“I… don’t know.” He looked to Orpheus. “Did I get everything I needed?”
“This should be enough for you to begin. It will take time for you to build a house, and you will have to make this trip yourself multiple times.”
He brought a hand up to cup the side of his snout, tapping it with a claw. “My cave is in the cliff of the Veil. I cannot build it in the forest there. It’s the serpent Demon’s territory, and he is very violent. He will destroy whatever I make.”
Orpheus was silent for a little while as he thought.
“I recently killed the Arachnid of Sorrows. If her territory is still empty of a strong predator, you can build there. If not, kill them and take it for yourself. They will not have built their nest yet and will have minimal defences.”
The Mavka’s eyes brightened to yellow. “That territory borders yours.”
“I am aware.” Orpheus moved a low hanging branch to make sure it didn’t brush against her. He was always so careful of her wellbeing. “It means I can aid you. However,” he said in a dark tone while pointing at him, “that does not mean you can enter my territory freely. It is mine, and if you begin to linger in it, I will fight to keep you out.”
“Orpheus!” she exclaimed, smacking him lightly in the chest. “That isn’t very nice. He’s your friend.”
“Friend?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “But you are my companion that lives with me.”
“So?” Her brows drew together. “You can have more than one friend. Even ones that live in their own houses and visit.”
“But I do not want him to visit, to be close to you,” Orpheus shamelessly stated.
“Mavka can be friends?”
“Sure,” she said as she turned away from Orpheus to look at him. “Humans have lots of friends. They generally only live with their families.”
“What’s a family?” They asked at almost the same time.
“Like a wife and husband and, you know, their children?” Then something registered within her. “Oh, I guess you Duskwalkers wouldn’t know.”
As far as she knew, Demons didn’t procreate. I didn’t see a single child in the village. Or maybe she did but just hadn’t noticed them.
“Orpheus, can Demons have children?”
“Yes, but it is uncommon. Only those in this area do so, and only those that have created some form of bond together. I believe it is becoming more prevalent now as they grow more human, like you saw.”
What about Duskwalkers, then? Orpheus said he’d never met a female one before, did they even exist? Could they possibly be an all-male species, created rather than born?
“Where did you guys come from, anyway?”
They turned to look at each other, twisting their heads in opposite directions as if mirroring each other’s movements.
“I have never discovered the answer to that question,” he said with a lingering uncertainty in his tone. “And it appears as though he doesn’t know either.”
“So, you both just… appeared one day?”
“I don’t think that is the case,” Orpheus answered with a sigh. “I just cannot remember where or what I was doing before I ate for the first time.” He touched his snout. “I remember eating a wolf and my skull formed, but I couldn’t see, could only feel what was on my face. Did you eat a fox first, and then a deer to gain your antlers?”
The Mavka nodded in answer.
“That was when I started remembering things. My antlers caught on everything. I got trapped in thorn vines for a long while before the Witch Owl freed me.”
“I did not form my horns until I ate an antelope,” Orpheus said. “I remember staring down at its hornless form and suddenly having my own. I wandered through the surface for a long time after that, hungry and eating everything in sight. I was not much more than a mindless animal.”
“I was the same,” the Mavka agreed. “I could not speak until I ate a…”
He paused and stared at Reia.
“Yeah, a human, I got it.” His eyes turned reddish-pink, and she snorted a giggle. “I’ve kind of gotten used to the whole humans being food thing for Demons and Duskwalkers. As long as you don’t eat me, I don’t care.”
“She is strange,” he said to Orpheus. “She does not mind that we have eaten her kind.”
He chuckled in return, turning to affectionately bump the side of his snout against her.