“Well, we already established that your world is different than mine. Maybe it’s different where you are because nobody tells kids what’s right, what’s wrong, who they should be. That’d be nice.” She doesn’t sound convinced that it’s true, but she definitely likes the idea. She gets a bit brighter. 

"Well, that's not quite it..."

Venus opens her main eye and gives the impression of a shrug. “I figured. It’s nice to imagine, though. Maybe if I go back and help my world, we can all come and help yours after.”

“Tell me about your world.”

“...I’m not sure I know where to start; I don’t know what might be important and what might not be. You have a Lucifer, do you have an Eve? Our Eve became the first Devil, and the worst. There’s some argument over the exact date but it’s been less than 10,000 years since then, and it’s been about 2,000 years since Jesus. It’s usually teens who become the devil, and it’s only teens who can defeat the devil, which they can do with radios. If you’re a good kid, you can get a transformation sequence, which is when you sparkle and look different and get better powers, but I don’t know much about that because I was never good enough. If you’re like me and they think you’re particularly likely to become the devil, they send you to a summer camp with other kids like you, and you are assigned a group of people so that if any of you become the devil the others can defeat you. I feel like I am probably failing to explain a lot of things because things that are obvious background knowledge in my universe are... not that, in yours.”

“Eve wasn’t ever the devil. Do you mean Lilith?”

Whatever this summer camp thing is, it doesn’t sound good.

“No, I don’t. That’s what eating the apple did. I guess that’s a difference. Did your Eve eat an apple?” 

"...Yes? So your apple must have been different. Did your apple have any sort of name or appellation?"

Appellation, ha.

“The forbidden fruit, I guess? Nothing else that I can think of.”

That's... concerning and sort of inexplicable. "Ours had the same name."

He doubts this line of inquiry will have any proceeds. Instead he says, "It sounds as though you had a very difficult time at this summer camp."

“Yes, I did. It—wasn’t a good place. It turned out for the best in the end, though. Without it I wouldn’t have met Jupiter and Neptune. And we’ve made some changes to the camp, so it’s better now.” Various eyes blink open and closed as she talks.

"What was it like?"

This is a really inappropriate time to be smiling but he's smiling anyway but not in a mean way, at least not that he hopes.

“When I first went, or now?”

"Both...?"

“When I first went to camp, it was—miserable. The sun was thick in the air and the counselors would only ever talk about Jesus and nobody talked about why we were all there but everyone knew it, like a dark cloud over all of us. We all knew that we were the bad kids, the kids that might become the devil. Some of us turned on each other—they made fun of me, a lot, made me do things for them and then laughed at me. And the counselors were so happy, so smiley, but you could tell by the way they talked that it was all so fake. The Bonfire Captain especially tended towards particularly vicious stories and lies, but the way he would say them, as though he was explaining a happy ending to a particularly slow child...” She pauses, opening and closing eyes. “Everyone there was so miserable, it all—hurt—all the time, even when they weren’t doing anything. Jupiter and Neptune and I, we... remodeled. We made it bigger, got rid of the boxes. Gave new bodies to everyone who wanted them. We were preparing to give them to even more people when I showed up here. They were going to have to send the good kids after us, hoping that’d help. But good kids aren’t always happy in their bodies, either.” Her wings rustle, a little, and the air around her is a bit warmer than it was. 

He has a sudden impulse to begin talking incessantly about Jesus. Not the time.

“There isn’t such a thing as ‘bad kids’,” he says instead. It seems important that the angel before him know this. 

“Yeah,” Venus sighs. “I figured that out eventually. But adults always called us bad kids, so until I heard the devil on the radio—I thought that was just how it was.”

Oh, so the devil and God were supposedly both on this radio device. Splendid.

”What did he say to you?” His breath catches in his throat. He thinks he has an inkling of what her— his— the being’s answer might be.

He is trying to remember that the being isn’t an angel, isn’t a woman, is just an unhappy — and profoundly misguided — young man playing dressup. But it’s hard, with them right here, with him, right here. It’s hard. To remember.

He swallows.

“She. She said. I guess it makes sense that you didn’t know that, since you don’t have a radio.”

“She said she missed us. That she’s always missed us. That she can’t offer us much. But that it hurt her, to see us, in pain, in those bodies we hated, and that we didn’t have to be in pain, if we didn’t want to be. And that... well. The way it was set up—if we all three of us tried to be good, whichever one of us was the worst at it would become the devil, and the other two would step in to defeat her. But if we all became the devil...” Venus’s voice halts as she remembers. When she speaks again, it’s lower, smokier, as though she’s affecting a voice that’s not hers. “There is room for three in my world. And only two in his.” Her feathers flutter. “That’s what she said.”

A hollowness in his abdomen. A sinking supposition.

“So you became the devil?”

“Yes. I was—scared, at first, and confused. But then I found it.” Just talking about it, Venus glows brightly. “I pulled on my arm and it just—came off. And I kept going and then it didn’t hurt anymore. I had always thought that the hurt was just part of life, you know? But then it turns out that... it wasn’t. So I became the devil. We all did. Jupiter and Neptune held hands and cried making their decision, but in the end... we all did.”

She’s glowing. Whenever she’s happy the light she gives off changes.

She— no, he, he pulled off his arm. And kept going until it didn’t hurt anymore. What? What?