Wh...where am I?
"It's ok, you're recovering from your illness, child.
I.... was in a car wreck....
"What's a car?"
Wha? Where am I?
"You're near the lands of Whitekeep"
what.. is Whitekeep,never heard of it.
"I've never met a reborn before."
Reborn?
"It's alright... perhaps we should talk." -- Anon Guest
[AN: I posted about my temptation to get Isekai'd just two days before this was due to be a story. FTR I rejected the temptation because I STILL haven't finished writing A Devil's Tale]
There had been heavy rain. Lilly remembered that much. Mom had been yelling about her applying herself at school and then Dad swore and... Squealing tyres. The smell of ozone. The smell of blood. A rising whine that drowned out everything else.
Then she woke up to... this. Whatever this was. It looked like a hospital, in that it had the general vibe of one. Except... the tech level was a little more vintage cinema than the last ward Lilly had seen on TV. The biggest difference was the lack of metal. There were curtains, but they hung from rods on the windows. Patients were given privacy by free-standing wooden screens. Her own blanket was a colourful quilt... with woven patterns in the pieces. Not printed like she knew. The walls were white, as was the floor, but it was a less antiseptic white than she knew. There were no LED lights casting everything into a harsh contrast. Then she saw the devil in clean robes.
She was blue, and had her indigo curls caught up in some kind of net tied to the horns that erupted from her brow. She looked confused at Lilly's fear of her, and kept her distance. Calling over a Sister Temperance. Who was thankfully Human.
The blue devil hung back, glowing eyes staring at Lilly the whole time, while Sister Temperance tried to find out what was going on.
For the record, Lilly would have loved to know too.
The devil fetched a record book, which revealed her name was still Lilly Whitward, but she was a ward of the castle. A child abandoned to the care of the state. Who was apparently best friends with the demon's baby sister... named Mercy.
The demons weren't real demons. They were just born looking like that. Mercy was otherwise just like any other eleven-year-old girl. Except she looked an awful lot like her big sister. The fact that she had a teddy bear and a bed bonnet shaped like a sheep did a lot to dissolve Lilly's fears.
So did her father. He might wear fancy velvet clothes and a weird gold decoration on his horns, but he was such a Dad. He alternated between fussing over Mercy and telling horrible Dad Jokes regarding the situation. "Think they need to run an exorcism?" he joked. "Or do a purge?"
"Papa-a-a-a," whined Mercy. "No they don't. It's just the Kaum Coughs. Except. Something happened to Lilly."
Glowing yellow eyes turned to her. And he looked so disappointed at Lilly's fear. The grey-haired old demon didn't approach Lilly. He murmured with Sister Temperance and the older demon lady. Apparently, all the demons were family. Mercy was they younger sister. Joy the older, and there was an absolute horde of siblings. Brothers and sisters and Humans and -not demons- Hellkin all raised with the same amount of love.
Lilly had a lot more to learn about this world. Including how she was now somehow magical, and that everything Uncle Davey said about running things was completely wrong. And that monsters didn't have to be monstrous.
And especially that Mercy was a really good friend.
[Photo by Augustine Wong on Unsplash]
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