"Goodness, my dear," the lady of the house says, "you do make an impression. It's wonderful to see a witch so well-dressed. It is no less than any of you have deserved, always." She tilts her head, sighs heavily, and then starts to shake. "I'm so sorry, but I don't think I'll be able to greet you with my accustomed poise. It's just…"

She hurries towards me. "It's been so long since we had a true witch here in Sarkosch!" She does a little bob, plucking up the hems of her dress. "Please, may I know your name and preferred pronouns? And is English your preferred tongue, as your incantation before my door would suggest, or would you rather German?"

"I'm Carrie," I say, extending my hand. "Carrie Rider, she/her." She isn't perplexed in the slightest, which gives some more weight to my theory that she's been able to keep up to date with the customs of the mortal Earth, but she does grab my hand with both of hers and shake a little too vigorously. "I'd much rather English. If this shrine is to you, I'm guessing Proto-Germanic would be closest to your own native tongue, which I don't speak, and my German just isn't much good." I clear my throat. "I'm from America, or… I was."

"You are still from your homeland," the demoness says softly, "even if it is lost to you."

"That sounds like you thought about it, same as I have," I say, "so I'm guessing no one here knows how to cross over on purpose, either."

"We know the how," the demoness says. "That has not been lost. Unfortunately, as I am sure you have experienced with all the myriad spells and means humans once used to reach us, not a single one of the options works. We…" she wrings her hands. "We simply don't have the power anymore. It just falls apart when it passes to your side, like it's breaking on something. We've taken to calling it the Wall, here. No one knows why it exists."

Then, a shake of her head. That shakes other things too. My hostess is very well endowed… okay, fine, she's got big boobs and hips that definitely look fit for breeding. I'm not really surprised when she says, "but first, manners--I am the succubus who rules here. I, too, am she/her. I…" She taps her fingers together. Oh, god, she does that too? That means she probably watches anime! No, that doesn't just mean she watches anime, it means she also identifies with all the awkward ditzy girls. "I have forgotten the name I used in the mortal world," she finally says, "and have… have had reason to stop using the one I once used here, so," she nods to herself, "I will call myself Merovingia."

"Did you know the Merovingian dynasty?" I ask.

"I did not," she says, growing shyer still. "The period of their reign is simply the last time I can remember being able to step through and manifest on Earth."

"That recently?" I ask, going a little breathless. "I thought we were talking about at least two thousand years since all the magic got shut out."

"Oh, that's a good estimate for the time when most of us began to be driven out," Merovingia says. "It's just that some of us, like me, had friendships with humans in very remote places. And my friends were witches, so their own power probably held the Wall back from falling into place on the lands surrounding Wildestur, that is, the Wild Gate, the shrine they built for me to commune with them on Earth, for a lot longer."

She winces. "I used to be very good friends with a woodland succubus from what I believe is now called Vorpommern--or Western Pomerania. That was, um…" she sniffs. Blows out a breath. "That was over two thousand years ago. She fell in love with a man of the Teutons. She took him as a husband, and, well… you can guess how that story ends."

"She gave up her immortality?" I ask.

"What? Oh, right, passage of time, ridiculous stories," Merovingia says, shaking her head. "No, absolutely not. She was still a demon, and indeed, her husband's village were glad for that. A devil-mother in the village, lending her power to defend her mortal family and friends--very highly sought-after for a wife. That was custom for the ancient Teutons, you see--as a rite of passage, sometimes their young men would go out into the wilds and face a demon of the forest. If she liked him, she might choose to take him for a husband after she finished tossing him around. My friend really liked her husband, so she let him win."

She sighs wistfully, tail sweeping from side to side. "He figured it out a week after the wedding, of course. She wouldn't have liked him so much if he'd disrespected her power instead of loving her all the more for it."

"She sounds like my kind of girl," I chuckle. "What was her name?"

"Yes, well," Merovingia says, tearing up, "the problem is that I can't remember her name either. It's lost on the other side of the Wall. It was a gift from her husband, and you know, even for the mind of a demon, time passes…" Her voice breaks. "I didn't mean to lose it."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"It's alright," Merovingia says. "It was a long, long time ago. Anyway, the last I saw of her--gods, she was such a magnificent forest demon! This long tail that split into a bunch of bony tips like an eldritch Cat o' Nine Tails, you know, and otherwise she was just such an uncanny blend of human and bat features, and those antlers, and whatever that strange other-something is that makes a demon a demon."

Another wince. "That's how I remember her. Wearing her true form, talking about this great journey southward. She didn't know the whys and wherefores--she trusted the leaders of her husband's people to know what they were doing. It was, um… it wasn't until a few years later that I learned about the Cimbrian Wars and Aquae Sextiae. I don't know how the Romans did it, but they must have nullified or countered her power somehow."

And then, Merovingia doesn't have to say, she died.

