The kitchen was just as beautiful as Kate had imagined. Sleek black wood, an adamant glass countertop with the stove top etched into it and a total lack of knobs or handles anywhere, just a slim gold lining on the upper or lower edge of the door or drawer to signify where to pull on. The mix of black and a gentle touch of gold gave it an almost monolithic character.

“Oh wow.”

“Does it hold up to your expectations?”

Kate laughed. “It surpassed them easily. This is so pretty!”

“And the dining table? You sort of ran past it.”

“Right!” Kate turned away from her new kitchen to look at the lovely black wooden table, its rim engraved with the same motifs as the front door. “I love it, obviously. I don’t think there is anything in here that could disappoint me. Hell, I doubt anything here could ever be less than absolutely amazing.”

Joro tried to hide a prideful grin, but there was lingering question before she could let her happiness flow. “I’m glad you love it. But… is it home? It’s not entirely enough to just live in a pretty home, it also needs to feel homely, for lack of a better word.”

“It does! It really does, but in a strange way. I don’t think I would have wanted this before I met you people. This feels like home for the me that I am still getting used to.”

“I don’t think I’m following.”

“I have a few annoying thoughts about my human past and how I interact with humans now. I talked to Amaterasu about it when we met yesterday, and she said a few things that brought up even more confusing thoughts. Past human me would have never asked for a home like this. In a way this is rejecting that human side, if it even exists at all and isn’t just a weird clinginess to the past. I suppose that’s good thing.”

“I see… You know, what matters is that you feel like home here. To have this as a place where you feel safe and comfortable, where you can be yourself and have the peace to sort your thoughts out.”

“So far, yes, this is home. I haven’t seen the bedroom yet, but I am certain it can’t disappoint.”

“Would you like a look at the beginnings of your bathroom down here first?”

“Let’s leave that for later, I have a few thoughts about that one I need to discuss with you.”

“Alright, just one quick thing before we head up to the bedroom then. The storage room over there, we haven’t put the shelves in yet. Do you want what we had discussed or do you have any changes I need to take into account?”

Kate shook her head. “I think your proposal for it is good, go with that.”

“Alright. Time for the bedroom then. After you.” Joro gestured to the door.

Upstairs was only one room. The bedroom. The bed itself, standing with its head against a wall, was massive, sizable enough for three maybe four demons and a few cats. Like most furniture it was made of black Eterna-wood, the preferred material for most demonic furnishings. The massive wooden beams visible from the outside of the house were also made from it. Up here, some of those beams were actually visible from the inside, mainly on the two sides of the room that could open up the balcony. The outside of the lower floor reminded of medieval European homes with its visible beams. Up here it took a modern twist. Between the beams on the balcony sides wasn’t the usual brick infill, but glass. Both walls were essentially giant windows. The beams themselves had been modified to allow a large double door on each of the two walls to open and let in the wonderfully fresh Hell air.

With a flick of her wrist, Joro turned the glass black, just like the adamant glass in the kitchen, and with as simple a move she returned it to its original state again. Kate looked suitably impressed.

“I can’t wait to wake up in here, wow.”

“I take it that you are happy with it?”

“Absolutely! You’re the best! …don’t tell that to Polly though, I’ve been trying to get her to accept that compliment. You can both be the best.”

Joro giggled. “I will just tell her that you called me second best.”

“Agreeable.” Kate nodded playfully. “Okay, I really want to have a look at the armour closet before we go back downstairs. Unless you have done more to the balcony.”

“The balcony furniture is not entire done yet.”

“Alright. Closet then.” Kate just turned right from the stairs and opened the closet that filled pretty much the entire wall. “Very nice. I doubt I will ever be able to fill this with clothes, but I do approve of this much storage space.”

“As someone who’s been around for aeons, I can assure you that you will need that storage space.”

“I have so much stuff I want to keep from my human years, and it feels like demons own so little stuff.”

“You already participate in the reasons why we own so little. We only get the books we love the most, the tools to make the things we love the most and conjure temporary things when we need them. No demon has a set of coloured pens unless they require them often. Same with basic clothes, most food, candles for a cozy evening, I obviously also conjured all the paper I made the plans for this house on. Everything I listed, except the plans, those go into the Archive, just gets dissolved back into nothingness when we’re done with them.”

“I need to do that even more. I am still too clingy with stuff that I conjured up. My closet is full of stuff with no real value or meaning, just clothes I made in the moment.”

Joro nodded. “You can rid yourself of those to save space.”

“And I will when I move my stuff. Speaking of saving space, let’s go to the bathroom.”

“Okay?”

Kate and Joro headed back down the stairs, and into the bathroom. It reached a little into the hillside, which had caused Kate to opt to simply seal the basalt walls instead of covering them entirely, giving the entire room a rather cavernous look. For the main purpose of this bath, that style fit quite nicely.

“So, you know how humans need to, well, evacuate waste from their bodies?”

Joro raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Uhm… humans don’t fully digest food like we do and the stuff their bodies can’t use gets expelled regularly.”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“I think so too. But it isn’t optional for humans and they can only stave that need off for so long. Since I am friends with a few humans, and the only waste disposal facilities, toilets as they are called, are in the Pandemonium, I need a toilet here.”

“Not a problem, I hear a ‘but’ coming though.”

“Yes. Since I don’t need a toilet, I would prefer one that is only there for humans when they enter here in the need of one.”

“Hm… Difficult, but I can get you one that is hidden behind another door or something. Maybe a nice piece of décor? I will have to study what in the Hell toilets even look like and how they function. Maybe we can improve on them?”

“It just needs to be a seat with a hole in it for the excrements to go into. Humans then use a system of pipes to flush that to a central processing facility. Maybe check in with the Pandemonium and see what they did? Who even implemented the toilets there? I thought you designed that building.”

“They were a later addition, I don’t know who put them in. But it is a good idea to just copy their implementation and see what we can do to hide it.”

“I trust in your ideas. A toilet also needs a sink, humans can’t just magically clean themselves.”

This bathroom was literally just what it was labelled as: a room with a bath. The large tub in the floor had a massive shower head above it, but it was more an artificial hot spring than anything else. Outside of towel racks and a few hooks and shelves on the wall for sponges and other stuff, there was nothing else in here.

“I will come up with something. Overall, are you happy with this, besides the lack of toilet?”

“I am. Looks pretty much done to me. You said it wasn’t?”

“The magical water inlets don’t work yet. We haven’t finished the inscriptions.”

“Ah, I see. Still, this is great.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Joro paused and narrowed her eight eyes. “Do you need the toilet to be here?”

“What are suggesting?”

“If the Pandemonium already has the needed facilities, we can simply put in a hidden door that connects to those. Something context sensitive, so when you go into the Pandemonium toilet room from here, their door also leads back there. But if you enter from the Pandemonium, you will just use their door normally.”

“Brilliant. Just put a small handle on the wall for the door, so people can actually find it, maybe just to the side here?” Kate pointed to an empty spot on the stone wall just beside the entry door.

“Absolutely doable. Want the handle to look a bit like the towel racks, just vertical and smaller?”

“Sure. I mean, if it looks bad we can reuse it elsewhere and get a new handle.”

“Yes. Alright, if we are done here, there is one more room to show you.”

“The reading nook.” Kate beamed with excitement.