Prompt: Apollo/Lucifer’s father, Jehoel, reacts to having a wild young child named Sariel to care for after taking her out of the asylum where her mother was kept

  The small shuttle, barely large enough to carry six passengers, descended to a landing pad on one of the many islands that made up the surface area of the Seosten homeworld of Elohim. Even for an island, the landmass wasn’t particularly large. It was, however, big enough to contain a single palatial home (a three story affair with lots of columns and miscellaneous statuary) a slightly smaller building with servants quarters, and extensive grounds. The estate came from old money, from the early days of the war, and the family that lived there had been quite important for almost as long as their people had kept records. Once, they had been a very large family indeed, with dozens of children of varying ages constantly running through the halls and over the grounds. But now, all these thousands of years later, only two blood descendants remained.

  One of those blood descendants, the man of the house, emerged from the shuttle once it safely landed. He rose to his full six foot, five inch height, wearing an elegant, well-fitted suit. It was dark gold with red trim, matching the red cane with a gold head he always used, despite not actually needing it.

  Jehoel, or Jeho as he was more commonly known, was rather different from most Seosten, in more than one way. The most apparent of those, even at a glance, was his plainness. Despite standing so tall, and wearing a suit like that, his actual face was decidedly average. Or perhaps it was the extravagance of his suit and height themselves that made his unremarkable face even more apparent. His nose was a bit too large, and slightly misshapen. On twenty-first century Earth, he would have been considered homely. With that, Jeho was, perhaps, one of the most physically ‘ugly’ Seosten in existence. Most of his people would have fixed that a long time ago.

  Most of his people weren’t as stubborn as Jeho could be. This was his face. He liked it as it was.

  No sooner had Jeho emerged from the shuttle, standing on the edge of that landing platform, where the long marble path led across the island to the distant house (there was a closer spot the shuttle could have landed on, but he preferred the longer walk), than his attempt to enjoy the fresh air was cut short. In this case, the interruption came in the form of a holographic figure that appeared directly in front of him. It was a life-sized (just under six feet) image of an amphibian humanoid figure with dark blue and green skin. “My lord,” the figure pleaded, “you really must--”

  The words were instantly cut off as Jeho raised a hand. He spoke simply. “A moment, Paeth. I need twenty seconds.” Then he turned to face the nearby ocean, watching the waves beat against the rocky beach at the edge of his ancestral island home. Breathing in and out slowly, Jeho counted those twenty seconds off in the back of his mind while enjoying the crisp sea air.

  Some might have thought him callous, to not even allow the other man to finish his seemingly desperate request. But Jeho knew Paeth well enough by then to read his emotions. If this was an actual emergency, one that had to be attended to immediately for the safety of the estate or its people, he would simply have said that from the start. He wouldn’t have started with ‘my lord.’ When the man thought through things enough to be as polite as that, it wasn’t a real emergency.

  Only then, once he’d claimed that moment for himself, did Jeho turn back to the patiently waiting servant. “Right, go ahead now. What exactly happened in the four hours that I’ve been away?”

  The hologram of Paeth immediately perked up. “My lord, it’s the girl. It’s always the girl. She is a devil incarnate. The boy was rambunctious enough on his own, but we could contain him. All we had to do was lock him in a room and we could be certain he would be there when time came to discuss his actions. But the girl, this demon child you have brought us, refuses to be contained. No lock will hold her. She is a child, a child, yet I have seen adults of your people more easily trapped than this girl. She has been here for only three weeks, yet I believe she already knows more about the secret passages and rooms throughout this estate than any of us. You included.”

  His pleading words prompted a short bark of a chuckle, quickly constrained, before Jeho gave him another look. This one was longer, and more contemplative. “You’re serious right now, aren’t you? The girl’s giving you that much trouble? Do you believe she’s a bad influence on my son?”

  There was a brief pause before Paeth shook his head. His voice was as earnest as Jeho had ever heard it. “My lord, to speak honestly, I believe you could search for a thousand Seosten lifetimes and not find another person in this universe who would be a better influence on him.”

