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A story in the world of Aisurcine ~~that totally isn't from some random 5 am Chromebook art-~~ Enjoy-

The tall bluish trees rocked in the cold, billowing wind, the leaves falling loose and swirling around the sky like little tornadoes. The blanket of dull, stormy gray roared above, lightning blasting the ground and scorching the grass.
Amidst the horrible storm’s bitter gale, there was a small cabin tucked into the corner of a short cliffside, the warm yellow lights from the windows shining through the darkness like a beacon in the pre-dawn. Inside was a not so happy couple tensed for when the cyclone would break through their house, prepared- they were not going to die from a medium-sized storm.

They were sitting on a small gray couch. The woman clenched a mug in her hand, trying to keep the warm liquid inside it still even with the walls of their cabin shaking. Her husband was beside her, under a thick duvet, staring off into space. He shivered. She clenched the handle tighter.

“We’re safe.” She finally said, in a way like she was telling herself. “The wind can’t get us here.” Her husband looked up at her, his face pale. “Carnis was not a good place to make a home.” He said. She laughed humorlessly. “It was not.”

The screeching tempest rattled outside, making the saffron colored light from the lamps flicker. It was a miracle they hadn’t gone out by now.

The two huddled there for a second, silent. Then… then there was a knock on the door.

Her husband stopped briefly, shifting under the comforter. “Wh…what was that?”

She eyed him. “A knock on the door. In the middle of a typhoon.”

He adjusted the duvet, looking uncomfortable. There was another knock, a bit more desperate. “Yeah- Yeah, I knew that. I was just making sure you heard it too.”

The wife then put down the mug on the side table and got up, straightened up her shirt, and started walking across the main room to the entrance, once again lightning spraying the windows with a violent, lambent glow. Fear edged into her mind as she got closer to the door, hands shaking.

“Don’t fly away!” Her husband called from the hallway, breaking the moment entirely. “I’m too pretty to be mourning!”

She laughed. “Oh no! You might get a wrinkle, or worse- a lightly colored hair!”

She heard him take a sip of the mug’s contents from the echo-y walls. “A lightly colored hair?? No!!!” He mock-wailed. “My life is doomed!!”

She scoffed, still smiling, before turning back to the door. With a small inhale, she grasped it, and opened it with a short creak.

"Oh thank you, miss or madam! We would have frozen to death out here!”

The wife took a step back, startled. She turned around. “Henry?”

“What is it?”

“C-come over here.”

She heard him groan through the storm’s furor, and she watched him appear through the hallway, frowning- and then letting out a little yelp when he saw who was- no, who were at their door.

“We don’t let cursed in, sorry.” He said in a stern but frightened voice to the people at their doorstep. “Please don’t try to eat us.”

“Eat you? Rude. We’re not cannibals, if you didn’t know.”

The woman eyed them nervously. There were four of them- four cursed little… things, and they were all children. The oldest (from what she could tell) was barely thirteen.

They were all relatively horrifying to look at. Two of them looked like cats- with shiny, round slitted eyes in the rampaging wind; another one- a little girl- looked like a bunny, and one of the cats- they had red fur-  was by her side, keeping her from blowing away(Personally, from what she knew about cursed, she was surprised SHE hadn’t been eaten); and the last one, who, from a distance, looked like she had the most human in her, had eyes sprawled all over her body and face like a little dirt worm.

Even with their… appearances… they looked friendly enough, and that surprised her. On top of that, they looked more than partially human, and unlike the other cursed her and her husband had encountered, they had chosen to talk first, rather than jump out to attack them.

“These are just kids.” The wife said quietly. “We can give them a chance.”

“The one that got Martin was SIX!” He cried in protest. Then he pointed at the messy-looking kids, a bolt of lightning illuminating their odd faces with eerie white. “It didn’t even have claws! THESE have claws.”

She groaned. “Henry, that was a BOOK. A book! Someone made up that. It isn’t real.”

Her husband huffed. “It was based off a true story. And these things happen A LOT. Just because they’re kids doesn’t mean they aren’t killers.”

The one who had spoken the most out of all of them- in the middle, the other cat-kid, with striking gray eyes- looked disappointed. “We’re innocent!”

