Annabelle’s Sunday evening odd encounter(Annabelle)
Date: 2025-09-14 17:29
(Annabelle’s Sunday evening odd encounter(Annabelle):Annabelle)
[Sun Sep 14 2025]
In empty brownstone
Three walls are painted moss green, the fourth a pale sage, with
veined limestone tiles underfoot polished smooth with age. Rustic
iron pipes frame white oak shelves lined with deep brown dishes and
glassware, while a six burner range and twin ovens stand beside a
dishwasher with brass handles.
A pot rack hangs above the stove, woven rugs in green, brown, and
cream soften the floor, and plants add life with a trailing pothos
from a high shelf, herbs on the windowsill, and a fern near the sink.
On the counter sit a seashell spoon holder, jars labeled Sugar and
Tea, a glass teapot with a sloth infuser, an old coffee maker, and a
grinder.
It is about 60/span>/span15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Plymouth and Hart/span>/span(Your target is abducted by a sea creature that’s somehow crossed over into our world, it is up to them to survive for long enough that their allies can come help.
)
From within the sink of the yet being decorated brownstone, is a horrible, wretched gurgle. The pipes below and above, reserved for common water utilities, run first with the ambiance of use.. And then a patter of violent, metal-pinging smacks drive straight into the sink and shoot out what looks to be a monsterous goldfish with blond scales, blue eyes, and a fully functional tongue.
“I want to live. Come with me” It rasps, flopping on the floor.
Sophie reels back from the sink, eyes wide, hands hovering uselessly in the air. “Holy shit..” she blurts, then clamps her mouth shut as the flopping, tongue-wagging goldfish rasps at her. For a moment she just stares then, with a half-choked laugh that sounds more like nerves than humor, she crouches a little closer. “You want to live? And you want me to come with you?”
Her voice is thin with disbelief, but there’s an odd spark of curiosity there too, the flicker of someone who’s seen enough weirdness to know better than to dismiss it outright. “Alright, fishy prince. Where exactly are we going, huh?”
“Bafftub,” The goldfish states before a sprightly, HHHHHHKKKKKKKKKKKAAAHHHH-!” It gasped with widened, too-human eyes. It’s a breath of resurrection in tone, but it seems quite deadly in practice as no real health is granted to the tiny creature. The sink, meanwhile, continues to flood with salty waves like a bath bomb thrown underneath. It does smell a little like the beach, suddenly.
Sophie grimaces at the flopping thing in the sink and grabs a long-handled ladle from the counter. She slips it under the gasping fish and lifts it out, holding the dripping utensil at arms length. “Bathtub. Right,” she mutters, water sloshing onto the floor as she hurries down the hall, the smell of salt trailing after her. She’s heading to the bathroom, to the bathtub that she can fill with water to hopefully help.
The bathtub is eager to be filled, and a second burst of water is indulged to spray violently into the ceramic housing. A very human visage, as the goldfish is allowed into the every flooding sink, finds its watery air and begins to paddle about in the limited space it has.
With a shimmy and a shake, the fish head breaches the surface looking in two separate directions that aren’t Sophie, and explains, “So this isn’t my best ask but I need you to become a fish and take a trip through the-” The face dunks for a breath of hair, and then returns with a splash, “pipes with me OR if you know somebody that can remove a curse that would be a fantastic person to call please tell them Anna is a fish and has swallowed a cursed thingie and needs a ritual to make that go away-”
The head dunks again, and in minor elaboration, explains, “It’s a Fae thingie like ‘swallow the cursed item to save the person or double it and pass it on.”
Sophie stands braced by the tub, ladle still dripping in her hand, staring at the waterlogged face bobbing against the current. Her mouth works once, twice, before she blurts, “You want me to what? Crawl through pipes like a discount salmon?” She presses a palm to her forehead, “Okay. Cursed fae thingie. Swallowed. Got it. Anna desperately in need of a ritual.” She breathes hard, scanning the drowned bathroom as though the cracked tiles might suddenly cough up a spellbook. “I don’t exactly keep a priestess on speed dial. Closest I’ve got is…well, me, and some questionable notes from class.”
Her hand drags down her face as she leans closer to the tub, eyes narrowed on the paddling creature. “So unless you’ve got an actual spell tucked under those shiny scales, it looks like we’re improvising.”
“If I knew the ritual I TOTALLY would have done Kkkkkhkh-” She coughs. Fishes don’t cough, but she is, and promptly ducks down for a breather. She swims a accelerating figure eight and then surfaces, “I was thinking Miss Kane but like if you know how that’s so great or like call Jak or like I mean I’m not gonnna lie being a discount salmon isn’t GREAT but it’s a good deed and-and…”
Another dunk below the water.
In fact, this isn’t an incredibly difficult ritual. A decursing, prominently featuring a flashing white light as it progresses, generally is designed to decurse something present on the wearer.
