An Incarnation's Daily Life
A warm afternoon, the sun high overhead.
I opened my eyes in bed and claimed that exclusive privilege reserved for office workers who had just flung a resignation at their boss's face, students on leave, and the gloriously unemployed: getting up, at a leisurely hour, sometime around lunch.
I shook off the bed's attempt to keep me, pushed myself upright, and started a light stretch.
"Nnngh~."
A strange little pleasure ran through my arms as I reached them straight toward the ceiling, and a smile pulled at my mouth before I even noticed.
The stretch done, and the bed's territory fully escaped, someone who had been appraising my sorry state spoke up.
"Hmm. Ragna. Come here."
"What is it, Demon God?"
I turned my head, and my Constellation came into view, sprawled across the sofa. Hair blacker than darkness itself, eyes like molten pure gold, and a demon's tail fixed to her backside.
Set the tail aside, and her features were not so different from mine. The presence she carried, though, belonged to another plane entirely—the air of an absolute being who might set all creation beneath her.
When I stopped in front of the Demon God, she rummaged through Sub-space and, wearing a thoroughly unimpressed face, held out a fist.
"Give me your hand."
I offered it, and two hair ties dropped into my palm. I stared blankly at the rubber bands that had suddenly taken up residence there.
What am I supposed to do with these? Tie my hair?
"Make twintails with them. This instant!"
They say a stone thrown without looking still hits a frog. Sure enough, she really did want my hair tied. But what was I going to do? When a Constellation says jump, an Incarnation jumps.
Working by feel alone, I tied my hair with the bands she had given me. I slipped one over my fingers, stretched the loop wide, gathered a rough handful from the side, and pulled it up. The same thing on the other side, and a simple pair of twintails was, for the moment, complete.
There was no mirror nearby to check, but judging by the feel under my hands, I had done a decent enough job.
"Well, Demon God? Not bad, right?"
She looked at me, squeezed her eyes shut, and quietly raised a hand to snap her fingers.
A clean snap cracked through the air, and the space around me had already become a bathroom.
Hmm. Had the Demon God used her Authority to teleport me? How bad did my hair have to be for her to exile me to the bathroom without a word?
I lifted my head to the mirror, and a little girl stranded on the vague border between beggar and bandit stared back.
The hair I thought I had gathered so neatly had exploded into a wild mess, stray strands sticking out in every direction. The first attempt at twintails was wretched enough that her silent order of banishment made perfect sense.
No talent for this, apparently. Maybe I can settle it with her over that.
She had squeezed her eyes shut at the result, after all. Negotiate well enough, and she might lose interest in twintails entirely. I yanked the bands free, left the bathroom, and walked back to my room.
I opened the door. The Demon God was still there—same spot, same pose—lying on the sofa.
"Demon God! I'm thinking we really ought to throw the whole twintail idea in the trash!"
"Ragna. More to the point, I am hungry. Bring me lunch."
Her face was indifferent, but the voice was firm and thoroughly entitled. I stared at a god like that and sighed.
Ragna Nightmare. Current head of one of the great Seven Great Families. Four foot three. Eight years old. A brat.
And the deity ordering this particular brat to cook, armed with a remarkably egalitarian moral gaze—what kind of god was she? Figures she was not called an evil-aligned god for nothing.
Cooking in this body was a reach. Not impossible. I just did not want to. This was modern Earth, though, so I pulled out the all-purpose grievance machine every human owns.
"Delivery's fine, right?"
The money could all come out of the family vault. Even that kid at the magic school in Britain dipped into his whenever he pleased. No reason I should not be allowed the same.
I switched the phone on, opened a delivery app, and was scrolling the menu when something absurd reached my ears.
"Ah. Makina went out to buy lunch. So wait."
Makina—the name of my fellow Incarnation, grinding away under that same Demon God right alongside me.
Come to think of it, my room had somehow become our standing meeting place, and Makina had not shown so much as the tip of her nose.
But why is Makina's name coming up now?
