Created by @annundriel and @pawspaintsnthings. An AU fancomic for the webcomic "Check, Please!" You can read it here: http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/
Are you not going to continue the comic? I was loving the way it was going, and I'll hate not knowing how it'll end, but I understand if stress or whatever else interfered— you were providing us with something wonderful for free, and it's enough that we hotshot we got.
Hello, thanks for asking. We have every intention of finishing. I’m just taking a little break. I needed to refresh my muse by working on some other things for a bit. The rest of the comic is planned, and I’ll be back at it soon! Woo!
Hey everyone! Thanks so much for being patient. I just wanted to pop by and assure you that I haven’t forgotten about you or “The Wolf at the Door”! It’s been a rough go for a bit but I have been chipping away at it when I have the focus to work on more tedious detail that comics require. The next chapter is in the final lap, so hopefully not too much longer. Thanks! (In the meantime, did you read @annundriel ‘s extra? It’s pretty fab)
The people were disappointed in the prince in the castle. They had become accustomed to a certain type of ruler, charismatic and easy. Their king was just such a man. Court was opened regularly to all petitioners, and subjects came from far and wide to see the king, to bask in his friendly smile and the love that shone between himself and the queen. They ruled with wisdom and kindness and the people felt at ease in their presence, sure they would be listened to and cared for.
The prince did not inspire such trust, nor such love. He stood at the edge of the court, hands behind his back, shoulders straight, and looked above the heads of the people who would one day be his to rule. He would not meet their eyes.
He was cold, and the people asked themselves, Who is he to have such ice in his veins? How could he, when his parents shine so bright?
The prince knew what was said about him. How could he not? Words spoken in taverns and markets turned into words whispered in the castle kitchen, the hallways. The prince knew what they said, and he tried to untangle the strings of his heart and let them see that it beat in his breast just as theirs, just as his parents’. Day after day, he fumbled to find the right way to pull the threads, to find the one that would send him unspooling.
But the weight of the kingdom, the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and the prince couldn’t live up to his father the king or his mother the queen. That was already decided.
His parents came to him. They spoke to him in the privacy of his rooms.
“You are our son,” they said.
You are the prince.
“We can see that you are struggling.”
You have to be better.
“What can we do to help you?”
You will always need our help. Your own two feet will never be enough.
He thanked them and told them that he loved them both (the truth) and that he was fine (a lie).
The knot in his chest remained, and the prince grew and knew that there was a part of him standing in his own way. This knot in his chest was keeping him down, down, down. It held him back.
It had to be removed.
Whispers could work two ways. If they doomed him with the expectation of failure, they could also lead him to salvation. The prince listened closely to the words the servants muttered, waiting until he finally heard what he wanted.
There is a witch in the woods, they said. The witch grants wishes. The witch can cure all ills.
There is a price, they said. But the witch always finds a solution if you are brave enough to pay.
Under the cover of darkness, the prince slipped from the castle. In his pocket was a note, directions carefully taken down from conversations overheard. To the west and down the valley, across the river. Through the woods. The prince followed the directions until he came to a home laced with magic, a home that could belong to no one but a witch.
He hesitated, but only for a moment. Was this not what he came for? To find the witch and ask for help removing the parts of him he did not like, the parts that kept his people from loving him as they adored his parents? With chin held high, the prince knocked on the witch’s door and waited, his heart beating rapidly in his chest. It was only a moment, and then the door creaked open and a face appeared, eyes dark and appraising. They traveled the length of the prince, from the top of his hood to the tips of his boots, and the prince knew that despite his attempt to dress plainly, the witch knew who was calling.
Despite the prickle of warning at the back of his neck, the prince entered the witch’s home when the door was opened to him. The witch welcomed him with a smile, a courteous nod of the head.
My prince.
The home was warm, and the prince was grateful for the fire that chased away the morning chill in his bones. He sat where the witch indicated and they talked—of what the prince could not say—and he drink and ate and—
The prince would think back on this day often in the time that followed. That he should not have knocked, that he should have turned around and gone home, that he should not have put so much weight on the words of those people who did not truly know him; these thoughts would plague him in the coming days and weeks and months, though he would not be able to articulate them in his mind for some time. He would remember running scared, running hunting, running wounded, running.
Running.
Until he ended up in another clearing, at another doorstep that led to another home laced with magic and, this time, a voice bright as the sun. This hearth was warm, too, and the prince curled against it, though he did not think of himself as the prince anymore. He was the wolf, and the rabbit was afraid of him, but the witch was…the witch was…
This witch looked at him with eyes gone wide with kindness. This witch, when he touched the wolf, gentled his hands and filled him with light. He stood at the door of his own home and—though his heart raced with fear—told the hunter who had wounded the wolf to leave.
The wolf let him touch, let him care, let him heal. His mind returned then, and the wolf—the prince—remembered who he was and what he had asked.
The people were disappointed in the prince in the castle, but not nearly as disappointed as he was in himself.
Please tell me you guys are going to do a kickstarter or something for a print copy of this? Or offer digital downloads as an ebook? Because I want to keep this forever!!!!!!!