  That was enough to make Jeho pause, head tilting curiously. “I’m very sorry,” he managed after a brief period of staring like that, “I seem to be somewhat confused on just what we were talking about. Was I mistaken somehow, or did you literally just call this girl ‘devil incarnate?’ Dare I ask why you believe that someone like that would be considered a good influence on my son?”

  The hologram of Paeth flickered just a little as the man cleared his throat, looking slightly uncertain. “Ahem, I don’t mean to say the girl is actually a devil. That was… a bit of an emotional outburst. She can be difficult to work with, and flatly refuses to be locked in any room, or to allow Lucifer to be locked away from her. She heeds no outside authority. It’s as though she has no real concept of being a child who has to obey the adults. She goes where she wishes and does what she wants to. But the things she wants to do are not evil or… or even bad, per se. She is--”

  “She is unaccustomed to having any real structure,” Jeho finished for the man. “The girl has spent the first years of her life under very unusual circumstances. The asylum was… not the best place to teach a child any sort of structure, to say the least. And its employees would not be my first, second, or even my eight hundredth choice for raising and teaching and caring for one.”

  “As ever, I shall defer to your judgment as sound,” Paeth politely noted, unwilling to directly say a word against those people, while still making his opinion clear. “Yet that is the situation we find ourselves in. The girl will not heed any attempt to constrain or restrict her movements or actions. She has been found in restricted areas, on top of the manor, in the ocean at night, and even in the armory once. We have tried to impress on her the dangers of being where she should not, and of what could happen if she or your son are hurt while out of our sight, but it is useless.”

  With a thoughtful grunt, Jeho gazed toward the building in the distance, though he wasn’t actually looking at it. His attention was somewhere far away, on a childhood of his own spent on this island, with other staff who did their best to teach him boundaries and how to care about what someone else said and thought. He saw a man not too unlike Paeth himself. He saw other teachers at half a dozen academies throughout his maturation. He heard his own voice arguing with them, demanding answers, only to be told that the answer was ‘because that’s how it is.’

  Once the silence had dragged on for a rather uncomfortable length of time, Paeth asked, “Sir?”

  Jeho started to say something, before pausing as a thought came to mind. He considered it and regarded his servant curiously. “You said she was in the armory once. From what you’ve said, she’s gone to other places she’s been told to stay out of more than once? What about that one?”

  “We impressed upon her the dangers of the tools within the armory when she was found there, my lord,” Paeth assured him. “We described how the weapons could be set off, the alarms and other protections that would be triggered, and even how much damage she could do if she were to touch the wrong thing before someone arrived to stop her. She has not returned to that room.”

  With a soft chuckle, Jeho replied, “Well, then she has indeed been considering your words. She isn’t entirely ignoring you, she’s simply deciding for herself whether your warnings are important enough to heed. You’ve told her to stay off the roof because it’s dangerous, but she believes she can handle that danger. And why not? Our people are quite physically adept. The odds of her falling are extraordinarily low. You’ve told her to stay in her sleeping quarters at night, but she sees no particular need to follow that instruction. This is a girl who has roamed quite freely throughout that hospital for as long as she has been able to walk at all. She has chosen when to sleep, where to do so, how much to eat, and so much more, for her whole existence. Bringing the girl here and expecting her to simply react the way an ordinary child would to new structure and actual rules may have been a mistake. One must try to make allowances for circumstance.”

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  “Sir,” Paeth started carefully, “are you saying we shouldn’t be attempting to restrict the girl?”

  Jeho’s gaze centered on him, his voice flat. “I am saying you may have more luck with that if you limit such efforts to actual dangers that you can articulate to her. Do not simply state a rule and expect her to blindly follow your authority as the adult. She has…” There was a pause as he looked away, working to find the right words. “She has seen too many adults who should not be trusted with any authority at all to believe that it should be inherently granted by age. Between the very damaged patients she grew up with around that hospital, and the medical staff who consistently failed to do the right thing, she has no particular reason to believe adults always know best, or that they will have her best interests at heart. Try to talk with the girl, not at her.”

