These days I woke up at four in the morning. I’d get out of bed, and take Mint out for a walk, After nearly five years of exposure to my peculiarity and living our magically inundated, these days it was practically Mint taking me for a walk.

On Mondays, after the walk, I’d give our house’s piano, a tune-up. I’d make sure its internal elements were still working properly. Then I’d wipe it down with oil and wood polish to maintain the look of her external elements.

Once I got back, I showered, I went through my morning toilette and dressed in preparation for work. Between becoming sexually active again, and dealing with the consequences of having my cultivation explode in both depth and volume alongside Margot’s, I’d gone through some changes.

I’d been able to keep those changes from turning into anything too dramatic...At least as far as my physical form was concerned.

When it came to my true form, dramatic shit was constantly happening. I was constantly evolving, constantly mutating, so honestly, it was the same old, same old, there too. I generally hid that part of myself anyway so it wasn’t anything I was concerned about.

Externally speaking, my physical form was more or less the same as it had always. I think my true visage was starting to bleed through a little more and I’d gotten a tad more attractive as a result.

I was on the verge of becoming memetically good looking. The kind of good looking where the fact of my attractiveness just sort of bled into reality’s understanding of who I was as a person.

This was actually a bad change, believe it or not. Or at least a very ominous one, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, due to the massive increase in the power that dwelt within my body nowadays.

I’d also had a couple other minor changes to my physical form.

My hair had changed color turning a sort of purple-pink due to the increased activation of my Luxuriae lineage. Fortunately, I could use shapeshifting and illusion to reset it to black, so the pink only showed if I got agitated or something messed with my glamour...

My ears were much more pointed and exaggerated in length, but elves had been a recognized demographic for ages so I wasn’t too worried about getting odd looks when I was walking down the street.

My eyes were essentially now just balls of astral flame that sat in my head that either glowed green or red according to my mood. But then again my eyes were always a little bit weird so maybe I was just being sensitive.

My teeth were now a lot more carnivorous in form. That was definitely not just in my head. Since I couldn’t change those pearly whites of mine to something less monstrous, I tried to remember not to smile to widely. I also had to be a little bit more careful when it came to kissing and...other activities.

Overall, I was looking a lot less human nowadays.

Yet, all these changes were still manageable, and they’d happened so gradually that I found myself being less upset about them than I probably should have been. Sort of how the horrors of aging stopped being so horrific if you were there to watch as the dashing youth gradually turned into a crookbacked old man over the course of several years.

My form had also turned a lot more mutable, and I now had a tendency of randomly shapeshifting, but that wasn’t a change so much as it was a return to form.

I’d always been some form shapeshifter. The ability to change and adapt was something innate to my nature, I think that’s probably why I’d ended up becoming a demon of lust instead of a demon of pride or greed, all those many years ago. I’d always been physically and mentally predisposed to being a people pleaser. Though thankfully, I eventually learned to stop being such a damn door mat.

In any case, I’d always been a shapeshifter, I just hadn’t had the power to do so as freely up until now. Now that I did have that power, and my internal aether levels were intermingled with a strong current of materia that allowed me to shrug off the universe’s attempts to keep my form static, the tendency had returned.

You’d think that with all of this being the case, I’d have more say about the forms I took, but no...Being a greater-being meant the cosmos was oddly strict on the forms I took. I’d always end up being forced to leave annoying little tells and hints of my true nature. Which meant those long ears, glowing eyes, and pink hair were here to stay. At least for the time being.

Once I’d showered, it was time to dress. Since it was an office job, there were standards I had to follow now, but the DPAA was pretty lax about those standards so long you weren’t a field agent. Thus I usually wore some business casual dress slacks, a button-down shirt, dark socks, dress shoes...Sometimes a tie.

I found myself ready for work a whole two hours before I had to be there. Fortunately, that just meant I had enough time to make a little breakfast for Margot and me. Today I went with a goodie but oldie, breakfast burritos.

Wyvern eggs, sausage made from sand wyrm meat, avocado salsa, cheddar, and mozzarella, on a wheat flour tortilla made with elysium-wheat. All the ingredients were sourced from the planets I’d terraformed and converted into giant farms. So they were both tasty and nutritious even for those of us who’d technically moved past the need for physical food.

The last touch was setting out a pot of coffee. The beans were also grown by me. Farmed on another of my aether-rich worlds with just a dash of materia-running through them so that my totally-not-a-morning person wife would actually be able to benefit from the brew.

Once all that was done, I left. There was nothing wrong, Margot and I weren’t fighting. We just had different schedules due to our different jobs. I generally worked steadily from nine to five, but Margot’s schedule was usually deadline-based.

If the DPAA office of Reality refinement and wasn’t working on anything major she’d be fine rolling into the office a little before noon, though as a trade-off, any time there was a big project, it usually meant that she might not get home till midnight each day.

It was a bit lonely going to work on my own at first, but I’d gotten used to it, and since I always woke up so early, it meant I could stop by Cass’ cafe to check and see if she had time to shoot the breeze.

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Little Mint watched her master leave. He scratched her ears a final time, before teleporting away. Mint barked goodbye feeling an anxious mournfulness.

For a few minutes, she was restless. Her little doggy mind preoccupied with the task of reassuring itself that the provider of her meals, walkings, and head pats would be back later in the day.

Then the black and white blob that lived inside the piano glided into the room and turned on the tv. Distracted, Mint barked and then growled, warning the strange creature. The blob turned the nodule it had for a head in her direction and then nodded that it got the message.

After months of active strife, and a brief cold war, the dog and the spirit had come to an uneasy peace. Both coming to terms with the fact that they were both under the care of the smiling, pink-haired, man.

Thus the spirit chose a channel that both it and the dog could enjoy, for the sake of avoiding a feud.

Two hours later, Margot would sleepily wander into the living room, a thermos of warm, freshly-roasted, coffee in hand. She’d see the two little girls sitting on the couch. One with green hair and bronzed skin. The other girl was ghost pale with black and white locks.

“Uh ...Morning, girls,” said Margot. Still unnerved to see that the dog and the ghost that lived within the piano were taking human-form again, after the first time she’d seen it, three weeks ago. Still unsure of whether that meant she was supposed to be the girl’s adoptive mother now, because she was fairly certain she wasn’t ready to be a parent yet.

“Bark...” said the green-haired girl.

The monochrome girl said nothing, simply staring in silence, her limpid, heterochromatic gaze, sending Margot fleeing out the front door.