---

Dawn sat by the craft table in their room while Dusk was lying on the floor drawing. A bottle of glitter glue was next to her, while the crayons Dad had written Dusk’s name on were spread all over the floor.

Dusk hadn’t found any paper sheets big enough, so she was doodling directly on the floor. Dawn had said Father would get angry, but Dusk argued back that Dad would understand.

Dusk started by drawing a big, big star. Not one of those boring five-point stars. No, she drew that sort of many-point stars that Father had painted in their fathers’ bedroom. She lost count of how many points she had drawn after she had counted to nine. It was fine. Father had made many points anyway, so as long as it was many, it was okay.

She got bored drawing it and crawled up to the centre of it and started scribbling in the centre of it. A few flowers here, a cat over there, that pretty letter Dad used when he was writing in his journal for work.

She began to decorate the arms too, drawing pretty symbols she had seen, her favourite letters, her favourite numbers. Some were pink, others green.

Dawn looked over as she finished with the plastic beads. She held up the string.

“Look, Dusk, I made a pwetty necklace!”

Dusk looked over. “For me?”

“No, Aunt Jade.”

“Oh.”

Dusk lost interest in it immediately and continued her drawing on the floor. It took up almost the entire space where Dad would put the play mat. The chairs of the crafts table were in the way, though. She started to move them.

Dawn looked at the drawing. She should tell Father, but it was kind of pretty, so she didn’t want Father to wash it away. She couldn’t resist and took her own pack of crayons. “Can I help?”

“Mm.”

Dawn took her favourite purple crayon and began connecting the points with scribbly, curly lines. Dusk went over to the crafts drawer and grabbed a sheet from there.

While Dawn continued with her purple crayon, she put unicorn and rainbow stickers in the gaps that appeared around the star when the arms were connected. She added glitter glue on top of the stickers to make them even prettier.

Dawn finished her curly lines. She borrowed the glitter glue to make a second row around all of it.

“Dad can’t wash dat off,” Dusk pointed out. “No gwitter goo on the floor.”

“But Father can take it off,” Dawn argued.

Dusk thought about it and then nodded in approval. “Add more!”

They just about fit the last of the glitter glue row by squeezing it between the curly connection line and the wall. Dawn might have glued a bit on the baseboard. And maybe the wallpaper. It was fine. If Father could remove it from the floor, surely he could from everywhere.

They looked at their masterpiece. It was the prettiest star ever! Dusk grinned proudly while Dawn applauded them both.

They looked at each other, giggling happily about how pretty their art was.

“Play house?” Dusk asked.

“Play with dolls,” Dawn replied.

“House!”

“Doll!”

The glitter glue shimmered in the sunlight filtering through their blue and purple lace curtains. Slowly the crayon scribbles shifted in colour, melted into fully connected lines. The glitter glows green and purple, red and blue. The glow moved inward and grew stronger.

Clouds moved in front of the sun, and the ceiling lamp flickered before it went out. The twins fell silent and looked at the lamp above them, then at each other.

“You look like the moon. But puh-puw,” Dusk told her sister.

“You gwoll too. But pink,” Dawn replied.

They looked at their masterpiece. It was pulsing in light, shifting colours.

There was a bleating sound that made them both jump. Dawn skittishly hid behind her sister while Dusk grabbed a pair of scissors from the crafts table and wielded it like a sword.

“Baaaaaah!” Smoke rose from the drawing, growing dense. A dark, creaky, bleating voice sounded from it. “WHO DARES TO AWAKEN ME AFTER SO MANY—”

It got broken up by coughs. “Why does the incense smell like hellhound fart? What sort of chalk was used?!”

The smoke was waved away, and on the drawing stood a goat. It had a goat’s head and goat legs, even though its arms looked more like a monkey’s because it was so hairy, but had similar hands as the twins. Normal hands with five fingers. The nails were a bit long, and Dad would decisively cut them if they grew their nails that long. But the goat unmistakably had monkey arms and human hands.

