The welcome relief Albaer felt at being healed entirely of his physical wounds was matched by a considerable amount of curiosity regarding his already curious and unexpected guests. ‘How I even managed to think of homework or school is going to be a mystery I will never solve.’ He thought and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you both, you were trying to help and I was rude to you.” He made his apology and met their eyes, “You’ve already got enough problems.”

Raziel and Lialah relaxed the evident tension and their wings folded in around themselves, ceasing to tremble behind their backs. “It’s fine.” Raziel replied with a dismissive wave toward her sister. “She’s the one who healed you, I can’t use healing magic.” She gave him a long, steady look, “But you probably figured that.”

Lialah wrung her hands, “No, no it’s fine, it’s what that kind of magic is for, my sister would have if she could…” She briefly dropped off the sentence and had a hard time meeting his eyes, “I see what you were trying to protect us from… I’m sorry we didn’t believe you when you said it was dangerous.”

Albaer’s jaw tensed. “It would be worse for you, they do that to me despite my being a human like them, what would happen to you is probably worse.”

Raziel picked up one of the books he’d brought for her and, evidently more to fidget than anything else as she wasn’t looking through the pages, she asked him flatly, “Why? Why did they do that to you? What did they do anyway?”

Albaer never explained it to his mother, he never admitted it to teachers or authority figures, but confronted by living myths who had no one else to tell and nowhere else to go, he turned away from them and slumped forward.

“I exist.”

“So?” Lialah asked, he caught the reflection of her face, her bright blue eyes seemed more knowledgeable than he wanted to admit, but the baffled way she asked revealed how utterly alien she really was to his world.

“I’m just an ordinary person, but people… humans…” Albaer scratched his head, “Look on your world maybe parents can give birth to both angel and demon children, maybe orcs and goblins and whatever else lives there can get along with what’s different, but that isn’t always the case here. Remember what I told you about other intelligent species?”

The pair gave little nods in unison, but clearly didn’t appreciate the implications. ‘A human would have gotten that. And that doesn’t say much for us.’ He thought and gave out an exasperated sigh, “We have a whole planet to ourselves because what we couldn’t kill for food, we killed off as competition for food. We don’t treat differences very well, even between each other.”

“But you’re… not different, are you?” Lialah asked and looked him up and down unsure of what she should even be looking for.

“Sure I am. My father’s dead, my mother is barely here more than to sleep. Of course, I’m my father’s son, and given who he was, that’s bad enough. So, I’m more or less without a normal family or life compared to the rest of them. More than that, I like different things than the popular people do, so… I get targeted.” Albaer said it as rationally as he could, openly stating what he’d long understood to be true. However, regardless of how well he understood it, saying it out loud made it so much worse, and his eyes filled with tears of frustration.

The hand on his desk clenched into a fist so tight that it shook and his jaw clenched with rage.

“So… they’re allowed to hurt you whenever they want… that doesn’t seem fair.” Raziel pursed her lips, but both she and her sister blinked in surprise when Albaer let out a long and bitter laugh.

“Right! They can do whatever they want, and I can’t do anything about it because the ones who should stop it don’t give a damn! That bitch… that bitch… and not just her… everybody knows… and they either watch and do nothing, or take part in it themselves. Yeah, there’s rules. The ‘teachers’, if you want to call them that… don’t teach the lessons they think they do. They’re not supposed to allow it, but they ignore it because it’s easier. Or they ask if I need help knowing I’ll say no because it’s humiliating. Even if I did say something and they did something, I’d just get it worse later.”

“So… why not hit back? Aren’t you allowed to even do that?” Raziel asked.

Albaer’s bitter laugh and bitter words faded away, he couldn’t look at either of them. “Yes. But also no. I was always taught not to use violence, not to be violent. Don’t hurt people, don’t get into fights, don’t get into trouble. Just be a good boy and…” Albaer sucked in a breath, “It’s complicated, but even if I did that, what’s the point? I’ll just get jumped by several of them later. So… nothing can be done. If my father were alive and… not who he was, maybe he could have done something. But I can’t tell my mom as it is… she works too hard, I can’t burden her with this.” He shrugged.

“All I can do is put up with it until I can leave. Then never see them or this shit town ever again.” He fiercely wiped his eyes to get rid of that shameful display and put his back to them again.

“Humans are complicated.” Lialah said and taking up a book from off of the bed, she looked down at it. “A Concise History of Everything.” She said the title aloud, and that prompted another thought from Albaer.

“So you can read it, I admit I was curious when you spoke my language, but you can read it too?” Albaer asked, though he didn’t feel like turning back to face her, it did bear asking about.

“Sort of.” Lialah answered, her melodic voice was such that he could practically hear a little smile on her face even if he couldn’t see it. “We summon heroes to our world, but they would come over not knowing how to talk to us, so the ones responsible for the ritual have a spell that imbues us with a translation skill. I didn’t actually know it worked on written words until just now, but… I’m still thinking in my language, but I’m speaking in yours.”

“You didn’t notice while I was playing those games?” Raziel asked.

“I wasn’t paying attention to you, I was…” She began to tap one finger against the other, looking a little sheepish, “you know, with the little well in there that keeps refilling…”

“The toilet… wait that’s what you were doing?!” Raziel asked, “Just flushing it over and over?”

“Well it was interesting! Endless water…” Lialah defended herself, but her blush was blatantly obvious.

“Great… the water bill is going to be high this month.” Albaer rolled his eyes, and as if to distract him from it, Lialah jumped back to the subject.

“But yeah, I can read the languages of this world, and speak them this way.” Lialah said, “I can probably even go from one to the other… since it turns out this works on written words.” Lialah’s blush hadn’t vanished, but she’d stopped her awkward finger tapping at least, even if she hadn’t managed to raise her eyes back up to Albaer again.

