“You really shouldn’t have said that.” Raziel said when she finished her soup and noticed that Albaer was gone. She leaned forward, catching her hand on the table to stop herself from falling over from the weakness that hadn’t yet left her.

Lialah’s heart was filled with shame. “I know. But she was just… sad. I hate seeing anybody sad, I thought if he could know what she felt, maybe they could-”

“Could what?” Raziel asked, her own heart burning with age old frustrations of her own, her talons dug into her palms, too weak to draw blood, it was nonetheless a painful thing, but not painful enough to make her relax the tension in her fingers. “Go back? Whatever they had before, whatever they were, even if he forgave her, how could he ever forget? There’s no going back. Not from anything, once done, it’s done forever. I know that better than anyone.”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean-” Lialah started to insist, her slender fingers fidgeting with one another as she finished the soup Albaer made for them both.

“To take her side?” Her sister interrupted again.

“I wasn’t!” Lialah insisted, “I wasn’t taking a side.” Her denial was strident and certain, but Raziel’s steady stare told her she thought otherwise.

“That is taking a side, my naive sister.” Raziel insisted in return.

“That wasn’t what I meant…” Lialah said, unable to look at her sister, instead she focused on her twitching, shifting fingers, her wings folded in close to wrap around her body in a self embrace.

“We meant to summon Kami. Instead we’re here. What you meant doesn’t matter. What you did does.” Raziel hammered it home, and Lialah’s lower lip began to tremble.

A twinge of regret and her own advice touched Raziel, she could see the way the angel was nearly reduced to tears, but her resolve stiffened. ‘Someone has to bring my naive sibling into line, or who knows what her meddling could screw up. She could really hurt him without knowing it, or offend him so much that we’re thrown out. If that behavior becomes a habit, we could get in real trouble when we start going out into this world a little more.’

As much as Raziel had come to trust Albaer in the short time they’d known each other, it wasn’t lost on her that it was still a short time. That was the reality she didn’t want to face, but one of them had to. He was still essentially alien, unlike any other race she knew, with a culture that was utterly unfamiliar and part of a world which was fending off who knew what kind of horrible disaster.

‘So many wars, so destructive, what horrible monster are ‘they’ trying to keep sealed away?’ Raziel asked herself that question more than once, and the way his mysterious items worked, she’d quickly come to love them, but the question of how they worked, the source of their power, it still wasn’t clear.

‘My adorable sister’s blunder of a question might have been a problem, but we still need to know. I’ll ‘have’ to ask at some point, but if it’s a bad question, we must be able to protect ourselves.’ Raziel hated the way she thought. It ate at her. It made her think of the reputation of her race at home. ‘Conniving, predatory, vicious, backstabbing.’ And there she was, her sister was lost in her own world of thought.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Raziel looked back, in Albaer’s room she heard the sound of a mouse clicking on the scree, ‘And here I am, wondering if I’ll have to turn on the one protecting and providing for us… how can I criticize my sister…?’

The guilt ate at her, gnawed like a dog on a bone trying to get the last little bit of flavor out of it.

There was one constant answer that she could always turn to whenever she felt guilty about how she was thinking of, or treating, or had treated, anyone. And nobody ever minded.

‘Why would they? I’m a succubus.’ She licked her lips out of view of her sister, thinking about even the possibility of turning on him, ‘I don’t have to tell him what I was thinking… if I just offer sex, that’s apology enough even if he doesn’t know why. I’ve seen his eyes wander.’

But there was still doubt. The unknown set her ill at ease, and too, there was their earlier… misunderstanding. ‘I don’t want to confirm the way this world sees me… strangely enough, this is like starting all over with a blank slate. Maybe wait. Wait a while and see what happens.’

Unexpectedly, Raziel’s thoughts and her conclusion that she should in fact, wait a while, brought a sense of unlooked for relief.

“I won’t do it again… I’m sorry.” Lialah said and looked down into her bowl of yellowish chicken noodle soup.

“Just- Just be careful.” Raziel reminded her, “I know you mean well, I do. But Albaer is not an angel, or an elf, or a demon. We barely have a grasp of his culture and we don’t really know what will happen if we do the wrong thing.” Raziel said and patted her sister’s thigh.

Lialah gave a weak little smile back in response, “Fine… I’ll be more careful.” She replied, it was as good a promise as Raziel could expect, and that gave her at least some small relief.

----------------------------------------

‘Another submission, another rejection.’ Albaer cursed his luck, his fingers were sweating, his confidence in his ability to find work was dubious at best. ‘Son of a murdering fraud. Thanks a lot dad, great legacy you left behind.’ Albaer thought and hit ‘submit’ dropping another resume into another company’s box.

The ‘swoosh’ sound of a successful upload came and went, and after he didn’t even know how long, Albaer had applied to every job within walking or cycling distance. ‘Although, I don’t exactly ‘have’ a bicycle… I guess I could buy one on the cheap somewhere, but there’s no point to that if I don’t have somewhere to go on it.’ Albaer’s thoughts went around and around in his head.

‘What will my mother say if she learns I quit my job? She’ll find out sooner or later, I can’t disappoint her, she needs me to be responsible. Working as a nurse pays nothing, everything is expensive and costs more all the time. Where will we get more money… there’s got to be something I can do, someone who will hire me. If I let her down, I don’t know what she’ll do, what we’ll do. And those two out there… I told them they could stay here, they trust me, nobody but mother has trusted me since dad. What will they say? They can’t live on their own here. They’ll die. I quit my job, they know I quit my job. What will I say to them when I hear their bellies rumbling? Sorry, you’re going to go hungry because my friend made me sad? Irresponsible idiot! You’re going to let them down. You’re going to let your mom down.’ He stood up and paced, and paced, and paced.

He paced until his legs hurt, he paced until his calves screamed at him, he paced until he grew tired of that and flopped himself down on the bed and stared at nothing. The others hadn’t come in yet, eager to be anywhere else, he shouted out to the pair, “Hey, I’m going to sleep, if you can do your possession thing, do whatever you want with my body, just put it back here when you’re done with it.”

He didn’t hear whether or not they responded, and nor did he care. They heard him, that was plenty. Whatever they did, they did.