“Do you eat childen?” Dusk growled, trying to sound threatening. “I have shissosh and two dads!”

“Oh, a goat-man!” Dawn exclaimed excitedly. “Can I bwaid your hair?”

The goat-man stared at the twins. The twins stared back.

“…Where’s the summoner?” the goat-man asked.

“Sahm-mon-uh?” Dusk asked, confused.

“What’s a salmoner?” Dawn asked, equally bewildered. “Do they fish salmon?”

“I don’t like salmon,” Dusk said.

“Me neither. I like ice cream!”

“I like cake.”

Dawn turned to the goat-man. “What do you like?”

“I like eating—No! That’s not important!” The goat-man bleated, “I want to know who summoned me.”

“Well, I want to play house!” Dusk responded.

“I want to play with dolls!”

“House!”

“No, dolls!”

Dusk turned to scissors at Dawn. “I say house!”

“Dad says not to point scissos at me!” Dawn squeaked and pointed at the goat-man. “At him! At him! Point it at the goat! Maybe he bites!”

Dusk looked at the goat-man with big eyes. “Do you bite?”

“…I have teeth,” the goat-man says.

“Do you bite childen?”

“Goats bite children!” Dawn replied for him. “Dad said so!”

“Dad lies all the time.”

“Does not!”

“Father said so!”

“Father lies all the time too!”

The goat-man bleated. “Spawns, that’s enough! Just tell me who—” He looked down at his feet and saw a thirteen-point star with various symbols and squiggly lines that were absolute nonsense. There were even some flowers drawn in the centre with some weird hell-creature with dot eyes, triangle horns sticking out of its round head, and a squiggly line for a mouth.

“…who made this abomination?”

“I did!” Dusk said proudly. Then she whispered. “But don’t tell Father. He will get angy.”

“I helped! But I didn’t put gwoo on the floor! It gooed itself!”

“…” The goat-man looked between the girls and then sighed. “What do you want? Pick one thing.”

“Dolls!” Dawn said excitedly. “Let’s play with dolls!”

“…Fine,” the goat-man sighed again.

“But I want to play house…” Dusk said, lip quivering.

“…Then we’ll play house…” the goat-man replied.

“DOLLS!!” Dawn shrieked in anger.

Dusk stomped on the floor. “The goat is mine! We’re playing house!”

“No! He’s mine! I named him Cupcake!”

“He’s mine!”

The goat-man bleated, silencing the girls. “Are you fae, the way you try to break my ears with your voices? In my thousands—”

Dawn raised her hand. “Dad says to never make a deal with the fae.”

“But the elves are okay!” Dusk added. “Are you fae?”

The goat-man groaned. “No, I’m a demon from—”

“Then it’s fine! Demons are okay. Father says we never need to be scared of demons!” Dusk said and put the scissors away. She didn’t need them anymore, if it was just a demon.

“Father calls us something-something imps sometimes. He says we are miss… miss… missivous!” Dawn claimed.

“Father calls Dad ‘quaint’ sometimes. I know what an imp looks like, but not what a quaint is,” Dusk added.

“Father calls him bald, too. But Dad had long hair. It’s the colour of waffles.”

“I think it looks like syrup,” Dawn pointed out.

Dusk simply declared, “It’s the same colour as syrup on waffles!”

“He plays the dog when Father hots a tea party with Sir Gwiffin. He woofs and licks our cheeks. Dad is a good dog.” Dawn began clapping her hands. “Tea party! Father isn’t here, so I can be Queen Dawn, and you can be Queen Dusk, and Cupcake is our guest! Load Cupcake!”

“And the dolls are the cot!”

“Not cot — court,” Dawn corrected.

Dusk went to get Teddy and Goldilocks and the Barbie dolls and that weird thing Dad called a haunted voodoo doll, but that Father said was perfectly harmless. Dawn grabbed Cupcake by his hair monkey arm and pulled him to the crafts table.