  Paeth was silent for several long seconds, clearly digesting those words before finally inclining his chin. “As you say, my lord. Though I believe, given the influence she has over your son, we will be talking with both of them, not just her. Lucifer treats her as if they were joined at the hip.”

  “They are quite young,” Jeho noted after giving it a second of thought, “so I truly doubt this is love at first sight, or an early mate bonding moment. Are you saying you think they will be more than friends?” His tone made it clear he wasn’t quite sure what he thought of the possibility.

  There was a very short bark of laughter through the holographic projection, which the man quickly restrained. His contriteness was apparent, even through the image. “Apologies, my lord. But no, I do not believe that’s something you need to concern yourself with. The two of them are more like siblings than any potential… anything else. As you say, they are very young, so there is a chance that may change. But I would stake my reputation and service to this home to say they will never have that sort of relationship. That’s just simply not what they are to each other.”

  Jeho acknowledged that with a nod, his voice contemplative. “We shall see, but for now, I’ll defer to your judgment of the situation. If that changes in any way, you will inform me immediately.”

  “Of course, sir,” the other man confirmed, hesitating slightly before continuing. “But if I might ask, will your treatment of the girl change should the two of them begin to exhibit romantic feelings?”

  There was no answer at first, beyond a soft, thoughtful grunt from Jeho. He considered the question for what seemed to be an inordinately long time, before finally replying, “If you’re asking whether I would turn the girl away, or restrict their access to one another should this relationship of theirs eventually become romantic, then no. However their relationship may develop, I think it’s safe to say that this girl will be part of my son’s life even longer than I will. So, no, I don’t want to be told how their relationship develops because I would put a stop to it. I want to be told because if they begin to see each other that way, there are conversations that should happen.”

  With a small smile, Paeth pointed out, “They are quite young. I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about on that front for some time. But yes, sir, we will keep an eye out for such things. And we will make an effort to… I believe the phrase would be, ‘choose our battles’ when it comes to keeping the girl in line.” He hesitated for just long enough to make the other man look at him with obvious curiosity before adding, a bit carefully. “But for those battles that must be chosen…”

  “I will speak with her,” Jeho confirmed. “I will make your authority clear. Meet her in the middle, Paeth. There are rules, and then there are rules. She has seen enough to know the difference.”

  With that much settled, he dismissed the man and promised to come speak with him in person soon enough, after he’d had time to settle in. Once the hologram had disappeared, Jeho stayed where he was, right there on the edge of the landing pad. A wave of his hand was enough to tell the pilot of the shuttle to lift off and head to the hangar for maintenance, leaving him by himself.

  Or, perhaps, not so much. After about ten seconds of silence while he stood watching the dark ocean, the man spoke up. He didn’t raise his voice, or even change his tone in any way from how he’d been talking to Paeth. “If you’d like to come out now, we can have that conversation.”

  Another moment passed, before one of the statues about ten feet away rumbled open, allowing the small blonde girl to slip out. She was a tiny slip of a thing, much cleaner than the first time he had met her, in the secret room of that hospital. But still nowhere near as clean as his stuffy old caretakers would have preferred, if they’d still been alive. Once she was out and had shaken herself off a little, the small girl stared at him with those big, curious eyes. “How did you know?”

  He chuckled, stepping down from the edge of the platform to join her on that marble path. “You have spent a few weeks here. Now, you might be very good at finding those hidden places. You may even be one of the best. But I spent my entire childhood finding the best ways to escape a flock of minders who were quite a bit more determined to confine and punish me than Paeth and the others are for you. It will be some time before you know these grounds better than I do.”

  She blinked at him once, then again, before asking, “You used to be a kid?” From the sound of her voice, that was a possibility the girl had truly never considered. She was staring at the man as though he had just casually announced that he had once spent a few decades as a volcano.

  It was a question that made Jeho cough despite himself. “Yes, well, as it turns out, I did not spring forth fully-formed from my father’s forehead. That’s just a joke I tell my son whenever he asks where children come from. I--” He stopped, as though only just then remembering that the person he was talking to was also a child, the same age as that son. “Yes, I was young once.”