Oh my gosh, thank you so much! We’re so glad that you’re enjoying it! *claps hands gleefully* At this point @annundriel and I haven’t talked much about plans for when it’s done. I know I’m going to have a copy printed for each of us but beyond that...who knows? I do know that we’re both committed to not making a profit off of Ngozi’s characters/universe so whatever we decide to do will bear that in mind. Thanks so much for asking though, I’m flattered. ;)
It was not. Any resemblance the Hunter has to characters from Check, Please! is coincidental. He isn’t meant to be based on anyone in that universe. :)
The village was afraid of the witch in the woods. They could not agree why exactly they should be afraid of the witch in the woods, only that the fear was wise. He was an unknown, and an unknown with power. Some claimed he'd turned their cousin into a toad—before grudgingly admitting they'd gotten better—while others said he'd been seen muttering over the crops, bent over wells, lingering near gardens.
Crops failed.
(There were some who raised an eyebrow and said, surely, the crops failed because of the drought.
Ah, they were met with time and again, but who caused the drought?)
The village was afraid, but they all went to the witch in the woods with their ills, those that could not be addressed by the apothecary whose shop was near the blacksmith and smelled of tinctures and salves and made Robert Loftin, the hostler, sneeze twelve times in a row whenever he was near. They went to the witch for luck and love, happiness and hope. They went when their hearts ached and their souls grew tired, and though his face at the door was always friendly, though his lilting words always put them at ease as he asked after their homes and families, still they were afraid.
Distance was best, they said. Magic cannot be trusted.
And so the witch lived at the edge of a clearing a league from the village in a cottage surrounded by herbs and flowers. He kept trees that bore fruit through the year and a rabbit that hadn’t always been at his side but which no one could remember him procuring.
(A familiar, they said. Have you seen the way he talks to it?)
He kept to himself, and the village liked it that way.
And while the witch filled his days with his garden and helping those that sought his help, though he found joy and relief in baking pies that filled the cottage—and the clearing—with the warm smells of butter and sugar and cinnamon, nutmeg and almond and cloves, he longed for things he couldn’t articulate. He had his home and his livelihood, his health and, in the rabbit, companionship, and yet…
Eric Bittle wanted more. He’d always known he was special, growing up, had felt the magic tingling beneath his skin as he followed his mother around their cottage, as he’d help his father bring in wood for the fire. Their garden had flourished beneath his fingers, and pies had appeared on tables and windowsills in the blink of an eye as he learned the skills his family knew and took each of them that much farther. It could have been luck. It could have been natural talent.
It was something else. Natural, still, but in a different way. A way that made his mother and father kiss him goodbye and wave with tears in their eyes when the moon was full and the path forward was clear. They loved him, and loved him fiercely, but he could not stay.
Eric had left. He’d walked and he’d walked and eventually he had found a village and outside of that village he had found a cottage. He’d taken its overgrown walls and ash-filled fireplace and made it his own, working through the day with sleeves rolled up and magic zinging to make a home where there’d been none before. When he was done, the grates were clear and the windows sparkled in the sun. Weather-worn stone shone bright and fresh-turned earth begged to be seeded. It was friendly, his cottage, but the villagers viewed strangers with suspicion, and a stranger who could turn a ruin into a home in a day was viewed with even more.
It was not the foot Eric wanted to start on, but it was what he had.
The villagers who visit him call him Bitty now, and Bun does the same. It makes Eric—Bitty’s—heart glad to know that here, at least, he’s found acceptance, small though it may be. Here, at least, he can be himself without fear.
And yet…
He walks through the village and cannot help but envy the ease with which these people, his neighbors, interact with one another, the joy he sees on their faces when recognizing a friend. He hears children playing in the center of the village and recalls his own childhood, playing around his mother’s skirts, ducking through his father’s fields. Bun is a reassuring weight at his back, a low murmur of commentary in his ear. He has work to do at home, the wolf waiting injured on his hearth. He cannot linger here, regret tight in his throat. He has a job to do and people to help. He is trusted with that much.
Bitty watches the way the villagers react to him, watches their darting glances, hands raised to their mouths in recognition. The few he helps regularly nod at him when he passes, offering half-smiles. It isn’t nothing.
He’s given them no reason to be unfriendly, but he hasn’t welcomed their friendship, either. Told by his parents when he left to be careful, to keep himself guarded, he’s kept their words close, strived to make them proud.
He thinks they would be.
With Bun’s help, he procures what he needs to help the wolf. He needs to be healed of his physical wounds first, and then Bitty can face the spell. His fingers itch with eagerness to pull at the threads of magic, to discover what’s hidden beneath. It’s something, he can feel it. Something important. He will focus on this, then. He will focus on the wolf and his ills, work hard to heal and help him. He’ll give him a home as long as he needs it. This is the work he can do, the work he was made for, and Bitty is proud of it, he is. And yet…
The village is afraid of the witch in the woods, and Bitty’s heart is heavy.
Hi! I really love the comic so far and the art is just breathtaking!! But I have a question. Are any other smh characters going to show up? Or will the story revolve solely around bitty and Jack?
Hello! Thank you so much for the kind words, we’re so glad you’re enjoying it! Bitty and Jack are going to be the only SMH characters that show up, though there will be a few other characters. Doing the other boys justice would have made the project a bit bigger than I could handle. Sorry!
