I was swept away, dancing among clouds of memories and scenes from my past but unlike the last times, I wasn’t directly propelled forward to relive what had once been. Instead, I had a modicum of control, I could chose what I wanted to see. Similarly to what had happened in the sea of memories I had visited before, my former life was arrayed around me, millions of sparkling drops, each representing something important enough to be preserved, surrounded me.

I could chose whichever one I wanted but again I felt like some of them were more of a danger than an asset, memories I wouldn’t be able to cope with, memories that would change and drown me in the atrocities I had committed or had been subjected to. Of course I was curious but I wasn’t willing to risk my sanity, so I allowed myself to drift freely, my attention focused inwards. In here, my actual life was nothing more than a half forgotten dream, just as real as anything else and equally hazy, the burning emotions that had consumed me a moment ago were distant and dulled, only a faint echo still lingered in my heart and mind. In here, I wasn’t afraid anymore.

Slices of the past drifted by, leaving behind images, emotions sometimes even sounds, but none of them seemed enticing, an arbitrary mixture of things that had moulded me back then but weren’t impactful now. After a while I became bored and reflexively tried to recall why I was even here, what had happened before I arrived in this place. Retrospectively, I shouldn’t have.

At first my mind remained blank, as if I had just woken up from a deep slumber and didn’t know who or where I was. It didn’t take me long though to start piecing together the puzzle and as soon as I remembered, hope and fear ignited within in me, strong enough to send ripples of blinding light through the fog of memories. Had it been enough? Was my mom alive? I had to know.

From experience I knew that the only way out was through, so to say. To wake up, I’d have to dream first. It was tempting to simply pick one scene at random and be done with it, but I also suspected that I might not get the chance again to decide what I wanted to see. I couldn’t throw that away. But what did I have to know? What would be essential?

Amazeroth… every few steps I had stumble across the name, whatever had happened, somehow he seemed to be either involved or even orchestrating everything from the past. I wanted to know who he was and how we were connected, if we even had had a connection before I had been reborn. I wanted to know who was trying to meddle with my fate and who was responsible for the most scarring moments of my life. I wanted to know… if I trusted his judgment enough to not hate him for what he had done.

As if the memories had waited for a question, they dispersed in the torrents of light that still flowed from me, vanishing without a trace until only one remained in the glare. Curiosity, anxiety and a little bit of hope were mingling in my chest as I hesitantly took a step forward.

By the father, I hated beast kin, from the bottom of my heart. They were so… dull, walking stereotypes in one way or the other, valorous lions, wily wolfs, cozy bears… I honestly preferred humans, capable of cruelty and kindness, greatness and depravity, everything mixed up into one unpredictable bundle that reminded me of the ever changing cosmos. But no, instead of watching a war for love or the rise of a civilisation out of spite, I was on some forsaken planet, Gaia, where magic had run rampant long enough to infuse life with its boring principles. Better yet, instead of bringing those ancient cultures down a notch or two, I was trying to help, to guide them through the biggest catastrophe in their living memory. Why? Because I hadn’t been able to ignore a crying child, even though it had a tail. One impressive specimen of a detached immortal I was.

“Can you fly higher, Lu? I want to touch the sun.”

“That’d be a short trip. The sun is dangerous, as most beautiful things are. And don’t call me Lu. My name is Lucifer. I’m not calling you Gretchen either, am I?” The tiny bundle squirmed in my arms, full of life but yet so fragile. I wondered how she’d react if I simply dropped her, it’d be a long way down towards the churning ocean. A long way for her to commemorate her sins and for me to catch her again. But she’d probably just squeal in excitement and ask me to do it again. Stupid girl.

“You can. It sounds better than Greta. I’m not old enough to be called Greta. I don’t even have any wrinkles yet. See?” She turned around fully and smiled at me, her tooth gaps made the charming expression hilarious and I had trouble to keep on a straight face.

“Don’t worry, the wrinkles will come. Never doubt it. Just imagine, your golden locks turning grey, your green eyes dulled with age and worry. Even your tails will be drooping. You’ll become a splendid Greta sooner or later. Every mortal does, unless they expire beforehand, that is.”

“And you don’t?”

“I already am. I’m cranky and short tempered but yet wise and kind. Can’t you tell?”

