Double update! Go back and read 010 first!

COUNTDOWN: 28 DAYS TO FULL MOON #2

                “You said you knew how to bake!”

                “no, I said how hard could it be!”

                The kitchen was a disaster. Flour was all over the cupboards, there was a pile of cocoa powder on the ground, an egg was splattered on the wall from where Chanyeol and Chen had decided to try and play catch. When Kita had offered to help Chanyeol, Baekhyun, and Chen bake a cake for Xiumin’s birthday this isn’t exactly what she’d had in mind although it was probably exactly what she should have expected.

                It was 6 in the morning, and she knew Xiumin would be getting up soon, which is why the four of them had gotten up two hours ago to try and get this cake done in time. But not only were they nowhere near finishing it, there was no way the kitchen would be clean in time.

                “Is Xiumin the clean type of person?” She asked, and the three beagles began laughing.              

                “He’s going to kill us.” Chen looked at her, “He’ll take us quietly in the woods and we’ll never be heard of again.”

                Perfect.

                “Right, we’ll we should probably-” Kita’s attempt to start getting them to clean up was interrupted by a muted conversation approaching from the stairs. Kita couldn’t pick out the voices, but wolves had much better hearing.

                Chanyeol look scared, “Xiumin.”

                Baekhyun paled, “and D.O. is with him.”

                Kita shared anxious glances with them, she’d seen how neat D.O. was from whenever she’d visited his bedroom. If Xiumin was going to murder them in the forest then D.O. would be the one to bury their corpses.

                Chen clicked into action, “Basement, let’s go!” He grabbed Kita’s wrist and pulled her away from the approaching duo. Chanyeol and Baekhyun had run on ahead, opening a hidden door by the fireplace, and darting down the stairs behind it. Chen ushered her to follow and then closed the door quietly behind them.

                “Where’s the light.”

                “Get off my foot.”

                “Who touched my !”

                “Ouch.”

                “Chanyeol!”

                A light flickered on and the four of them blinked, adjusting to the faded yellow light. Chanyeol lowered his hand from the string controlling the open bulb, and joined his fellows in looking around.

                Baekhyun let out a cough, “can you imagine if they came down here? We could scare them to death with all this dust.”

                “When was the last time any of you were down here?” Kita asked, copying the others in pulling her shirt up to cover and nose.

                Chen shrugged, “we made Sehun sleep down here on a dare once, a couple years ago.”

                Chanyeol laughed, “he was mad for weeks.”

                The chatter died down as they heard footsteps above them. Dust fluttered down from the ceiling and settled in their hair but still no one dared move, lest Xiumin and D.O. realise they were down here. Their footsteps were heavy, and faster than usual, so the group in the basement could only assume that the two upstairs were doing an angry search through the house for the people responsible for the kitchen.

                Soon, the footsteps moved away and the four of them let out the breath they’d all been holding.

                “Safe.” Baekhyun sighed.

                Chen snorted, “yeah, until they go upstairs to check our rooms and see that none of us are there.”

                “…We’re dead.”

                “Maybe we could sneak out, take a couple of the bikes, and hide out in the human town for a couple days until the heat dies down.”

                As the three wolves began plotting ways of escaping, Kita was still exploring the basement. It was a big space, but had obviously never really been used except for a place to store old stuff. There was an outdated couch against the wall, cushions torn to show the fluff inside. A broken desk was propped up next to it, just under one of the two covered windows.

                “What’s with the street signs?” She asked, looking at the pile of stop signs and street names in the corner. She received only shrugs in return, the wolves still focused on how they’d get out of this situation alive.

                There was a pool table with a scratched up surface. There was a pile of blankets on top of it, and Kita could only imagine that that’s where Sehun had slept on his night down here.

Three wheelchairs laying on their sides drew her eyes to the other side of the room, where a washer and dryer were not plugged in, and an old-fashioned washbasin stood ready for a load of laundry.

“Seriously guys, where did all this stuff come from?”

They shushed her, going back to their conversation.

The last place for her to look was a pile of framed pictures propped up against the far wall. The first was of a banana attempting to ride a motorcycle, the second was a bikini-clad girl in an igloo. They kept getting more and more bizarre as she flipped through them, until she reached the last one of two fish in a bowl, attempting to pick up a sword to fight for the little fish castle as a cat watched from the outside.

Chuckling, she looked behind them to make sure she wasn’t missing any of the prize art pieces, and she felt her heart shudder. She shoved the pictures aside, dropping to her knees and running her hand over a symbol carved into the wall.

A simple ouroboros circle, enclosing two triangles within it, triangles that pointed at each other, positioned in a vertical line, barely touching at their tips.

“Guys come here.” She said, her voice quiet but conveying her urgency.

She felt them crowd around her, looking down at what her fingers were tracing. “Has this always been here?”

“Kita, we don’t come down here, we have no idea! Why, is it important?”

“Go get Kris.”

“But if we go upstairs-”

“Go!”

The three could easily see how freaked out she was. Chen wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and Chanyeol and Baekhyun ran up the stairs. Kita could hear Xiumin and D.O. angrily converge on the two but heard their footsteps keep running to their Alpha’s room.

Chen didn’t ask anything, he just kept rubbing her arms to try and force some warmth back into her. She couldn’t feel it, her senses like she was under water as she focused on the carving. A circle and two triangles, how could they change her life so much? She only came back to focus when she heard Kris’s footsteps behind her.

She didn’t let him speak before asking, “where did this come from?”

He had obviously been pulled from his bed, but although his eyes hadn’t opened all the way yet he was still in Alpha mode. Kita moved out of the way so he could crouch down to look at it.

“I don’t know, what is it?”

“I brought Suho too.” Chanyeol called, as he rejoined them in the basement joined by the secondary Alpha who quickly walked over to look at what was causing such a commotion.

“Do you know what this is Kita?” He asked, and only then when all eyes turned to her did Kita realise that the wolves truly had no idea wat it was.

“It’s the mark of the Fey.” She explained, “it tells that a Fey has been here, a message to others that they have left something behind.”

She’d expected a gasp, or an outburst, or for Kris to at least look a little angrier than usual, but she got none of it.

“That’s it?” Kris asked. “Of course a Fey has been here, they built this house.” He turned and head back up the stairs, obviously grumpy that he’d been woken for nothing. The others gave her apologetic glances before following him, meeting an angry Xiumin when they re-entered the living room.   

Suho was the only one left.

“But this means something, it has to!” Kita told him, seeing only pity in his eyes.

“I know you want to go home, and you’re looking for signs-”

“I’m not looking for signs! They left this here for a reason! It’s a message!”

“And what does it say?” Suho asked softly, but Kita could tell he was hunouring her, trying to let her down gently.

“Forget it. I’ll figure it out myself.” She strode back upstairs and out to the garden where she sat heavily on the grass. Although there was no moonlight this early in the day, the pulsing of Fey magic under the ground was enough to calm her slightly, the soft breeze of nature enough to focus her.

They Fey had been here, and they’d left something behind. The wolves might not believe her, they might not care what was hidden in their basement, but Kita was sure as hell going to find out what it was. She was done being lied to, the Fey had too much to answer for, and she was going to uncover every single thing they’d ever hidden from her.   

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Drew inspiration for this basement from a house my friends used to live in, I promise you, it was just as strange.