This is called a Cleanse ritual, and costs the standard degree of life force.
“I know what a cleanse is.. but I thought they could only be enacted by leadership for some reason.” Sophie/span>/span Anna does fish things in response, like sit in the water, panic (or exult) in the growing nature of its watery home, and breathe as it catches its breathe. Surfacing once more, putting a fin on the side like an elbow.. And then flopping side ways into the water, she finds a method of compromise with breathing and speaking by putting her gills in the water. “..Gurl I have to trust you. You’re the best, you can do it.”
Sophie exhales slowly, committing herself as she draws her spirit inward. She gets a knife from her satchel and presses it to her thumb, wincing as the blood wells up. With careful strokes she drags a rune along the side of the tub, the red line stark against the porcelain. Leaning closer to the water, she fixes her gaze on the struggling fish, “Alright, here goes. Just don’t go belly up on me.” Her voice drops into a steady chant, quiet at first, but growing firmer as the glow builds beneath her palms.
A white light grows in response. Straight in the stomach of the belly of the beast, it pulses like a pretty night light. It isn’t in the nature of a curse to reject the cleansing, for a curse does not live. The process of a long, life-eating ritual begins to suffocate that candle of magic, the curse naturally wilting away.
“So.” The fish gurgles after the 30-ish minute mark, trying to save face from an inordinately awkward process of occult ritualism upon a still fish. “How are things, rbbrbrbrrrr… I. Hope you’re doing okay. My day was. Great before this.”
Sophie giggles as her chant has softened, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her free hand. ” Oh, ya know. Regular Sunday, talking to a fish with better small talk than half my classmates.” She leans her chin into her palm, watching the faint shimmer curl around the beautiful scales. “I’m hanging in. Exhausted, salty, and apparently growing a reputation for throwing temper tantrums But hey, still here, so I guess thats something. I’m not gonna ask how your day’s been.”
The light diminishes. There’s a silent, stress-ridden moment wherein nothing occurs. Just A fish without a light, a ritual with a spent cost, and the awkward drip of salt water from what should be fresh-water pipes.
“You know,” The fish states sagely, “The city’s pretty stressful. It might have something to do with like. The mist monsters and the people-monsters and the gang wars and the existential nature of everything we don’t know. Or-” The one fish-eye winks.
“It might be something in the 2water.”
A splash, a wade, and then a very human grunt from the aquatic creature and it begins to elongate. The scales dig back into the skin and then stretch into a fairer membrane. What whiskers it had peel back into the shape of ears and it grows.. Clothing? Clothing appears like an aura and in lies the girl that shall not become as drowned as her namesake’s poem: Annabel Lee.
Soaked, drenched, and the smell of salt bleeding in the air, she blinks on eye and then the other, rasps out of muscle memory, and then proceeds to spit up water from her lungs.
Annabelle spits out a pendant, look at that. Right at Sophie’s feet to throw away or keep as she so desires.
Sophie scoots back as her eyes widen as the gold sheen of scales sinks into skin, the whiskers folding back into ears, and the strange shimmer of clothing blooms over a body that should not exist. For a breath she can only stare, caught in awe at the impossible beauty of the change, salt thick in the air and the last ripple of light fading across the water.
Then the human form sags and sputters, and she snaps back, sliding an arm behind Anna’s back to hold her upright. “Cough, let it out, don’t hold it in,” she says quickly, steadying her and guiding her forward. Her hand works firm against Anna’s back in practiced motions until the water breaks free from her lungs. “That’s it, keep breathing. You’re safe. I have you.” When the pendant is coughed out she laughs, “Huh..neat.”
A hopelessly congested fit of coughing later, a wide-eyed yet exhausted pout forward, and Annabelle leans against Sophie with a strangled laugh. “..Thaa-ah-ah-ahaaanks, Sophie.” She giggles, wipes her face with wet hands, content not merely to be clean but to not be a fish. “I’m not gonna lie, when I got swallowed my the pipe of my own faucet, I was SUPER sure I was just gonna get lodged in a pipe and never see the light of day. I- I never said this if someone asks, but I’m super glad to be a fish flushed out into your apartment..”
Anna looks over her shoulder at the puddle of flooding from the living room. “..You want help cleaning up? Do.. Do you have, like, a mop?”
Sophie laughs softly, looking around, “Ya know, I just moved in here and I haven’t asked my boyfriend yet but ..I hope he does.” She gives Annabelle a bright smile, “You are far too awesome to wind up in a pipe in the middle of nowhere. Try..be a little more careful next time, ok?”
Anna slicks her hair behind her ears, sobered to a simper. “Gurl I. Will. Try.” Wide eyes, a haggard, resigned frustration to way the city is, and she presses her elbow on the lip of the tub to step out and be free of her sepulcher.
/span