“Don’t forget funny,” she laughed and this time I couldn’t prevent a smile from forming on my lips. I couldn’t help it, I liked her laugh. It was a precious thing, pure and full of life despite what she had been through.

“Where are we going, anyways? Do you think we’ll find more of my tribe in the South?”

“Maybe, but first we have to make a little detour. There’s somebody I have to talk to, or tear into pieces, depending on how the conversation goes. It won’t take long.” Heck, that know-it-all had some things to answer for. Like the cosmic coincidence that had led me to carry a singed, smelly kitsune pup in my arms. And the cycle had begun so well…

I had woken up with Aurora at my side, far from here. She had still been asleep, a luxury I hadn’t wanted to interrupt. Sleep and dreams were important, even though we didn’t exactly need either one to survive, to remain sane over countless millennia, we needed a mechanism to cope with what we had done and witnessed. Dreams were simply the most elegant solution, meditation worked as well but it was cumbersome and took ages to replace a single night. Not to mention that waking up with someone you cared for in your arms was a blessing all on its own.

We hadn’t been in the Silver City, a place I wasn’t too fond of to be honest, but on earth, a small, backwater planet no one seemed to care for even though… but that’s another story. I had quietly gotten out of bed and crossed over to the huge windows that had covered one wall of our bedroom completely. The impressive massive of the Alps had spread before me, grey and white towards the horizon, while lush greens and verdant forest had covered the slopes closer to our hotel with a beautiful sunrise in the east. Everything was serene, perfect, except that a hooded figure with a crown of horns on its head had been standing at the edge of the closest forest, a few kilometres away. When my gaze had fallen upon it, he had beckoned for me to follow and retreated under the shadowy trees.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It hadn’t been difficult to guess who he had been, there weren’t many demons who had the ability to track me down, and of those, I could only think of one who would actually bother to do so. I had been tempted to close the shutters and make some coffee, hoping he’d leave but that would probably have resulted in a series of painful accidents until I sought him out anyways. Better to get it over with.

With a thought I had unfurled my wings and had appeared beneath a large oak, Amazeroth had leaned against its trunk like an oversized beanstalk, tall and haggardly thin.

“Sorry to cut your honeymoon short, I hope the Misses is well?”

“You already know, don’t you? What do you want? I’d like to get back before she wakes up.”

“Your manners really are impeccable. Fine. I want you to come with me. There’s something you have to see with your own eyes, you won’t believe it otherwise. It’ll just be a short trip.” Right, that was why he had been smiling like a scary stranger with a bag of sweets.

“Sure, let me just grab my things and we can be off.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course not. If that’s all, I’ll go back and start to make breakfast unless you spill the beans.”

He shrugged. “The end is nigh, the war will be fought again and you can’t stop it. Better?”

“Not really. Just more crappy nonsense. If all you have are your weird prophecies, I’m not interested. You don’t know yourself what they mean until they come true, so spare me the theatrics. Now, out with it. You knew very well that I wouldn’t come with you, just to play a role in one of your little schemes. What do you have?”

“A major problem with your character but I guess that’s not relevant. Watered down that even a brute like you can understand me: me help you. You no come with me, big bad.” He had rolled his eyes, then. “Do you know how frustrating it is? Knowing what could be and seeing everybody else stumbling around blindly, shutting doors left and right that should have been opened? I can’t speak plainly, otherwise I would. Everything I say will cast its own ripples, possibly undoing what I’m trying to accomplish. You’re life is about to change. This much I can tell you, and if you want a future which isn’t just as dark as your arrogance deserves, you’ll sacrifice some of your time and come with me. It’s not like you have much to fear, even I can’t harm you without help.”

“No, but I think I have much to lose. I could just as easily find out, a few hundred years from now, that I will have signed my death warrant today.”

“You won’t, quite the contrary, believe it or not, I want you, no, I need you alive, at least for now. I swear, nothing that will happen today will be detrimental to your future.”

“And what about the present?”

“Well, she might rage a little but she’ll forgive you for a spoilt morning. Even though I’m not envying your return,” he had added chucklingly.

“Hmm… whatever. If you’ve lied to me, I’ll find your little hideaway and burn it to the ground. With you inside. Are we clear?”

