July 27, 2000
The next Saturday, Frank needed to go shopping for a new laptop: he couldn’t fix the one he had and had saved up enough for a new one. Mark joined him, and they went to a shopping centre in the area where their friend Victoria lived. After making sure that she was home, they decided to stop by her place for a coffee before heading back. Frank was hoping to be able to see Coralis before they’d leave. They spoke a couple of times, but hadn’t seen each other: she was either free when he was at work, or she worked when he was free. Meanwhile, Coralis and Eva were wrapping up the case they’d been working on all week. Coralis was covered in werewolf and vampire blood. She dropped off Eva where she lived, then headed straight home. Victoria didn’t know at what time her roommate would be back, but looking at the time, she became worried that she’d get back as Cheetah while Frank and Mark were there. She didn’t want to be the one to have to explain to Frank that his new girlfriend wasn’t human if he happened to see Cheetah turning into Coralis. She knew that one day, Coralis would have to tell Frank about their world, but not like that, and not to his best friend Mark. She noticed that the bowl of peanuts was empty, so she got up and told the guys that she was going to go to the convenience store down the street to pick up some snacks. She had more snacks in the pantry, but she needed an excuse to call Coralis on her hologram. She could have gone to her room but couldn’t find a believable reason to do so, unless she managed to mistakenly spill her beverage on herself. She walked out through the front door and walked to the wooded park near her apartment to find a shady corner away from praying eyes. As Victoria approached the spot she had in mind, Coralis landed on their rooftop. Seeing that her friend wasn’t in the kitchen, she scratched the window and waited. “Did you hear that?” said Mark. “I heard something coming from the kitchen, yeah” Coralis was hoping that her friend would be home. She didn’t want to have to walk to the wooded park just to be able to shift back and frighten the neighborhood, as she was covered in blood. Even with an invisible cloak, it was risky business: someone could run into her by accident. An invisible cloak made her invisible, but she’d still remain solid. She scratched the window again, putting more strength in her front paws. She didn’t care if she’d had to replace the window. The guys got up and went to check what was going on in the kitchen. “Did Victoria get a cat lately?” said Mark. “Not as far as I know. Coralis didn’t say anything about that when I saw her last weekend.” Mark opened the window to let the black cat in. Coralis wasn’t expecting to see Frank and Mark there, so she stayed on the ledge instead of going in, wondering what to do next. Making sure that no one could see her, Victoria pulled her hologram out and tried to connect to Coralis’. “Ohhh look, it’s purring,” said Mark. “I had no idea Victoria had a cat, she must have gotten it this week. Coralis didn’t say anything about it the last time we spoke.” Coralis didn’t know what was going on and where her friend was. She knew that her hologram was trying to go off, she was glad its auto-projection was off. She was hoping that it wasn’t the EBEE trying to call her, because if their call wouldn’t go through, they would page her and the guys would then question why this black cat was beeping. She was about to jump off the window’s ledge, but Frank picked her up. She twisted and turned, to indicate she didn’t want to be picked up, so he put her on the ground and closed the window. “Maybe it’s just a cat Vic is feeding,” said Mark. “Let’s see if there’s cat food somewhere then.” While Frank and Mark were searching Victoria’s pantry, Coralis tried to sneak into the bathroom, thinking she could maybe try to sound-proof it and take a shower, although there was the risk that the guys would need to use it while she was locked in it. The bathroom door was closed, so she tried to think of another plan. Victoria got back to the apartment and saw her friends searching her kitchen. “What are you looking for?” she said, while dropping a bag full of cookie boxes and popcorn on the counter. “Did you know that you still had peanuts and crackers? We’re looking for cat food,” said Mark. “Hmm why are you looking for cat food? I didn’t realize I still had snacks, Coralis must have bought more,” she said. As she said that, she understood: her friend must have