Makina, like me, was an adoptee taken into the Nightmare Family, for the obvious reason that she had been chosen as an Incarnation of the Demon God. The current family head, though, was me, and every tap the money flowed from was in my hands. Part of me wanted to hand her a few of those taps, but trusting them to another eight-year-old still felt like too much.
Anyway, the conclusion was simple. Makina had gone out to buy lunch without a single coin to her name. In one word: we were fucked.
I sorted my thoughts and turned toward the source of the disaster. Just looking at her still lying there with that bored face, I felt my blood pressure climb high enough to cure a hypotension I had never even had.
"Demon God! If Makina was heading out alone, you should have stopped her!"
"I trust my Incarnation. I am not like those base creatures who cannot even trust their own."
"So you're just going to watch a kid walk out with no money?!"
"Hmph. Is the Authority I granted mere decoration? She will use the Authority of Space. Win a duel, or steal it. One way or another, she will bring it back."
What kind of bullshit was that? When the Demon God descended, the continent became the Demon Continent, and the law of the jungle might be running rampant there now, but that was still complete nonsense.
As expected of the Demon God. Always exceeding the imagination.
I turned from her—spouting madness with a perfectly calm face—and hurried toward the front door.
If she was right about the Authority, no physical threat should exist for Makina. But did that actually hold? No matter how overwhelming an Authority was, the one swinging it was still the person using it.
I rushed on, hand stretching for the knob, and the bell on the front door shook itself with a bright little ding-a-ling as Makina opened it and stepped inside, a loose, happy smile plastered across her face.
"Ragna! You're up. I brought lunch!"
She hoisted the plastic bag in her hand and beamed, thoroughly pleased with herself. All I could do was stare back, blank.
"The money... how did you pay?"
"Money? I just went to the shop and ordered, and the owner gave it to me for free."
Makina walked past me where I stood dumbstruck and set the food on the table.
He just gave it away? Had he figured a great noble ruling the Demon Continent could not possibly be short on cash, and quietly put it on a tab? Or had he decided that even an eight-year-old Makina was the Demon God's Incarnation, and that he would lose if it came to a fight, so he handed it over? I would never know why a fried-chicken shop owner had given Makina chicken for nothing.
At least she's safe.
She really was safe. That was the relief.
The moment food appeared on the table, the Demon God slipped in and tore the bag open. Out came chicken, armored in a rough crackling crust with moist meat underneath.
Chicken was definitely delicious. For lunch, though, it sat a little heavy. There was no way Makina had bought it simply because she wanted it, and not for dinner either, so my eyes slid naturally to the Demon God beside her, sparkling as she pulled out a drumstick.
Sigh. And that calls itself a god.
Makina and the Demon God were already seated. When I took a chair as well, the three-way summit was in session.
I ate chicken while blankly watching the two of them, and a point in common among all three of us, me included, jumped out. A question I had known from the start, and never found the chance to ask.
"Why do Makina, me, and you all look the same, Demon God?"
Not exactly the same face. The features: hair black as pitch, and eyes of brilliantly shining gold. It could not be coincidence. An Incarnation was someone the god chose herself, and between me and Makina, both Incarnations of the Demon God, the only things we shared were this look and our gender.
Makina must have been quietly carrying the same question. She pretended otherwise and stole a sidelong glance at the Demon God.
Taking both our stares at once, the Demon God kept her eyes on the drumstick and spoke in a listless voice.
"That? You were to my liking. Your appearances, to be precise."
Makina nodded at the answer and went back to tearing meat off a wing. I frowned at the Demon God.
Appearance was our only point in common, so I had half expected it. Hearing it aloud was worse. So this Demon God had chosen us as Incarnations because she liked that we resembled her.
A narcissist god. I prayed, sincerely, that her end would be a miserable one. And hold on—had she not just been eating a drumstick? Why was there another one in her hand?
"Also, Demon God, quit with the drumsticks. How many are you having by yourself?"
"I have eaten but two."
Three people, two of them children. And the chicken, of course, had been made from the sacrifice of a single bird.
"Argh!!! Demon God, please!! Do you not have a conscience?!"