Ree has a minion!

Sunny the Monarch Butterfly

Ree ran alongside the steam, her bucket of flowers dangling from her mouth. She was late. Like always, she'd been out picking flowers and had lost track of the time. It was just so easy to get lost in her own imagination.

She'd never been a good Monster-in-the-Closet. When she didn't daydream through her shifts, she'd never really had the heart to be properly scary. She saw the children sleeping, and well... they were just so lovely and innocent. She wanted them to have sweet dreams, not night terrors.

So, she'd been expelled from the Monsters. How she'd made it past the training was still up for debate, but regardless, she wasn't one of them.

She had moved to the Neutral Zone, and had made a small trade of selling flowers to other Monsters- who were slightly confused by the human tradition of giving one another dead plants- but who seemed to embrace the opportunity to make up with their significant others by buying something instead of apologizing.

And then one day, someone had approached her stall, face covered in a cloak (although this wasn't unusual in the Zone, sometimes you just didn't want to be recognized). As it turned out, she wasn't the first Monster to be disgraced for being too kind-hearted. There were dozens in the Zone. They had formed a motley band, keen on reversing the terrors their ex-colleagues had caused.

But she was late for their meeting, which was the first she would attend. She ran as quickly as she could, her bucket of daisies flapping in the wind. She finally arrived back to the Zone, and rushed to the building where their clandestine meeting was taking place. She arrived in the meeting hall, covered in sweat and panting. She took the last open seat in the circle of chairs that was set up, shrugging apologetically at her neighbours.

---

And so, under the guidance of her new friends, her nights had become dedicated to watching over children as they slept. She was often a little late, but it usually turned out alright. The child would have sweet dreams and in the morning would wake up with a flower beside their bed, in a slightly misguided gesture of kindness from their anonymous guardian.


Other Monsters: Sweetpea, Vivika, Ponder, Cosette, Sabine, Maynard, Fionn

Credits

Art by CORE
Background Flora by Luciana Silva (luciannapappdesign) at Pixabay
Profile by Sunrise
Story by Trithie