My Friend Is NOT From This Neighbourhood

Chapter 1 - Summoning Successful

A/N: I'm gonna go full on Wattpad user mode and add authors notes. Cringe culture is dead, I hope this fic flops like a fish.

Celia looked around frantically in her room after hearing a crash, heavy clouds of smoke filling the space. "Ugh, confound it!" She coughed and waved in front of her, trying to reduce the amount of smoke entering her lungs.

It had been a long week of school in which she had no particular events happen to her. Like most days or everyday, Celia had nothing bad happen to her. It's not that she wanted anything bad to happen to her, but life was quite boring. She didn't have very many friends to hang out with, at least not many real, close ones.

The girls she was seen to be around were akin to the typical American high school movie take on popular girls—popular meaning social and society's take on conventionally pretty. Celia was a pretty girl and meant well, so she joined that clique at her school out of desperation. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to do her much good at the end of the day. She was still terribly lonely. If she had to name one person she was close to, she could say her older brother, but Celia very rarely saw him, and so she remained lonely most of the time.

Deciding that she's had enough of feeling alone, she thought of ways to make friends quick. She was in no rush, but she was impatient and thought of effective ways to making friendships, and fast. One thing led to another, and soon she got her hands on some... unique ideas. She had got her hands on a most unconventional idea: demonic summoning.

As one hops from one internet search to another, she stumbled across a darker means of making friends. Demonic summoning, rituals, spirits and dead people, anything of the sort made Celia's skin crawl. She couldn't be one hundred percent about what to believe It was absolutely something that she wouldn't dare try. At least that would be true, had it not been so long since she's had a friend.

"If anyone were in my shoes," she tried reasoning with herself. "Perhaps there would come a time that they'd be so frustratingly lonesome that they'd try summoning a demon from nowhere." So she had done exactly that, not knowing what she would be getting herself into.

Her summoning would be something from the surface level of the matter, a basic spell to bring one forth to her in the form of a companion. She would not look for anything intricate or anything that would summon ill-willed beings, but an entity that was close enough to having morals. Maybe some creatures with humanity, she hoped.

She read through many kinds of different rituals thoroughly, but never thoroughly enough. There was always some sort of fine print or script in a language Celia couldn't decipher. Foolishly, she thought to ignore it; if she couldn't read it, she wouldn't bother.

The demon she'd be summoning was not guaranteed to be friendly, but there was a better chance of them not being outwardly malicious either. What's more, it didn't take very much to set up the ritual. It was fairly inexpensive—not that Celia was worried too much about the price—and easy to set up for beginners. Now that she had set up and successfully gone through the ritual's criteria, Celia felt unsure. She felt uneasy about this whole ordeal, wondering what she'd just gotten herself into.

Now regretting what she had done, Celia coughed as she rushed to her bedroom window to open it and let the smoke out. She considered going for her bedroom door next. Before she could do either of those things though, her wrist was grabbed as a voice spoke.

"That won't be necessary," it said. The voice was low and gravely and made Celia's hair stand on end.

The smoke dissipated with a snap of someone's fingers. Celia's room was back to it's normal state—smoke free without any abnormalities. All except for one.

Standing before her at the centre of the room was a strange looking man. He was quite tall, had light brown hair clumsily tied up in a bun, and his tanned skin was speckled with lighter coloured patches. The clothes he wore looked like something out of an old fairytale—Celia couldn't help but feel like they were familiar somehow. What caught her attention wasn't any of that, but the horns sprouting out of his head, dark as night, with a lithe tail just as black. Celia's eyes widened at the sight.

"I did it," she whispered. The being before her looked half bewildered as she stared.

"Where am I?" He asked. "Who are you?" His eyes were piercing, a crisp brown close to being honey coloured. If her bedroom was darker, Celia wondered if those eyes would glow.

"My name is Celia," she answered, taking a hesitant step forward. "I think I summoned you from... somewhere." The man frowned. His arms were crossed as his eyes darted around the room. One might think he was searching for something, but he really was thinking.

"You summoned me?" He questioned. "How?"

"Well, um, you see, there was this book I found online that apparently holds that kind of information," Celia explained. "It really wasn't very hard to do. I just wanted a friend."

"You summoned me, a demon, so that you could have a friend?" The demon raised a brow. Celia felt self conscious. "Don't you have friends with normal people?" The demon asked further, making Celia feel bad whether it was his intention to or not. He tutted, almost scolding Celia. "Why would you even think to bring a demon into the mortal realm for such a thing?"

"I don't have any friends!" Celia quickly shouted at him. Her face was hot from frustration and shame, and she didn't want to admit how pathetic he made her sound. "It's not that easy to make friends, you must understand! I wouldn't have done this if it weren't so difficult."

There was a flash of sympathy in the demon's eyes, and for a moment he looked rather guilty. Celia was tough, but his words and the energy she spent trying to get this far made her close to crying.

"I'm sorry," the demon apologized, much to Celia's surprise. "I didn't mean to make you feel upset."

I must be lucky, Celia thought to herself. He isn't outwardly malicious.

"It's nothing." Celia brushed him off. "What's your name? Do you even have a name?"

"Of course I have a name," the demon replied. "It's..."