V. Blinding

Her ears twitched as she stirred restlessly in sleep.

Ryli woke with a start and shot into a sitting position, the quick movement causing her vision to blur and the drumbeat in her head to pound all the harder. She glanced around; the room was dark, its ceilings were high. She could see a tiny beam of light sneaking in through the curtains of the large window at the wall. Getting up and walking slowly to the heavy drapery, she flung the thick fabric aside, only to be assaulted by the blindingly bright daylight that proceeded to crash into the room.

After blinking several times and adjusting to the light, she looked back over the large room. It was simple- all grey stone with several soft rugs, a tall wooden door, and two other big windows along the wall. A pair of sturdy-looking beds were set against the wall directly across from the windows. In the bed next to the one she herself had turned into a disheveled mess was a sight that managed to somewhat relieve her. Shadoe lay curled in a ball beneath the blankets, and after dashing quickly to her friend's side, Ryli shook the other's shoulder. "Shadoe, wake up! we have to get ou-"

Shadoe uncurled stiffly, putting a hand to her temple and squinting up at her friend. "You..."

"Hmm? What's wrong?"

"You sort of have animal ears on your head..."

"Wha- Well, so do you!"

"What...?!"

At the same time, their hands flew to the top of their heads, patting at their hair and new ears.

"Ohhhh!" yelled Ryli.

"Ohhhhhh!" yelled Shadoe in echo. Neither of them were really sure what else to do. Most people wouldn't know what to do if they gained some sort of strange, unexplained mutation overnight. High school just doesn't give training for that sort of thing.

Shadoe had just taken a breath and started to gain perspective when she saw something flick behind Ryli. "Uhmm... Don't yell again... But... What is that?!"

Ryli spun around in a tight little circle, looked behind her, and saw what appeared to be a cat tail. She grabbed at it and stared at it for an uncomprehending moment. Its soft fur had puffed up in her agitation; it reminded her of that stray kitten Dirk had brought home a year ago. The poor thing had taken to hiding beneath the couch whenever the band practiced, its fur all on end as the group ran through the loudest songs, where the drums shook the windows and occasionally annoyed the neighbors.

"Oh my god..." But as Shadoe got out of bed, Ryli's eyes widened. "Hey, hey, you have one too!"

Shadoe screamed first this time, grabbed at her fluffy tail, and held it tightly. She loosened her grip a bit, as the tighter hold had sent a sharp sensation through her nerves.

There was a soft noise as the door swung open on its hinges. The pair froze as two young men walked in. One of them stopped short at the door, his eyebrows knit together and ears laying low down against his long hair, as if he couldn't bear to step in any further. The other wagged his own bushy tail, and with one push off from his powerful legs, he leaped and landed a foot away from the two girls- the two flinched, but held their ground.

Both boys were tall and fit looking. The one that had hung back had an uncomfortable look on his face, but the tail-wagging one wore a small grin that revealed a set of sharp canine teeth.

He tilted his head to the side, and with a mock frowny face that only disturbed his smile for a moment, he whimpered, "We leave your side for hardly five minutes and that's when you decide to finally wake up?"

Shadoe blushed at the stranger's smothering familiar attitude and his proximity to her face. He seemed to be examining her and she thought she could hear him murmur something like "Huh... They are blue..." In that same moment, she managed to realize she was in nothing more than boxers and an undershirt, as was Ryli. And beneath the eyes of two somewhat handsome and also slightly odd guys, she felt fairly exposed.

"Uh... Who are you...?" Ryli, seemingly unphased by her own state of dress, frowned at both of the intruders.

"And where the heck are our clothes?" Shadoe crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowing.

"Oh, you see, my brother is a bit of a perve--"

"Don't listen to him!" The cranky one jumped closer, shoving the other, presumably his brother, aside. "I had one of the servants take care of that. Your clothes. Now you can pick out something less... conspicuous..." His grey eyes glanced out the window, searching for anything else to look at than the girls that apparently caused him a large amount of unrest.

"Conspicuous...? Well, yah, we were in pajamas, but does it get any more conspicuous than fox ears or cat tails?" Ryli scoffed, her aforementioned tail flicking back and forth. "How bout you explain some things first?"

Shadoe leaned towards her friend and whispered, "You sure we can't get some of these clothes they were talking about...?"

"Oh cmon."

IV. Siblings and Sleeping Beauties

"Are they alive...?"

"They had better be. I'm not quite sure, but I don't think there are any sacrifices foretold in the prophecy."

