be heard of the distance, each tiptiptip against the glass an ominous warning of the fall to come.

Maria Randolph, who had been sitting on the couch with a newspaper while the lot of this was going on, settled the vase with two fingers and glared at her sons. "You two turn back this instant or you're going back to your rooms until dinner."

David, claws turning to fingers, growled, "It's five-thirty anyways. We're bored."

"There are more productive ways to be bored. David, have you done your homework yet?"

"No," grumbled David.

"Timothy, did you clean your room like I asked you to?"

"I was cleaning it when David started chasing me."
"Now, why were you chasing him, David?"

"He called me a mangy mutt."

"He what-" Maria started.

Timothy cried over his mother, "He was stealing my toys again!"

David yelled, "Guys don't play with stuffed toys. Only girls and babies do."

"David, I told you to leave your brother alone. Now, Timothy, where did you hear that kind of language from?"

"They're not even bad words." Timothy said. "Someone called me that at school an' the teacher didn't even say anything."

"I'm going to need to speak with Ms. Jacobs-"

"Mom, we were just playing a game-" entreated Timothy.

Maria was just about to continue when there was a slight tap at the door. Maria's ears, superb even in their human shape, caught every bit of the echo as the familiar pattern sounded through the silent house. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Both boys were quiet. "Oh Christ." Maria whispered.

There was a shadow at the door, looming over the dainty porch. Maria recognized the man at the door. "Get down into the basement." she said in a low voice.

"What? Mom-"

"This isn't up for debate. Get down into the basement right this second."

The boys had seen the face of their mother just before all hell broke loose before. She never used it when reprimanding them, but still it struck an instinctive fear within them. David grabbed his brother's hand and ran into the basement.

Maria approached the door, took a deep breath, and opened it. The man at the door was thin in form, though his broad shoulders made him look much larger than he was. He had graying hair and a good deal of stubble, sharp hazel eyes, and a curve to his dark lips that made him look almost contemplating. Between that and his intent yet aloof expression, he looked as if he was thinking over someone's death.

Knowing the activities of his kind, he likely was.

"Ian Maddock." Maria said, clenching a hand against the doorframe. "Why the hell are you here?"

"Pack's in the area. We're recruiting." He tasted the air with his nostrils and mouth both, His tongue like a snake as he lifted his head slowly, relishing every second. With a soft exhale, he sighed, "Two pups."

"Stay away from my sons."

"You and your apathetic kin are a danger to our race." ticked Ian, disappointed. His eyes, round as twin full moons, fixed her with the same intensity they'd held years ago, when he'd come to her the first time- the time she'd said yes.

Years of practicing for his return boiled into furious seconds. Her knuckles white, Maria snapped, "It's incredible you have the nerve to say that when packs bring up the crime rates, enforce the stereotypes we spend our lives trying to deflect, and try to kill anyone who gets in your damn way." she says. "It's incredible you'd even bother coming back to me when you know my answer. You've known it since the day we parted ways."

"So you're not interested. Fine, Maria. Send your husband my regards."

"You'd better pray that I don't tell my husband you were here." snarled Maria. She pressed a finger against his greasy overcoat. "I have a revolver in this house for a reason. If you or your pack step one foot over my doorstep I will hurt you."

Ian nodded as if he understood or could afford to understand, but his eyes were still fixed with predator intensity on the messy rug, the toppled lamp, and then he looked back to her eyes. "You're making a mistake." he whispered. He padded off down the street like a wounded animal, his slow, loping gait deliberate in each footfall.

Maria left the door open until he was halfway down the street, out of eyesight, afraid that the slightest sound might draw his gaze back to her.

She grasped the handle as if it was a hot iron and closed the door, drawing her hand away at once. She pressed herself against the old oak with one hand over her mouth and each breath painful in her throat. Her kids were audible from the cellar downstairs. Her kids. Oh god, her kids...

She had been a fool to think her past was behind her.

It had been a long time, but the pack had good memory.

---

2) Kitsunekid (I don't have a name for her yet). She's in Extraordinary (the part that's up so far)... I think? Anyways she was the first character in this book. I originally made this series as a world where she could technically exist.

Thirty years before Extraordinary, btw.

---

"You're safe now."

It was the fifth time they had told her that. The kitsune child, twitching in her too-large, billowing clothing, still didn't feel safe. The room was big and white and loud and smelled of the first-aid kit her father had kept in the back of his car. She had covered up her nose with her sweater, which smelled of earth and the mountains where she'd left her father, and took in a deep sniff.

Not good but

better.

A woman with horseshoes on her feet- tall ones- strode over with a clip clop clip clop on the tile floor. She held out a metal square to the kitsune child, a gentle smile spreading across her face but dying in her eyes. Not honest.