"Do you… mind if we talk about this moment instead?" I ask. "I'm sorry. I should've thought about it before I started asking questions like those. That you're a real person with thousands and thousands of years of history, and if you seem like you're having a hard time talking about something, there's probably a really, really good reason for it. Uh…"

God, what do I even talk about right now? This all feels so surreal. I've been waiting my whole life for this exact moment, planned a thousand grand plans like I was some kind of chosen one, but the first thing Merovingia told me is that none of those plans will work because Earth's mundanity is… stronger than magic. All of it put together.

Wow… this sucks. I mean, this is amazing, but everything leading up to it sucks.

"Maybe I'll just sit down," I suggest, "and you can do whatever it is you'd normally do for a guest? You don't have to do any witch-specific stuff if there's any reason you don't want to."

"Right, right," Merovingia says. "Um, so," she pads alongside me, somehow feeling smaller even though she has at least two feet on me, "usually, since I love to cook, and being skilled at nourishing people who are too weary to nourish themselves is very useful for a succubus, I'll just pull up my kitchen in the open air nearest wherever my guests choose to sit."

I flop down on what is absolutely, unquestionably the softest, coziest couch I have ever flopped on in my life. "Oh, fuck," I groan, mashing my face into it and putting all kinds of wrinkles in my expensive special-wear-only witch-attire. "They don't make 'em like this anymore. Not on Earth." They probably never did, actually. I feel like, if I actively tried to fall asleep, this couch would make it happen faster.

"Hm," Merovingia acknowledges. She pulls a hand upward through the air above the infernal pits below. A bolt of flame spouts upward in turn, splits and spirals into different coils, then stabilizes into the fiery effigies of several burners. Iron pans blip out of portals and enter orbit around her while an obsidian sink and knives with bone handles phase into being. Suddenly, just as she puts her fingers on the biggest, meanest meat knife she's got, she whirls around.

I don't flinch. Merovingia, on the other hand, bugs her eyes out a little and grimaces. "Sorry," she mutters, "sorry, that must've looked incredibly suspect. Please don't believe all the things about sexual murder and cannibalism and dragging your soul to damnation. It's just that I… I… um…" She averts her eyes.

Oh, boy. How much of the nastier stuff about succubi am I going to learn is true?

"Carrie, are you a hallucination induced by my loneliness?" she asks.

The bottom drops out of my gut. I guess she really has thought about the same stuff I have.

"Why?" I ask. "Because I seem to be confirming a lot of the same conclusions you've already come to? Because the number one way you're used to other people reminding you that they have their own thoughts and feelings, that they're real people who exist outside your head so they can think of things you'd never think of and they can do things you'd never do, is that they tell you you're stupid and wrong?"

"Um… ja…" the succubus says.

"I… Mero, that's what's so shitty about gaslighting," I say. "It makes us think there's no one in the world who would actually agree with us just because we understand each other, no one that we just naturally have things in common with before we even meet, so we get along without having to spend weeks or months fine-tuning each other. After so many years of thinking friendship is a myth, it's… it's natural to assume that when we find it, it's just a performance people are putting on to play to our expectations."

"So, there's really no amount of proof you can give me that will convince me you're real when I don't trust my own senses," Merovingia says, "and also, now you're doubting yourself again and wondering whether I'm a hallucination born out of your loneliness."

I fold inward. "Yeah," I mumble.

"W-well," Merovingia says, grinning desperately, "I'm not. I…" She looks like she wants to say more, but doesn't. She finally finishes, "I hope it's not too late to believe in each other."

"It's not," I say, and smile.

Our conversation ebbs. I just recline there on the couch, watching Merovingia dice vegetables that cycle in from somewhere else, and start some meat sizzling in her pan. She picks spices out of a granite cabinet that swivels in from nowhere and swivels right back to nowhere again. She also nicks her fingers a lot in her haste, but the cuts seal right back up again.

Demon blood probably doesn't carry any diseases that could infect a human, right?

It's just… nice. Merovingia's cavern is well-appointed, beautifully decorated in a way that's somehow cliché and totally her own at the same time. I feel safe here. It's like coming home. And even aside from the rest of the scenery, I have to admit Mero is really pretty. Pretty enough I can't help but feel things. A succubus, and not just that, a succubus with her own domain. This lady's powerful. No wonder she was the patron of her own shrine. I--

When reality hits, it hits hard. Not disillusionment, but all the years of unrequited hope and desperate need and deep kinship come crashing home at once. Something else gives way, and just as I'm starting to glow with childlike delight, I find out that reading about a succubus and being in her presence are not the same thing.

"M-m-merovingia," I stammer out, contorting and shivering with raw undeniable need, "is th-th-there somewhere I can go, or do you mind if I just," I gasp, throw my head back, and moan. "J-just take care of this right here?"

"If you don't mind me watching, I do like to see," Merovingia says, beaming at me. "It's nice to know I'm helping a pretty young woman enjoy herself."

