Drade laid huddled on his bed, a pillow squeezed on either side of his head. It was well beyond midnight, and he had school the next day.
Yet, he couldn’t fall asleep. It wasn’t like he was troubled or anything -he was quite satisfied, actually- it was just one thing...His sister just wouldn’t shut up.
On the other side of his room, where carpets of all shapes, sizes, and design laid, Uffield was busy playing Bite and Smite 2 on their game console. Three of her black, gooey tentacles pushed her controller to its limits as she performed extremely technical combos against Baybliss Army soldiers in-game.
He was happy to play Bite and Smite 2 with her as she streamed over the past two days, watching and quipping as she had fun interacting with her new fans and virtual avatar’s quirks and expressions, but she was as loud as Chaos!
And he didn’t have the heart to tell her to kick it.
“What?!” Uffield’s high-pitched, girlish voice almost whispered to a microphone near her incomprehensible, blue-blanket-covered form, “You were with the stream earlier? Aww, thanks for checking up on me.” Her virtual avatar automatically gained a cute smile, reflecting her inhuman expressions with a human one. She had increased her follower count tenfold over the past three days of streaming and paid an unnatural amount of attention to her stream’s chat. “Huh? You’re worried about my health? Why would that be...?” The avatar gained a ? puddle of ominous black liquid over its head as it tilted it in confusion. “Oh, I guess humans need to sleep, don’t they. Honestly, I can’t relate too much.” The avatar shrugged. “What do you people even do when you’re asleep? And dreams sound sooooo terrifying! My brother said he gets dreams where everyone he knows is dead, and he can’t cry. T-that’s just terrifying. I can’t imagine living through that multiple times!” The avatar leaned back, holding its arms securely together with an unsettled expression.
...
“Nightmare? That’s an ominous word...besides the point!? As I said,” she repeated like it should have been obvious, her avatar holding out a finger with a stern expression, “Eldritch beings don’t need sleep. Take it up with my dead great-grandpa, Azzy, if you don’t like my biology...Human? How many times do I need to tell you I’m an eldritch entity...no, it’s not a joke, I swear! It’s normal to stream 3 days straight for me. I’m not sleepy-eyed at all! Well, I don’t have eyes, so...yeah.”
As she played Bite and Smite 2, a massive, inexplicable, and out-of-place pug had appeared and begun chasing her character down. She had unwittingly activated a secret event. “WOAH, WHAT IS THAaaat...” Her voice trailed to a croak as she noticed something to her left.
Uffield almost instantly paused her game and muted her mic with the tap of her nearby keyboard.
Drade stared at her as she moved the only exposed part of her incomprehensible body to face him.
She ‘stared’ back, awkwardly, as Drade’s face curled in sleepless rage.
“I-I’m sorry...” she said in shame, folding her blanket atop her ‘face’ with particularly stout tentacles. Drade had told her repeatedly to keep it down, and it was a miracle he’d endured her blather for three days straight.
“It’s...fine,” Drade slowly forced out before walking out of the room, squeezing past his sister, who was almost as large as the room was wide. Just before he exited, he said, “I’m going to take a walk.”
“Got...it...” Uffield whispered. “OH! And watch out for that rubber ball on your way down. Luma lost it there earlier today.”
“Lumia? What was she doing with a rubber ball?”
“No, Luma.”
“Who is luma?”
“You know, she’s the neighbor’s kid.”
Uffield could perceive everything in a 25-foot radius, able to pinpoint anything inside, right down to the atom or photon, so it wasn’t a surprise she knew their many neighbor’s names, but Drade wasn’t sure how he was expected to know them. His ‘illusion ignorance’ ability was one thing, but omniscience was another.
“Got it. I’ll make sure to avoid the...ball.”
With Uffield’s expansive understanding of the world around her, she knew a bit...too much. But that was par for the course when eldritch beings came into play.
Drade walked out of the room and into the kitchen, where his mother leaned against their kitchen stove, drinking coffee. On the dining room table, her computer shined under a dim chandelier’s light.
“Up late cooking up lessons again, mom?” Drade asked groggily, his deadpan voice a little sore. “And you should stop drinking coffee so late.”
His mom had dark brown hair, unlike Drade’s pitch black, and wore her pink pajamas with a loose cardigan over a light tee-shirt. The colors didn’t match well at all. “Says you, Drade! Aren’tcha going to school tomorrow?”
“Uffield,” Drade said simply.
“Ohhh, that figures. I told you rooming with an eldritch entity wouldn’t be easy.”
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“And I told you that turning down the financial aid of an extremely powerful eldritch entity, AKA: dad, would not be preferable,” Drade pitched back.
She waved his turnaround off, replying in a light tone, “You really shouldn’t talk about your dad like he’s some sort of mob boss.”
“He isn’t?”
“Oh -yeah, you got me there.”
She smiled and raised her cup of coffee like she was making a toast, returning it to her mouth for a sip. “Did I ever tell you about how your dad and I fell in love?”
“Mom, if you tell me that story again, I’ll fall in love with domestic violence.” Drade let out a tiny sigh. Although Drade usually had a deadpan expression, there were always nonverbal subtleties his mother could pick up on. Such as how when Drade grew annoyed, he weaved sighs of annoyance at the end of his sentences.
