I thought my heart was going to break out of my chest. What the hell dude! You can’t just spring on someone ‘oh hey by the way here’s a fucking house, it’s yours’! Sure, Sophia had seemed fairly uncomfortable with my showing gratitude, so I dialed it down, but still!!! A FREAKING HOUSE!?? I had no clue how to even start paying her back, since anything I could do for her would just be a pale imitation compared to what she could do for herself with little to no effort. At the very least, I’d at least try to make sure I didn’t screw up dinner too badly.

I spent half an hour cleaning and chopping my various vegetables, cubed up some chunks of rabbit meat and organs, then dumped them all into a pot of boiling water, along with the herbs I had found and a healthy dose of spices I may or may not have stolen from the town. I then put the lid on the pot and let it simmer. I knew that stews generally take a long time, so I figured I’d let it sit for a couple hours then come back to check on it, so I made my way to the living room, where Sophia was shuffling a deck of cards that she pulled from seemingly nowhere.

“You make those too?” She looked down at her hands then shook her head, the broken chuckle she only makes when she’s embarrassed about something escaping her lips. “No, remember I told you about Veronica?”

“The gambler?”

“Yeah, well I’ve been spending time with her lately. You have shown me that I actually rather enjoy interacting with others regularly, yet for the reasons I told you about how demons socialize I can’t afford to spend time with a lot of people I actually like, so I started going over to visit someone I can’t get along with, and I might have stolen these from her. There isn’t much around here in the way of entertainment, and I thought maybe you’d like to play.”

I had a couple hours to kill, so I shrugged and sat down to absolutely destroy this girl in some go fish. Before we began, I asked her to remind me when two hours had passed. Sophia snapped her fingers and a candle appeared, casting its flickering light over everything. What one has to remember is that in the subspace, even though you can see everything, there’s no actual light source. A conundrum I still didn’t quite understand, even if I did have a theory about what the subspace was and how to get here. One of the side effects of that was that there were no shadows in the subspace. After all, shadows only exist when light does, so without a light source, even when you can see everything, it looks somehow…wrong. Flat. Now however, with the flickering light of the candle, everything was thrown into a stark three dimensionality, including Sophia.

The difference was like seeing a picture of someone and interacting with them in person. With the candle giving her a more natural appearance, despite the inherent unnatural hue of her skin and the magical moving tattoos of flames across her body, Sophia seemed… warm, and gentle. Friendly.

“Do I look that strange to you?” I realized I was staring, and hurried to reassure her, “No, well yes actually, but in a rather beautiful way so it’s fine.” As I watched, the flame tattoos flickered up to her throat and face, as she looked away. “So you do blush, just in an odd magical sort of way.” I noticed. “Just shut up and pick a card!” She yelled at me.

After go fish, I taught her the rules to Rummy and we played a few rounds of that. During the games, I asked Sophia, “So you’ve mentioned that pretty much all demons develop obsessions to deal with immortality right? What’s yours? What is it that the venerable Desire’s Flame truly desires?”

Sophia stopped playing and stared at me silently. Not in a way like I asked an insensitive question, more like she was gauging my reaction, to see if I would make fun of her or be annoyed by her gushing. Apparently, something she saw told her that it would be fine, because after a moment she responded. The sheer intensity behind her words informing me that if I believed nothing else Sophia had ever said to me, I could believe this.

“To make my own reality. This subspace is a prototype I made when trying to figure out how to sustain life. The one I currently plan to use for my own world is far, far larger. From there I will make my own personal world by hand in whatever shape I desire. I will have every stone, every plant, every animal, and every kind of person imaginable on it. In short Leo, I desire everything.”