A shuffling of feet, more soft, deep murmurs... Ryli sat up quickly, a dizzying disorientation possessing her form as she did so. Weird dreams... She wondered if somebody had slipped something into her drink at the gig the night before... Something was definately wrong...

"Oh look. Gmorning, there."

"Who is it...?" She couldn't open her eyes. She had flickered them open for just a moment a second ago and was still seeing spots. "What's going on...?" Her brain tried to pick apart where she was, what she was doing there. She didn't have answers to either question, hardly had an answer to two plus two.

She fell asleep again, the pounding against her skull an inescapable and violent lullaby.

_______________________________

Artemus furrowed his brows, tail stopping its wag. The pair still refused to regain consciousness enough to carry on a conversation. He had never been one for patience. "Will they be okay?"

"... Probably." Actaeon shrugged after staring at the limp bodies a moment longer. "Maybe the change was too much for them? Human bodies tend to be awfully weak and humans in general seem to be rather resistant to change and slow to adaptation."

"Huh..." Artemus scratched at his head and looked the two over again. One, the one that had called him names, had attained her true form in the shape of a fox- a humanoid body like his own, with a pair of soft, black-tipped ears, and a bushy black-tipped tail. Her fur, her hair, was a light brownish-red, smooth and velvety. The other girl was distinctly feline, still with a humanoid form, but with an added pair of triangular ears and a long, sleek tail. They would be confused when they woke up, probably.

Actaeon made a little aggitated growling noise and sniffed at the air. "They smell strange and human and despite their physical changes, it's obvious they don't belong here... Someone will find them out, if they don't get out of those... Earth things... and into something more fitting for Elle." He gestured to the clothes the girls wore, his nose wrinkling with distaste.

"You could always do it yourself. Get them into something fitting, I mean."

Actaeon's quick bark was defensive, his ears laying low and oddly enough, his cheeks going just a bit pink. "I meant that they need to wake up so they can change themselves." Though Artemus knew exactly what his brother had meant, he enjoyed teasingly exploiting and prodding at his brother's one weakness: females. What were siblings for, if not teasing and poking fun?

"Oh, okay then." Artemus grinned. His brother's ears perked up as he realized his twin had been trying to get a reaction like that on purpose.

"You're an idiot prince, you know that."

"I'm not the one who's so easy to fool. For a stone-faced guard, you're all too easy to undermine."

"Hmph..."

III. Rabbit Hole

1:23.

Ryli continued watching the digital clock on her bed side table; she always enjoyed viewing the magical moment the numbers all lined up. Across the room she could hear faint music coming from Shadoe's ear buds. The other girl had fallen asleep listening to her iPod, nothing out of the ordinary. Ryli sighed as she reached for her own iPod, and after selecting a soft play list she was finally able to drift off to sleep.

 _______________________________

Shadoe woke in a haze, her half-awake mind moving slowly, scattered. She could remember... She had been listening to her iPod. But she could no longer hear it. "The ear things must have fallen out..." she thought.

She tried moving her arm so she could find the headphones, but she couldn't move. She tried moving her legs; they wouldn't move either. Her blankets felt tight. Really tight. Like she had been wrapped in a giant burrito. Like that giant burrito was being held tight and carried away at a high speed.

Fully awake now, Shadoe could hear the wind howling loudly as it rushed by. They were moving fast- much faster then any human could run.

Ryli squirmed and wiggled but could not get free of her own blankets.

"RYLI!" Shadoe tried to yell over the roaring of the wind.

"Shadoe?!" Ryli's reply was almost lost to the air that flew past them.

"What's going on!? Who are you?!" Shadoe squirmed some more, fighting against the grip of the captor that held so tightly to the blanket-burrito.

"Ah, they're awake now," said a voice that easily overcame the wind with its deep, strong tone.

"Hold on, we're almost there," said a similar, but somehow different voice.

After what must have only been a few seconds, they stopped and were gently placed on the ground. The sound of earth being rappidly tossed about and scratched at filled the night.

Shadoe couldn't see what was happening, but fell to screaming insults, currently unable to move anything but her mouth. "You dirt faces! I hope you get hit with a semi-truck! Let us go or I'll hunt down and eat. Your. First. Born. CHILD!!!" She spoke the last few words with threatening, solid singularity.

A slight scoff of a chuckle. "Well, that's no way to speak to a king."

"King? King of what?! King of the dirt-faced, truck-squished, and first-born-childless?!' yelled Ryli

"Nice." Shadoe appreciated the play off of her own insults. Ryli echoed a "thank you."