“We are, even though you have as much chance of going through with your threat as a trout has of becoming a philosopher. But if it makes you feel better… you can have the last word.” Wise ass. He had then squashed a small gem between his fingers and a greyish portal had flickered into existence. I had tasted it with my wings and the thing had packed quiet the punch, this hadn’t been going to be just a commuting trip. “After me, I assume,” I had said and passed through.

I had appeared on a colourful field, full of flowers and enticing scents with the heavy odour of old magic in the air. A huge cherry tree had risen in the distance, taller than most skyscrapers back on earth and an aquamarine river had rushed through the fields, carefully designed trenches and channels had irrigated orchards, the fields around small homesteads and several water wheels, some of which had been connected to what I had assumed to be arcane workshops or ritual sites. People of the fox tribe had been milling about everywhere, luckily no one had been close enough to become alarmed by my sudden materialisation but I hadn’t been thrilled, exactly.

Why had he brought me here? And why hadn’t he arrived yet? Both questions had been answered quickly enough as the earth had begun to shake, dark clouds had raced across the sky and the oppressive feeling of released transcendent forces on a planetary scale had assaulted me. What the… had he been trying to blow me to smithereens alongside a planet? That would have been the stupidest idea ever, as I had been about to demonstrate.

I had taken off, determined to shake Amazeroth for as long as it took to get an answer out of him. But of course I hadn’t been able to fly away undisturbed. When I had circled towards the sky a faint whimpering had caught my attention and idiot that I had been, I had gone looking and found a lonely, crying girl, sort of unexpected in the middle of the apocalypse. She had been stuck in a collapsed barn, bloody patches on the broken timbers had indicated where her family had found its end. I hadn’t been able to leave her there and picked her up, carrying her across a world that had been ripping itself apart. She had clung to me like a drowning person to a raft, her sobs a stark contrast to the explosions and raging winds.

We had flown for hours, the scenes of destruction never changing and after a while I had started telling her stories. Some had been invented, some had been real but my words had carried her far enough away to fall into an uneasy slumber. And now I was cradling the orphan in my arms, without so much as an idea of what to do with her. Well, first I’d have to find Amazeroth and demand an explanation for why in hell I had had to witness his tantrum. But a part of me already knew the answer.

It was the girl. Somehow it was important that she and I would meet as we had and if I credited his vague ramblings even in the slightest, I’d probably come to owe Greta quiet a bit in the future. Didn’t explain why he was roasting the continent, though. Surely he wouldn’t sacrifice all kinds of peoples just to ensure the right circumstances for our meeting, would he? The more I thought about it, the more I believed that he just might have and that pissed me off, royally. I didn’t know exactly where to draw the line but I was decently sure that he had crossed it by trying to manipulate me through the death of thousands of living beings. That was just… wrong.

“Is he a friend of yours?” Greta continued our conversation.

“Hmm, I don’t really know. What do you think a friend is?” Her tongue poked through the gaps in her teeth while she was thinking and I had to admit, she looked quite adorable. Not that I cared.

“Uh, I think a friend is someone you can rely on. He tells you the truth when you need to hear it and helps you, when you’d fail on your own.”

“That’s interesting. What about sympathy? Shared history? Compatible convictions?”

“I don’t know what half the words mean, but isn’t that just a fancy way to describe growing together? I don’t know, but I think friendship is a decision, in a way. Otherwise it’s a buddy. Someone you like to spend time with, but that’s not the same. Friendship means to … to care for what happens to the other person and to have their best interest at heart, even if they don’t see it that way or don’t behave like it. Friendships comes from you, not the other person.”

“That’s a pretty grown up way to describe it. In this case, I don’t think we are. I definitely don’t have his best interests in mind and I’m almost certain that he doesn’t, either. At least I don’t think so. But honestly, that’s probably the essence of what I want to find out. So… actually I don’t know. Maybe he is, after all. Man, that would be weird.”

“Why? Are your parents angry at each other?” This time I was the one to laugh. Metaphorical she wasn’t even too far off but hearing her childlike analogy just put things into perspective. We really were a bunch of rowdy kids. The problem was, we didn’t have parents to tell us right from wrong.

“No, but we are… imagine you have a cousin but he’s the black sheep of the family. It’s frowned upon to have close ties. We aren’t supposed to be friends, so I have never truly considered it.”