arrived while she was out. She walked out of the kitchen to try to find Coralis. “Yeah, we saw a black cat by your kitchen window, we could hear it scratching it from the living room. However, when Mark opened the window, it wouldn’t come in, so I picked it up to bring it in, and it didn’t seem to like it. You didn’t tell us you got a cat.” “It even purred for us when I opened the window.” Victoria struggled to keep her laughter in. “I see you met Cheetah,” she said as she saw her friend on top of a tall bookshelf in the living room, in a sitting position. She walked back to the kitchen and pretended to search the bottom shelf of the pantry. “Seems like I’m out of cat food. I’ll tell Coralis to pick some up on her way back.” “Speaking of her, do you know around what time she’ll be back?” said Frank. “No idea, but I’m sure she’ll call you when she gets back. Miss her already?” “Kinda always I’d say,” said Mark, teasing his friend. Frank shrugged. “So you two are actually a thing now?” said Victoria. She knew her friend was there to listen. “Possibly,” he said, while looking at his watch and remembering the last time they were together. “I think we should get going. Can you please tell Coralis to give me a call when she gets home? Doesn’t matter what time it is.” “Sure can do,” said Victoria as she stared at her friend. As soon as Frank and Mark were gone, Coralis jumped off the bookshelf and landed in her normal form. “Was about time, I was actually considering asking you to let me out of the window and go wash up in some shady corner. There is no way they can see me covered in blood that isn’t mine.” “I tried to call you on your hologram, but seems I walked out too late.” “Oh, it was you? I was hoping that it wasn’t the EBEE. Anyway, I’ll go hug the shower, then I guess I’ll call Frank… and uh, think I’ll glamour our elixirs to make them look like cat food.” “Yeah please do. I have to go to my parents’ tonight, for my dad’s birthday. I would like it if he didn’t call me just to ask if you’re home. You should consider getting a mobile phone. Awesome idea for the cat food, I don’t want to have to explain to them why I never have cat food in stock.” While it was Victoria’s turn to shower, Coralis called Frank and agreed to watch the X-Men movie with him at the movie theatre. She was conflicted about what to think of the movie, but couldn’t tell him why. After the movie, they went to her apartment, and he stayed over for the night. Victoria got back home at 1:00. Both of their bedrooms were soundproof, so she didn’t know Frank was there with Coralis. In the morning, while she was making coffee, she saw Frank walking out Coralis’ room, wearing only his pants. “Oh, good morning, Frank! Didn’t know you’d be here, but I guess I should start expecting you here in the morning.” “Uh sorry about that, wasn’t really planned, but she’s not here at the moment. She said something about having to go to an emergency meeting with Eva, and that I didn’t have to leave just because she had to.” “It’s fine, don’t worry. Coffee?”Once upon a time, Sethbe, the son of a spirit god, had an affair with Mathilda, a Light Priestess, which resulted in a child. War was raging between the children of the gods: between those of darkness and those of light. Sethbe and his brothers, Liedte and Zienkhe, were overseers in the darkness. They could not have people know about the child. Mirrhia, a loyal servant of the brothers, took the child and disappeared before anyone realized birth happened. She made a quick stop to the family temple in the middle of the Egyptian desert, to present the child officially to Ghar, the brothers’ creator, protected by the watchful eyes of the temple guardians. With the baby tucked in her arms, she then left into the night, without a trace.August 8, 1980Anita picked up Coralis in her arms and climbed up the stairs to take her to bed. In her eyes, Coralis was the best thing that ever happened to her, better than the night she accepted Donny as her husband and mate. She dropped her in her smal
