Devil's Backbone (closed)

[Interstellar Bun]

It happened so fast Cassius barely had time to even figure out what was going on. Pain started in the core of his being, a force pulling him between worlds piece by piece. Realizing the sensation at hand, Cassius tried to grab the chase he had been lounging on as if that would do him any good. It didn't. In that moment, he was completely and utterly powerless. Ages ago, when this had happened to other demons who were foolish enough to let their true names be known and written in books, Cassius had laughed until his sides hurt.


It was less funny when it happened to him.


Cursing his luck, pain ebbed through his being, agony screaming in each and every molecule for what seemed like ages as time stretched on. Then, all at once, it was over.


Cool air settled around him, pressing against his form. In a rush the candles in the room were doused, the drapes on the windows fluttering as he whipped the air around him. It was a simple parlor trick, but humans tended to get freaked out when that sort of thing happened. It was the best he could manage, considering he couldn't move. Whomever did this had used old magic, something binding him so truly and completely that it made it a struggle to even alter his form - not that being on Earth made that a simple task in the first place.


He'd only been on earth, oh, four or five times before over the history of mankind. It wasn't his favorite place.


His form stretched, taking the visage of a looming shadow blacker than the galaxy itself. For good measure, he adorned his shadowy figure with horns, arms so unnaturally long claws scraped the ground. Maybe it wasn't his best work, it had been a while sine he had to pull these tricks himself, but he hoped it'd do the job. Summoning up his best voice, the amorphous creature spoke.


"Who dares to summon me," His voice was a low, deep thunderous rasp that seemed to linger in the air. "Who dares to call upon my name and bind me to this place, believing I will submit to your will? Speak, mortal."


Yeah, that was a speech he was pretty proud of. Considering he was more than a little out of practice, he thought he had done fairly well.

 

[Forever For Never]

It started out a fairly normal Sunday. Angela was off of work, and with the time free, she decided that it was finally time to clean up the mess of an apartment she had. She had been working every day for nearly two weeks straight, and as a result the dishes and laundry had piled up. After a few hours of doing those menial tasks, Angie decided that she might as well try to organize her closet.


In this process, she found an old book on her top shelf, more or less covered in dust. What the..? After blowing off said thin layer of dust, she found that the book's cover was written in a strange language. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she returned to the living room, deciding that she should sit down in her comfy armchair to try and figure out where it had come from. 


Upon further research, after turning a few pages and sending a picture to her cousin, she found that it was a secret Santa from her great aunt twice removed. 


"Yeah, it's in some weird language." Angie said, one hand holding the phone to her ear and one flipping through the pages of the book sitting in her lap. 


"That's Latin, Ange. I took three years in high school." Her cousin, Samantha, told her proudly. Angie rolled her eyes, even though she knew that Samantha couldn't see.


"Yeah, yeah. What does the title say then?" She asked. On the phone, Sam laughed.


"I don't know. I see 'the' in it, but I'm not sure what the other words are. Find a page and read me a sentence or two and I'll try and translate them." And so Angie flipped through some more pages, stopping on one with a picture of a dark, shadowy creature. There was some text next to it, and she raised her eyebrows. A description? 


"Okay, translate this." She cleared her thorat: "Ar šo rituālu pabeigta, es tāpēc zvēru uz maniem senčiem un apņēmusies šo dēmons Cassius manai dvēselei mūžīgi un vienmēr. Nāciet atpakaļ uz mani!" The words were butchered, as she had never read Latin before, but as soon as she finished the last phrase the line dropped dead. ".. Hello?" 


She he barely had time to get the word out before a wind raced through the room, blowing the drapes back. The candles that she had lit in order to make her living room smell like caramel blew out, and in the center of the room a mass of darkness took form. Angie dropped her phone, barely even hearing it as it clattered to the floor (but, thankfully did not break). The mass spoke, voice thundering and, well, terrifying to a puny human such as herself. 


"I... Um.. I..." She stuttered a few times, unable to collect her thoughts in the presence of such a terrifying figure. "I... I don't think you're in the right place.....?" Just what did those words mean?

 

[Interstellar Bun]

That wasn't the response Cassius had been expecting. Normally people liked to jump right in to ordering him around, trying to puff their feathers or show dominance. People didn't summon him if they didn't have nerve, after all. People without nerve tended to stay away from most demonic things. And yet, as his vision focused, he saw himself staring at what appeared to be a young girl. She looked frightened, and her voice only made her seem more so.