“Huh… neat.” Albaer had to admit, and decided to let the toilet issue go. But true to the nature of questions and answers, her answer only led to more questions. He thought about what to ask next, and settled on something. “Can you actually speak your language if you want to? I’d like to hear it?”

“Both of ours, or just mine?” Lialah asked.

“I thought you two were sisters?” Albaer glanced over at Raziel who rolled her eyes.

“I look nothing like her.” She pointed her red finger sharply toward the one she called sister. “We’re siblings by how we grew up, not by birth.”

“Oh… right... so you were adopted.” Albaer concluded.

“Again, no. We grew up in a… I don’t know how to explain this, a school, a school for ritual candidates.” Raziel explained, and her red eyes no longer rolled, but she approached and put a hand on his shoulder. “I suppose we owe you answers, but this isn’t comfortable to talk about, so do I have to answer more on this?”

‘Are you going to make us leave if we don’t talk?’ That was what Albaer ‘heard’ in Raziel’s question, he closed his eyes. ‘Don’t be cruel, they’re alone, they’ve got nobody, and they’re nice.’

“No, I’m sorry, I would like to hear what your languages sound like though, if you don’t mind?” Albaer gave a warm smile up at the fangy demon woman, and she straightened up a bit, heartened. Meanwhile he tried very hard, and failed, not to notice the way her breasts bounced just a little when she did so with such a crisp motion.

‘I’m a pervert.’ He thought with resignation, but kept the smile on his face to listen.

Lialah folded her hands together in front of her waist, spread her white feather wings and bent humbly forward, “Mao eriya sen sha lao falenshi sa lo phashi lah, Albaer Babtiste Lamark.”

It was melodic, harmonious, and beautiful, musical the way she spoke, and Albaer was transfixed. “So that’s your language. It’s beautiful, does it have a name?”

“We call it ‘Cloud Tongue’ as you would say it.” Lialah said and brushed a lock of golden hair away from her face and back over her ear.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice, but it’s all soft.” Raziel waved a dismissive hand and spread her wings as wide as she could, her hands on her hips, her red eyes flashed like a ruby catching the light of the sun, and she spoke her mother tongue. “Xlkz mvzkp, nmytk wskcht plkj znkzi tktkyl, Albaer Babtiste Lamark.” Where Lialah’s had been melodic as a mother’s rocking lullaby… the savage guttural language of the demon might as well have been a Death Metal concert.

“So… that had almost no vowels… I doubt I could ever say anything like that. But it was… something else.” Albaer said after flailing for something nice to say.

Raziel took it for a compliment. “Thank you. We don’t use vowels much except either in a name, or in reference to something very specific. Angels use them like they’re going to rot if they don’t. Storm Tongue is much… stronger.” Raziel smirked.

But Lialah piped up, holding her hands up into fists, she glared at her sister earnestly and bounced her heels while she exclaimed, “We just like pretty sounds, what’s wrong with that!”

Albaer held back any noise of his own while he watched the angel bicker with the demon, if he ever doubted they were siblings, he didn’t anymore.

It was only his stomach growling that stopped them from arguing. “You’re hungry… ah, actually… so am I.” Lialah said and put a hand on her stomach. “If it’s okay, can we eat too?”

Raziel seemed the more conflicted, ‘asking’ for things didn’t seem to come naturally for her, she unconsciously put a hand on her own stomach as well, but before he could say yes she said, “I’m happy to do some chores or something, unlike my sister, I am not a freeloader.”

“I’ll work too!” Lialah piped up, and Albaer got out of his chair.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I can feed you both without shopping today, and I’ll show you some things you can do to help out, I just have to make sure my mother isn’t here. I don’t want her asking why I’m making three meals.” Albaer said placatingly and went to the door, his hand was on the brass knob when he turned back and asked, “Just out of curiosity… when you were speaking your languages… what were you saying?”

“My sister was saying some very lewd things, she’s a shameless pervert.” Raziel said and crossed her arms in front of her chest, she whistled casually and looked away while Lialah turned as red in the face as the demon herself and exclaimed.

“I was not!”

“Wait… was she?” Albaer asked with his head cocked sideways a little and Lialah turned on him with her wings fluttering hard enough that they almost lifted her from the ground.

“No! Raziel, tell him!” Lialah pleaded.

“Fine, she wasn’t.” Raziel shook her head and went over beside her sister. “She’s a bit of a prude, if you want the truth.”

“I am not!” Lialah squeaked out, “Just because I’m not a succubus doesn’t mean I’m a prude!”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself, virgin.” Raziel looked down at her sister just a little with a cocky smirk that exposed her sharp teeth again.

Lialah took a deep breath to shout something back, her hand raised and finger ready to point, she stopped, they both did, when Albaer cleared his throat and coughed into his hand.

“Oh… ah… what we were saying was…” Lialah said and faced him again, bowing with hands in front of her waist, and waiting in silence until Raziel rolled her eyes again and imitated her, they then said in unison, “Thank you very much for helping us, Albaer Babtiste Lamark.”

“Y-You’re welcome.” Albaer flushed red in the face and left the room, closing the door behind him.

‘How long has it been since I heard the sound of a ‘thank you’ and to think I’d hear it that way… and hey… did Lialah imply that Raziel is a succubus… that’s…’

He kept his eyes tight shut and after calling out for his mother and hearing nothing, confirming she was gone, he stood outside his door again for several minutes with his hand on the knob. ‘Do not go into the bedroom where a succubus is waiting with her sister, with a full blown hardon… we’ve had ‘enough’ misunderstandings already.’ Albaer told himself, taking several minutes longer than was comfortable before he dared re-enter again to give them the all clear.