“Sit down!” she commanded. “I’ll make you look like a proper load!”

Cupcake looked at the tiny chair and then sat down. He sighed and bleated something the girls couldn’t understand. He buried his face in his hand. It didn’t bother them.

Dawn began to braid the hair growing from the goat-man’s chin and used a Hello Kitty hair tie to tie it off. She added some gold stickers to his horns and some lace ribbons. She wanted to put a tutu on him, but he was fatter than Dad, so it didn’t fit. She put it around his neck instead, like a necklace.

“Pwetty!” she exclaimed.

“I’ve invited all the guets!” Dusk announced.

She had placed the plushies on the chairs, and the dolls sat on the table. Everyone had a teacup and saucer.

Dawn and Dusk sat down side by side.

Dusk cleared her throat. She sat a little straighter and flattened her hair. “We have gaddered today to welcome our new cot sigh-bet, Lord Cupcake.”

“Father wouldn’t say that.”

“Father sounds just like that.”

Dawn remained firm. “No, he doesn’t.”

“Then you welcome him, and you pour the tea!”

Cupcake bleated. “I can pour the tea.”

“NO!” Both of them exclaimed.

“Father says guets never pour the tea! It’s the hot’s duty!” Dawn said with conviction.

“It’s diswescepful!”

Cupcake just wanted to go home.

---

As the door opened, an odd, burnt-but-not-quite smell hit Jasper in the face. His brows drew together as he opened the door fully. The first thing he faced and got eye contact with was a goat-headed minor demon with a pink tutu skirt around the thick neck, which was covered in grey and black fur. The black horns had ribbons wrapped around them and were decorated with shimmering star stickers. In the clawed human hand was a much-too-small teacup with a rainbow on it. 

His eyes moved to the side, and he saw a half-blackened, half-melted, lopsided summoning circle glittering with glue. Right there, in front of their reading nook.

He looked at his daughters, who looked at him like they had been caught stealing cookies from the enchanted jar again. He couldn’t even get mad.

At least their circle had looked better than his, and they didn’t summon anything remotely close to as powerful as Orion.

“Ah… Guess the salad will need a lot more lettuce,” Jasper said as he looked back at the demon.

If that had been what he had summoned years ago, he might just have either squealed from joy or peed his pants — he’s not entirely sure. He looked at the two girls.

“Sweethearts, clean this stuff up, then wash your hands. I just finished making lunch — it’s lasagna. But next time you make a new friend and have them over, tell me first. I don’t want to add extra greens to the salad out of nowhere.”

As an afterthought, he added, “And no more glitter glue! I’ve told you before that I can’t get that off the floor. As soon as he’s back home, I’ll have your father banish all of it to the void until you are adults and responsible enough to use it!”

And he’d tell Orion they got to magic-proof the house from now on. A single magic accident was already a hundred too many.

---

Author’s Note

This is, technically speaking, a story related to I Summoned a Demon, Who Made Me Sign a Contract, but I wrote it because it was said in a Discord server I’m one of the admins of, that the user wanted to read a story about a child summoning a demon by mistake with crayons. It was related to the story, though not directly, and I happened to have a headache, so I went with the flow since serious writing or editing was out of the question.

This hasn’t been proofread, although I’ve tried to go over it a few times for grammar and spellchecks, at least. Will it be edited in the future? Absolutely. But that might be years in the future, since I’m still writing the main story, so I decided to post it as is so that it could be read by those who wanted this silly little piece.

I think I might have to post the prologue of the main story very soon. It’s weird to write something canonically related to a story and post it before I even posted the prologue, but here I am doing so anyway!

Also, if any of the mispronunciations or mistaken words confuse you, feel free to ask in the comments, Twitter or Bluesky.

List of (some) mispronunciations and word mistakes:

• bald: bold
• gwoll: glow
• load: lord
• puh-puw: purple
• sigh-bet: subject