He hesitated, and when he spoke again, the thunderous affect was still there though he, admittedly, sounded a little less sure this time around.


"Was it not you who summoned me? Who bound me to this world with your will? No, I am not mistaken."


She had to be messing with him, playing some sort of trick for her own amusement. There was no possible way she could have just accidentally summoned him, right? That was insane, he'd never heard of it happening before. Black holes that made up his sockets bore down in to her as he stared, waiting for her facade of innocence to break. The sooner she told him what she wanted him to do, the sooner he could eat her and go back home.


"Tell me your name, mortal, and why you have brought me here."

 

[Forever For Never]

The only thing keeping Angela from bolting out of the room was that this was her house and she had nowhere else to go. She swallowed the lump in her throat as the demon spoke again. Did she really do this? How? Was it... Could the words in the book could have been some sort of summoning ritual?


"U-um," she started, "I'm Angela... But, really, I-I didn't mean to." She turned around and grabbed the book on the chair, fumbling with the pages until she found the one that she had read off of, one of the few pages with a picture. 


"Was this how I, uh, 'summoned' you?" She asked, holding the book closer to him with trembling hands, her finger pointing to the start of the words she had read. "I don't know what this means, I can't read Latin. I was just reading it to someone to see if they could translate it, um." She hesitated, risking a glance toward the creature's 'face' before having to cast her eyes down toward the ground at how terrifying she found it. He didn't have a face, but she assumed the two empty sockets were what he saw out of. Clearly meeting his 'eyes' was too much. 


"So... I'm, um, I'm sorry you had to come out here, but... Well, I really didn't mean to summon you, do you think--could you, please, go back to wherever you were before?" Angela asked meekly, fingers curling around the edges of the book tightly, as if it would somehow protect her from this thing. 

 

[Interstellar Bun]

He seemed to sink, slightly, his frame shrinking as he stared at the book.


"Oh you've got to be fucking kidding." The boom of his words had vanished by then, as he sounded more exasperated than anything. His form shifted with the words. Giving up the dramatic visage, Cassius settled for something more familiar.


Standing there, adorned in nothing but his own skin, the tall man reached out and snatched the book out of her hands. Mumbling to himself, he looked over the words once more before sighing. Oh this was funny. Oh this was fucking hilarious. Out of any summoning spell that she could have accidentally found and stumbled her way through, it had to be that one. He ran a hand through his dark curls and looked at her. With an actual face, it was easier to read the annoyance on his features.


"This spell you used? Yeah it means I can't go back until you release me. Normally I could just break the spell and be on my way, or eat you and end the contract, but once you start throwing words like 'soul' and 'commit' into things shit gets tricky." This time he held up the book for her to see, long elegant fingers tapping a few words. "See this? 'Commit to this demon Cassius my soul now and forever'. That's pretty serious."


He offered the book back to her.


"So, release me." The beat of hesitation then allowed worry to flicker across his features, replacing the irritation that had been there. "You...do know how to do that, right?"

 

[Forever For Never]

This situation was just getting worse and worse. Well, except for the human transformation. It was easier to be around this... Whatever he was when he wasn't a cloud of black smoke. The whole naked thing wasn't what she had anticipated, and after taking a split-second peek at his lower half to see if he was, well, a he, she focused her attention on his face. He was definitely not pleased by the situation. 


Angela visibly paled at the demon's words, but hesitantly retrieved the book, flinching slightly as if it had burned her, before peering up at the now-man, still noticeably scared. "I, well, I had no idea that was what I was doing, I'm so sorry." She fidgeted a little, picking at the leather fringe on the old book cover. 


"And. Um. About releasing you..." She stared at her feet, unable to meet his eyes. She had no idea how she had even summoned him, so how would she know how to release him from it? But she had to find a way. She didn't want to be bound to this demon forever. 


Angela opened the book up to the same page. "Well, like I said, I didn't know that I was, well, summoning you, so... I have no idea how to release you either, but--" she quickly started as not to make him mad--"if the way to summon you was in this book, then it should say how to release you too somewhere in here, right?" 


That was really all she had to go on, and so she held the book out to the demon once more, hoping that he could find it somewhere in there, as merely looking at the words for too long was stating to make her eyes hurt.

