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“Christmas,” Amelia said, spewing out the word like it was poison on her lips. “An inane custom of your plane as I hear it. The birth of your God, and you choose to commemorate it with glaring lights and lavishing trees? As I understand, it appears you people here too differ vastly on your beliefs compared to us Kronocians. Seems proof of the existence of your world’s Divines is dubious at most. So I ask, what purpose is there in maintaining this meaningless custom?”

“You wouldn’t get it,” I simply said, equally as unkeen to delving deep into the intricacies of religion with an entity from another reality. “Look, you have your practices, and we have ours. For some, for me, it’s just tradition at this point, more of an excuse than anything. Y’know, a perfect opportunity to spend some time with the people you love.”

“The people you love, you say?”

“Yes,” I said, hearing the scorn in her voice loud and clear. “And I love Adalia. I love her very much at that. So, as per my earthly mortal-ly traditions, that means spending an entire day presenting her with all the love that I can offer.”

“Would the Elf not simply do? Or What of the succubus? The human? Why my sister in particular?” She inquired, her arms haughty crossed in front of her again. “I’m certain they would all jump at the perfect opportunity—as you claim it—to express their unending affection for their specially beloved. So why not them? Why are you not spending this invaluable time with them instead?”

“Christmas is…” I began slowly. “I promised Adalia that I would…”

“Promised her? Oh, pity then for the rest, I suppose!” Amelia said, so quick to drown me out. “I wonder, when will it be her turn next? To wallow and ache in silence, in envy unspoken, yearning to express her feelings for you while you go off flourishing your ‘love’ with the next person you had promised to.”

I like to of myself as being quite lenient, as fair and patient of an individual there ever was. But this? I don’t need this…

.....

Without another word, I just briskly walked off, passing the concrete pillar, passing her in particular, and retreading the snow-smothered trail all the way back to where I had parked my bike… and accompanying the dampened noise of my shoes plowing through the piling snow, was the lesser, subtler sound of her trailing me closely from behind.

All I could think about was probably how bizarre a scene we must have looked. Her gliding in her deep blacks, me billowing in my… deeper black. Like a pair of blatant evildoers, master and minion, off on their way to plan their world dominion.

“I’m not done speaking with you yet,” She called out.

“Yeah, I guessed as much,” I said, turning right and pulling a hand out of my pocket to the clatter of keys jangling around my finger. “Too bad I am though. If you refuse to believe that I really do care for your—”

“I have already given you my stance and view on that matter,” She interjected. “Suffice it to say, they have not changed in the slightest.”

“See? If you won’t listen, why should I, right? Bye.”

I found my bike, reaching a hand to wipe off the accumulated snow, and mounted it quickly. Fired up the ignition and had my helmet in both hands before I noticed there was still an obstacle in the way.

A glaring, frowning obstacle at that… and sadly, with a wall behind me, I was pretty much stuck here.

“Indeed. It seems my sister is of the same mind too,” Amelia grumpily grumbled. “So as averse I am to the prospect of you celebrating this ‘Christmas’ with her, I cannot stop her, nor can I you… most unfortunately. ”

She expressed her disappointment with a begrudging sigh, and I just sat there in my seat, arms dangling off the handlebars just bracing for the caveat attached in this rare show of amity from her… and just as I had anticipated, Amelia hardened her already heavy stare.

“But if you insist on this, what you call ‘love’, what you claim to be sincere, then I just wish only for you to know her as I have, as I do. For she is as much her past as she is her present.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“You didn’t believe her always this passive, always this gentle, did you?” She said. “What you see, what you’ve come to know of her, is only a small fraction of who she is in her entire. Before, long before you, Kronocia—do you not wonder how she used to be? How she spoke, how she thought? Do you really believe her meekness now is something inherited to us ruthless, predatorial Matriarchs at birth?”

Something about the way she was speaking was annoying me. Like she was trying to lure my curiosity, dangling a piece of carrot at me and teasing me with a bite that’ll never come. And goddammit, it was kinda working.

“So what?” I said, trying to sound disinterested in spite of myself. “You’re trying to say she was just like how you are now?”

“Worse,” She said, the smallest hint of smirk trailing with her words. “Worse than I.”

I recalled back, in my mind, hearing Adalia’s voice whispering to me in a haze of memories. She had confided to me she had killed humans before, mercilessly, indifferently, for that was simply just what she was. Predator to prey. The strong to the weak. I knew this, accepted this, but… worse? How does she mean by worse, exactly?

“Of course, predictable and arrogant as you certainly are, you’ll claim you still bear feelings for her despite it,” Amelia scoffed. “You do, don’t you?”

“I do,” I responded immediately. “I know she’s killed, I know she’s been ruthless, but I also know that she’s come to regret it. I know she’s changed. Right now, she’s changed.”

“Changed indeed,” She muttered with a singular nod. “Yet, I ask, do you not wonder exactly what it is that brought this change about within her? How did she come to fall so far from the superiority of her species to actually harboring feelings to someone like you?”

There it was again, loud and clear, that carrot on a stick.

“Because she became human for a while?” I said, offering the first thought that popped in my head. “Learned to sympathize, saw things from our point of view?”

“It amuses me to think that you still consider yourself human, or wholly one at least,” She remarked, sniggering. “But I digress. You speak of her brief transformation as the catalyst? Hmm, perhaps, or perhaps not.”

“Oh, just spit it out already,” I snapped, feeling the simmer of impatience rising. “Hurry up and reveal something scathing about Adalia that I don’t know, so I can go home and have it not change a single thing about how I feel about her.”

Expected her to react in many different ways. A still lingering smirk on her face was not one of them.

“No. You see, I wish only for you to wonder, not to know. Not from me, at least,” Amelia said. “Those questions. If you really wish to be with my sister, then I only request that, in time, you will seek her for those answers she had undoubtedly hid from you. And just bear in mind that you are not the first.”

“The first?” I blinked. The first what?”

“The first human to have claimed to love her.”

And with that, she tugged away her string, tugged the carrot from her lips, and shuffled to the side, no longer obstructing the way forward.

I knew better than to pry answers from out of her. It’s like every time she opens her mouth, she plunges me deeper in a murky sea of disquiet.

Not the first human. Meaning… that she’s fallen in love before? Or is it just…?

Amelia stood silently by in amusement, and I could see she was clearly enjoying watching me slowly unravel from within.

Well, I wasn’t having it.

I put on my helmet, slowly wheeling myself forward, her lofty gaze just within the corner of my peripherals as I passed her by.

“Another thing to consider,” I heard her speak out again. “Your abilities. Have you not considered honing them in your spare time?”

I chose not to speak, but planted my feet into a grinding halt all the same.

“What with that cloak of yours. And knowing the threat looming ahead. It’s only the most sensible thing to do,” She said. “Perhaps get one of your many paramours to teach you. If I may suggest, I believe the succubus would prove quite the capable teacher. In any case, do give it some thought, won’t you?”

I sighed. “Noted.”

Then it was her turn to skirt away. In the frosted reflection of my rearview mirror, I watched her turn her heels in the opposite direction, drifting further and further. Any second on the brink of vanishing in the literal blink of an eye… never to be seen again until who knows when.

I thought of Tyler.

“He wants to see you still, y’know?” I said aloud, staring up briefly at the glass panes of the fifth-floor. How lonely it looked soaring in the cold, gray skies. “Even after everything, he still just wants to see you.”

If she had heard me or completely ignored me, I wouldn’t know… for the next time I glanced back at my rearview mirror, the white of snow was the only thing staring back at me.