"As opposed to just slightly off, like, 'mysteriously sharp nails that are in actual fact exactly as sharp as they appear to be which for some reason is sharper than human default' or something, yes. I would have, for some reason, expected the 'slightly off' option instead of the 'by the way let's just fuck with small bits of everything in quite random ways' option." Slight sigh. "Maybe only because it seems neater, whatever that means."

He giggles. "You know, it occurs to me that maybe your gracefulness may not obey conservation of momentum."

"I– okay, first of all: ugh; second of all: uh, that sounds possibly interesting but it probably doesn't do it greatly otherwise I might have noticed?"

… His cheeks are back to normal color by now, oops.

"And your cheeks are normal again," he points out. "And I dunno, you never did notice the gazelle thing going on."

"I mean, since finding out about the gazelle thing." Eyeroll. "I guess it might do it but just not dramatically – at least, it doesn't seem to do it very dramatically – in which case it'd be novel but probably not that useful."

"...breaking conservation of momentum would be incredibly useful if we could learn to harness that at all."

"Are you talking short-term 'very useful' or long-term 'postpone the heat-death of the universe' kind of useful?"

"Both?"

"I'm not sure how it would be useful short-term unless it were doing it quite a lot and I was sort of thinking that it doesn't really matter if I have it long-term since you're probably going to find something like that in your magic use?"

"Actually magic has some pretty interesting laws of conservation of energy going on. You can get more energy than this universe had in the first place, but it comes from somewhere, and there's usually the regular price of 'magic is evil.'"

"Does demon magic not run on the same principles, then?"

"It does but you don't have to pay the evil price for it."

"Is this actually confirmed and verified and an established fact or are you just guessing from how I don't seem to be paying it right now?"

"I mean, if demons pay some other price it's not obvious, magic is much more ubiquitous in other realms than ours. Also I have a few years of my own demonic shapeshifting with no visible price—although the budding magic addiction might be it."

"Okay, so if I get a weird inclination to magic more than I already do, it's possibly that? Or if I find myself, I dunno, being ridiculously moody unless I happen to be mangling material with my nails frequently, it might be because of a lack of magic use or something?" He shrugs. "Probably not worth worrying about until or unless it actually happens."

"Well it could also turn you evil very slowly, so you don't notice it happening, or eat away at your personality, or make it harder for you to resist possessions, or..."

"So perhaps I should go around not being a demon?" he suggests, raising an eyebrow.

"You understand why I don't think it's likely to do anything."

"Why it's not likely to help if I try not to demon, or why you think it's unlikely that it'll turn me evil, or…?"

"Why it's not likely there's a price, nice demons are in fact a thing, even with magic."

Nod. "Doesn't totally rule it out, but yeah, unlikely."

"Yeah, maybe hybrids have—or lack—something to prevent that from happening, maybe we're all gonna turn into Scream in ten years."

"Scream?"

"That serial killer from that terrible movie? That's his name, isn't it? With the mask and huge mouth?"

"Oh right yeah. Well, hopefully we won't, yeah."