image [https://imgur.com/NlClDGQ.jpg]

Now that mama and baby were safely reunited, I had a few questions for her…

“Why is your baby a bird person?” I asked.

The woman had a very uncomfortable look on her face, but let out a loud groan before deciding to tell the story.

“They’re called demi-humans. Although, others call them half-breeds.” She glanced at Tori with a melancholy gaze. “He’s not actually mine, well, now he is, I suppose.”

I’ve heard of demi-humans before in story books and anime, but I didn’t know they were real.

While she was talking, Tori extended his head up toward me. As a fellow winged individual, my instincts were telling me that he wanted to be preened. To satisfy his desire, I started picking at the little enclosed feathers that stood in place of hair until they opened up into a beautiful crest.

“Ooh…” I gawked. “So pretty.”

“Peep!” Tori cheered.

“So, I’m assuming his parents are…” Yamin neglected to finish her sentence.

“They were a wealthy family that came from the east, hunted by poachers who prize their feathers for extravagant clothing. I was one of his family's handmaidens before escaping.”

“I don’t mean to point out the obvious, but your dark skin…” Yamin started, “you’re from the southern part of Arba, am I right?”

“That’s right,” she nodded. “His family moved to a lower country of Arba, hoping that they’d be safe there. You can imagine why nobody here wanted to help me.”

I was clueless about that part. What about this Arba place made people not want to help this lady?

“I know our people are on very bad terms since the war,” the lady continued, “but I’d heard that your church would take us in and protect this Demi-human child.”

“Peep!” Tori chirped at the sound of his name.

Yamin smiled, nodding to her.

“That’s correct. The Ecclysian church always has room for souls in need.” She turned to me. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but right here is the Eighth Star of Heaven.”

At first, I was a little upset that she just blurted that out and exposed my identity… But watching cautious hope conquer the ladies eyes as she looked me up and down made it feel like Yamin said the right thing.

“No, that’s not possible,” The lady didn’t want to be fooled though and held onto some disbelief. “She looks just like a normal little girl.”

Right now, I was wearing overalls and a pink paperboy hat to cover my hair. You wouldn’t think someone like me was actually a real angel, and I’m not, but the humans don’t seem to know the difference.

Anyways, I took off the hat, letting my white hair flow down and shine in the light. Samael quickly scrambled to take his place as my ponytail scrunchie. My unique hair seemed to convince the lady that I was a lot more unique than most.

“A real angel…” she let her mind wander for a moment, inspired by how I could be the genuine article. “Now I have no doubts that I’m doing the right thing by being here.” She picked Tori up and held him tightly. “If kind people like you exist, then we should be safe here.”

As happy a moment as this was, the train conductor stormed in… Oh boy… He was miffed at us.

He was screaming at Yamin and I for all the noise we’d made on the roof, even threatening legal action. We were in a pretty bad way, but had to keep his focus off the lady and baby, otherwise they’d probably be in a lot more trouble than us.

Thankfully, Marek was checking up on us and said he’d handle the situation. Since he was a member of the Royal Council, the train conductor was more than happy to let him take the reins against us.

Of course, Marek wasn’t going to get me in trouble. He knew what we were doing, and obviously this was just getting the heat off our backs. I couldn’t wait to get off the train though. This had been enough of a crazy ride for a while.

~☆☆☆~

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I didn’t want to bring up the demon arm coming from Yamin’s backpack in front of a bunch of people, so we both stepped into the tiny train bathroom for temporary privacy. Yamin almost tripped over a leafy potted fern outside the door.

“Sweety, this is a one person bathroom…” Yamin said, recovering from hitting her shin. “Why did you bring me in here?”

Apparently she didn’t even realize what had happened. Her eyes were closed, after all. That arm that came out of her bag happened completely of its own volition. But clearly it responded to her call for help.

“Yamin, you didn’t hand me that sound box,” I told her. “There was something that came out of your backpack…”

The moment I said that, a look of dread spilled over her face. Moments later the backpack was on the floor and she was digging through it.

