Perception Check DC 2: The Harpy has a lot of shoes. You find this ridiculous.
The bed is unmade. You don’t know what hospital corners are but are pretty sure they are not on this bed. The duvet cover looks expensive and goes perfectly with the gray paint and yellow and white accents. Perhaps the most shocking thing you encounter is what lies next to the dire feline on the bed: A towel!
Perception Check DC 12: The towel is still damp!
Again the party is filled with suspicion that perhaps the Harpy no longer takes residence here. Has the brave adventurer slain the Harpy? Has her infamous mother finally crushed her daughter’s soul under the weight of a thousand paperbacks? Has the Harpy’s attempts to untangle herself from her obsessive, stagnant, mired ways driven her mad?
Could be.
But then, her familiar is still alive. And seemingly healthy. Even though that cat is a jerk, the Harpy is a notorious animal lover. No matter how many scars or bouts with Cat Scratch Fever, or pleas from friends and pad thai delivery men, the Harpy wouldn’t abandon the stupid cat. Plus the Harpy’s clothes are here. There are way too many lovingly folded, hung, and organized by color to assume she could leave these behind. Besides, everyone knows the Harpy couldn’t pack her most precious belongings into a backpack.
Just as you saw on the refrigerator, here there are more pictures of the Harpy and the assumed brave adventurer. They stand sunburned and sweaty in front of the Parthenon; perch overlooking Puget Sound with a magnificent picnic spread out before them; and pose steins in hands, in cheap, polyester Bavarian costumes. They smile, heads bent temple to temple in every photo. It’s almost hard to believe the smiling, relaxed woman in the pictures is the same woman who could make a grown man cry for putting wine glasses in the bottom rack of the dishwasher.
Perception Check DC 4: Yep. You fully believe these are photos of a happy-looking couple.
The party passes by a bookshelf crammed with books. You see the shiny domed heads and round glasses-wearing faces of Today’s Top Self-Help Experts next to tomes full of tentacled monsters with eyestalk-sporting heads. Books about heroes and dangerous lands and handbooks and compendiums are side-by-side with hardback readers promising to unleash the power of the universe. Some of these books, especially the ones with the strange-looking experts’ headshots on them, look very scary.
Perception Check DC 9: The spines on the scary-looking books show zero signs of wear and tear. These books have never been opened.
As you look around, the dire feline yawns and stretches on the expensive duvet cover. It’s hard to imagine the Harpy would allow the furry, shedding, dander-ridden beast to lounge on her bed and yet freak out over some dirty gym clothes. On second thought, dirty gym clothes are pretty gross. The dire feline has beautiful blue eyes, you notice, then you quickly avert your gaze lest you be turned into a pile of catnip. It is then you spot another book lying on the bed. This book is facedown and opened. The spine is crackled and creased. The pages appear to be dog-eared and marked with sticky notes. There is what appears to be a woman in white on the cover holding a bouquet of purple flowers.
Perception Check DC 5: Unlike the scary books on the shelf, this book has been read. A lot.
A neon orange Post-it Note arbitrarily stuck to the front covers some of the book’s title.
Perception Check DC 9: You can make out the words planning, guide, and fabulous.
You can’t be entirely sure what the handwritten note says because no one in the party wants to get that close to the dire feline, but you’re pretty confident you can make out the words love, mom.
Perception Check DC 21: You can also read the words see chapter 5, buffet, reception, and don’t worry about budget.
A chill runs down your spine as you realize what this means. There is not much time. You must leave the Harpy’s lair and return to town. This is much worse than anyone thought. The townspeople of Seattle’s twelfth-most-popular neighborhood and beyond must be warned. No caterer, DJ, or florist uninformed.
The Harpy and her mother have a new project. And for once, it looks like mother and daughter are on the same page.
SHELLY MAZZANOBLE is the author of the ENnie Award-winning Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl’s Guide to the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® Game, and she writes a monthly column for Dragon online. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the Seattle Times, Carve, Whetstone, Skirt!, and SomeOtherMagazine.com. In a fit of narcissism, she has appeared in her own work, sometimes casting herself as the lead in her plays, which have been produced in Seattle’s Mae West Fest and Manhattan Theatre Source’s Estrogenius Festival. Originally from upstate New York and a graduate of Ithaca College, she now lives in Seattle with a bipolar cat, a dog who may or may not have murdered a cat, and a guy who sometimes leaves wet towels on her expensive duvet cover. Visit her online at shellymazzanoble.com.
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