A Crash Course in Demons for the New Kid

Chloe was in line to get into the cafeteria, and someone behind her was staring at her.

She tried to ignore it. She glanced at him, noticing his gaze, then she looked at her phone. She flipped through some text messages she had already read, then looked back at the guy to find he was still staring. Pretended to look through her phone again, glanced back, and he was still staring.

He looked old enough to be in the middle of high school. He also looked new, and he looked like a normal human. Chloe definitely did not look like a normal human, what with the tail and the horns and the weird legs, so, given some time, she would at least be able to imagine a completely innocent reason for him to be staring at her so much. But right here, right now, she wasn't thinking of any of those reasons. He was creeping Chloe out with his creepy stare and she wanted him to stop.

So she confronted him. Putting her phone away, she turned around, looked him in the eyes and said, "You're acting like you've never seen a demon before." Her tone was matter-of-fact, and a little irritated: he lived on Manta Freaking Carlos, didn't he? Of course he would have seen a demon before now, she thought. He was probably just being rude and creepy.

@Aedan Drago

Chloe blinked. "Oh." She chuckled. "Well, that explains it. Nice to meet you new kid. I'm Chloe." She gave him a little wave.

The line moved while she was talking. She backpedaled a little to catch up with it. "If you want I could tell you all about us demons. I need to give a presentation about that in a couple days, so you'd be helping me too." She shrugged. She remembered wanting to know everything about everything in the magic world when she got here, buy this guy might not have felt the same way.

"No problem," she shrugged. "A couple years ago, I would have stared at me too."

The line was moving at a brisk pace, as it usually did. It didn't take a lot of time to verify who was a student at the entrance; only during big rushes like this did they end up with lines. Soon they would be making it through to the cafeteria proper. "After I get my food, I'm going to be sitting at that table over there," she said, gesturing towards an empty one, "or if that fills up, somewhere near it. I'll wave to you."

She automatically assumed that Aedan would be sitting with her. He was new and probably didn't have a lot of friends yet; new kids like him usually didn't feel like they had a lot of options.

The food was as varied and good as ever. Many options from many cultures and for many diets. Chloe went for a central american sort of meal this time: rice, beans, and plantains, with a side of salad, skipping the meat. Some of Chloe's friends had gone vegetarian, and she was considering making the switch. There was probably some irony in a member of demonic nobility caring about things like animal suffering or environmental sustainability.

[If Aedan didn't follow her along through the food lines, he would eventually find her waving from a table near the one she had pointed out.]

"Aedan," Chloe repeated. The name sounded familiar - it was similar to an old friend's name, from her last school. She tried to ignore the memories coming back to her, nodding once, sharply, like doing so would buck the thought off of her mind.

She quietly wondered if the new guy would like some more food with his plate of hot sauce.

"Okay Aedan. So, the first thing you need to know about demons is..." she trailed off, ate a bite of her plantain. "I guess... it's probably good to know that demons aren't even technically a 'thing`. What I mean is, there's a bunch of different types of people and things called demons, and while a lot of us share some [/i]superficial[/i] characteristics," she tapped her horns as an example, "we come from very different planes of existence, operate on very different kinds of magic, and generally don't have anything to do with each other, except for weird exceptions like the stuff that goes on on this island. So, my dad and i are a completely different kind of thing from, like, Dana in the registrar's office for example."

She sipped on some tea. "Oh, and, also. That whole thing about us being embodiments of evil and sin? Not always true. But sometimes it is, and even then, it usually isn't a big deal. I have some lust demon friends who would rather just, literally hang out and watch Netflix." As opposed to 'Netflix and chill.' She wondered if Aedan would even catch that reference.

"Questions so far?"

"Yeah. Sorta. 'Species' isn't always a word you can use to describe us though, because we didn't exactly go through evolution and we don't always follow the rules of biology. But, yeah."

She tried to think of a good example.

"Well, there are some demons that only really exist in an incomprehensible parallel world where they can exert godlike power on their surroundings. And they mostly only come to this island by proxy, like with an avatar they created, or by inhabiting the body of someone who lives in this world already. Which usually isn't as bad as it sounds, by the way. We have a teacher here who's like that. Professor Corbie. She agreed to it."

She took a bite of her food.

"Oh. And a lot of demons can shapeshift. Especially if they're just avatars of demons. But a lot of the ones that can aren't anything like that and they might have even had a human parent or two. And, uh l, it's also really common for demons that are connected to some impulse, which humans like calling 'sins,' I guess..." she took a moment, and decided against going on a tangent about that word. "Well, those kinds of demons have powers related to their 'sin.' Like I know a demon of gluttony that can eat anything."