Venus appears. 

She radiates heat and light; being near her is an intense summer day somewhere equatorial. She has eyes to fly with and wings to see. 

This is the first thing Venus notices: she is alone. Jupiter and Neptune are not there. Her radio buzzes with the sound of static. She is vulnerable without them, and she’s acutely aware of it.

This is the second thing she notices: she is not alone, not really. There is a kid with her, and the kid doesn’t even have a radio. Some of her eyes blink, at that. “Hello,” she says, without bothering to move her mouth, because she feels like she has to say something and isn’t quite sure what it should be. 

Is this a dream? There’s an angel— or at least he thinks she’s an angel —there’s a woman with wings and a multiplicity of eyes, and she’s looking at him.

”Hello,” a voice says, from nowhere.

This is his most fervent desire?

"Angel" would probably be the most accurate description, yes.

...She's vulnerable, yes, but as far as she can tell, nobody has a radio. And whoever it is in front of her--she recognizes something of herself. So she decides to risk it.

"You can take off your body if you want, you know. I know they've probably told you how evil it is, to be the devil. But it's not evil at all, really, to be happy."

What?

“I am really confused about what you’re actually talking about.”

...Huh, okay. Maybe this has to do with--why nobody has radios here and however they managed to separate her from Neptune and Jupiter. She blinks a lot and her glow goes a little more blue than it was before.

"Do you know what I am?"

“...Um, wait, did you say you were the devil?”

“...Yes?” Her wings rustle uneasily and her eyes are moving around.

“You can’t be serious.”

“...What do you mean?”

“The devil isn’t a woman...?”

“I mean, I’m not... the devil on the radio? But I took off my body and became a woman and wanted things and I’m definitely the devil that teenagers are sent to kill, I’m pretty sure that makes me the devil. Jupiter and Neptune are the devil, too, but they’re not here.”

“What?”

“...good question, actually.

So, if you didn’t bring me here as a trap because I’m the devil, why did you bring me here? ...Did you bring me here? You seem just about as confused as I am.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You said a great deal of words I am unfamiliar with and you do not seem very devil-ish, though you seem to perhaps-mistakenly think you are the devil for reasons unknown to me?”

“In regards to your question, I performed a particular ritual that most likely brought me here, but I didn’t expect you, nor do I know what I’m to do regarding you.”

“Okay. Before I appeared here, alone, all of the things I said would have been common knowledge. Well, except for the first thing, about how it’s okay to take off your body and be the devil, if you want it. That’s not common knowledge yet, because the adults at camp and all the people like them are trying to hide it, but I’ve been trying to tell people, because it’s important. I didn't even realize, how much it hurt, all the time, to have my body, until I was taking it off and being the devil and suddenly it didn’t hurt anymore. I believe—no one should have to endure pain like that just because of what other people have told them, not when it is so quick and easy and painless to just stop.

But I am used to the rest of the things I said, with the words you are unfamiliar with, being common knowledge from early childhood, and am very unclear as to what you’re confused about or how to go about fixing that, but I can try? And I’m sorry that your ritual brought you somewhere unfamiliar.”

“There’s only one devil, and his name is Lucifer.”

“Then, wherever this is, it is not where I am from. I’m not Lucifer, but I definitely am the devil. God said I sinned like him? Shining as Lucifer, the morning star, in the dawn, and symbolizing the arrogance of desiring a beauty that is not God’s. Maybe that’s why everyone said I was the devil. It doesn’t really matter to me what you call—whatever I am, but I was taught that this is called the devil just like the color of the sky is called blue, so I’m going to call myself that until I hear a better word.”

“You’ve talked to God?”

“I mean, I haven’t talked to Him, but I’ve heard him on the radio? He’s pretty easy to find. 109.8 FM.”

“You keep saying that word- radio? What’s that?”

“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."

“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?

“Jupiter and Neptune. What did they become.” His voice is very flat.

“They became the devil, too. Jupiter has hands, a lot of them, for every kind of touch you could ever need—used to be Neptune spilled out bile, or ink, or poison, but recently it’s been water, clear and clean. I helped!” She raises the temperature a bit, demonstratively, and then drops it again. “Helped her boil it all away until she didn’t feel like she had to be angry anymore.” 

