“A radio is something you can use to talk to people really far away and listen to anyone broadcasting and sometimes do magic.” She leaves off and destroy the devil. “I had one, but it was left with all of my other things when I appeared here.”

“I might be supposed to kill you...” He doesn’t sound happy about this.

“You can’t kill me. It takes two to defeat the devil.” Fuck. She hadn’t meant to say that. Now they know how to defeat her. She had thought she was safe, with Jupiter and Neptune, you can’t kill three devils at once, but now... well.

“...Also, you don’t have to kill me. People always say you have to destroy the devil but you don’t.” She looks profoundly unhappy. “Just—please don’t force me to go back to that body I hate. I think I’d rather die than that.”

“What’s this you keep saying about your body?” He is so confused.

“I used to be a boy and I was tall and shy and had curly blonde hair that almost but not quite covered my eyes and everything about it itched and hurt and bothered me all the time and I hated it and I didn’t even know, because I didn’t have anything to compare it to. But then I took it off and I shone and I finally felt happy and right and I realized that, that this is what normal is supposed to feel like. My whole life, I had been wanting something, and I didn’t know what until suddenly I was the devil and I had enough eyes and wings and hair and I was a woman as bright as a sun and it turned out that that was what I wanted. So I helped my friends take off their bodies, too. And I made them promise that I never had to go back, because I would rather die than be that boy ever again.”

Oh.

“That doesn’t make you the devil.” He sounds immeasurably tired.

“I am pretty sure that it makes me the devil but if you have a different word around here for the-type-of-being-one-is-after-taking-off-their-body-and-getting-everything-they-want I would be happy to hear it?”

He considers.

Whoever this is, they look — he looks — like some kind of angel, maybe fallen. But it’s also possible that—

“Did you always look like this, with the wings and eyes and such?”

“No? I was human, and then I became the devil.”

“—Right, that must have been what you were saying earlier. I was asking because I only really know about rules for humans.”

He pauses.

There are many words he knows for boys who want to be girls, and none of them are pleasant.

Instead, he says, carefully, “I don’t know any other words. I know that it’s wrong to place your happiness above your duty.”

Venus’s wings flutter and the air around her sighs. When she speaks, she sounds almost as tired as Lindsey. “Yeah, that’s what all the adults say. Did you know that adults can be wrong? You’re allowed to be happy. Not that you shouldn’t do good things but—you never have to be miserable for them.

And... The only thing taking off my body changed, really changed, was that... I’m happy now. It didn’t hurt anyone. People around me are a little warmer, spaces around me are a little brighter, and I am happier. Nothing else is different. Why should it be my duty to be—colder and darker and more miserable?”

“It’s probably different for people like you.”

Venus would look suddenly, deeply sad, if you knew what to look for. As it is, some of her eyes blink shut, and the light she’s radiating gets a bit more color to it. “...maybe. I don’t think so, but it’s no more implausible than my story must seem to you, especially if you don’t have the devil where you’re from. Or, well, I know you have Lucifer—but you don’t have the type of being that’s like me, at least not yet. So my existence and my story must be. Strange to you. I’m sorry if I’ve been overwhelming.”

“Yes.”

“The way it is here, there are people who you shouldn’t disappoint. And it’s wrong. To disappoint them. Or to abandon them.”

“If someone is disappointed by you being happy, I don’t think they were worth it in the first place. Good people shouldn’t do that. And—I didn’t abandon anyone, when I became the devil. Some people thought I did, but... It wouldn’t be true or right, to say that I abandoned them, when I was still alive and talking to them and they were the ones who refused to talk to me.

Maybe this is just something I don’t understand. But... If it is, I don’t think I want to understand. It feels wrong.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I guess it must be,” Venus says dubiously.

“Why did you think I should change my body the way you did?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t—force you or anything. I promise. That’d be wrong. But it turns out a lot of people are happier, if they take off their bodies. Some people get more hands, some people get bodies made of water, some people grow animal heads, lots of people people change genders like me while they’re doing it. We all look strange, but... most people I’ve met are happier for it. When they let themselves want things, even if they’re strange. And where I’m from, they tell us a lot that it’s evil to want to be the devil—not Lucifer, the whatever I am. Even though it makes us happier. So since I became the devil I’ve been trying to tell people that... it’s okay. To be happy. And that it’s not evil, to take off your body.”

“There wasn’t anything related to me, in specific, that made you think that?”

Something in his voice might induce hesitation.

“Well, not at first. But at first I thought you were one of the scouts sent to destroy me, so.” Venus pauses; the air around her warms up, cools down, warms up again. Her voice is careful, when she talks again. “But the thing that you said, about your happiness being less important than your duty, reminds me a lot of someone I know. And things got a lot better for her, when she let herself be happy and become the devil, even when she was terrified because everyone had told her it was wrong.”

"It's not that other people have told me something."