"All right."

She hands him a several-page-long printout. "And here you go. I don't promise it's good, but it's better than the last two books I read, which I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone even as a magical formality."

"Thank you," he says, folding it up so he can stuff it in his pocket. "I'm sure it's delightful."

"We'll see," she says, but she can't help smiling at least a little.

And once they have a shuttle she will fly him (and Connor, she's not gonna spend another day flying Connor out) to their destination.

Cam reads the story on the way.

Fly, fly, don't ask about the story lest she spoil the experience of reading it, fly.

"This is cute," he remarks, regarding the story.

"I'm glad you think so!" she says, lighting up. "Most of the ones I'm writing now are, like, things I made up putting Connor and Zana to bed, but I try to revisit the ones I like later and polish them into more cohesive stories that actually, like, work in a more general context."

"That makes sense! One thing I haven't gotten around to seriously trying even as long as I've been around is writing fiction."

"Really? I guess there's no rush when you have forever, though. That'll be nice, I don't have to worry about getting all of my stories out before I die anymore. I suppose if I were a demon then publishing anything on earth would be logistically complicated for a while, but hey, I'll take it."

"And you can publish in Hell, there's billions of people there, and sometimes the angels and fairies and Limbo get updates - data's easy to fit on the train."

"Yeah, that sounds approximately as cool. - oh, wow, there are a bunch of demon authors that none of us have ever heard of, aren't there. That's terrible. Also great? I have no idea how to feel about the fact that there are tons of other literary traditions that we're completely unaware of but that I could totally find a way to investigate. Putting investigating that on the to-do list, right after 'end death as we know it'."

"I like your priorities," he chuckles.

"Ending death does seem like it should stay at the top of the list. And I reserve the right to go back to researching obscure and probably useless fields of knowledge exactly as much as I want for the rest of my existence after I have managed it."

"To which pursuit you have every right."

This is a pleasant thought. She'll just put the shuttle on autopilot and get to work on her paperwork for a while.

The shuttle autopilots along. "Do either of you mind if I practice violin?"

"Not at all, go ahead."

Connor's playing a game in the back with a headset and has no opinion on the matter.

Cam plays violin. He has had a lot of hours of practice over the years, unlike with fiction writing.

She will quietly but very sincerely applaud when he comes to the end of a piece.

"You're really good at that. Not that I have any particular ability to tell when someone is really good at music versus when they're a normal amount of good, but you sound really good."

"Thank you! I picked it up because I thought it would be terribly entertaining to learn The Devil Went Down to Georgia and it went from there."

"This is honestly a pretty good reason for doing something," she says, smiling. "I imagine you've exhausted most of the obvious puns by now. You've been a demon for what, like, a hundred and fifty years? Ish?"

"Yes, although since I can't usually talk while I'm summoned that puts paid to a lot of the obvious 'go to Hell' type ones."

"Well, you're welcome to cross any remaining ones off your list if you run into any really good setups," she says cheerfully. "...So you died, like, right around revelation, then?"

"Few years subsequent, yeah."