A Light Snack
To bite, or Not to bite the hand that feeds you
This is day #2. You can catch the beginning of Ferrell’s story here: Welcome to Nevicata.
This little series will intersect with other tales based in the world of Nevicata devised by Maryellen Brady 💗📚 for her 24-Day Advent-ture. She’s invited us all into her world.
PROMPT (#2): Your character is given the gift of comfort. What form of light is it?
You can read the companion story here:
The frost sprite zipped ahead of Ferrell and pushed open the coffee shop door with the pomp of someone entering a royal court.
“Stay,” it told the pup, pointing its stick-figure arm at the snowbank.
The door shut in his face. Ferrell blinked, baffled but obedient.
Inside, steam curled through warm lamplight, and the smell of roasted beans mingled with sugar and pine. A ball-jointed doll stood behind the counter—tall as a human, carved of pale wood, face painted with delicate, serene features. Her joints clicked as she moved.
“Tessela,” the frost sprite sighed, collapsing across the counter like spilled slush. “Life is pointless and everything is terrible.”
Tessela paused mid-pour. “We’re opening with that tonight, are we?”
“I found something,” the frost sprite said, voice flat with existential dread. “A creature. It’s outside.”
Tessela leaned to peer out the frosted window. The silhouette of a very small, very cold, vaguely dog-shaped lump sat in the snow, ears wilted.
“You left it out there?” she asked, horrified.
“It’s for the best. He’s… complicated.”
“He looks like he’s freezing.”
“He’s from Hades,” the sprite said. “If anything, he’s probably too warm.”
Tessela straightened, joints clicking, painted brows knitting in concern.
“Sprite,” she said, “you can’t leave a creature—any creature—out there in the snow. Look at him. He’s shivering.”
“That’s not shivering,” the frost sprite said grimly. “That’s… trembling with barely contained chaos.”
Tessela wiped her hands on an embroidered snowflake apron and marched toward the door with the solemn determination of a doll who had decided on a moral stance.
“I’m inviting him in,” she declared.
The sprite gaped at her. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
—
Ferrell had been told to stay outside the coffee shop, so he sat in a mound of snow pretending to guard the door while stoically dying of hunger.
That’s when he smelled it. Warm. Smoky. A perfect scent wafted toward him in the cold air, darkly sweet with grief-magic.
He lifted his snout, inhaled, and almost toppled backward.
Something was coming.
Something dramatic.
Something wrapped in too much black fabric and trailing emotional damage like a perfume.
Nightmare-Scarf-Lady.
She stopped in front of him, looming like a thundercloud stuffed into a dress. A crow shadowed her shoulder, radiating long-suffering babysitter energy.
“What,” Nightmare-Scarf-Lady demanded, “is that?”
Ferrell bristled. He was a Cerberus puppy. Obviously.
The crow muttered, “Cerberus puppy. Don’t make eye contact.”
Ferrell immediately made eye contact.
Then she rummaged in her pocket and a new scent drifted out: funeral-charcoal, still holding the faintest whisper of ritual fire.
He whimpered.
She drew out a small chunk of charcoal, dark and perfect and humming with sorrow-flavor.
Ferrell’s pupils expanded until they almost replaced his entire face.
She held it out in those long, thin, pale fingers—fingers with a very light coating of grave-dust. Fingers that had absorbed centuries of beautiful, aged sadness.
His nostrils flared.
His stomach tightened.
This was a dilemma.
On the one paw:
Charcoal was a perfectly acceptable snack.
Warm. Familiar. Respectable.
On the other paw:
Her bones.
Specifically: those fingers.
They smelled like concentrated misery and brittle moonlight. Like top-shelf grief, aged to perfection. Not the soft emotional crumbs people dropped. No. This was a five-course meal of sorrow served on a skeletal platter.
Ferrell swallowed hard.
He stared at the charcoal.
Then the fingers.
Then the charcoal.
Then the fingers again.
He weighed the moral implications.
There were none.
He leaned forward reverently…
toward the charcoal…
toward restraint…
toward being a good little Cerberus…
And then instinct grabbed the wheel: Why not both?
CRUNCH
Nightmare-Scarf-Lady unleashed a shriek so sharp it peeled a thin layer of frost off the nearest roof tile.
Ferrell scooted backward, prize in maw, and darted through the coffee shop door the moment it cracked open.
Inside, he found a spot by the fire and savored the victory.
The charcoal was good.
The finger was better.
Together they made a flavor profile he could only describe as:
“Sorry-not-sorry.”
Outside, Nightmare-Scarf-Lady wailed, “That was my favorite finger! I point with it all the time!”
He shrugged.
Most people considered pointing impolite.
He’d probably done her a favor.
The crow sighed, feathers drooping. “Well, that’s a Cerberus for you.”
Ferrell let out a tiny, self-satisfied huff and licked soot off his chin.
Best.
Village.
Ever.
LoL 🤣 I still want one.
I want to boop that nose, but I like all my fingers....