The kitsune child tapped the screen with a dirty finger and it sprung to life. It was the sun, but larger, with less malice in the way sit burned her eyes. It was lightning, but a stretched out into a screen, like the old screen door outside the cabin in the woods- as that had scintillated and changed in the winds in the heart of summer, this flickered with its own, dangerous light, one that reverberated from deep within the device. She picked the square of metal up, tenderly.

"I have not seen of this," she informed the woman, unblinking.

"It's to call your father. Do you know his number?"

"It is like the black phone, on the wall? The one that rings?"

"A corded phone? Erm, yes, I suppose so, if you still use those at your house."

"You can't bite it." the kitsune child repeated her father's words to her sternly.

"No. Please don't." the woman agreed.

"I don't think he will pick up," the kitsune told the woman, handing her the screen back and blinking her irritated eyes to try to get the sting out of them. "My father has been sleeping out behind the patio for a few years now."

---

3)  In places further out to the west, where the law is less rigid and you're less likely to get caught, it's quite common for all sorts of magical crime to occur. 

No time frame.

---

The bar was dim and dingy, with the scent of sweat and danger mixed into the equally revolting odor of beer and smoke that pervaded the place. The musk clung to its denizens once they left the pub for cheap motels and held over the shadowed side of town, a man-made bad omen. It was their personal way of marking their territory.

The newcomer, with his tousled hair and darting eyes, was like a mouse in a den of feral cats. He knew this, and still by some miracle, no one pounced on him as he stole away to the bar. Once he hunched over there, shading his face from view, and had an ambitiously sized pitcher clutched in his hand, he was safe. Still, there was a rasp to his breath as he tasted the air and his lungs expelled it, disgusted. It grew more prominent with the sharp intake of breath as another man, lanky and bent, passed by and sat beside him.

The man took a long huff of his thick cigar, and the smoke curled from his mouth in unnatural patterns. He fell into silence as it rose, eyes squinted into what might have been some pale kind of pleasure, and once the smoke had ascended to join the thick haze overhead, he said to the youth, "So you're Erik, then?"

"Erik Fitzgeorge." he replied, holding his free hand up to his mouth and coughing once.

"Just give me their name." spat the man, eying the wood of the bar rather than his broker. "Whoever it is, I can guarantee them dead in three days."

"That's not what I called you here for tonight." replied Erik, sternly. His drink stirred as he brought it closer to him, but he had no intention of drinking it. Truthfully, these poor spirits upset his stomach.

"A more unconventional job, then? If you insist. 'm not oft hired these days, and certainly not by the likes of you, but, well, money is money."

"Do you know how I traced you, good sir?"

"I don't care."

"Do you remember killing a woman, about twenty years back? A woman named Lauren Gabels?"

The man tactfully snuck another puff of cigar smoke in before answering, with the same pause and dull, vacant expression as it rose. Finally, he admitted, "I wouldn't know."

Erik's voice rose, trembling, and he fixed the man's eyes directly for the first time that night. "What do you mean, you wouldn't know?"

"I make pacts when I kill. Most people in these parts do- you scarce remember a thing after a good rest and a few drinks later. It's Novocain for the soul."

"You bastard."

The man squashed his cigar against the table, looking about to ensure others had not heard the pitiful squeak in his client's voice. He brushed away the remaining ash and with half a sick smile, continued, "That woman... she was someone important to you. Your mother, by the time, I suppose, and now you've come out here for revenge. I can also deduce, by your atrocious get-up and despicable thirst for 'justice', that you're someone who's had the luxury of having good choices for most of your life. Well, if you've come to destroy me, I apologize, but I'm afraid you can not kill me."

"No one in this pub would stop me from placing my hands around your throat." Erik growled, the small bit of alcohol he had imbibed humming in his chest.

"Nor would I. You didn't come to do that, though- you came to kill the likes of me, to do some kindness upon this world and this town. Yet you see this pub is not empty. Demons writhe beneath us, at this moment, in numbers that you could not perceive with your mortal mind, hungering, because they know that they will be fed. You can not kill me, because I am alive there-" he pointed to the next table over, "and there- and there- and there!" He steepled his hands, turning back to face the far end of the bar. "I will not die tonight."

---

 I have so many dumb ideas for this world, too, just because normal people interacting with magic in their day-to-day life is my shit.  One I've wanted to write forever is about this kid who snorts phoenix ashes on a dare because his friends bet him like five hundred bucks (and then the phoenix starts reforming and he ends up sprouting feathers and having his fingers catch on fire) because it's just such a stupid teenage thing to do. Or there's this one where the intercom at some school keeps getting interrupted by distant eldritch horror mutterings on Tuesdays and everyone just sits there and tries to go about their daily business as the voice of the void cackles through the speakers, scarring the freshmen for life. 

MAGIC.