Nearly a week had passed since the restructuring of the FBC and RICA. Kate was joined by Lilith during this te evening rexing at the reception desk.

  “I actually got to spend some time with Apollyon over the past days.”

  Kate raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “It’s nice to no longer just talk about work.” Lilith sighed. “You two would make wonderful egg mates.”

  “I’m sorry, egg mates?”

  “Yea, make an egg together.”

  “I am not following.”

  “No one ever told you how we actually reproduced?”

  “No…? Now I’m afraid that it involves eggs.”

  “Sorry to confirm your fears then. When two demons wanted to get a child, they would usually have sex, but other exchanges of genetic material worked too. Then, one of them would start to develop an egg and after about a hundred cycles y it. Some two hundred more cycles ter you would have a little demon cracking out of it.”

  Kate went bright red. “B-but we use ‘born’ and words like that? Why? We can’t y eggs anymore, right?”

  “We adopted the phrase ‘ying an egg’ from the angels. Before we met them there was no difference in words to distinguish birth as humans do it and ying eggs. We can’t do all that anymore, don’t worry about having procreate in any way.”

  Kate just stared for a few moments. “I don’t know if I can get over the egg stuff.”

  “The egg stuff?” Jeff, president of the HEMA club, had entered the library. Anyone coming in so te was a surprise.

  “Jeff! You’re just the distraction I need.”

  Lilith didn’t interject but giggled quietly.

  “Okay? I don’t want to ask what egg stuff you talked about… I’m not here without reason though, I need to talk to you.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “I know you said that you would like to leave the involvement of the HEMA club in the upcoming medieval fantasy festival to the rest of us and don’t want to get involved but I really need to ask you for a favour. Alisha was supposed to run the sword fighting show and she broke her leg yesterday. You are literally the best person I can ask. Please, reconsider.”

  “Fine… alright. But it will be run my way and I will ask Pauline if she can be my partner for that show. We’re going to do improv fighting on that stage and will just direct people to the workshop at the fencing hall if they want to learn more.”

  “I would have preferred a choregraphed show but at this point I will take what I can get.”

  “Don’t you trust me to deliver something worthwhile?” Kate smirked.

  “No, I do. I just… eugh, I don’t know. Thank you though. You saved our involvement with that entire thing.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “That’s all I was here for, I better head home now, it’s te.”

  “I’ll see you next week.”

  “Yea, see you Wednesday.”

  Once Jeff had left Lilith spoke up again. “Medieval fantasy festival?”

  Kate nodded. “It’s a fun idea. A few centuries ago this region went through about a thousand years of hyper religiosity and rather bad times in general. We call that the medieval period. Because of the general superstitions that were rampant at the time, people tend to use it as inspiration for fictional worlds often with magic and fantastical elements, hence the name fantasy stories. Well, there is a lot of history to look back on in this city and a lot of it is shrouded in folklore and vagueries, mainly because of us. This year the city council decided to celebrate that.”

  “That sounds like fun. Are you participating?”

  “With the HEMA club apparently, yea. Oh, HEMA is short of historical European martial arts, which is mostly sword fighting. I get to have a little fun sparring with humans.”

  “And the library won’t take part in those celebrations? That sounds like a missed opportunity to me.”

  “Okay?”

  “The city was founded around the library, right? We were here first. This is as much a celebration of us and the stories the people came up with about us as it is about the city itself. You should really do something to take part in that celebration, even if it’s something small.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But it’s on Polly’s birthday and we tend to have a quiet few cycles together during that time.”

  “Then ask her first, maybe she’ll like the idea too.”

  “Alright, I’ll do that.”

  “So, Polly, about your birthday this year…”

  “That sounds like you have additional pns for us. Go ahead.”

  “More or less, yea… Jeff approached me. I need to jump in and take over the sword fighting show they had pnned for the festival that weekend. I need a good partner for that and maybe you’d like to have a fun time with me?”

  “Under one condition. You are mine for the cycle after the festival. We just take an entire cycle for ourselves and just enjoy whatever we want.”

  “Deal. Lilith also proposed that we do something as a library team for that festival but I suppose you’re not up for that.”

  Apollyon shook her head. “You would be wrong to suppose that. I did not suggest doing anything because you have been quite busy recently. But if you are up for something, I will be quite happy to facilitate our pns.”

  “I would love to do something but I have no clue what and it’s just a month left to go. I don’t know if the city council will be happy with our sudden involvement.”

  “Would you like us to handle it all?”

  “Just pass your ideas by me first but please do.”

  “Of course. I am rather excited to do something special for our visitors.”

  “I totally didn’t expect that, you’re normally so shy when it comes to doing special stuff for human strangers.” Kate raised an eyebrow.

  “It is not about the humans, it’s about us. They want to celebrate their history and our influence on it, even if they don’t know who we are. That is a good opportunity to celebrate our history with them too. The history of the library.”

  “Okay, yes, that’s a good reason to do something for that weekend. I am sure you have ideas already, right?”

  Apollyon smiled. “Of course I have. I intend to ask Fury to provide food in front of your doors, there will be dispys of texts that come from the history of the library, of course human texts only, Nirrti and Adelina wanted to hold writing workshops for children and adults alike, and the schools have asked us if we could do something to advertise their reading programs.”

  “Wow, that is an extensive list. Obviously, we can do all of that and more if anyone else wants to offer anything else. I love the idea of asking Fury for catering, that will be amazing.”

  “I am quite certain she will enjoy cooking for humans on a rge scale. When we st talked, she compined about the volume of customers not being as high as it would need to be to provide an enjoyable challenge.”

  Kate chuckled. “She's definitely getting her challenge at the festival.”

  “I hope so.” Apollyon tilted her head slightly. “There is something else on your mind, something you are unsure if to ask or not.”

  “How can you even tell that?”

  “You fidget.”

  “Ah. Yea… Lilith mentioned something, uhm.” Kate started to blush. “About eggs… she said we’d make great egg mates.”

  “A great compliment. I am gd she sees our retionship that way and I would have been proud to bear an egg for you if we still could.”

  “No, Polly, that’s not… I know that it’s great that we are this close but the part that gets me is, well, the eggs, you know?”

  Apollyon raised an eyebrow. “I forgot that humans don’t reproduce that way. I hope the knowledge of our reproduction methods isn’t too disturbing.”

  “I don’t know. It just feels wrong? I mean, I’m not the biggest fan of the idea of giving human birth either but ying eggs is a bit much.”

  “Do you regret being turned?”

  “Never! There are things about the human body that I find disgusting, it’s totally okay that demon anatomy has simir things. It was just a bit of a shock. Well, a big shock, honestly.”

  “I understand.” Apollyon pulled Kate into a hug. “I am sorry that I didn’t properly tell you about it all.”

  “It’s okay, I won’t ever have to worry about it really.”

  “Even if you could, for us demons it requires a degree of intentionality that is not part of the human way. Even if we could reproduce, if you do not want a child you will not be able to take part in… creating one.”

  “I have so many questions…”

  “I have some answers but not enough. I will gdly read through some actually helpful books with you.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Would that be a good pn for after dinner?”

  Kate nodded and hugged Apollyon a little tighter than before.