October 1st, 1989Coralis and Nadilla sat quietly in Ms. Wagner’s office. Head looking down, sometime shooting furtive glances at each other. They thought they were in trouble, once again. Coralis closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of what could have possibly led them to the administrator’s office this time. Maybe they were going to move them again, even if their social workers said that they would have to stay there until the trial was over, at minimum.They arrived to this group home about a month ago, along with some other children. She didn’t punch a kid nor instigated any sort of conflict. She kept to herself, barely talking to anyone. She couldn’t think of any reason that would explain why she and Nadilla had to sit at the administrator’s office, on a Sunday morning. “You think they want to punish us because we are not talking to the social workers here?” said Nadilla in a low voice, just loud enough for Coralis to hear it. Ms. Wagner’s office wasn’t small. In one of the
July 15, 1990Coralis and Nadilla were excited. They were getting ready to go shopping for their school supplies. The previous month, they had received by mail the list of what they would need for school. The list wasn’t long, but there were so many books listed on it, that they were hoping that none of them were heavy: they had no one to help carry them to school or across the mall. As promised, Vallia met with them a few times during the year. Coralis wasn’t sure if that really helped, because she simply ignored the other kids to avoid getting into conflicts. The trial and the weeks prior to it were a little more challenging, but Roberto gave her something to suppress her emotions during that month: it wasn’t healthy, but they couldn’t risk any accident at the courthouse or with the authorities. He made sure that Vallia met with Coralis when the potion wore off. Ms. Wagner wasn’t too keen about letting a 10-year-old girl go shopping alone with a 9-year-old, but Roberto had filed t
August 26, 1990It was 5:00 when Coralis’ alarm went off, but she was already awake. She barely slept. She was as excited as she was anxious about where she would be ending the day. Nadilla had already left for her school. She hadn’t been able to call her, so she had no idea how she was doing, if she liked it. She was hoping that she would be able to write to her. They had realized that even if Nadilla was able to send her a letter as soon as she arrived, odds are that Coralis would already be gone by the time it gets to their group home, so they decided to check if it would be possible to send letters to someone in another school. They had been apart a few times in the past, but not for the last couple years, so it felt odd to be without her cousin. She missed her. Martha said that she would pick her up at 6:00. Coralis was ready and waiting at 5:40. All of her belongings were with her. She didn’t know if she was going to come back or stay on the school ground for Christmas holidays
October 3, 1990It was 20 minutes past curfew. Coralis, Victoria and Maribel felt antsy and restless. They sat in class for the entire day, studying various theories and histories, but no practice of any kind. Moreover, Coralis and Maribel had to stay in detention for an hour after classes ended for the day: at lunch, they decided to race each other on their flying stick and lost track of time, arriving late for their elemental history class. Their roommates were doing their homework, but they were done with theirs, so they decided to sneak outside and go for a walk around the building, just to stretch out a little bit. They figured if they stayed within the shadows, they wouldn’t be seen by anyone, and they wanted to try out a night vision spell. It didn’t take them long to reach one of the backdoors. Coralis was about to pull a piece of paper to jam between the ledge and the lock, so that the door wouldn’t lock behind them and they could go back in using the same door, when she not
May 15, 1991The school was hosting the European Elemental Tournament. The EET was a competition between twelve elemental schools located across Europe: Scotland, England, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Ukraine and Romania. There were more elemental schools located in Europe, but smaller or considered not prestigious enough, so they weren’t officially included in the EET. These other schools had the option to sign up eligible students to the EET, but would never be hosting it. To be eligible to participate, students had to be an elemental aged between 15 and 20-years-old. They could be living outside of Europe, but had to officially be attending full-time an elemental school located in Europe. The tournament lasted 10 days.Participants would compete in various events and disciplines, depending on their subspecies: potions, flying, combat, history, etc. The best 3 competitors of each discipline would then compete at the World Elemental Tournament.
