“How are you feeling?” I asked. It was starting to become a pattern, asking people how they were, but it looked like it was going to be that kind of week. Crypto looked a very specific brand of miserable. He looked a little feverish, a little… ‘flustered’ and a lot confused. I wasn’t really expecting an answer -- not a coherent one, anyway -- but it couldn’t hurt to be as supportive as I could be. After all, his eyes had just been opened to… a lot of things. If what two women in bed looked like together in person. What I looked like with horns. That demons and succubi exist. My breasts, which he’d gotten an eyeful of. While the rest of his thoughts were as opaque to me as always, he apparently couldn’t help but fantasize about those from time to time. I tried to ignore it, although it was pretty flattering. 

“I-- I-- I don’t…” he stammered. That was pretty much what I’d been expecting. He was more than a bit of a mess, and who could blame him. He was sitting on the couch where Rama had made her nest the night before -- it still smelled like her, all spices and exotic flowers -- and looked like he was trying to make himself so small he wouldn’t touch anything. The poor kid was more than a little scared. 

“You have questions, I think,” I said, trying to put myself in his shoes. The conversation I’d had with Madeline two months ago had gone very differently, for a number of reasons, so I wasn’t sure to start. My better half was in the kitchen making a big pot of coffee, giving Rama a talking to about dealing with humans. The latter had put some clothes on, at the very least. “Where would you like me to start?”

“Horns,” Crypto managed, nodding to himself. “Definitely the horns. The… the red skin. The tail…” I nodded understandingly. I’d retracted them to put him at ease, but I occasionally saw his eyes flick to the top of my head again like he was expecting them to show up and yell ‘boo’.

“The demon-looking thing?” I offered.

“Demon-looking?” he asked. He looked relieved. “So it’s not actually demons?”

“Oh, no,” I said, “definitely demons.”

“Oh.” 

“But it’s not like you think,” I said, trying to reassure him. “There’s none of that fire and brimstone stuff. Nothing mentioned in Sunday School.” Just then, Madeline came in. She was wearing her comfy clothes and an oversized bathrobe, and carried a tray with several cups on it. “Hey you,” I said, and she leaned down to kiss me. I briefly got a flash of what that looked like from Crypto, and knew that Madeline did too. It made her smile into the kiss. After we pulled away from each other, I took a cup and nodded gratefully at her. “Thanks, love.”

“Of course,” she said. “How are you handling the uh…” she looked between Crypto and myself, “everything?”

“I just got started explaining that we’re not interested in stealing souls or causing eternal torment,” I said. 

“Just short-term torment,” Rama said with a wolfish grin as she passed by behind the couch, holding her own steaming mug. I shot her an angry glance, but she didn’t seem to notice, instead leaning over to poor Crypto, who at least didn’t pull away when she got close. “Don’t be scared, little one,” she purred. “We’re not going to hurt you.” She looked up at Madeline. “Much.”

“Rama, now is a bad time,” Madeline said. “You really don’t deal with humans much anymore, huh?” The tension in the air became more and more palpable, and it was starting to annoy me. Rama was pure sex, but she clearly had some issues with boundaries and proper behaviour. 

“I don’t deal with anyone much anymore lately, Madeline dear,” she said as she stood up with the hint of a scowl on her face. “It’s all so much work. Especially the humans. They’re so fragile.” The way she emphasized every other word made it hard not to pay attention to her. She had a very neatly trimmed way of speaking, pleasant to listen to. “But fine. I’ll let this one be.” She very gently touched Crypto on the shoulder. “Until I’m asked otherwise.” Crypto shivered and closed his eyes. I felt sorry for him, so I stood up. I’d gotten dressed, he had too, so an idea had come to me. 

“Madeline, I think I’m going to take a walk, take Crypto with me,” I said. “The fresh air will do good, and I can explain things in a less… crowded environment.” Madeline nodded approvingly, blowing on her coffee. Rama sat down on the sofa and smiled like a cat with a treat. 

“That works out just fine,” she said, then looked at Madeline. “I have some things to discuss with Madeline, so some privacy will be very appreciated.” I didn’t like the way she said that. She seemed like she was up to Mischief, which was something I’d never really encountered outside of saturday morning cartoons and the occasional raccoon. Once again, she seemed to either not notice or acknowledge my glare, but she got a cold hard stare from Madeline as well. Still, it didn’t seem to diminish her smile in the very least. There were implications in the way she spoke, but I hadn’t picked up any broadcast emotions and fantasies from her, so she was at least courteous enough for that. 

“Anyway,” I said, “let’s go for a walk, yeah?” Crypto nodded softly. He seemed to be so lost, trying to make sense of things, getting him out of there was probably the best idea. After just a moment, we both had our coats on, I quickly minced over to Madeline to give her a kiss. She was clearly still annoyed with Rama, but she returned the kiss, if a bit gingerly. Crypto was already waiting for me by the front door, like a puppy, and I smiled a little apologetically at him as we stepped outside. He seemed so vulnerable, a part of me just wanted to wrap him up and take care of him. There was clearly a lot he had to deal with. We walked in silence for a while, breath in little clouds in front of our faces.

“So… demons…” he said. 

“Yeah.”

“What does that… mean exactly?” he asked, frowning to himself. I was trying to answer the question to myself first. What did it mean to be a succubus, to me? Well… not much. I mean, sure, it was a part of my daily life, and it played into a lot of my interactions with Madeline, but, well… cozily living with her was more important to me. Making a life with her, and figuring out what that meant was, in a sense, more central to my life than the horns. 