The hour I spend on that couch while Merovingia cooks would not make very good erotica. It'd mostly just be the same line or two repeated over and over again. As an experience, though, something that actually happens to me personally, it is the single most erotic thing I've ever done in my life. I am pure lust and sensitivity, and it's a good thing Merovingia magics my gown off, because otherwise I would definitely tear right through it to get my fingers where I need them.

By the time I finally come to a rest, still gasping and groaning with aftershocks from something like my two-hundredth orgasm--Merovingia's aura seems to have cut my refractory period down to a fraction of normal--she's finished cooking.

"I'll just draw you a bath," she says, drifting by to rub my head, "and I promise you, the food will be just as fresh when you get out as when you go in, ja, so please, don't feel the need to rush." Am I… did I just become a pet witch? I'm not sure if I'm Mero's pet or not.

I'll figure that out later. The hour I spend in the rose-water bath she carries me to is almost as good as the hour that put me there in the first place. I believe her about the food, because my bath water never loses its heat either. And when I do finally step out, putting on a red silk nightgown she's laid out for me, the plate of schnitzel and noodles in mushroom sauce, with a side of seared asparagus and carrots, is better than any restaurant I've ever visited.

Well, yeah, duh. Merovingia has had literal millennia of cooking practice. It'd be just plain sad if any ordinary human cook could do as well as she does.

"That was so good," I groan, reeling back. "What do I owe you?"

"Hm?" Merovingia asks, squinting. "Oh! Right! I have to remember you don't necessarily know everything about the old ways, even if it seems from the way you treat your witchcraft that you reinvented many of them innately. In short, you do not owe me anything and I would not want you to. I am not a being of flesh and blood. My power self-regenerates as I live and rest, so it would be outright robbery to ask that you give me something in return when nothing was actually used up."

"What about, like… that thing where there's only a limited amount of energy in the universe, and it's neither created nor destroyed?" I ask.

"That is only an accurate description of physics on the Earth side of the Wall," the succubus answers, "and even then, only because magic and the self-renewing infinity of true otherworldly forces have ceased to be literal, real-world powers on Earth. Even here, you see, we consider ourselves supernatural, because our power quite clearly does not make sense. At its most basic level, it defies the logic of being. It should not be possible, yet simply is. The more we use it, the more we have later."

She conjures a sink and draws water-spirals already iridescent with soap through the air around her hands. She slides my dishes in. They scrub themselves. "But, enough. You begin to get the idea, and we have as long as you like for the rest. I don't know who had you so pent up, liebchen, but if I cared about compensation--and I don't--the sheer amount of sexual energy you poured out earlier would be enough to pay for a hundred dinners like that."

"And, the, um… helping me get around, after?" I ask.

"Carrying beautiful women to baths is its own reward," Merovingia says.

I blush and hide behind my hand a little. She's good. At everything. I'm pretty sure she's going to seduce me whether she tries to or not. Fuck, I really, really want her to! I want that for me. Maybe for her, too? A demon and a witch wandering the other world together. I can learn from her in person, talk to her, see her, touch her--when I'm ready to cross that mind-boggling bridge. I can…

It hits me, and I bolt upright. It hits me that magic is real, demons are real, Merovingia is real. The pure euphoria filling my head… there's nothing I can compare it with.

"Oh my God," I say, then flinch. "Sorry, force of habit."

The succubus--the actual, fucking real, really fucking here succubus--waves a hand like she's brushing a fly away. "It's intent that invokes the Anathema, not a simple turn of phrase. Why else do you think the liturgy is so insistent that you mustn't invoke the Lord's name in vain? It teaches people to use it lightly, to forget its power."

"Oh, that totally makes sense!" I say. "Okay, in that case…" I take a deep breath. Merovingia watches me expectantly. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!" I step a little too far into her personal space and do a kind of velociraptor bend while I stare up at her, circle her, shake my little gremlin-fists of glee like it's Christmas morning.

Christmas morning? Ha! Fuck that! This is a million times better than Christmas! No, a billion! A trillion! It's infinity times better because Christmas never felt magical to me. Spiritual, sure, full of fun and joy and family, but those things aren't magic. Magic is magic. Christmas never felt like a real magical experience, but this--

"You're a demon!" I yell. I start to go for a hug, realize that's getting pretty over-familiar with a real person who I just met, and settle for gesturing at her instead. "You're an actual, real, demon! I don't have to guess at things, I don't have to come up with a thousand bullshit revisions of a ritual I really liked to make myself feel better about not getting an answer the first time, you're a real demon! I can just talk to you and you can tell me what it's like to be you, what you'd like from me, how we can live together! I…" I run my fingers through my hair, shaking my head in amazement. "I can't believe it."

"Hm," Merovingia says, peering at me carefully. She's either a superhumanly good performer so she can just fake the mannerisms perfectly, which would also be fine because that would be such a trademark succubus skill, or she's actually one of those people who's so wise you can just see it in the way she weighs everything she sees, and I don't care which because she's a real fucking demon! It doesn't matter what she does because she'll be doing it as a demon! A demon who's real and really does things, that's all I ever wanted to see!