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The rest of the round passed in silence as I absorbed what Sophia had told me. Before I shuffled the deck to start the next game, I was finally able to respond, “Damn and I thought I was greedy. How far along is it?” She carefully analyzed my face, almost like she was expecting to see an accusation there. She asked me with confusion coloring her voice, “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

This time it was my turn to be confused, “Why would I? Remember how I told you I had a theory about this subspace? Well my original earth, my new earth, and heaven and hell all exist in the same space right, just different frequencies of mana? My theory about this subspace is that it's just the same, it’s the same three dimensional space, but you’re using something like an unregistered frequency of mana, which makes it simultaneously both exist and not exist within the bounds of the universe. The fact that it’s such a paradox means that we can both visit and go back to our original worlds, but we can’t cross over into the other person’s world because at that point, we would definitively become things that Exist, and the world’s natural defense mechanism you mentioned would kick in. I’m assuming that the way you bring me here is by using our connection as something like an anchor and dragging that state of ‘things that don’t exist’ around me, so rather than bringing me to the subspace, it would be more accurate to say that you’re ‘having the subspace include me’. That’s probably also how your summoning ritual works, by making the area inside the circle a field that doesn’t exist in the world yet can still be observed by it.

So if we assume that theory to be correct, then the base concept of creating your own sliver of reality is not far fetched by any means, and assuming gods are a thing that exist, has probably happened several times, and that’s why we have these different worlds. I would assume that your biggest problem is actually getting the materials to get started on constructing the world itself, as stuff made by mana dissipates after a couple days. Another big problem is a lack of understanding of how a world actually functions, which is illuminated by the fact that rather than trying to make a world capable of storing life, you’re trying to make a world in a subspace that can store life.”

The next thing I knew, an 8 foot tall demon threw all of her weight on top of me, crying hysterically.

Sophia’s POV

I couldn’t help myself. When I heard Leo calmly, step by step, explain everything I had done and thought over the millenia, while also alluding to the fact that he possessed information which could make my long held desire come true, and most importantly, when he accepted my words as easily as though I had confessed a desire to simply learn how to play an instrument, or take up juggling, I threw myself into his arms with tears streaming down my face. The only problem was that Leo didn’t have enough in the way of arms, so rather than catching me gallantly, we just tumbled to the ground. He looked down at me now lying sheepishly on his chest and asked, “Hey could you maybe make yourself smaller? Might be a tad bit easier.”

I slapped his chest lightly in annoyance that he essentially called me too big, before complying with his request. I shrank myself to a much more maneuverable 5 feet tall. He then rolled me off of him, stood up, and before I could join him, picked me up and sat us both down on the couch he had previously been on with me on his lap, holding me, and stroking my head. Instantly I felt the heat rise up to my face, and to stop Leo from seeing it and pointing it out again, I hid my face in his shoulder.

When was the last time I had been in this position? When was the last time I had felt this way? So understood, so…taken care of? Have I ever…

My thoughts were interrupted by something gently poking my leg. After a beat, I looked down and realized what was happening. Oh wow. I have an entirely new avenue by which to tease this man that I had never even considered before. I started adjusting myself, pretending I was just trying to get more comfortable, while really just rubbing against it to make it even bigger. Once I felt it hard enough to bruise, I knew my work was done, then turned to him with an innocent expression. Only to find that he was staring at me, with tight lips, one corner raised, a sparkle of amusement in his eye. He knew perfectly well that I knew exactly what I was doing. I instantly turned away in embarrassment, but he called me out anyway.

“Trying to get a ‘rise’ out of me? I don’t think you’ll find it all that hard to do.”

I muttered under my breath “I think I’ll find it plenty hard.”

He let out a carefree laugh and said “Perhaps so.” We then fell silent as I stared into his eyes. Come to think of it, I don’t think I had ever actually seen his eyes before. Every time I’ve seen him in person his eyes were either closed or focused on something else. They were a warm brown, with flecks of green around the edges. Like a forest in the middle of spring. As we stared into each other's eyes, I felt myself be slowly drawn in towards him, inching closer, and closer, until…

The light from the candle went out. We stayed still for a moment before Leo remembered, “SHIT THE STEW!”