 

[Interstellar Bun]

He stared at her as he accepted the book once more. Why humans had even felt the need  to write these things down was beyond him. There was a reason demon summoning had gone out of style literal ages ago, after all. More than anything, he was just perplexed as to why his name had been written down. Perhaps just as a place holder? An example? Brows furrowing, he began to flip through the pages of the book, fingers skimming along the old parchment as though they were dancing.


He hadn't bothered replying to her last comment. With any luck in a few minutes none of this would matter and she'd go back to doing whatever it was she'd been doing before, and he'd be back to lounging. 


There was a key word he was looking for, release.


"Here we go." He muttered the words more to himself than the human as he neared the end of the text. The pages spoke about theory, preparation, the emotional and metaphysical costs of such acts and Cassius didn't care one bit about those. He flipped the page, expecting to find the spell and, instead, was greeted with the shredded edges of paper that had been hastily ripped out.


He ran his hand through his hair again, resisting the urge to sigh.


"The pages are gone." He shut the book with a swift motion and it made a soft sound. He didn't even sound mad so much as exasperated. "I'm going to guess you don't have any more spell books laying around, then?"

 

[Forever For Never]

As he flipped through the pages, Angela tried not to freak out. She had just summoned God-knows-what from some supposedly ancient book that her--who was it, aunt twice removed?--had somehow gotten her hands on and for some reason thought that it was a good idea for a secret Santa present. Who does that?


She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't even notice there was something wrong until he spoke again. "... They're gone?" Angela chanced moving closer and saw to her dismay that they really were gone. 


"Oh." Don't freak out. Don't freak out. You can fix this. ".. I hadn't even known what that book was until today, they're nothing else I have that's anything like it." She inhaled a long, shaky breath, trying (and failing) at calming herself. 


"Um...." She honestly didn't know what to say. He didn't look particularly furious, but the whole smoke-and-candles thing earlier had set her on edge. What would happen if she couldn't free him? "What do we do now?"

 

[Interstellar Bun]

Cassius supposed, if he thought about it, she was handling all of this fairly well. If she hadn't meant to summon him, if she had no idea that such things were even real, he was moderately impressed with the fact that she hadn't simply fainted from shock. Though, that might still happen later so he wasn't about to rule that idea out just yet. He also supposed he was handling it fairly well too. He kind of had to, in a way. It wasn't like he could physically harm her, not with the spell she had accidentally used.


What good would getting angry even do? It wasn't like throwing a  tantrum and destroying the place would help any, even if it would have made him feel better.


He realized he had been silent for a few moments too long, his thoughts consuming him. She had a good question, one he didn't think he even knew the answer to. It wasn't like this had happened before, at least, not to him. If it had happened to anyone else they hadn't returned to tell the tale. That was a dreary thought.


"Well, you can start off by telling me where I am" He squinted, finally looking around. For the first time, he stepped away from where he had been summoned, his stride slow and almost cautious. "And...when I am as well, because none of this looks even remotely familiar."

 

[Forever For Never]

Angela nodded slowly. She didn't know where he had comw from--hell, if her two years in catholic school back in elementary were anything to go by--but if she were somehow summoned to an unfamiliar location she'd want to know where she was just as much. 


"We're in my apartment in Seattle, Washington." She replied. "The year is 2016." She paused. ".. Does that mean anything to you? Or do you count years differently where you're from?" 


Did demons have the 'A.D.' And 'B.C.' dating system? Or did they just count forward from a bunch of years? 


"So... Do you have to, um, stay here?" Angela asked, fingers fiddling with the hem of her shirt. She felt so awkward and out of place. How did one talk to a being so clearly more powerful than them, especially when she was supposed to have 'bound' him to herself, whatever that meant?


"Also, do you think you could explain what exactly it means that I bound you here, or to me, or want ever?" She asked, looking up at him again. "Because summoning demons isn't... Well, it isn't a thing that anyone--well, most people--even believe is possible. So I'm kinda in the dark about what just happened." And still hoping that its just a bad dream.

 

[Interstellar Bun]

The words 'Seattle' and 'Washington' meant nothing to him. He probably shouldn't have even asked, seeing as how long he'd been gone. Still, he cold probably get some frame of reference for where that was later, seeing as how he'd now have the time to bother with stuff like that. The year was more useful to him. He knew how humans kept track of their lives well enough to realize how long it had been since he was last there. No wonder everything looked so strange. He could say what he wanted about humans, but he had to admit they were a creative bunch.