Erik, Henry and Coralis were getting ready to head back to school. “Coralis,” said Kief, “I don’t know how I missed that detail when we were filing the paperwork for you, but was your birthday really on August 1st?” “Hmm yeah, it was, I am now 11,” said Coralis. “Why does it matter?” “Wait wait, DID WE REALLY MISS YOUR BIRTHDAY?” said Erik and Henry at the same time. “Had we known, we would have done something to celebrate it. Why didn’t you tell us?” said Kief. “Because I don’t think it matters. I never done anything for my birthday. Sometimes a social worker would give us a cupcake, but I never cared about it.”The Fullemons didn’t like that answer. They decided that if Coralis came to their house again the next summer, they would do something to celebrate her birthday. Meanwhile, they would try to see if she could come to their family for the End-of-Year holidays: the boys started to see her like a sister.Coralis was happy to see her friends again, but the uneasy feelin
February 6, 1993Unable to sleep, Coralis and Victoria decided to go for a walk. It was cold outside, so they stayed inside the school building. The school had so many hallways and staircases, that they could easily walk for an hour without seeing the same wall painting twice. Moreover, less risk of getting into trouble if they weren’t caught outside past curfew. As they approached a staircase, they heard some whimpers coming from behind a wall. They stopped walking and tried to figure where the sounds were coming from. “You heard that, right?” said Coralis. “Yeah, I’m not sure is the person if crying or in pain, or both… but where is it coming from? Sounds like it’s coming from behind that wall.”The girls stood between an outside window to their left, and a wall to their right. They started to closely inspect the wall to their right, in case there was a secret lever or a hidden lock. Both of them were convinced that the whimpers were coming from right behind it. They patted the
July 27, 2000The next Saturday, Frank needed to go shopping for a new laptop: he couldn’t fix the one he had and had saved up enough for a new one. Mark joined him, and they went to a shopping centre in the area where their friend Victoria lived. After making sure that she was home, they decided to stop by her place for a coffee before heading back. Frank was hoping to be able to see Coralis before they’d leave. They spoke a couple of times, but hadn’t seen each other: she was either free when he was at work, or she worked when he was free.Meanwhile, Coralis and Eva were wrapping up the case they’d been working on all week. Coralis was covered in werewolf and vampire blood. She dropped off Eva where she lived, then headed straight home.Victoria didn’t know at what time her roommate would be back, but looking at the time, she became worried that she’d get back as Cheetah while Frank and Mark were there. She didn’t want to be the one to have to explain to Frank that his new girlfrien
July 21, 2000Coralis got back home to her UK flat around noon. The Northerners won the semifinals against South Africa the day before and the team had stayed in town for the night to celebrate. When leaving Johannesburg in the morning, her teammates flew directly to Bulgaria, where they were going to play the next day, for the finals, but Coralis decided to fly to her UK flat instead, and to head to Bulgaria later on that night.Her roommates weren’t home, so she took advantage of her time alone to listen to her voicemails. Frank had left five messages. She listened to them while sitting on the foot of her bed. She enjoyed listening to his messages, in which he would simply talk about how his day went. Knowing she would soon have more time to spend with him, she wanted to give him a call. She looked at the time and calculated the time difference. Hoping she wouldn’t be waking him up, as it was 7:00 on a Friday morning for him, she dialed his number. “Coralis?” answered Frank, in a
June 29, 2000, 22:00Frank and Mark entered a bar located on Acadie boulevard. They went to watch The Shaft and wanted to go out for a couple of drinks before heading back to their dorm. The bar was within a short walking distance. Mark had just broken up with his girlfriend Jessie and Frank didn’t know when he was going to be able to see Coralis and take her on a date. “All right, now you know how bad it crashed between me and Jessie, it’s your turn bud, how is it going between you and Coralis?” “Well, if you wouldn’t have been deep into Jessie’ skirt for the entire month, you would know,” said Frank. “Ouch! Well ok, I deserved that one, but it’s past history now. So. You and Coralis.” “Hard to tell, I saw her only twice since the party. The first time doesn’t count: she was walking out of the dorm’s elevator while I was coming in and she had to leave for work. That was about 2 weeks ago. We spoke a little bit, but she was running late”. “But you said you saw her twice.”
