After we ate, the girls began to get tired. Their heads were drooping, and then finally they stopped pretending at all and they both leaned against my shoulders, yawning like crazy.

  “You two should try to sleep, it’s been a long day,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “What about you?” Elyra asked.

  “I’ll wake one of you up later and we can take turns,” I said.

  Of course, I had no intention of doing any of that. My Vitality points were already coming in handy, and I wasn’t feeling very tired.

  Elyra nodded sleepily, grabbing one of the stones she heated up and snuggling it against her legs. She patted my shoulder like it was a pillow, and then buried her face in it. She was asleep moments later.

  On my left, Vespera did the same, but after almost an hour I could feel that she was still awake.

  “They used to have clothes like the one you’re wearing back in Prominence Vector,” I said softly, trying my best not to wake Elyra up.

  “Mm?”

  I chuckled, stopping only when my body movements made the angel sleeping on me mumble in her sleep. Unlike a certain demon, hers was a real sleepy mumble.

  “I know you can’t sleep,” I said.

  Vespera shifted, dragging one of her horns against my face as she straightened herself up. It was cold and smooth, and a little moan escaped her mouth. She had done it on purpose. Truly a demon.

  “That’s right. I couldn’t sleep,” she said sheepishly, with a hint of a blush on her face. “What did you say about my clothes? Did they have armor like this in space?”

  I chuckled. “I was talking about the one you so cutely call plastic bag.”

  “Oh this?” she pulled at her jacket. She had kept it on top of her armor, and the clash between the medieval and the modern-day styles did things to my mind.

  I nodded. “It reminds me of Prominence Vector. It was a Banks Orbital station in the Delta Pavonis system.”

  She had no idea what a Banks Orbital was of course, but I was more than happy to explain. I felt guilty for keeping her awake, but it wasn’t like she could sleep and, before I knew it, I lost myself in the narration. I told her all about many kinds of space stations, and vented my frustrations at not being able to ever see Prominence Vector in its full splendor. When I died, only the first segment had ever been completed and yet, five billion people had already moved in.

  She listened eagerly, asking questions and humming in thought. The idea of space fascinated her, and I enjoyed her company. I was growing bored of keeping watch, but now? Time was flying.

  “So you really were a spacer…” she said. Her voice hid her emotions, but the bond betrayed them.

  “Did you think I was lying?”

  “No, no, of course not. It’s strange, you know? I might not remember my past, spacer boy, but I know what I am. A demon…”

  She paused. “No, I am a Great Race now. A Demon with the capital letter, then. Perhaps the last of my kind.”

  “Or the first,” I supplied.

  Her smiled was full of pain. “It still hasn’t fully settled. And I know Elyra is doing her best not to think about it. I fear that once we leave these caves and finally see what Races have survived and…” she sniffled, swallowing a sob. “And… and learn that neither Angels nor Demons are among them…”

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  “Shh,” I said, caressing her hair. I kept away from her horns, because now was not the moment to play those kinds of games. She seemed to appreciate that.

  “You are the first person I know I can trust, Sol,” she said. She did not call me spacer boy. “You are the first person who can talk to me about huge boring circles in space, and not only will I believe them, but I listen and find myself fascinated. You say so many silly things, and I want to hear them all.”

  “Silly? Like what?”

  She exhaled, smiling. “Like what, you ask? Well, you said that there was an orbital station in the middle of the stars…”

  “That’s—”

  “I can believe that!” she said, pulling at her transparent clothes. “What I can’t believe is people dressing up like this!”

  My eyes involuntarily followed her hands and I saw her hints of her body through the strange, plastic-like fabric. Her skin was slick with sweat, the material not letting it breathe at all, and it caught the light of Elyra’s halo and folded wings in a sheen of sky azure. I swallowed, looking away.

  The demon sighed. “This plastic bag. It’s awful against the skin, but I get the allure. It feels like something a succubus would wear. Did you have succubi in your world?

  “Are you a succubus?” I asked despite myself.

  She shook her head, then her smile became teasing. “Why, wanna find out?”

  I tried not to give away my reaction, knowing that with our bond, it was futile. Looking straight ahead, I said: “It was just humans. Four trillion of us, spread across more than five hundred light years.”

  She made a little ‘o’ of surprise with her mouth. “Your civilization must have been so old.”

  “Yes and no. Humans have evolved on Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago, but it only took less than six centuries to go from one billion to four trillion people, if you can believe that. Then 24 hours to go from that to zero.”

  I kept talking, aware that Vespera wasn’t the only one listening. Elyra was still pretending to sleep, for some reason. She must have known that, with the bond, we had felt her wake up but she still kept up the pretense. Now that I thought about it, she did that a lot.

  I let my mind wander while my mouth spoke. I wondered out loud—how it was possible that humans existed here as well, if they had evolved on Earth? Was it convergent evolution, or something else? I talked about technology, about the fact that we had never cracked hyperlight and technology had begun to stagnate around the year 2100. It didn’t matter. It was more than advanced enough to colonize space in the dirty, messy way it happened. A long shot from what the great visionaries of science fiction had hoped, but slightly better than what some others had wrote about.

  “Plastic clothes were a passing fad on Prominence Vector,” I said. “And they weren’t all see through. The transparent ones, people would wear like Elyra did, over other more modest clothes.”

  "I can’t believe nobody tried to pull off my looks!”

  “Of course they did,” I replied. “But they quickly found out that the officials didn’t care that they technically had clothes on, and still arrested them for public nudity.”

  Vespera scoffed. “Crazy,” she said. We fell into a comfortable silence, until she poked me in the side. “Do you think Elyra came from that Vector place you talked about?”

  “There were no angels there. As I said, it was just humans and nothing else. No monsters, no magic. Hell, not even regular animals outside of the zoos.”

  “Not even on other worlds?” a voice asked from the side

  “Elyra?” I asked. “You’re awake?”

  I only said it for her benefit. Still, she chose to be a little bit bratty. “Of course I am. You are not being as stealthy as you thought.”

  Vespera whistled. “That’s very much un-Elyra-like. Well, apologies, little angel. We’ll be quiet now.”

  Despite her tone, I knew that she really was sorry for having woken Elyra up.

  “No. I want to listen too. You explored other worlds, right? What did you find there?”

  “Barren rock, and a lot of disappointment.”

  The angel deflated. “Oh.”

  “And slave jobs for people like me who fell for the propaganda, hauling stuff for the megacorps once they set up all sorts of industries there. Unlike on Earth and on populated orbitals and habitats, there were no regulations. The early companies made so much money. I, of course, arrived late.”

  “Now you are here,” Elyra said, squeezing my arm. “I would dare to say that it was worth some suffering, was it not?”

  “She’s right, spacer boy.” Vespera added, adding her own special snappy sauce to the mix. “I know it hurts, but it’s not your life anymore, Sol Nightguard. Your life is here, now, with us.”

  She squeezed my arm, and Elyra copied her.

  “Well, fuck,” I said. “You two know how to bring a grown-up to tears. Good job there.”

  “It’s good tears, isn’t it?” Vespera asked.

  I nodded.

  “Good!” she said, snuggling up to me. I felt her horn settle right between my neck and my cheek and knew she had found the perfect position. “You said you’re keeping watch, right? I think I’m ready to sleep, now.”

  She yawned. “Yes, of course,” I said. “Sleep well.”