I wrote a story on a creature I just learned about, check it out!
About a month ago I found a book in a magical little store called Monsters You Should Know. I was drawn by the spooky yet cute cover and learning about more mythical creatures from different cultures. I always loved reading Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and had long studied them as a hobby knowing a career would be foolish and embarrassing to my parents. Still, I continued to find out more and more about creatures around us that we’ve forgotten, that we can and cannot see.
I poured over the book and was immediately drawn to many of the creatures and knew I had to domesticate one for myself. While the Persian unicorn shadahavar was tempting after my years of research and respect for the creature, I decided a less carnivorous creature may be best for my first beast. While I poured through the book again I remembered I had fallen in love with the first creature in the book, the baku, a dream-eater.
The baku is a Japanese creature that devours nightmares of those who suffer from them, and myself long afflicted thought that the baku in its short stature and relatively harmless nature would be easiest to domesticate. There were some worries of course, the main being that if one relies on the baku too often it will begin to devour ones hopes and dreams as well. But myself having few save for domesticating strange creatures wasn’t worried about having anything important gobbled up and went about my mission.
I spent what little money I had after school and went to Japan and searched for the creature. There were many lonely nights and I worried that I may have wasted my money on my hope of finding and domesticating a baku when one night I had a nightmare and in my sleep managed to call its name.
I caught it right as it finished slurping up my nightmare, a pair of glowing eyes and sharp teeth disappearing within it. It struggled a bit while I clasped it close to me but it stopped, looking up at me with a confused sort of innocence before sniffing around me and snuggling close. I knew my time was limited now and that I had to take the baku out of the country as quickly and quietly as possible. I used a potion I had bought from a dark witch and rubbed it on its body. The baku fell easily asleep and I contacted a friend of a friend of a witch whom I had promised my first born (which was unlikely to happen) and made it safely back home without anyone the wiser.
The domestication took well, perhaps because I had so many nightmares the baku was comfortable at my side because it knew it would eat then. I tried feeding it other things, meat and plants and ordinary pet food but my terrors were sufficient.
I named the baku Aisling, my own little joke for my background. A way of honouring my family, not that they knew about any of this.
But I must stop hoping around it. It’s started to sniff and taste me in its own strange way, and my nightmares have been less and less since domestication took place.
(Inktober Prompt List found here. Image found from the book “Monsters You Should Know” by Emma SanCartier.)
Sarah O'Connor 