The little bunny girl nodded furiously. “No sad red jam on us.” She said sagely. They all nodded in agreement. The other kid continued- “I just need somewhere my siblings and I can stay for a night. Just a night, nothing else-”

“I might ask for water though.” The girl with the hundreds of eyes on her said quietly. She was elbowed lightly for that by one of her siblings, and the cat kid continued on like she hadn’t said anything. “-We’ll leave immediately- You’ll barely even notice we were here!”

The wind screamed in their faces. Henry’s wife shivered in the freezing gale. He narrowed his green eyes, unresponsive. Thunder roared. His wife elbowed him, eyebrows furrowed in an expression that read ‘seriously, bro?’. He squinted at the children, like he was searching them for murder weapons. The wind screamed again. The little figures swathed in the glow of lightning were quivering and swaying in the cyclone. Henry’s wife gave him that ‘you have got to be kidding me’ look again.

He sighed, throwing his hands up. The storm blasted again, and the bunny girl squeaked, almost getting swept away like a kite but getting caught again by a kind of cursed who naturally was supposed to be eating her alive. “FINE!” Henry growled. “Let the isns in.”

So they were let in.

The four looked shaken, shivering hard, as they stepped inside the house, like they hadn’t felt a place this warm in forever.

“Thank you again-” the cat kid with the gray eyes said. She could see he had rust orange colored fur, and he ineffectively tried to hide a large gash on his right arm. The wife would have to ask about that later. “We surely would have met our end out there if not for your hospitality.”

“We get it.” Henry said bitterly, turning back to the room he was previously in and sitting down on the couch with his duvet. “No need to press it in.” They all walked over to that room, Henry’s wife coaxing the small fire that was dying in the fireplace.

Henry looked confused at the way they clustered around the warmth. He just stared at them for a little while, before mumbling “But aren’t you ice m-” He saw them tense and changed his words “But don’t things like you enjoy cold?”

The dirt worm girl shrugged, the eyes on her bare arms blinking slowly. Her voice was messy and rough, which might have been another aspect of being cursed besides- you know, the appearance part. “Only slightly. Mild chill? Yes, I can handle that.” Through one of the small windows, the image of a tree being uprooted and flung recklessly into the air made him nervous. She waved a hand towards the outside. “This? Nothing with sanity left can handle this.” She looked up and narrowed her at him. “I would know. I have some.”

He saw her look disgustedly down at her arm, and almost felt pity. Then he remembered in his favorite book his favorite character was eaten by one of these things, and the pity disappeared.

His wife sat down beside him on the couch and pulled some of the duvet over for herself. She turned to the kids and smiled. “I’m Margaret, and this-”

“My name is Henry.” He said quickly. Margaret sighed. “Anyways, what are your names?”

They all blinked, looking sort of surprised. She doubted a lot of people asked this of someone like them.

The cat-kid who did all of the talking paused, then pointed at the dirt worm girl with wild dark brown hair “that’s Adair” then at the bunny girl- who, apparently, was missing an arm- “this is Daisy” then at the cat boy with red fur who seemed the calmest of the four “that’s Jace, but he likes clouds a lot so we usually just call him Cloud- he says it sounds like a cat thing” and then at himself “And I’m Peter.”

Margaret nodded. “...Interesting.” She leaned forwards, the windows booming with light. “So, why were you out here all alone? And… why do you look so beat up?”

It was- Jace, yeah, that was his name- who responded this time. Behind him, his siblings casually smiled. It was slightly weird, but Margaret tried not to pay attention to it. “We usually travel by ourselves. It’s best not to be around strangers a whole lot, especially since we’re monsters to everyone. But we were staying with an adventurer-type guy. Had a house just out of here in… Cord, that’s the city nearby. But he was an adventurer-type guy, and most of those aren’t rich and can’t fund their adventuring well. He pretended to be nice in the beginning, but we found out he was just going to show us off so he could get money.”

Henry opened his mouth to say something, but Jace continued. “We ran away. Unfortunately right into a storm. And now we’re here.”

“...You’re very trusting.” Margaret’s husband said. Peter nodded. “It’s very risky. But we never look like antagonists this way.” He said simply.

