C'thelli's Demonic Orphanage

11

A couple of weeks of what was supposed to have been training passed in a blink of an eye. C'thelli wished it was because the demon was a fast learner, however he was quite the opposite. In fact there were times when she thought that Feimo was actively ignoring her instructions. He was yet to learn how to read his enemies and counter her feints, nor did he care much for the laws of chivalry, and would often forget to hold the door open for her or the other women.

Instead he would leave them there to stand outside tutting and rolling their eyes outside for minutes at a time until he remembered his male duties. The only activity that he seemed to get right was the dinner table. His eye for utensils was second to Dom's, and his conversations were always lively and welcoming affairs.

The more she thought about it the more she realised that his knack for social interactions had made him a few friends within the community. Naturally the first was Hanley, she practically had to carry him around lest he ended up conjoining himself to the demon's hip. It was a frequent occurrence to find the two of them acting out scenes of imagination, like battles or trade deals, though the two of them often divulged into the other. 

His second friend was found in Algie, strangely enough. Despite the utmost terror the girl visibly instilled in him, their love for cooking cultivated an unsteady arrangement of preparing dishes. It first started when the girl attempted to sneak down stairs to observe the making of breakfast. In the midst of the early rush, the devil would find a mislaid flower pot here and a tousled rug there. Which given that the fabric within the kitchen would naturally pose a fire hazard, she should have caught on sooner to her antics. It was only when she took up her rolling pin one day and set to work with the dough did she finally discover the changeling, who muffled a cry before sporadically poofing back into her original form in the devil's hands. 

No longer did she possess her rolling pin, instead, a girl with thick strands of dough clumping in her hair and a face white with flour stared at her with a judging gaze. 

"Take my advice, don't sniff that," Feimo said from the chopping board. Afterwards, the devil had been replaced as the other cook.

As for Robin, her friendship with Feimo was much more transactional. While she may not have heard much, she understood the little witch was calling in "That favour" on Thursday, whatever that meant. It was enough to make him groan, something which she wasn't disappointed about. He was getting a little too chummy for her comfort. Although she would come to discover the nature of that activity a couple of days later when she stumbled across a honey sweetened treat levitate into the air and phase through the ceiling. 

That's what it looked like from a glance anyway, but upon closer inspection and a tentative poke with her finger, she found that her once intact ceiling, now had a man-sized hole sawn into it, with only a weak illusion spell to clog it up. The very next day Feimo's training involved learning the adequate agility to avoid both the frisbee of ceiling and Robin's spell book as they whizzed passed his head with a vengeful force. Suffice to say, the demon sported a bright red lump upon his pretty face the very next day, and his little partner in crime was grounded for a week.

The only child she found yet to befriend him was Vivian, who didn't seem to care. Or more accurately, she didn't notice him much as her eyes remained glued to her gem, which for some strange reason, the demon was happy to respect... Weird, normally he loved annoying people. In fact just the other day, he had to fly over to town and collect him from the tailor's for attempting to haggle with English shillings. How'd he even find them? She supposed that was one person with enough common sense not to befriend the idiot. 

Father Dom on the other hand... He was more than happy to distract him whenever she found herself too exasperated to handle him, which soon became much more frequent. It started once a week after Sunday's service, however, even as he began to improve in behaviour and his annoying tendencies diminished, still the priest insisted on keeping him. For longer and longer, until a full week had passed without a visit. No doubt she thought he would be trying to keep his eyes open while Dom bored him with some profound tale from the Bible.