#Plushia's perfect morning

[jessigrino]

Don't feel bad for him, that's his natural habitat. It would be bad without the fire.

[p1nkcanoe]

Plushia is the Abbey's Resident Baby Gremlin.

Plushia is an interesting little creature. 

It was summoned by accident. The abbey had needed a new ghoul to help around the grounds and any would do… Their lack of specificity had been their mistake. You can imagine the look of confusion and shock on Imperator and the Cardinal’s face when the glowing from the summoning ritual subsided and sat crisscrossed in the center was a miniature, demonic little gremlin, shifting and shaping its body into different forms before settling on an odd, grotesque copy of the awkward Cardinal to his left. 

“Whoops?” The Cardinal had said, nervously. Imperator had not been impressed. 

And they’d always meant to send him back to wherever it came from, but the time to do it never came. But it wasn’t like it ran rampant through the halls, tormenting siblings and biting the ghouls… 

Except that's exactly what it did. 

At least once a week the smell of smoke fills the halls and siblings are sent sprinting in and out of rooms trying to find where it is coming from. Most of the time it's a curtain or a sham set aflame by the creature and his stolen box of matches. The flame dances up and up and it watches it with huge black eyes as it eats at lavish fabrics until it licks the ceiling. Or until it’s put out by a cloud of extinguishing powders and ruined with copious amounts of water. It loves fire, like really loves it in an obsessed type of way. (Swiss once considered letting the thing play with bottle rockets until he launched himself into space. Cumulus said that was too cruel.) And the little thing runs surprisingly fast, like really, really fast. The second it hears the clink of Imperator’s heels or the sound of a boot it takes off through the door, leaving the smoldering match it used behind to burn a hole in the carpet. 

“Today’s the day. It’s going back,” Imperator will say. She’ll even write it into her calendar. The only issue is, in order to send something back to the pit, you first have to catch it. 

“Send the ghouls.” 

And that is how you commence a gremlin hunt. It requires all hands on deck and sends every ghoul in the abbey sprinting and scrambling through the halls and down into the basement for the little shit. It brings out the worst in everyone. It’s purely primal –all unglamored bodies and claws– the way they attempt to hunt it down and capture it. But as mentioned previously, the thing is lightning fast and the perfect size to run under furniture and into cracks between the walls that only an arm can get into. It also doesn’t help that it thinks the hunt is a game; everything is always a game. He weaves around valuables, runs under padded feet, bites at resting heels… Needless to say, the hunts are ever unsuccessful and Imperator marks her calendar again. 

Recently, and to everyone’s dismay, the thing got his hands on a screwdriver and mastered navigation of the vents. Now, siblings and ghouls alike are woken up in the middle of the night by the pitter-patter of feet somewhere above their heads and in the walls, much too heavy to be a rat. It’s insufferable. And it does it on purpose too, sometimes taking metal objects with it just to scrape and hit and drag against the sides in no particular pattern, just to make noise and keep the lucky individual from getting any sleep. 

In the winter the abbey gets frigid at night. When the fires in the fireplaces die down and the air becomes icy, the gremlin sets out for warmth. On more occasions than the ghouls can count they've woken up to a tiny body nestled into their bed. It’ll worm its way in between the pillows or simply sleep right above the crown of one’s head if it wants, and they’ll never know until morning comes and they accidentally roll over on it or push it to the floor. He’s been caught a handful of times, captured between strong hands that carry him in a vice towards Imperator’s office. Mount and Cirrus’ hands are scarred from razor sharp teeth and tiny claws. They never make it the entire way before they’re dropping the gremlin and spitting curses between their teeth. It’s gone and giggling before they can even turn around. 

Oh! And the little shit mocks people... It rarely speaks in full sentences, and never responds when spoken to, but the second something it finds amusing happens it’ll repeat it and poke fun like a broken record. Stub your toe? You’ll be hearing the way you cursed for hours. Think you’re quietly getting off in the safety of your own room? Nope! It’ll be in the walls and up through the vents moaning and groaning until the entire abbey knows the way you sound. Sometimes it’s humorous, like the time it caught Aether calling Sunshine “Daddy” and decided to sprint through every inch of the grounds repeating the word with perfect pitch and inflection, even including the breathy little whine at the end. They never let him live that one down.