“Okok, How about the first time we had...” She stopped, giving her son a moment to say ‘no’ to what she was about to say before she said it.
“What’s up with the dramatic silence?” Drade leaned against the kitchen counter opposite of his mother, oblivious.
“...Uhh, when we had ice cream together.” She improvised, not actually interested in discussing what she’d alluded to.
“Is there...something special about that time?”
“W-well, I suppose there was.” She took a bit of time to recollect her memories of the event in question. “So, we were in China, right?”
“Right...?”
“And one day, we walk down a strip mall, and he’s in his usual business clothing,”
“...What’s his usual business clothing?” Drade hadn’t seen his father too many times, but he was humanoid, unlike his half-sister.
“You know, like, he’s in black and white clothes that cover his entire body.”
“How did you fall in love with that again?”
“I thought you didn’t want to hear that story? Whatever, before I continue, what were you doing out of your room?”
“I was gonna go for a walk.”
“I could go for one too.”
In the distance, three people were scattered about Changeton park, cleaning the place up. It was rather chilly, so both Drade and his mom wore heavy coats, though while Drade had changed into reasonable clothes, his mom hadn’t bothered to change her pajamas. Drade didn’t know why he bothered making himself look good when most of his clothes ended up ripped or dirtied at the end of each week, nor was he sure when he’d fallen into the habit, but he was too lazy to break out of it.
As they walked down the park’s sidewalk, his mother continued with her story. “So where was I? Right, he was in his usual clothing, and I was holding his hand, then on a whim, I pointed to an ice cream shop and asked if we could go there. So, we went in and sat on some stools at the bar counter. And then-” She chuckled for a moment, remembering something funny, then stifled herself. “And so then a chef of sorts asked us what we wanted and all, and once we gave him our order, he went back to make our stuff.”
Drade tilted his head. “Wouldn’t someone be a little confused by some dude revealing absolutely no skin, with like, a mask and stuff?” Although eldritch beings like his sister or father could walk unnoticed by a random passerby, if they were to interact with anyone, that strange effect would instantly wear off, revealing them for the monstrous visage.
“Exactly! So once he walked off, I was quick to ask your dad why he didn’t react at all, and he said that the guy happened to be isomancer that worked for him.”
“Isomancer? So did he use ice magic to make ice cream?”
“Well, that’s what I guessed too! So, we waited, talking a bit, being romantic, and eventually, the guy came back holding two bowls of ice cream. Then, he threw them overhand at us. As I panicked, seeing my precious ice cream flung across the room, a bunch of floating isosceles triangles began appearing in front of the ice creams’ path. Our ice cream ricocheted off the triangles and was flung all across the room spastically as the triangles launched it to and fro, finally landing them on our table perfectly fine!” She animated the flying bowls with her hands, buzzing them about the place in caffeine-filled excitement.
Drade’s eyes drifted to their top right. “So what you’re saying is...that he was a...isosceles triangle wizard?”
“Yes!”
“...Dad and his freaking half-puns,” Drade let out another subtle sigh. He knew one thing about his dad, and that was that he made way too many terrible-like, genuinely bad puns. That those puns seduced his mother was even more embarrassing than the repulsive fact his father made them. At least he had the excuse that he was an ‘incomprehensible’ eldritch being!
One of the people working on the park somewhat limply walked to Drade once his mom’s story had finished, his eyes closed. “Hey, Drade!” he said.
His mother reeled back in surprise and confusion, but Drade instantly recognized the person controlling the body. “Hey, Luuko. How’s the beautification doing?” Luuko’s voice was recognizable but vastly different in the person’s incompatible body.
Luuko shrugged. “Not bad, we’ve almost got the park fixed up. I can’t magically fix those dents in the concrete, though, so they’re staying.”
Drade waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. We can always have Destin handle it when dad finally stops ‘borrowing’ him.”
His mother interrupted their conversation, “So...Drade, are you going to explain...” His mother gestured towards Luuko’s thrall haphazardly. “...this?”
“That’s a sleepie. It’s controlled by luuko; she’s one of the Friends.”
“Creepy...” the wife of an eldritch mob boss said.
“I get it...” Luuko said. She yawned, despite being asleep. “It’s pretty weird. Hey, Drade, you know how my sleepies are slow and stuff?”
“I do.”
She scratched her...his? head nervously. “I was wondering if uhh...if you’d train me.”
Drade tilted his head with curiosity. “How would I train you?” He guessed she just wanted a lap pillow, but entertained her request regardless.
“Well, I sorta figured you’d...y’know, in your o’ great knowledge of magic, be able to help me...maybe? I’m pretty useless, all things considered...”
Drade narrowed his eyes for a moment, seriously considering the request. “I never thought about that possibility... Where do you go during lunchtime?”
“The library, to sleep.”
“Ok, I’ll meet you then to train you. Does that sound good?”
Luuko drooped in disappointment. “Aww...I guess I gotta say bye to my sleepytime then...”
He looked back to his mom, ignoring Luuko. “Come on, let’s go.”