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“No one would believe me anyway.” Naomi chuckled. “For beings that continuously grasp at inexplicable higher powers, we are also very skeptical.”

“You’re a weird group,” Kilean mumbled, and Naomi couldn’t help agreeing. Humans were, indeed, very odd.

“Speaking of legends,” Naomi started, “I know krampuses visit our world every year at the start of December, but what do you do when you’re not here?”

It’s always been a huge curiosity for her. For legendary entities that only had one day of the year dedicated to them, what did they do for the rest of the year? Did they cease to exist when it wasn’t their moment? Did they do something else? Did they turn into humans and live normal lives? So many possibilities and no true answer.

“The humans we bring to Hell, or the bad people who die on their own and find their way there, still need punishing,” Kilean explained. “We continue the torture and oversee their suffering.”

“That’s interesting.” She nodded, pensive. “You know, for the type of job that you do—and the fact that you’re a literal demon—I would have expected you to be evil, yet you seem like a genuinely kind person,” Naomi said, surprise in her voice. She wasn’t sure whether calling him a person was accurate, but he didn’t correct her. Her eyes widened, realizing how that must have sounded. “I’m sorry, that might have come out wrong. I don’t mean to be offensive, it’s just that for humans ‘demon’ usually equates to ‘bad’ and ‘evil’.”

“I didn’t take offense,” Kilean reassured her, giving her a small smile. “There are evil demons, like there’s bad beings everywhere. But generally, the words are not synonyms. We are not so different from humans regarding personalities, actually. Our real differences come with appearances, the ability to use magic, and some habits and traditions—but that’s the kind of cultural difference you can see between different types of humans, too.”

“It feels weird to think about,” she confessed. “We are so conditioned to think of others as something bad. While we have started to unpack that about other humans, I doubt many have ever thought to unpack that nuance about non-human beings. But I guess that’s also related with whether you believe in their existence enough to question the words you use.”

Kilean’s attention returned to the flames, as if he needed the wavy movements of the fire to help him focus on his thoughts. He tilted his head, a frown appearing on his face.

“I wonder,” he slowly started, “do demons have human qualities, or have humans taken credit for widespread qualities—believing they are the only owners of them?”

“Likely the latter. Humans do have a long history of believing themselves to be the center of the universe.”

“Probably.”

Meals finished, Kilean offered to bring the plates into the kitchen, then came back to sit on the floor, closer to her than before, enough that she could feel the warmth from his body.

“Are all other entities from legends real? Cupid, angels in general, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and everyone else?”

“My kind is not allowed to wander into many other worlds, and we are mostly focused on our own community, so I’m not aware of all the entities that exist,” he explained. “But I’d say most, if not all of them, are real. The human world is just one side of the universe. Us magic beings live in many different planes of existence, some completely different from yours—like Hell—, some in-between, and even some existing in your world hidden in plain sight. Each creature has their own realm.”

“Well… that’s another piece of big news that will take me the next year or two to process.”

When she looked up at him, she found him staring at the photo frames on the wall and cabin behind her.

“Something caught your eye?” she asked, curious to know what his faraway expression was hiding.

“Do you have photos of your own family?”

Grinning, Naomi pulled out her phone and opened her “family” folder from the photo app, where she regularly kept pictures of both family and close friends to look at when she felt lonely.

She showed him a picture of her full close family, from a few Christmases ago. Crowding a couch, Naomi was on the far right side, accompanied by her younger brother, older sister, her grandma, and her mother.

“But this grandma is not my mom’s mother,” Naomi explained. “Her mother died from an illness when we were still young. This is my father’s mom.”

“Your father isn’t in the photo,” Kilean noted, cleverly not asking anything directly.

“My parents divorced two years after Carter was born. My father immediately made himself another family, but his mother never forgave him for messing up our family, so she cut contact with him and has been supporting my mother through the years.”

Kilean nodded to himself. “I like that woman.”

Naomi showed him other photos—of her aunt, uncles and cousins, and even some of her friends. She hoped Kilean hadn’t noticed when she quickly had to skip one specific photo, having forgotten to delete a group picture where her latest ex-girlfriend was also present. She hadn’t realized she had forgotten one picture when deleting all her traces after the breakup a year before.

Kilean asked her about her loved ones, about their personalities, and about happy moments they had shared. There was longing in his eyes as she spoke, and Naomi was aware that assuming things about other people was risky, but she doubted demons had families like humans had. From his expression and eagerness to hear her stories, Naomi sensed Kilean’s sadness about not having that type of connection.

She happily kept talking his ears off, hoping it would help him feel less lonely, but when she felt her eyes getting heavy, Kilean encouraged her to lay on the couch and get some sleep. While she settled on the comfort of the sofa, she refused to fall asleep, not wanting to waste the little time she had with him.

Naomi tried to keep talking, her words slurring, but she was so tired that she nodded off a few times—only to immediately jerk awake a few seconds later, scolding herself. At some point, her brain shut off on its own without her realizing it.

Her eyes jerked open again when a loud noise shook her awake, orange light pouring in from the windows. Naomi, however, had no time to appreciate the dawn, because Kilean stood next to the couch, growling at the entrance door behind her.