Alba & Yinepu Have Grave Troubles

A third dog had come to live with Alba and the family, but he was mostly visible. Alba named him Yinepu, since she said he was a half border collie, half sokar mutt.

The thing was… whenever she took Yinepu for a walk, they would run into the restless dead. This wasn’t normally too bothersome, as Yinepu had an affinity for fetching their still beating hearts from their smoky, incorporal chests and then worrying them like a bone and smacking them on the pavement until the blood of their death was spent and splattered. Sometimes he’d growl.
Generally this had a positive effect, in that the spirits burst and swirled in the wind, sailing away like puffs of smoke carried off to “lands of forgotten sorrow,” as Alba would say. She also noted that it was good excercise for Yinepu, keeping him trim and fit. Restless Dead made his coat shine.
There was a hitch when they visited cemeteries though. Yinepu would get terribly distracted by all the commotion and had difficulty focusing on any one unclean spirit. When he and Alba went to visit the Manatham family tomb with the neighbor spinster ladies, Ethel and Lillian (they weren’t really sisters… no one talked about it. It was known and accepted) to leave an offering, Yin had one of his fits and Alba had to hold his neck until he calmed down. Alba was mighty cross, saying “So help me if I have to put down a restless corpse in my good saddle shoes…”
Lucky for everyone Lillian had a swell incantation that did the trick neatly.

Azeban Soksemo Among the Nereid

For months Alba had been telling everyone that a new dog had come to live with them. The family had grown used to her proclamations, and found it hard to argue the existence of another invisible dog, (especially since no one had been able to capture a photograph of it not existing), even if Alba said this one could run so fast as to fetch and return items before they'd even been thrown. Some friends (with cameras) still had their doubts, however.

One Sunday morning Alba got up early and walked out into the yard with nothing but an empty wash tub and some soapy water.
Neighbors heard her muttering, “I swear to Hatshepsut and a gaggle of Thutmose that I will scrub every bit of invisible off of this dog if it kills me….”
Later that afternoon several neighbors asked her when she had gotten a dog.

Cadejo's Persistent Existence

"Oh Jesus, Mary & Joseph! He's right here! Here! I mean are you even looking?"

Troubles of the Soul, Lost & Found

When Alba had set sail on that early afternoon of June 10th, 193X, she hadn’t intended to worry anyone. She pushed the little boat down to the bank of the dirtlake, and out onto the soil. The earth was slightly choppy that day, rolling beneath the boat with a regular slap driven by a gentle breeze. Alba told herself she’d just meant to get away from things for a while. Perhaps she’d take a dip.

Once she’d gotten out into the center of the dirtlake though, she’d realized what her heart had prompted her to do. How could she deny it when it knocked upon her soul with such urgent demand, thrashing and struggling to be free? She had meant to drown her sorrows forever.

Alba’s sorrows were named Mitchell Abernathy, he was ten and lived on the next farm over. She had taken him by boat to throw overboard, bound and gagged, so that he and his insistent teasing may sink silently to the bottom, leaving her without so much as a “shump!” of earth to mark his passing. Resigned, Alba shoved him overboard, where to her amazement he floated as if a witch. Alba watched in a moment of struck horror as he rose up and magically ran across the surface of the dirtlake for the shelter of a benchbuoy. Along the bank appeared multitudes of cats… surely his demonic familiars come to his aid.

Alba managed to row out to him and resecure him in the boat before he could make land - and the cats, poor swimmers and wary of dirtlakes - merely mewed their protests from the shore. Following the witchhunting protocols she had heard discussed by family fireplace, she did the only thing she could and secured Mitch below a heavy stone. She had considered watching him through the night from the safety of the boat to make sure the Proto Eurasian Wolves finished the job when they happened upon his bound and wedged body… Somewhere out in the wild though she heard the strained howl of some type of dog… high-pitched and whiny, like something with short little legs.

This made her reconsider and with a shiver, she turned and rowed back towards Aunt Holda and home.

Frau Holda Frekke, Dispenser of Cats... Finder of Lost Souls

June 10th, 193X was the day that Alba Milesian first went missing. Her Aunt Holda was desperate to find her, and summoned 468 search cats to scour the hills, creek banks and surrounding woods in order to find her as dusk was quickly approaching, which would be followed by its cousin, night - and that was when the Proto Eurasian Wolves came out to hunt.
Holda was distraught, having promised her brother Japheth that no harm would befall Alba shortly before his disappearance and then his recent death. Caring very deeply for Alba and being filled with fear for her safety, she addressed the cats before they set out, saying slowly and sternly so that each would understand, “We do not break our oaths to the dead… We do not.”
Holda Frekke kept one of the cats’ number behind as an envoy and formal guarantee of the other’s return, as that is how it had always been done. Her husband Jacob (who had lost a bit of his sense after an accident in the shed) became withdrawn, and could only look on over the hills in hope, sucking his thumb for security as dusk grew ever near.

The Auroch Muselon

Muselon was the old Milesian family cow. It was said to be a descendant of the Auroch species, and lost at least one hind leg escaping Scandinavia. Allegedly, she used to have nine legs, but now only had three. Alba would say that only Cadejo could see the missing ones, and that he said a new song was created with every hoof-fall of her hindmost spirit limb.
Jaffy used to say that Muselon would shiver in the night, bucking her head and swaying ghostly horns wildly to fend off Proto Eurasian Wolves which bubbled up from her genetic memory to invade her dreams. Some farmhands claimed that on the following mornings she gave milk of the most beautiful colors… pastel pinks and blues and soft greens. It formed a kind of disembodied rainbow (one color from each teat) on mornings with heavy mist or dew.

Alba & Cadejo Go Shopping

Alba had had her new Ensign Ful-Vue for a few months and was fast becoming a photo snapping whirlwind. She and Cadejo stopped off at Mr. Schonberg’s store to pick up some new photographic paper… Cadejo was distracted, reading a snippet about stresses in undeveloped gelatin emulsions when Alba politely reminded him of the items on their list.

Maestro en Ciencias Occultas

Alba was told by an occultist that she had a spirit animal … he was a Dachshund and his name was Cadejo.
Many people didn’t believe her, and Alba remained the only person able to see Cadejo for many years, often wearily pointing him out to unbelievers as her photograph was being taken. Cadejo accompanied and assisted her on errands such as stomping grapes and foot-racing locomotives, which were past-times she enjoyed thoroughly.

Alba Milesian

Alba was a soft spoken woman with a boundless love for animals, nature and family gatherings. She was known to keep many pets over her lifetime. She was terribly saddened when her father, Japheth Magog Milesian was found, dead, in Madison Parish, Louisiana sometime in 1933 after a long absence. Jaffy, as everyone knew him, worked in turbine power generation… He was a gregarious man, affable and boisterous in spirit, remembered fondly by his many friends. It was no secret that the earlier passing of his wife, Granta affected him deeply.

The circumstances of his death were largely unknown, and Alba never did discuss it at length with even her closest friends. She was a private person, with eccentric manners. One neighbor remarked that she described her father to him one day in the spring of 1943…

“It was a curious thing, her insistence on describing his height by cubit and span, as she said they did in the old country. I have no idea what 7 cubits and a span translates to… She said at any rate that she thought of him as a giant when she was a child. She also said that she couldn’t turn a tap or run a bath without thinking of him… She felt as if he was always around in spirit, to watch over her, with or without his head… which I guess they never found.”