June 29, 2000, 19:00Coralis was sent to investigate a ghoul issue with Eva, a werewolf working for the CMMA. Like Coralis, Eva was also an apprentice. They had been working a few cases together. They had resolved their cases quickly, even if neither of their mentors were with them, so they weren’t surprised to be working together again without actual agents with them. She met with Eva at a coffeehouse near the Côte-des-Neiges cemetery early evening. “Ready to tackle this ghoulish mess?” asked Eva. “As ready as I’m willing to be. I have a game Saturday in Thailand, hunting down ghouls isn’t on my list of things that I should be doing on a Thursday night, especially when I have no idea when I’ll be back.” “I bet, so you’ll be travelling all day tomorrow?” “I fly fast, but it will still take me 7-8 hours to get there. I could use a fixed portal from Vancouver, but I still got to take into account the time difference.” “For how long do you think you are going to be away?” “A
May 7, 2000 - 22:00Half an hour later after she arrived, while on the dancefloor, Coralis’ pager went off. She cursed and headed across the room to where the payphone was. Victoria knew that it had to be about work, but didn’t say anything. Frank was watching her from their table. Seeing her facial expression as he saw her going toward the payphone, he became worried. He waited a minute and decided to go check on her, which didn’t go unnoticed by Mark.He caught the end of her conversation, where she told the person on the other end of the line that she’d be on her way, and saw her hanging up the phone with force, nearly breaking the receptacle. “Is everything ok?” he asked, while leaning against the wall on which the payphone was. Coralis was surprised to see him there: she didn’t sense him coming. She wondered how much he heard of her conversation, and how could she have been so absorbed in it that she let her guards low enough that she didn’t hear a human approaching. “Do y
May 27, 2000 - 17:00Coralis had a home game in the afternoon against India. She was supposed to go to Victoria’s after the game, so they could get ready to go to her semester party, but she had been sent on an emergency mission in West Island right after it. She found out through her mentor that since Lord Meozo’s horrendous years, the EBEE has been collaborating with the CMMA quite often, sometimes pairing up a CMMA agent with an EBEE one, just in case the suspects were also involved outside the continent. Considering that Coralis had to spend a lot of time in Montreal because she was part of the Canadian national flyball team, she shouldn’t be surprised if their superiors would take advantage of it to send her on missions there.She warned Victoria that she might arrive late, but that she would be there. However, she didn’t tell Frank. She saw him once after that night they kissed, but didn’t really talk: she had to stop at Victoria to drop money for her to book a moving truck, bu
May 2, 2000Coralis was on her way to visit Victoria. For the past 4 months, whenever she would come to Victoria’s dorm, she got into the habit of landing in a remote alley nearby or behind heavily shaded bushes at night. She hated Victoria’s dorm: too many humans milling around, so she found it too risky to keep entering through her bedroom window. Dorm rooms were somewhat shared and sometimes some students would stay there all day to study or work on their essays.Victoria wanted to talk to her about the apartment she found for July 1st. Coralis knew that she had class at this time, so after landing, she went to get a coffee, thinking that she had some time before her friend would be back.As she got in line to order her coffee, Frank, one of Victoria’s friends, came out of the toilets and saw her in line. He was about to leave, but for the past few months, he’d been wanting to talk to her. Every time he saw her around the campus, she was either leaving, or he was the one who had to
March 13, 2000Coralis had to attend a mating gala hosted by the Swamtons, a prominent fay family. They wanted their eldest son and heir, Ollyo, to find a bride. They invited dozens of single elemental women of prominent families or who were powerful. Coralis didn’t want to go. She knew Ollyo very well: he was always surrounded by all kind of women. She didn’t think that there was any species that he didn’t sleep with. She dated his cousin Rowan for a short period of time, but his father was always in their business and they ultimately realized that it was better for them to remain friends instead of pushing for a relationship that would feel forced. The Swamtons were close to Coralis’ parents. They told her to bring a single friend with her. She was still a little bit angry at her parents: she thought they should never have gotten involved with Lord Meozo in the first place and stood up to him, but she didn’t know what their deal was exactly with the Swamtons. She also remembered he
November 19, 1999After her flyball game against Columbia, Coralis flew to Victoria’s dorm window. Victoria had started a medical program at the university to become an optometrist. Her dad’s family being human, she wanted to be able to better help them to see the world around them. It didn’t matter to her how gloomy the world seemed to be some days; it was still beautiful to see. Victoria wanted to help humans see the world for what it was: colourful, vibrant, full of beauty.As she approached the window’s ledge, Coralis jumped off her flying stick and transformed into her black cat form mid-air, right after shoving her stick into her cloak. She landed on the window’s ledge as a black cat and scratched the window. “Hey Cheetah, did we win?” said Victoria, as Coralis transformed back into her mage form. “Yup, we did. Columbia’s team is better than it was last season, but they’re still lacking in cohesiveness. You missed the game?” “I literally just got back. Human university is