She propped the book up on the sink counter and we both watched it, awaiting something interesting to happen while our eyes were peeled. But it just sat still, unwilling to cooperate with our hopes. She poked it once for good measure.

“Did you just see it move?” Yamin asked me with a frantic voice.

“That’s because you just touched it.” I was just as frantic though.

Watching this thing like it was some unbelievably dangerous science experiment was clearly not bringing us any closer to understanding what it was all about.

“Yamin, when you were translating it, what exactly did you learn about the book itself?” I was referring to the actual purpose of the book, not the content. Of course it had info on almost all the demons we’d encountered so far, possibly even a little more detail than my internal compendium was keeping track of, but I needed more of the purpose.

Despite my humour, anything could be broken down into a science if you think about it. That was when I conjured up a hypothesis.

“This book reacted when you called out for help,” I mentioned. As expected, she was too freaked out at the time to remember. “Maybe if we call to it, it’ll do that again.”

“Book!” Yamin took initiative. “Do something for me!”

No response.

This time I posed the same question, but it didn’t respond to me either.

Adding to my hypothesis, I figured it would only respond to Yamin, since it seemed to have a penchant for her.

“Try asking it to do something specific.” I told her.

“Okay.” she nodded. “Uh… book… Can you turn on the faucet for me, please?” Yamin asked.

Nothing happened. Darn… I was sure that we were getting closer.

In the heat of the moment on the roof, Yamin was pretty charged up with feeling. Maybe emotions played a role in getting it to work?

“Ask it nicely, like a school girl or something.”

“Uh…” she blushed. “Um…” she put her hands together cutely in front of her and sweetly leaned forward. “Excuse me, Mr. Book, please turn the faucet knobs so we can have some water.”

Bupkis. That book was not going to respond to her.

“Try getting angry at it.” I suggested.

“Uh…” she cleared her throat, turning even more red. “S-stupid book… Do something,” she mumbled.

“Oh come on… Indena’s yelled at me louder than that for finding out she irons her hair every morning!”

It’s true. Indena was apparently very self conscious about it too.

“She does?” Yamin’s eyes widened. “No wonder it’s so perfectly straight…”

“Don’t change the subject!” I shouted. “Get angry! Tell that book to do what you want!”

“A-a… I don’t think I can!” she puckered up her lip and made some kind of a half angry duck face. “Alright, listen here, you lousy leather bundle of leaf paste!” Yamin reluctantly shouted, looking like she was about to cry from raising her voice. “You better turn that faucet on, or I’ll put you through the shredder!”

Good grief, I sure hope people can’t hear us from outside the bathroom…

When Yamin concluded yelling at the once inanimate object, it disowned that title by beginning to shake.

-WARNING! Darkness detected!-

“Bingo!” I shook my fists in success.

A hazy fog began to rise from the book, slowly forming into a hand as it reached for the faucet. Once the handle was turned and the water started to rush, the hand retracted and disappeared into the book.

Silently, Yamin and I turned and gazed at each other with shocked expressions.

“Woah!” We both said together, grabbing each other's hands, jumping up and down. “We figured it out!”

Wait! As cool as it was to experiment here, we both had to remember that this hand wasn’t something good. It was born of darkness, which was my sworn enemy to defeat.

Even if it seemingly remained neutral, reacting only to Yamin’s will, that didn’t mean that it couldn’t end up causing trouble down the road.

Rather than continue to approve of this thing being used like some sort of servant, I gave Yamin a stern warning.

“Don’t use this anymore. It’s definitely dangerous.”

“But, if it listens to me, can’t I just keep it from doing anything bad?” she asked.

In theory, that would work. But the reality was that we had no idea how this thing was going to change over time. It was using darkness as its main source of energy, which so far has done nothing but corrupt people. Technically, darkness only exists after something has been corrupted in the absence of life. But just the same, it should be avoided.

She kinda’ pouted a bit, but I convinced her to keep it safely in her backpack until we studied it more.

When we both stepped out of the bathroom, sure enough people were staring at us like we were crazy… Luckily nobody asked questions.

“Opps!” This time I almost tripped over the dried up potted plant. Hey, wasn’t it alive when we went into the bathroom?

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