The two then heard what sounded like a low growl. "Oh, hush." said one to the other, as the digging finally stopped. The girls were both picked up once again; the blankets had loosened a little bit. As they were tossed into what resembled a giant rabbit hole, Shadoe managed to poke her head out to just catch sight of the two figures, the kidnappers, jumping in the hole after them.

There was the sensation of falling as everything went black...

II. Howling

It was a hollow sound, the chorus of notes hit by a multitude of mutts.

With a slam, Shadoe shut the back doors of the van, the noise just barely heard amidst the barking of riled up neighborhood dogs. She yawned and peered down the street, unsure what could be disturbing every pup on the block. There was no evidence of a reason for the uproar.

"Hey, you two coming in?" A call from the porch caught her attention and she glanced around for her friend, to spot Ryli staring up at the sky. Corran called something again and Shadoe reached to grab the other girl's arm, tug her out of the trance. At the touch, Ryli jumped and her consciousness crashed back down to Earth.

"What's up...?"

"I dunno..."

"Hey, you two! I'm gonna lock you out!"

Ryli shook her head clear and yelled a response. "Shut up! You're bugging all the dogs in the city with your obnoxious voice!"

The barking and howling quieted to whimpers soon enough.

_______________________________

"I told you to be more careful. Your scent is all over the place."

The (surprisingly) elder brother tossed an apologetic grin to his twin. "Kings like to make their presence known."

"Whatever..." Actaeon growled softly in his throat and tossed the hood back over the crown prince's head of dark hair. "And stop with that annoying tail-swishing."

Artemus' bushy tail just kept wagging, despite the warning. His ears perked up at a noise down the road. His silver eyes saw her an instant after he heard her, and his tail-swishing only picked up tempo. "There, Actaeon. We've found them!" He slipped back around the corner at a tug on his cloak and turned, only to see his brother's light grey eyes glaring down at him.

"There are other people there, brother. We have to take the two and also keep mortals out of this business. Don't get your tail in a twist and go trotting out to greet the humans like some overeager pet." Actaeon glanced up at the stars. "We still time left until daylight..."

Artemus reached up and patted his guardian's, his "younger" sibling's head. "Sorry, Actaeon. Stop worrying, alright?"

"Get off..." Actaeon shook his head quickly, knocking his brother's hand away. His ears lay low, an annoyed little snarl coming from somewhere in his chest, but his body grew slightly less tense.

They couldn't fail, right? They were princes of Elle. They would not go home without obtaining what they had come for.



I. And In The Dark I Can Hear Your Heartbeat

The air was warm and heavy and smelled like summer city nights.

Ryli paused her thinking and took in a deep breath of the familiar scent. It was going to be another good summer, best friends side by side, walking home beneath the sky of endless stars that constantly combatted the bright lights of civilization.

"Well then, what'd you think of tonight?" Shadoe glanced over at her companion, the streetlight illuminating the cheery expression on her face. She slipped her hands out of her pockets and ran her fingers through her hair. Tilting her head up, she caught sight of a full moon that seemed to be continuing its eternal battle against both the lights made by man and the lights set into the sky by God. 

"It was fine, aside from..." She paused. A flash of silver that slinked around the corner just ahead of them caught her eye; but it was gone before her gaze could catch it again, nothing more than a trick of the light. "Mm..."

"It was fine, aside from....?"

"Ah, right. Dirk's drum solo was..."

"Yah. I thought so too."

"I know, right?"

The pair laughed as they rounded the corner. The van was already at the front of the house and she could hear the voices of their bandmates even before she spotted them on the porch. Shadoe dug in her bag for the key as Ryli closed the gate behind them.

"Took you two long enough! We still have to load all the stuff out of the van."

"And I'm hungryyy."

"Quiet, quiet. I forgot I had the key."

"You could have just ridden in the old wagon with us." Corran snatched the key from his friend's hand and unlocked the door, calling an "I'm home!" to nobody in particular. "Speaking of the wagon. You two get to take care of that. While Dirk and I call for a pizza."

The boys rushed inside before anybody could put forth an objection, and as the porchlight flickered on after they had slammed the door, Ryli shrugged. "No big deal. Cor might find his bass pushing up daisies in the front flowerbed tomorrow, though."

"I'd be a fan of that plan, if it didn't endanger the band's future as the most epic, famous, chart-topping group in history."

"Good point." Ryli grinned and swung open the back doors of the rusty, paint-chipped van. "I could just shave one of his eyebrows off while he's sleeping?"

The pair laughed again, still on the adrenaline-induced high of a gig-well-done. As they lugged the instruments and cords and equipment into the little two-story house, the silver glint slinked about several more corners, unnoticed.