“And the…” Margaret said. “And the… wounds?”

Peter looked at the arm he had tried to hide. It had a large, nasty scar from the elbow down. “Um.” He mumbled. “It’s just there.”

“And your sister.” Margaret added. “Dassy I think it was.”

“Daisy.” Henry whispered.

She blinked. “Daisy. Yeah.”

The bunny girl- who was cuddling with Jace-’s eyes were bright. “Missing for real life.” She said in a spooky voice. Jace shrugged. “It just isn’t there.”

Henry finally stepped in. “You can’t just have something like that disappear for no reason.” He said skeptically as he watched the four shift nervously. “Things like that don’t just happen- limbs don’t just go missing.”

“No uncomfortable questions.” Adair hissed defensively.

Margaret pulled back, dissatisfied. “Fine.” She huffed. Henry leaned over to her, hissing “Suspiciousssss…”

She attempted to ignore her husband, and continued to ask questions. “So… are you all actually family or-”

“No.” Peter said. “Spiritually, yes. Genetically, no.” Then he turned to Jace. “He knew Daisy before this whole mess- but they also aren’t related.”

“Ah.” Margaret mumbled. Even though she had seen it before, it still surprised her every time.

There were safety in numbers, of course, but her whole childhood told her that cursed were wild, crazy creatures without much sense or brain. That they attacked everyone because they could not think, that they attacked even their own kind with a horrible, unquenchable lust for blood.

And yet there were four random kids in their home, and none of them were eating each other. It got her every time.

“Sooo… why are you out here?” Peter said after a little while of silence, the question catching her off guard. Margaret blinked.

“We were tired of the city.” Henry cut in. “And all of the hate for things like you. Not that I like any of you, of course, but it was exhausting and I didn’t like, as I was simply going down the street to buy some jelly for a sandwich, every sign I seeing to be ‘kill them all!’ or ‘they all must be gone!’

“Cord is known for its hatred of your kind.” Margaret said quietly. “I, personally, am neutral on the topic, though-” she took in a breath “I sometimes doubt my choice, especially regarding the things I hear in the news…”

They all shifted at this too- clearly they knew as well.

There had been reports of cursed massacring small villages out and about recently. Crazy creatures that had pulled core beasts out from wherever core beasts hid and murdered hundreds of innocent people. The thought of it made Margaret shiver, wrapping more of the comforter around herself. What only made it worse- and her forgetfulness of it ashamed her- was that at some point, they had all been human at one point or another. They all had lives they were living, and then, abruptly, they were monsters.

“So… so your parents just abandoned you all?” She said cautiously. “When… this happened?”

Again, they all looked uncomfortable at this, slightly more than the last question. To Margaret’s surprise, they all took the time to respond. First it was Adair. “Yes.” She said simply, softly. “Yes, pretty much. My mother had been telling me what a wonderful job I was doing with the dishes when I felt weird and she looked at me and started screaming and threw me- yes, threw me- out a window.”

“I was playing hide and seek with my friend and it was fun and then he came over to find me and did and was crying. I ask him whats wrong and he say I look scary and he run away from me. I tell Mommy and Mommy say I need leave bfore Dad come bucause he would not believe I was me.” Daisy added in a teary voice.

“I don’t remember exactly, but I was doing something with my brother when he went all quiet and started backing away. I didn’t know what was wrong- he ran down the stairs and I chased him, thinking it was a game- and I heard him tell our mom ‘Peter’s a monster now’. She kicked me out of the house and didn’t even say a word.” Peter said, not meeting Margaret’s gaze.

“I drank something from someone. It tasted funny. I saw what I looked like and I knew that my family would probably attack me if they saw me, so I ran away.” Jace said finally.

It was sickening how easily Margaret had dehumanized them at first- that she had referred to them as things. She imagined how it would feel if she was one of them, out in a storm, and called a 'thing' as she slowly froze on their doorstep. The thought gave her butterflies.

1. ↑ not an insult, if that's what you were thinking! In Aisurcine there is a creature called a dirt worm !
2. ↑ isn - (is- in) a word in Aisurcine for 'monster'; plural: isns (is-in-s)
3. ↑ Warriors >:)