Taking another step, looking less cautious, Cassius started to explore the room, just looking at things.


"Time is different, but I know how you count your years well enough. Last time I was around it was when King Solomon reigned, so I'm willing to guess it's been a while since then." He scoffed a little, the sound almost one of amusement.


"As for being bound, normally I'd just be bound to earth and to your words so long as you were powerful enough to keep me under control. But this?" he motioned between them, brows lifting slightly. "It's a little different. That whole 'soul' thing means we're metaphysically connected, which works more for your favor than mine. You can tell me what to do and I'll be bound to do it at some point, and I can't actually hurt you without paying a price myself. I suppose you could send me away from you if you wanted to, but you'd still technically have a demon attached to you and I'd be left with nothing better to do than terrorize people until something came to stop me."


The last part was tacked on too casually.

 

[Forever For Never]

King Solomon? She thought for a moment. He was ruling before time was counted in A.D.... Right? "Wow. I think It's been at least two thousand years since you've been here." Angela noted, amazed. He appeared to be in his mid thirties at most, but clearly he was far, far older than that. She assumed that demons lived much longer than humans, but she didn't know it was that long. How did demons even die? She made a mental note to ask him sometime, as it seemed like they'd be spending quite a bit of time together, at least for the time being.


"No, please don't terrorize people," Angela asked, eyes widened slightly. So he couldn't hurt her, at least without repercussions. That was somewhat comforting. "So... I can tell you what to do?" She asked. "What exactly can you do? I mean besides turning into a if cloud of smoke and blowing out my candles." She thought that she should relight them, her eyes had adjusted to the dimmer lighting but now that the initial shock of everything had been somewhat calmed she wanted more light in the room. 


Another question struck her just then. "Do you need to eat, drink, sleep, or do any of those other human stuff?" She made a decent amount of money at her job, but if she had to provide food and probably a bed for him as well as clothes--which he still wasn't wearing--, the costs would start to add up. Maybe she could make him get a job? That sounded like some cheesy sitcom. A girl and a demon: roommates in this modern comedy.

 

[Interstellar Bun]

He snorted, smiling for once at her comment about blowing out her candles. The dimple that appeared with the expression vanished just as quickly as it came, though.


"So I'm going to guess you don't know too much about my kind. 'Demon' is kind of a catchall term, and different...sects, I guess, have different skill sets, different limitations. I, for one, don't possess a physical form so I have more flexibility in deciding what I look like compared to some others. This has made me a good candidate for spy work and menial labor in the past, though I was ordered to commit the occasional murder now and then." He shrugged. "I know a few simple tricks but I can't, say, spontaneously burn places down, grant wishes, or manipulate the minds of other people. You'd need someone else for that."


Her other question struck him. No one had really ever bothered to ask that. It was always just a fast summon and then he was off to do whatever the practitioner desired of him and Cassius was left waiting for the summoner to slip up so Cassius could take his tithe and go back home.


"Technically speaking," he continued, "I don't need to do any of that human stuff while I'm here. I do, however, like to sleep, and eating is just an indulgence."

 

[Forever For Never]

Angela nodded slowly, choosing not to think about the murder part. He was still considered to be under the umbrella term of 'demon', and what she'd mentally pictured when she heard that word implied doing awful things such as killing other people, but it made her uncomfortable how casually he said it. She supposed that his beliefs and thoughts on the taking of human lives was vastly different than her, but even so it was quite unsettling.


"Well, I don't really think I'll need you for any of those things, so that's fine." She paused. "I mean, I don't really need you for anything, so... I guess you can sleep a lot?" She shrugged, still at loss as what to do with him. At least money wouldn't be an issue. She'd still like him to wear clothes though. "Hey, so if you can change your appearance, could you change it so that you're wearing clothes?" She asked, glancing away. "Because in this day and age it's kind of awkward not to wear clothes."


Then something hit her. "Wait, hold on a second." Angela said, frowning. "I don't even know your name yet." Assuming he had one. But even demons had to have names, or something that they went by, right? 

 

[Interstellar Bun]

He considered her question, raising a brow as she looked away. Ah, right, humans and their issue with nudity. He'd forgotten that was a thing. Granted, an amorphous being didn't really have much to cover up when he was back home. Not having much to go off of as to what clothes looked like these days, he fell back on what was familiar to him once more. The shift happened so automatically it was like nothing had changed, as though the cloth that draped about him had always been there. It hung off one of his shoulders, wrapping half around his chest and covering his legs. It looked natural, real, and the way he held himself made the simple ancient outfit seem fitting.


