I’ll make an Art Fight character roster thread soon, but after a year I’m finally making A ref for my OC Isolfur.

He’s an ice demon yeti summoned as a witches familiar.

To be honest, when I see prompt of day 26 says horns, my mind immediately went ‘Oh, Shadow would be good one for this.’ Shadow is my oc in The Owl House; Amity’s demon familiar.

Her name was Fae.

She was a gentle young girl—very kind, and very timid. Her favorite things consisted of stargazing, exploring the woods and meadows behind her house, and the color blue. She liked to catch toads and lizards and then set them free after telling them to stay safe and hide better. They never really listened, but she thought she’d at least warn them anyways.

Fae’s birthday was in November, so she was made to wait a year before starting school. She was one of the oldest children in her class—in her whole grade, really—and it made the other kids laugh at her. Then again, kids had been poking fun at her ever since she was three years old, and the further along she got in school, the more kids laughed and made fun of her. She would never tell the teachers because she thought the other children were right: that she was “weird” and “backwards,” as the other kids would say to her. Her mothers (Anneh and Jazmyn Callisto) found out, of course, because it became a concern of Fae’s teachers. There were many, many parent-teacher conferences concerning Fae as the years passed.

But let’s back up just a bit.

When Fae was around six or seven—approximately six and a half—years of age, she packed her Starry Night lunchbox with four peanut butter sandwiches, three apples, and a juice box. She took that lunchbox and a cloak that her mother had given her, and she left home.

“I’m running away,” she had announced.

“Really, dear?” Jazmyn asked.

“Really, Mom.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Anneh crossed her arms, glancing at her wife for backup.

“Where will you go?” Jazmyn a strand of Fae’s hair behind her ear.

“To the woods, where I’ll live and be happy,” Fae responded matter-of-factly. “Maybe some nice deer will adopt me.”

“Well, at least let us help you pack,” Jazmyn said, winking at her. Anneh was, of course, confused. But they helped pack her lunchbox and dressed her warmly and walked her to the porch, watching to make sure she was okay. She’d be back, they both knew it. She just needed to let off some steam.

And that is exactly what Fae did. She went out to the little meadow in the middle of the woods and she laid her cloak out across the grass, opened her lunchbox and proceeded to eat one of the sandwiches.

After some time (and another two sandwiches), she felt calmer, but was still set on running away. “I could find some nice deer to live with,” she wondered out loud as she fed some ants, “but I think I’d be too loud for them. Maybe some foxes—but they wouldn’t like fire if I cook my food, which I will, if they’re eating meat.” She was so wrapped up in this thought process that she didn’t notice a dark figure at the edge of the trees.

It was black, but not like the color black. It was black like a hole that went down and down and down and never reached a bottom, black like the sky at night when there are no stars out. It was the color of a black hole, a void. And it was watching her. Roughly the size of a dog—a german shepherd, perhaps—it stood, watching, observing, waiting for the right moment to move in. It had shadowy horns on the top and sides of what could only be assumed to be its face, and narrow white slits for eyes.

Fae closed her lunchbox and brushed the crumbs off of her lap, sighing a sigh much too deep for a six-and-a-half-year-old. She was barely paying attention to anything when a throaty growl pierced her daydream and startled her. She turned, looking around but seeing nothing. “Hello?” She called putting, voice small but confident. “I have an extra sandwich, if you’d like one.” And then she saw it, the creature—if it could be called that. It presented itself to her, standing as it was, a barely-dog-shaped mass of void-black. It lifted its head and squinted its already-narrow eyes are her.

“There you are,” she said, clearly disturbed but putting on her best brave face. She opened her lunchbox once more and pulled out the last sandwich, extending it to the creature. “You must be really hungry to growl like that.”

The creature perked up what appeared to be its ears, taking a step closer. Then it opened its mouth.

It had two rows of sparkling, white, razor-sharp teeth, gleaming in the daylight. And then it spoke.

“Do you not know what I am, boy?” A low, silky voice that sounded much like her moms’ friend Jeremy’s.

“I’m a girl,” Fae said without skipping a beat.

“You can’t be,” he lowered his head. “I was summoned for a one Felix Callisto.”

“That’s me,” she said. “My parents gave me the wrong name when I was born. My moms haven’t changed it yet.”

“I see.”

“My name is Fae.”

“Well then, Fae, do you know what I am?”

“Hungry?” She guessed, holding up the sandwich again.

He lifted his head proudly. “I am—” a shadow-demon, summoned to protect and defend you at all costs; but he couldn’t say that to a six-and-a-half-year-old. “I am a very special... ghost-dog, and I have travelled a great distance to be with you.”

“So like my moms’ familiars.”

“Well.. perhaps, in a way.”

“Well, you must be hungry if you’ve travelled all this way for me,” Fae said, once more holding the sandwich out eagerly. “You should eat.”

“If it would make you happy...”

“It would.”

And so he opened his mouth and swallowed the sandwich all at once.

Fae sighed in relief. “So then,” she started, closing her lunchbox again, “if you’re my familiar, you’ll need a name. And it’ll need to be a good one, something you can be real proud. What kind of name would you like?”

“What good will a name do me?” The creature asked.

“So you can come to me when I call for you,” she explained.

“But I will always be at your side,” he countered.

“Not always. You gotta have a name!” She paused, her tongue sticking out as she thought of names. Then she saw her lunchbox and smiled. “What about Vincent?”

“Is that a good name?” He tipped his head.

“If you like it, yes.”

“Then yes.”

“Okay Vincent, we should go home now. My moms will want to know where I got a dog from.”

Vincent stood and squinted his narrow eyes at her. “Let us leave here.”

And they walked off, and she asked him normal six-year-old questions, and he did his best to answer on a level she would understand.

“So Vince, can you do any tricks?”

Just updated another character, or rather this time a species. Here’s some basic info that I have finally decided on for the species:

Classification: familiar, lower demon

Ability: possession, specifically of any animal but humans, apes/monkeys, dolphins, and elephants

Appearance varies depending on what it has possed last. Only consistency is body shape, number of toes per foot, type of head, tongue and teeth, and ability.

Very greedy creatures

“You can make a family out of anything.  It took me a long time to understand that I didn’t have to accept the was things had been mapped out for me.”

Honorary Blogger Sadie Rose Bermingham: If A Picture Paints (80) Thousand Words… + Excerpt & Giveaway!

If A Picture Paints (80) Thousand Words…

by Sadie Rose Bermingham

A couple of years ago, in between novels, while we were both obsessed with tales of urban fae, ruined buildings and faded industrial environments, Bellora sent me a photograph of a run down looking building that could have existed in any post-industrial city in the western world. The building had been an auto-parts store and the…