Down With The World

She's Gonna Save Me (Call Me Baby)

"Ahh, what a lovely morning.", Arachne Fowle sighed happily as she leaned back and basked in the warm sun from her place at her metal table etched with butterflies. A gift from a happy client. She was doing what she did every morning she possibly could; having breakfast in the beauty of nature. More accurately, in her manor's garden. Arachne continued speaking as spread some jam on a scone.

"Nothing beats the warm spring weather, eh Constantine?", Arachne questioned. Her response came in the form of a yippy bark from the Welsh Corgi sitting in the seat opposite to her. To anyone else, the dog's response would have just sounded like a normal bark, but to someone with Arachne's... special gifts, she could understand him just as well as any person.

"Right? The birds are singing, the sun's out, nothing's better than a Roanoke spring morning!", Arachne mused as she took a sip of her tea from her fine china cup. Once she was done, she looked at the corgi (Constantine) excitedly.

"Ooh, you know what we should do? We should go for a stroll through the garden! We can see if the foxglove's already in bloom!", Arachne suggested. Constantine barked again, and Arachne scowled.

"Of course I know we do that everyday! You're a dog, you need to be walked! I just made the suggestion to make it sound less like a requirement, since you get so huffy when I treat you like 'a common house pet', as you put it.", Arachne told the dog frustratedly. Another bark was heard, and she rolled her purple eyes.

"Yes yes, you're a very sophisticated familiar, now can we please get on with our routine?", Arachne requested annoyedly. However, all her annoyance disappeared when she heard Constantine whimpering and saw him looking longingly at the other two seats at the table, both of which were empty. Arachne looked at him with sympathy. She knew exactly who he was thinking about; her parents, who had passed away from health complications earlier that year. They always ate breakfast outside with them, and then they would all go for walks in the garden together. But now... it was just the two of them. Arachne got up out of her seat and petted her familiar gently on the head.

"I know. I miss them too.", the long black haired woman said softly. Then, she hit the floor when she suddenly saw a bright white light appear above the center of her garden, not knowing if it was an attack of some kind. She watched in bewildered fascination as the light deposited seven forms onto the ground before disappearing. Arachne stood up and straightened the tie of her business suit, eyes wide with shock.

"What in the name of the Goddess?", she muttered under her breath. Further adding to her shock, Constantine jumped out of his seat and started running towards the middle of the garden, where the light had been. Knowing there could very well be dangerous strangers there, Arachne rushed to catch up with him.

"Connie, wait!", she called out, using her familiar's preferred nickname. She sprinted past the elegantly trimmed flower bushes, hedges and trees, until she reached the center of the garden, where a large stone fountain resided. Arachne was even more confused and surprised by what she saw when she got there.

"Oh my Gods... ", the woman swore with wide eyes. There, unconscious and strown about her fountain like discarded dolls, were the strangest people she had ever seen in her nineteen years of life.

There was a man in a black and white bodysuit lying in her hydrangeas, a young blonde girl with space buns and a Japanese schoolgirl uniform lying eagle-spread on the grass, a man in a burnt orange trench coat and a white and black mask draped over the branches of one of her trees, a man wearing a suit and made of what appeared to be purple mist lying on the roof of her gazebo, and a man who was what could only be described as an anthropomorphic lizard laying on top of her rose bushes (for his sake, Arachne hoped his scales were hard), and a shaggy blue haired boy laying at the feet of her life-sized Greco-Roman style stone statue of the Goddess Hecate and covered in what appeared to be severed hands. But they weren't the most concerning ones. That title went to the man in a black trench coat who was lying halfway into her fountain.