"I trust this will please  you for now, mistress?" He said the last word almost jokingly, though that was bound to amuse him much more than it amused her. "I'm sure it's out of style, seeing what you're wearing, but I suppose we can blame that on me being old fashioned."


He turned to face her, no longer wandering about the room. Instead of offering her his hand to shake, Cassius bowed.


"I'm Cassius, though if you are ever to speak of me to anyone else, for whatever reason, I'd ask that you please not use that name...not in full." he paused, brows furrowing. "Wait. Didn't you say, at first, you were reading the book aloud so someone could translate it? Where are they?"

 

[Forever For Never]

Angela raised an eyebrow at the combination of his strange attire and the title of 'mistress,' a bemused smile gracing her face, the first one since she had summoned him. "Mistress?" She repeated, making a face. "That makes me feel so old and stuck up. Would you mind just calling me Angela or Angie?" 


She took a longer look at the clothes, or rather, cloth that he was wearing. It definitely wasn't anything that would be worn today, save perhaps on some fashion runway as a strange trend trying to be born. But somehow it fit him. "It definitely isn't something you'd see people wearing today, but I don't mind if you wear it as long as you wear something else if we go out." She wasn't sure where or why she would take him anywhere, but she imagined that it would get quite boring sitting in her apartment for hours on end, so she figured that she might as well give him some options. At least until she could find some way to release him of course.


"Cassius, huh?" The name was foreign on her tongue, but not in a wholly unpleasant way. She thought for a minute. "Well, is there anything you'd prefer I call you instead? Like, uh, Cas, Cassy? Casey?" The last one was an actual name, at least. 


"Oh, Samantha?" She had completely forgotten about her. In a way it was her fault that she had gotten into this mess. Darn her and her inability to actually read and understand Latin to the point of understanding the difference between a summoning spell and literally anything else. "That's my cousin. She can't really understand Latin though, I was just reading her a few sentences to see if she remembered anything from high school several years ago. I was talking to her on the phone." She picked up her forgotten phone on the floor and then hesitated. ".. You probably have no idea what a phone is. Basically, you can use it to talk to someone any distance away. Samantha actually lives in California, which is over ten hours traveling by car--" she stopped, sighing. "... Which is also something you probably don't know about. Um, point being, she's not here. But don't worry, she could hardly understand any of it. I mean the only word she could read on the front cover of the book was 'the', so there's no way she would have distinguished your name from any other word she didn't understand." 

 

[Interstellar Bun]

She smiled. Well, at least it would seem she had something of a sense of humor. Cassius considered that a good thing, seeing as how humans were painfully boring when they lacked one. While she didn't seem the sort to punish him for a bad joke, the memories were still there, and it was nice to see that, maybe, that aspect of their personalities might get along well enough.


"Casey will work." The response was almost stilted. Being asked what he'd liked to be called wasn't something that happened, not with humans. Names were assigned to him, if he was ever named at all. With every passing moment, she kept striking him as more and more strange.


That feeling only intensified when she spoke of her cousin.


He listened, and despite himself, a more than perplexed look settled on his features, his head tilting slightly to the side. Phones, cars, he felt more out of his depth than he thought he might at first. Of course the world had changed, humans were good at innovating, the strange part was Cassius found himself wondering exactly what things were like now. Were there still kings ruling with an iron fist even if they didn't have slaves of demons working for them? And how did phones work? Questions danced on his tongue, curiosity nipping at his throat. He started to say something, but stopped, restraining himself from asking. Asking 'pointless' questions in the past had always ended poorly.


"At least that's one less thing to worry about for both of us, then. I'm assuming summoning demons is still considered a bad thing."

 

[Forever For Never]

"Alright, Casey it is then." She settled. "Would you mind if I called you Cassius when we're alone though? I feel like it fits you a little more."


Angela paused, thinking for a moment. "Well... More or less yes. Honestly, not many people would believe you. The only people who truly believe in demons nowadays are very religious people, satanists, and paranormal freaks. But even half of those would probably laugh if you told them that you'd summoned one." She shrugged. "You look like a fairly regular human, so I don't think it'd be any issue, no one would think you anything but." 


