After dinner, Amaterasu, Kate and Nirrti chatted away most of the night. After many fun hours, Amaterasu decided to explore the library while Kate and Nirrti killed some time before the young Nightmare had to leave to meet Jorogumo about her house.

“Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever read the letters your great-aunt gave you?”

Kate shook her head. “No. And I won’t before the funeral, maybe not even for a few weeks afterwards. I want to clear my mind a little before I read them, give Prudence and the letters the respect they deserve. I can’t do that with all that’s going on.”

“Maybe it helps ease your busy mind a little to at least know why your feelings about humans are so bad. I have a theory about that, something I have struggled with myself and I think every Nightmare eventually does.”

“Having some clarity there might help, yes. What’s the theory?”

“I think it’s something you need to consciously experience yourself. When you travel to Hell later, just pop by the streets of Dis and open your mind. Let all that thought noise in. And then do that here again, maybe on the city plaza. You know how we tune out background noise, actual audio noise?”

“Yes.”

“Our minds do the same with background thoughts, but just like sounds, you still pick up on the feeling of it. Birds chirping is nothing special and normal, but if one bird is in distress you can hear that and you will know, even if you actively try to ignore it. I found that human thoughts, at least the loud ones we pick up passively, are very negative. Intrusive thoughts about themselves, judgments about others, annoyance about minor things. Often the loudest are the ones aimed at others. Disgust, bigotry, anger.” Nirrti frowned.

“And I pick those feelings up even when I don’t actively register the thoughts behind them. So much negativity towards others doesn’t make you like the source of that.”

“Exactly. I found demons to be much more pleasant. They are not positive, but that negativity humans carry isn’t really there. Demons are far more content in general.”

“I see. And people like Walter, that city council guy or the looming cult thing certainly don’t help.”

“It’s hard to not let that get to you, isn’t it?”

Kate simply nodded.

“I can’t tell you how I got over it. There are days I feel like I never did. I suppose my dismissiveness of humans helped at least a little.”

“’Humans are unobservant’ you told me when we first went for food together. Not the last time you distanced yourself from them. Understandable...”

Nirrti nodded. “We aren’t humans, but it is hard to not empathize with them. A little bit of forced distance helps me.”

“I don’t know if I can do that yet, but I certainly want to. Might be a bad thing to try in this specific moment anyway, right before a funeral.”

“Hm. Yes, maybe afterwards. Maybe not at all. Everyone has their own solution, it’s possible that trying to follow my example makes it worse. Who knows…”

“Hopefully we will soon enough. Thank you anyway. I will just have to a little thinking on what you told me. And on the near future in general.”

“Speaking of near future, have you seen Evelyn recently?”

Kate couldn’t help but smiled again. “I have not but she sent me a text message. Right now, she should be with Apaosha.”

“Oh?”

“She wrote that she would take a few days to spend with her new demon friend and if I had any tips on, well, she just sent me two small pictures of scissors and an octopus.”

Nirrti giggled. “I think humans call those emoji and she is implying… something fun here.”

“I must admit it went totally over my head.”

“It did?” Nirrti sounded surprised. “Aren’t you supposed to be the twenty-six year old human-born demon who knows current culture? How do I know more about this than you do?”

“I have no idea. What is she even trying to say sending me these emoji?”

“They are a sort of hieroglyphic language, widely understood even across normal human language barriers. She wanted tips on sex with an abyssal.”

“Oh… OH! I get it. Well, too late for that now.” Kate chuckled awkwardly. “She will have to fall back on her smut writing imagination.”

 

Jorogumo opened the door for Kate. “Welcome to your home.”

“Well, hello. And thank you.”

“Shall we start outside? I am eager to show you around!”

“Sure!” Kate had already seen her cozy home from the outside as she teleported here, but she wasn’t one to deny Joro the joy of pointing out every detail.

“Let’s start right here, with this beautiful door. It isn't just my favourite piece of wood in this house so far, it’s also the one we all spent the most time on. Just look at these engravings.”

Kate was suitably impressed. She had given Joro permission to have some fun with the front door and that certainly showed. The engravings on the door were beautiful, a stylized collage of trees, books, pens, paper, cats, birds, and at the very bottom of the door all the names of the demons that worked on this house. “That is incredible. Is the inside…?”

“Both sides of the door are the same. Didn’t want to force you to go outside whenever you want to admire your front door.” Joro chuckled. “Let’s head around the outside, we haven’t done anything like a potential garden or seating area, just as you requested, but there is still stuff behind the house you need to see.”

“Lead on.”

Joro did just that. Kate followed her to the rear of the house where it stood against the hillside. From down here she could see a path from the balcony outside the bedroom leading up the hill to a pavilion of sorts.

“And that is your reading nook.”

“Did you finish it?” Kate sounded very excited.

“Nearly, there is one thing missing that I only thought of after we started building. I need your okay to put it in.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’ll show you when we get inside there. I just wanted you to see how amazing it looks from down here, where I personally think would be the perfect spot for a little patio.”

“It really is. We should talk about that after the tour, I want to make the final decisions about the living room and the balcony today, no reason we can’t also talk about what to do out here.”

“Oh, I do look forward to that. I am eager to continue work on your home. Actually, that brings up a question…” Joro wandered back to the front door. “Do you want to move in now or once we are fully done? I almost expected you to move in before you even ask about working on the rest.”

“I thought about all that and I kind of want my cake and eat it too, if that expression makes sense to you?”

“Uhm… like you want it both ways that would be normally mutually exclusive? You want to eat a whole sparkroot.” Sparkroots were a delicious little treat, sweet and fruity, but they practically burst into small chunks when pulled from the ground. Eating an intact one was pretty much impossible.

“Exactly. I would like you to continue your work here unimpeded by me while I move in my stuff. I have quite a bit, well, stuff to bring over from the cottage and my apartment in the border world, even my parents’ home.”

“Absolutely doable. Just give me a warning when you want to bring in something larger like a furniture piece or something.”

“Of course.”

“Speaking of furniture.” Joro led into the living room, the first door in the entry hallway. It was still empty. “While everything supposed to go in here is finished and just sitting in my warehouse, last we spoke about this room you weren’t sure on the flooring."

“Oh, awesome! I actually had thoughts about the floor. My parents have a dark walnut floor in their living room and it looks amazing. It’s this very dark brown.”

“Hm… remember when we went through floorings, and I showed you smoked Atteka. Would that be close to what you want?”

“Wasn’t that the one with the unusual grain?”

“And the little red strands in it, yes.”

“Oh, that would be amazing, let’s take that.”

“I can’t offer you an Atteka floor made from natural Atteka, it will be conjured material.”

“Okay? I’m fine with that, but any specific reason why?”

“It’s not actually wood, it’s a type of bone that is simply unethical to harvest in large quantities. Down in the abyss, there is an animal that sheds its ossified exoskeleton every few centuries, that’s the only time you can get Atteka, which is the outermost layer of that skeleton, in any morally acceptable way. I won’t do that, even if you waited out the thousands of years to get enough for this floor, I will not put it in here.”

Kate nodded with understanding. “Absolutely reasonable. How did you even figure out that it was good flooring anyway?”

“Someone asked if we can conjure it and wanted to try it instead of a wooden floor because of the unique look. Things developed from there, trying different methods of altering the colour and finding more ways of using it. It’s great for countertops too, for example.”

“Fascinating. Well, I am happy with a conjured floor. The fact that most other materials in here are natural was always just a bonus and never a requirement.”

“I want to offer you only the best. I will get everyone back here to work on the living room tomorrow. Shall we move on to the kitchen?”

“Sure.”