Life at Windian High (Part 2)




The door flew open and slammed shut behind her as Tym sulked into her house. There wasn't any reason for her to be acting like this, she was just in one of her 'bad mood at the end of the school day' moods. Her family was used to it by now. They had even found a remedy for it, a few simple words that always made Tym feel better. Linda poked her head out of the dinning room as she spotted her daughter and uttered these very words, causing an immediate reaction from Tym that sent her flying down the hallway, ripping open the door to the basement and hauling down the stairs into her father's study. These words were simply: "Your father's downstairs with a new case." Of course, anything that got Tym that excited was bound to perk the interest of her younger brother, Tim, and soon after the blur of grey that vanished down the stairs, so went a blur of black. Linda just shook her head as she went back to her chores.

The Black's basement was rather large, although currently it was filled up with many boxes of different sizes stacked all against each other. Some of these boxes were filled with random materials, cloths, furs, threads, many different things. Some boxes were simply filled with other boxes, and even other boxes were filled with just assorted junk. At the south end of the basement was the door leading to Donald Black's study. Currently it was closed, but that soon changed as Tym hurried over and pulled open the door, her brother right behind her. Don didn't even look up from his desk were he was examining what appeared to be some sort of large rodent pelt under a looking glass as his two children rushed into the room. The large black wolf simply grunted out, 'You can look through the little box in the corner, but stay out of the bigger one." Tym did just that. Brother in tow, the two forestclanners raced over to were two boxes were stacked up in the corner of the study, grabbed a hold of the smaller of the two boxes and drug it out to the center of the room. Much like a child on Christmas morning, Tym's eyes were gleaming as she tore open the top of the box and looked inside.

"Ohhhh! Is any of it up for grabs?" The wolf girl's tail was wagging back and forth with a great ferocity as she stared down into the box before her, panting happily in a dog-ish grin. Don replied with just another grunt.

"The small box is just assorted stuff. Knock yourself out."

Tym immediatly dove into the box, pulling out different objects. The skull of what appeared to be a large bird-like creature, a set of horns, the striped pelt of some smallish creature, a rabbits foot or two. Tim was quickly getting bored over the things that had his sister so enthralled, and the younger wolf began to look around his father's room.

Donald Black was a taxidermist. He took in furs, feathers, hoofs, bones, skins, assorted things that were brought to him by certain hunters, and it was his job to clean them up, fix them up, turn them into sellable items or else find other uses for some of the smaller scraps. The smaller scraps were exactly what Tym was leafing through right now, which meant that the larger box still left in the corner was full of the things that were going to be heading to the stores once Don was done with them. Curiousity perked Timothy's interest as he headed towards the larger box. Both Tym and her father looked up in perfect unison as the younger child went to pry open the large cardboard box.

"KEEP OUT OF THAT BOX!" The snarl echoed from both his older sister and his father, causing Tim to fall backwards with a startled yelp and go tearing out of the study and up the stairs, away from the basement. Don let out a low growl and rubbed his tired eyes as Tym turned back to the small box infront of her.

"You need to keep a better eye on your brother, he could make a mess of things down here." Don got up from his seat with a grunt and headed over to the larger box in the corner, moving it over to his desk before he tore off the tape that held it shut and flipped it open, glancing into it. "Looks like a more assorted batch this time around. Not bad quality either." He reached into the box and carefully pulled up a tiger-striped pelt. The fur was a deep orange with red highlights that shimmered like flames in the light of the small room and inky black stripes that only seemed to strengthen the wild fire coloring of the pelt.

"Ohhh..." Tym's tongue lolled out in a happy pant. "Pretty! Looks female, young adult."

Don chuckled lightly as he moved over to his desk, stretching the pelt out to examine it. "Pretty? You always seem to have a trouble with them until they end up on my desk here."

"Yea well," Tym made her way over to the box and peeked inside to see what else was in this latest batch of furs and skins. "Worens are always worth more dead anyways."


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