"Actually..." She sighed. "With how little you know about today's world it'd be pretty hard to believe you were just some regular guy. I think, for your own sake, you should probably learn about the world today." She walked over to a desk in the corner of a room and opened her laptop, clicking the tab for the Internet. "I mean, I can't force you to do anything--wait, actually I can--but I won't. This was partially my fault and I'm sure you'd rather be doing whatever it is that you do normally, so I don't really want to make you do anything. As long as you don't break anything or get yourself in trouble you can do whatever you want really, but I think it would be good if you learned at least a little about this world. Could you come over here?" She motioned to where she stood at the computer. 


"This is called a computer. You can use it to access any form of information that you want, different.. 'Books' that you can read, pictures, and videos, which are a series of moving pictures. There are games too, and all sorts of cool stuff. But it's a great tool to learn things from. I think it'd benefit you if you perhaps searched the greatest inventions of the past few centuries to try and get an idea? You can control the little pointer icon here by moving the mouse, this thing that my hand is on, and you can select something by tapping on the left hand side of it." She demonstrated, showing him the soft clicking noise it made. "This is the keyboard, which you can use to write words. It's got all the 26 letters in the English language as well as the numbers and some other stuff, but you won't have to worry about any of that now."


Angela paused in her explanation to take a breath, realizing how fast she was going. "I'm sorry, I'm probably not explaining this very well. Do you need me to repeat anything? Or, would you be more comfortable just reading books? I can get some from the library for you." She offered. It was such a strange situation. But she tried her best to emphasize with Cassius. She knew that if she was brought into some time vastly different then hers she would want to know what was going on, and she was sure that on some level he did as well.

 

[Interstellar Bun]

At her first question about his name, he simply offered a shrug in response. She could call him 'demon' for the rest of the time and he wouldn't even flinch. It might have even been better that way for both of them. It would have kept expectations low. However, he wasn't about to stop her from calling him that in private if she really wanted to.


Cassius stared at her, then at the machine, and back again. It was pride that stopped him from asking her to repeat everything she had just said.


"Books would be a good start." He said slowly, after a moment. "But this it's...kind of like a ouija board. I've observed humans using those. The mouse is like the planchette, and...you called it a keyboard? That's like the letters on the board itself." He stopped talking when he realized he was musing aloud.


"But, yeah, I think I can figure it out. I'm a powerful creature from hell, how hard can it be?" Half of his mouth quirked into a smile, another mild joke he wasn't sure she'd find funny. "But this thing, this computer, it can give me answers to things I want to know?"


That question was a little softer, as though he were aware it sounded stupid and disliked the idea. He still remembered the first time he had been summoned. The confusion, the anger, how that particular summoner wanted to keep him as in the dark as possible so he never truly knew what was going on. That wasn't a time he particularly enjoyed recalling. In fact, he didn't much like recalling any of the times he had been summoned, nor the people he had been forced to work for.

 

[Forever For Never]

Angela nodded, allowing a sheepish smile to crawl into her face. "Yeah, books. They're always a good start. Sorry, I guess I just got a little overexcited there. It is rather like an ouijia board though, I'll use that analogy next time I have to explain computers to demons." She joked with a smile. 


"Oh, you have no idea what you're getting into." She couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "I mean, I'm sure that you can figure it out, but there's a lot of really, really weird shit on the Internet. That's the thing that allows people to access information. It's like..." She paused, trying to think of a way to continue with the ouijia board analogy. "It's like the portal that allows the spirits to come to this world and move the planchette on the board. The thing that connects it all together." 


She he couldn't help but feel a pang of... Something at the tone of Cassius's voice. He sounded unsure. She knew that something like a computer had to be a mind-blowing concept for someone like him. She smiled a full, genuine smile. "Yep. The computer can answer any question you want to know. It will tell you things you never even thought you'd want or need to know. And you can use it whenever you like as long as I don't need it for anything. But my phone has a built-in computer, so I shouldn't need to use it too much." She paused. "Don't believe everything you read on the computer though, a lot of people lie on it. If you're skeptical about the legitimacy of anything you can always ask me about it. I'll probably know." 


Just then, Angela's stomach rumbled quietly. She laughed. "I guess I'm hungry." She hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning, but that was hours ago. It was time to make some food. "I'm going to make something to eat. You said that you don't need to eat, but if you like what I'm making I'll give you a bite. I'll show you how much even food preparation has improved in the last two thousand years." And so she led the way into the kitchen.


