Calamitous Intervention

Coming Clean

Months Ago

Oum Boonchuy hummed to herself as she cooked breakfast while pacing around the kitchen. Next to her, she had her phone sitting face-up on the counter. As she set up the food, she briefly glanced at her phone, her face dropping a bit, but she forced herself to focus on prepping.

"Bee! Sweetie! Breakfast is ready!" she called out, about to sit down when she heard a buzz, and her head snapped to her phone. Right there was a new message from her missing daughter, Anne, after days of silence.

Without a moment's hesitation, Oum rushed forward and unlocked her phone. As she opened her messages app, she saw that the notification Anne had sent was a photo. Upon inspecting it, she froze as Bee, Anne's father, walked into the kitchen. "Everything okay, honey?" he asked worriedly, noticing her expression.

Oum didn't reply as she took in every detail of the photo. It was Anne next to some... pale-skinned pointy-ear lady with long, luscious gray hair and golden eyes. And on the other side was a strange skull-headed demon dog.

As her breathing quickened, more photos appeared of the same trio in different locations, including one taking a selfie in front of... a giant island-sized corpse?! Feeling overwhelmed, she felt her eyesight going blurry, and she promptly fainted.

"Oum!" Bee cried out, rushing to catch her before she fell to the floor and potentially injured herself. In the background, the silhouette of an unknown figure stepped forward, observing the scene.

Chapter Thirty - Coming Clean

Anne had some music playing on her phone as she was preparing some food—except this time, it wasn't the slimy, disgusting ingredients she had reluctantly gotten used to over the months.

At the Owl House, as usual, Anne was making some breakfast for Eda and King, who were eager to try human food finally. This time, her pleading had finally paid off, and Eda went to go find the ingredients she wanted in the human realm.

"Hope all the ingredient hunting I did was worth it, kiddo," Eda grumbled as she sat at the table after drinking an elixir. "Nearly got caught by the cops twice."

Anne rolled her eyes as she scooped an omelet off of the pan with her spatula. "Don't know why you stole the ingredients in the first place, Eda. You already saved up lots of cash over the years. The green paper stuff."

Eda raised her eyebrows in mild surprise. "That's human cash? I thought those were just fancy napkins."

Quickly erasing her guilt of using stolen ingredients to cook, Anne placed down two plates in front of Eda and King. "This is Khai Jiao. It's a classic my mom usually makes for me. It's a Thai omelet on a serving of rice."

Looking confused, Eda poked it with her fork, not understanding what she was looking at. "This is human food? Well, at least it looks nicer than eyeballs." She took a bit of egg and rice and took a cautious bite of it. The flavor immediately hit her, and her eyes widened in surprise, feeling as if she'd had the best apple blood in her life. "Whoa! Hot dang, kid, this is good! Didn't expect human food to be like this."

"Wait, you're telling me you have full access to Earth, yet you've never eaten anything from there?" Anne asked incredulously.

In response, the Owl Lady shrugged while taking another bite, savoring its rich taste. "Well, I did try some coffee from Starsuns, but it was pretty bad, so I never bothered with human food after that." She turned to King. "What do you think, K—..."

Eda paused, seeing that the little demon's plate was already completely spotless, and he was in a food coma, silently snoring.

"Yeah, I think he stopped chewing after the first bite," Anne murmured, amused. As she began eating as well, she pulled out her phone and scrolled through some social media, seeing some posts from her classmates from St. James. She was about to switch apps to MewTube to watch some cat videos, but then she saw an all-too-familiar sight—99+ missed texts and calls from her parents.