“We-ell,” I said, trying to find my words as I lead us down a little path off the side of the street that wound around the back of the library, “it’s complicated.” The path wound through the trees at the edge of town, over a small creek, and wound back around to town. There were offshoots to hiking trails, but as I wasn’t planning on murdering Crypto and hiding his body in the woods, I wasn’t going to go down those. “Basically, as it turned out sometimes a baby is born to demons, looks like a person, and doesn’t find out until their late teens when their parents tell them.”

“But your parents…” Crypto said softly. I’d told him pretty much everything over the years. I nodded.

“Yeah. So I only found out recently, when I met Madeline -- which is why I kind of fell off the face of the earth for a couple of months. She helped me figure a lot of things out.” I paused. “I trashed my room. Uh… unintentionally. There was a lot to figure out.” I sighed, blowing another little puff of vapour. I enjoyed the cold sometimes, when it was just the tip of my nose and I felt like a little dragon blowing smoke. “I transformed after I met her.”

“Transformed… how?” he asked. As we reached a little bench, we both sat down and looked at the water. It bubbled softly and I appreciated the ducks waddling and swimming past for a little bit. 

“There’s the horns,” I said, “obviously. They kind of… retract.” He looked at where they were supposed to be so I obliged. His eyes grew wide but he stayed quiet as my horns grew to their full length, before they retreated again. “Everything… ‘weird’ is stuff I can hide, you know?” I blew some air into my hands, more for show than anything. My core body temperature was a lot higher than it used to be. “I’m a lot sturdier,” I mused. “And there’s the uh… the other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” he asked. He seemed remarkably interested.

“You’re taking all of this very well,” I pointed out, and he blushed, exacerbated by the cold already having put some colour on his cheeks. 

“I just… It’s a lot to take in but you’re still… my friend, you know? Even if your name is Evelyne.” I couldn’t help but smile. He was as nice as ever. I nodded. 

“I want to be, at least,” I said. 

“I just… the whole transformation thing is so much and I want to understand.”

“Well,” I said, closed my eyes and took a deep breath, “there’s a couple more things. There’s some mental stuff that I’m not going to get into right now, but there was another big change. I’m going to need you to promise not to freak out.” He looked at me in a panic, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he was imagining. Did he think I was going to turn out to actually be a soul-sucking sex-demon? Because that was only three-fourths right. 

“I promise,” he mumbled, though he didn’t seem like he had himself entirely convinced.

“When you got off the bus, I told you about the voice changer and stuff, right?” I asked. For some reason, explaining all of this was scarier than the fact that I was essentially a biblical monstrosity. It should be easy. It wasn’t. Probably because it’d been the cause of decades of stress. Still, I wanted to be honest with him. Partially because I had my suspicions, and largely because he was my friend. He nodded. “Well, that was a lie, kind of.” He cocked his head. “There was no voice changer. I always used my own voice, and all the ‘guy-stuff’ we talked about was all real.”

“But… but you’re…” 

“I wasn’t until pretty recently,” I said, and got up. Sitting on the bench, I was worried I was going to freeze my ass to the wooden slats. He got up too and shoved his hands in his pockets for warmth, staring at me with eyes so wide I was worried his eyeballs would get frostbite. “Don’t forget to blink, hun,” I said with a warm smile, and he blushed again. “The part of me that changed most was well… I look like what I’m supposed to look like now.” I paused, hesitating. These were hypotheticals we’d talked about, sure, but to actually wave the real thing in front of him was liable to shake loose some feelings. “Just like we used to talk about.”

“But that’s not possible,” he said. I wished I could prove it to him. Maybe I could. I had no idea what I was doing, but maybe I didn’t have to. Maybe instinct could get me far enough. It was always worth a shot. I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant as the path turned its way back towards town. There was a little shortcut we could take that would lead to the back of the house. 

“It is. I think I could… offer it,” I said with hesitation, and then looked at Crypto sideways, who seemed lost in thought. I briefly considered opening my thoughts to him to get a sense of where he was at but I did not want to risk the wall of noise that would inevitably hit me if I did. His jaw was clenched tight. “If you don’t like it, I should be able to undo it. You know, if you want.”

I could see him mulling it over in his head as we walked down the path. We weren’t that far from home now, and I looked forward to being inside and warm, as well as getting something to eat. I hadn’t had breakfast yet. “May-be…” Crypto mumbled quietly. “What would that mean? What would I need to do?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I can’t make you into… something like me, of course. But if I kiss, it should… fix some things.” Crypto’s blush was reaching cataclysmic intensity, and I repressed a little giggle.

“K-- Kiss me?” 

“Well, I’d want to talk to Madeline about it first,” I said, as I pushed open the little gate at the back of our garden and we walked down the path to the back door. “I’m not going to kiss you just like that. Madeline and I are both very open minded.” I opened the door and stepped inside. “But we both talk about everyth--”

My voice caught in my throat as I saw the woman I’d just been talking about, lying on the couch. Half on top of her was Rama, face buried in Madeline’s chest. Madeline had her arms around the other woman, though her expression was one of shock as we made eye contact. I clenched my jaw. I was in no space to address this, and in no mood to hear weak excuses. I grabbed Crypto by the collar and dragged him outside into the cold again.