"That was very kind of you."

“Thank you.”

"You're welcome."

He feels really bad for the not-angel.

A comfortable heat settles over the area as a few of Venus’s eyes blink open and closed. “Do you have any other questions?”

“...Not that I can think of right now.”

“Okay.  You don’t know where we are either, right, you randomly appeared here too? We could figure that out...”

“...No.”

“As in, I know why I am here. I think.”

“...oh?” 

“I have magic.”

“Oh right, I remember you saying that you know why you got here, that you did some sort of ritual. That—doesn’t explain me, though, does it?”

“Yes. The ritual was for a specific purpose.”

“...Which was?”

“It was supposed to.... allow me to attain my most ardent desire.”

“...Oh. Oh. Is your magic reliable? Because—I mean, I don’t mean to force the issue, but... Are you sure you want to stay in that body and not get a new one?”

“I think I may have.... erred. I didn’t mean this to be the result.” He blinks away sudden tears, hoping the not-angel didn’t notice.

Venus has a lot of eyes. She notices.

She doesn’t comment, though. She remembers what it was like to be that boy. “...Okay. Do you know where it is that your ritual brought us?”

"No! No I don't!" He really should have thought harder about the ritual before doing it.

Lindsey remains blissfully unaware of Venus's thoughts on the sort of boy he is.

“We should. Uh. Probably figure that out, then. ...Though I’m a little conspicuous, and if I go outside in a world like mine then they’ll probably send kids to defeat me.” Her eyes are blinking thoughtfully, with only a little nervousness. 

"I would probably be less conspicuous?"

The area gets a bit warmer and Venus gives off the impression of smiling. “Yes, that’s probably true.”

Awww.

He looks around. They're standing on what looks like a wooden roof surrounded by only the sky. There's a ladder on the edge.

"I don't really want to go alone...?"

“...I can come, but—I mean, I can make myself seem a little more human, tone down the heat and make sure my face doesn’t get too covered up, but I can’t really... turn this off. If I come with you, what’s the plan if people start coming to defeat me?”

"I don't.... have a plan."

“Um. Okay.

so. I guess we just climb down? Or, you can climb down. I can fly!”

"— wait, actually, I need to test something first." He draws his wand out of his cloak and says, "Lumos."

And there was no light.

“...What were you testing?”

"Typically I can do magic by saying fake Latinate words and waving a stick of wood in specific patterns while thinking specific things. Apparently here that doesn't work. I also have a particular magical artifact that I don't expect will work here either."

Next, he digs around in his cloak again and brings out a ruby ring. He fixes his gaze on a tree and stares at it intensely. The tree does not spontaneously combust.

“Huh, that’s really interesting. I hope this doesn’t impact your ability to go home, since it was magic that brought you here—but probably rituals will work even though the stick and ring didn’t, since they worked just fine to bring us here. It still would’ve been nice to have magic on our side, though, but we work with what we have.”

"I don't actually know about the rituals. I don't think their ability to bring us here implies an ability to return us." He tilts his head. "But your abilities clearly still work."

“My abilities aren’t—something I do—it’s who I am.” She pauses, rustles her wings a little. “I hope you can figure something out that we can get back home eventually. I have friends who will be worried, and you’d probably prefer having your magic back. But we’re here for now, and that’s okay too, hopefully.”

"Yes indeed."

It is really, really enjoyable being around Venus.

"You mentioned flying? Could you fly me down?"

When Venus grins, it’s a heatwave, but somehow it’s not unpleasant. 

“Definitely.”

(Flying is even more fun than Venus had imagined it would be before she had wings. It is so fun.)

It is!

They land in what appears to be the countryside.

Venus is very on guard for people or signs thereof!

Lindsey notices and doesn't comment.

They're walking through what appears to be the countryside. It's autumn, fortunately, so it's neither too hot nor too cold.

He shivers, though the wind isn't quite cold.

He's not used to being vulnerable like this.