  The girl had to process that revelation for a moment. She stepped away from the statue with its hidden compartment, but didn’t go much closer to him. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was keeping her escape options open. Maybe she didn’t even know she was doing it. After growing up in a place like that hospital, with the sort of people that place attracted, it made sense that she would instinctively avoid trapping herself. It was, however, a reminder to check in on the place soon, and make sure that every single faculty member who had had any say in what happened was dealt with. The whole asylum needed a good, thorough cellar to ceiling scrubbing, so to speak.

  Eventually, she crouched to stare at a bug making its way through the grass. Her finger gently poked near the thing as she asked, without looking at him, “Are you going to send me away?”

  The question made Jeho lean back on his heels, regarding her in silence before a soft, yet audible sigh escaped him. He took a step forward, before sinking down into the grass. It looked rather undignified and even a little awkward, considering the expensive, well-tailored suit he was wearing. But he still sat, leaning on one hand with his legs out to one side. When he spoke, his voice was different. The shield of projected authority was gone. He sounded like a tired man with far too many responsibilities, and too little time. “Sariel, please come here for a moment.”

  “You said my name.” The girl sounded surprised by that fact, enough so that she reflexively moved that way and took a seat on the grass somewhat near to where he was. Still not close enough that she couldn’t scramble away and sprint to safety if need be, but it was a start.

  “Did you think I didn’t remember what it was?” Jeho asked, an equal mix of amusement and curiosity in his voice. He moved one finger to a long blade of grass, allowing a purple beetle to crawl onto it, before transferring the thing to his other hand and setting it down near a bush.

  The answer came in a soft, uncertain voice. “I thought you were avoiding saying it, so it’d be easier to send me away, to a new place with doctors. Like how you’re not supposed to name animals that you’re not gonna keep, so you don’t get attached to them. I read it in a book.”

  Wincing just a little, Jeho chose to reply, “You like to read?” When she gave a silent nod, he gave her a small smile. “I do too. I’m sure you’ve found the libraries already. But you haven’t found this book in any of them.” His hand moved, and just like that, a small leatherbound tome appeared in it. There was no title or author listed. The pages appeared to be made of real paper.

  Realizing he wanted her to take it, Sariel hesitantly did so. She glanced back at him for guidance, before opening the thing at his nod. The small Seosten girl’s eyes scanned over the small print just inside the first page. “What… um, what is it?”

  “That is a diary,” Jeho informed her. “It’s a diary from someone I think you’d like to know about. One of our own people, who… well, let’s say had a very untraditional upbringing. It’s… well, a long story, but he grew up in a prison. He spent the first eleven years of his life there, thanks to a bit of a complicated situation. He began writing that journal when he was just a little bit older than you. Though, ahh, the entries do become more detailed and interesting a few years later, in my opinion. Particularly in his later life.”

  “A boy… who grew up in prison?” Sariel gasped out loud, eyes widening with obvious surprise at that. “Can I see him? Can I talk to him?”

  With a grimace, Jeho shook his head. “That would be somewhat difficult, for many reasons. The book will have to suffice. I… would like to hear what you think after you read it. And Sariel, the book is valuable.”

  The girl nodded hurriedly. “I’ll be careful with it, Lord Jeho, sir, I promise.”

  “Jeho is fine,” he assured her. “But to answer your question from before, no, I am not going to send you away. You are my son’s friend. You belong here. You have a place here, do not doubt that. And do not fear that your every action or inaction may lead to banishment. I give you my word, you will not be abandoned. Now, let us go see what trouble my son has managed to get himself into, shall we? And don’t forget to read that journal.

  “I look forward to reading your opinion of the boy who became Lord Tabbris.”

  Joke Tags: Boy I Can’t Wait Until We Eventually Find Out Whether Sariel Ended Up Liking Lord Tabbris Or Not

  And hey hey you all want something else to read that fits into the urban fantasy detective style bit? Check out the story below.