Little Helpers

“Is he gone yet?” the Faun asked the Siren, whose gentle, melodic voice put the Author to sleep. With a slight nod of her head, she dragged herself out of the Author’s front jacket pocket to the glass of water by the keyboard.

Maxim Trevelyan
Writer, Ravenclaw

The Author stared at the computer screen, tapping out words on the keyboard. After rereading the paragraph, he sighed and deleted it, as he did five times before. He was invited to write a story for an anthology series, but it just would not come out right, no matter what he did.

He was just so tired, he worked all day, then had classes in the evening, so he barely had any time to himself. The Author willed himself to calm down, breathe and close his eyes for just a second. He just needed few minutes to himself and he would get back to work. With those last thoughts in his head, and a strange melody to accompany them, the Author laid down his head on the table, falling asleep.

***

“Is he gone yet?” the Faun asked the Siren, whose gentle, melodic voice put the Author to sleep. With a slight nod of her head, she dragged herself out of the Author’s front jacket pocket to the glass of water by the keyboard.

With a happy bark, she was followed by Fenrir, a great white Wolf and the Faun. The three and rest of the pocket monsters had a soft spot for the Author, who never vilified them in his stories, no matter what the tale talked about. Seeing the trouble the Author was in, they decided to help out.

The Faun jumped on the keyboard with Fenrir yipping around the glass of water, playing with the Siren. He started typing out the story, jumping on each individual key, stopping only to take a breath.

“Oh, this’ll take all night,” the Faun complained as he momentarily stopped in his jumping. He looked at the words on the screen, which barely formed two sentences. There was a mournful howl from Fenrir who curled up at the space bar, snout hidden by his tail.

As if the words were part of a summoning circle, the arrival of the next two monsters was accompanied by soft, hissing noises.

“Move away, amateursss.” These words were the only warning the Faun received before he was removed from the keyboard by one of the Hydra’s heads. “Let ussss ssshow you how it’sss done,” three heads said and the rest started typing up the story. It was significantly faster, the Faun had to admit to himself and just as he was about to offer his help, a small bite made him yelp and turn around. He quickly averted his eyes when he saw Medusa.

“I’ll help you Hydra,” the beautiful woman said and encouraged her snake hair to take on some of the load.

Seeing he was not much help at all, the Faun busied himself by making sure the Author would not wake up. It just would not do for their secret to be revealed.

***

The morning rays of sunshine were merciless in their mission to wake up the exhausted Author. When he realized what time it was, the Author panicked. He had to turn in the story in an hour or he would lose the deal with the Publicist.

He moved his computer mouse in an effort to make some last minutes attempts at a story, but to his shock and awe, there were words on the pages of the Word document. There lay a beautiful and uplifting story about little pocket monsters who helped out people in need.