It was nothing super fancy, but it had a refrigerator, oven, stovetop, microwave, and dishwasher, in addition to a stainless steel sink and tile countertops. She took out a loaf of bread from the cupboard and turkey and cheese from the fridge and started to prepare a sandwich.

 

[Interstellar Bun]

The amount of information that was being thrown at him was staggering, he had to admit. He wanted to linger behind with the computer, let Angela go off and do whatever she wanted, but it was curiosity that pulled him away. He'd never admit it, at least, not aloud, but he did want to see what had changed. He was learning, slowly but surely, but the information he had been given was so small. It left him hungering for more, wanting to figure out the pieces for himself now that he had the unfortunate amount of time required to do so. That was a thought that still make his essence squirm a little.


He moved with an almost silent whisper as he followed her, bare feet merely ghosting along the ground. It was enough to make him seem eerie, out of place. Inhuman.


It was in the doorway that he paused, dark eyes widening for a moment as they scanned the room, taking in the information that was offered to him. Everything was so glossy, so sleek and compact. He eased forward, letting his fingers brush along the counter tops. His hand twitched, wanting to reach out and open things, to touch more and investigate, but he kept himself still and opted to, instead, lean against one of the counters so he could observe her.


"I'm...going to be doing a lot of reading, aren't I?" He flashed another grin her way, something so quick one only had to blink to miss it. His head tilted as he watched, his next words slow as he mused out his thought process. "So, since I'm not seeing any servants, or male figures of authority you'd have to hide a devilishly handsome man like myself from, I'm going to also guess that your odd culture has changed just as much as your technology."

 

[Forever For Never]

She managed to look up from her sandwich preparation just in time to see the grin before it had gone. "Oh yes, devilishly handsome indeed." Angela laughed as she buttered a skillet and lit the stove with a simple turn of a knob. She was glad that this demon knew what puns were and briefly wondered how long exactly they had been around. 


"Well I'm not sure how exactly it was last time you were on earth, but in this place at this time females such as myself are perfectly free to vote for whoever's in charge, own property, work, wear pants, and do more or less all those things that males can. And servants really don't exist anymore either, at least not the way that they used to." She put the sandwich onto the pan and allowed it to toast for a few moments before flipping it and doing the same with the other side. "But no, I'm single and live alone, so there's no one who I'd have to hide you from." 


That topic, however, brought up another question. What was she to do if a friend or family member decided to drop by and found Cassius lounging around in only a long piece of cloth? That would pose quite problematic. How could she explain why he was living (if, of course, demons were considered alive) with her? 


She killed the fire and decided that she'd worry about that a little later. She just wouldn't invite anyone over until she herself had gotten more accustomed to having him around. "Out of curiosity, would you mind trying this?" Angela ripped off a piece of the still-warm sandwich and offered it to the demon. "I'm kind of curious as to how different food from back then tasted. It's just turkey, cheese, and bread. I don't know if that was even eaten together last time you came to this world, but it's a popular lunch today." She set the plate with the rest of the sandwich on the table and sat, taking a bite of it herself. 

 

[Interstellar Bun]

Single, a woman, and living alone. The world really had changed, though it really wasn't up to him to even try and decide if it was for the better or not. It was just different, all of this was so painfully different. If anything about what she had said was better, it was the lack of servants. Perhaps why summoning demons was so rare, then, why risk losing your soul or getting eaten when servants weren't even in use? He pondered the thought, squinting slightly as he stared off. It was the food that he was offered that brought him back to his unfortunate reality.


He accepted the piece. It was warm, and it smelled better than he had expected it to. "Well I can tell you right away this is going to be better because it isn't pickled, boiled, or kept on salt slabs. You can only eat so much meat before you feel like you'd be better off just licking salt."


With that point made, he nonchalantly popped the bit of sandwich into his mouth and paused. Okay, sure, he was expecting it to be better at the very least, but that was a lot better than he was even expecting it to be. His eyes closed for a moment, shoulders sinking as he savored the taste. He looked almost blissful.


"You know, maybe being stuck here won't be the worst thing to ever happen to me." He mused  the words, watching her as she ate. He hadn't moved from where he had propped himself against a counter. "You're already better than every other human who has bound me before."


Not that it took a lot to reach that point. Still, he hadn't meant for that last comment to slip.