Daily Ritual Ch. 7

The days went by, Rosario and Bren were now officially TALKING, they were texting almost everyday. This was tricky territory for Rosario for a couple of reasons: first of all it was unpredictable when Bren would respond. It could be immediately after receiving her message or it could be HOURS. Second of all, Rosario had never spent this long talking to a crush before hooking up. Plaz would tease her about it.

“Bren and Rosario sitting in a tree, n-o-t-f-u-c-k-i-n-g” he said in a sing-song voice

“shut up you big dolt” she said, but she smiled

“fae’s really cute ok, and I’m finding it a relaxing change of pace. Waiting.”

“That’s cool. I’m happy for you, I really am” he said, passing her the joint back.

“You said you wanted to build a real relationship with someone, and i think, you’re doing that and that’s great. I still have no idea how I feel about the fact that it happens to be with a faerie.”

“Well, you know, love doesn’t choose.”

“You couldn’t have hooked up with a nice demon girl, I know a number of very available succubi.”

“Yeah and by now we would have fucked each other out and had a fight over the validity of pop grimoires and be on non speaking terms”

“Ok, just because that happened last time.”

“ahem” she coughed

“right, last two times. Whatever, like I said, I’m happy for you.”

“You know” said Rosario taking a puff in between. “We still haven’t talked about how you feel about me being one of the good people.”

“You’re right, we haven’t.”

“Well, how do you feel?”

“Weird.”

“Elaborate on that”

“heh. I keep veering very close to saying ‘you’re one of the good ones’ but I’m afraid you’d punc̣ OW!”

“well you knew it was gonna happen”

“Fair, fair. I guess. Well to tell the truth, I don’t actually know many faeries, we just have stories. ‘Don’t go in their circles’, ‘don’t look at them or you’ll go blind’, ‘you can tell them by their long fingers’ ” Plaz shuddered a little.

“You have these stories in hell? Those sound very similar to our folklore”

“Well sure. You have to understand about spheres. I mean, this is very simplistic, but if you think of it as spirits of the heaven, spirits of the earth, and spirits of hell. Demons kind of sort of can get along with celestials because a lot of demons used to be celestials. Some demons still get along fine with them in a ‘just cause our folks are fighting doesn’t mean we have to’ sort of way.

But Earth spirits, faeries, nymphs, pixies, dryads, we don’t know them. We don’t know what their business is. Both Angels and Demons have different things they want with humans, we relate to them in a human level, fae don’t seem to care. Can’t relate.”

“I guess that makes a sort of sense. It’s still, prejudice, and I thought you’d be above prejudice, being a gay demon and all.”

“There’s no such thing as being above prejudice, sooner or later you find a people you just can’t trust.”

“I don’t want to believe that.”

“Well, take if from a demon if you want. I mean it’s not like faeries are a racial or sexual minority. They’re a… a class of spirit.”

“They’re also not a monolith. Obviously, the existence of changelings show that there is some relation between them and human.”

“Yeah, a parasitic one. Bren said it… faerself. They didn’t use to ask for consent.”

“Neither did demons.”

Plaz was silent. Finally he said.

“Well what about you, how do you feel about all this?”

“I don’t know either.” said Rosario “It’s kind of funny. It’s like, well I don’t know if I ever told you why I became a goetic practitioner.”

“I don’t think you told me but I can guess”

“Oh yeah?” Rosario said, smirking.

“It’s cause we’re the coolest, obviously!” Plaz said, then started laughing, then started coughing.

“I mean,” said Rosario, taking the joint from his hand.

“You’re not far off. This is cashed by the way, should I roll another one”

Plaz nodded still coughing. Rosario started rolling another joint and continued.

“I thought it would be fun and edgy to summon a demon.”

“Yeah, and if I remember correctly you went straight for a big one”

“Go big or go home, is what I always say.”

“That was dangerous you know, trying to conjure Astaroth as your first conjuration, and did you even try to get a silver ring?”

“I was wearing a ring”

“A silver ring”

“I don’t know, I got it at Claire’s”

“Yeah, just be glad I interceded.”

“Yeah… come to think of it, why did you do that?”

“huh what?”

“Why did you show up?”

“I told you right? you got it wrong and accidentally got me instead”

“That’s what you told me when we met. And I never questioned it till now, but.. I mean we actually conjured Astaroth together last year, and I just, yeah I can see that I didn’t do things exactly right the first time, but why would you have come instead.”

Plaz sighed.

“Well the truth is, at the time I was well, I guess you could say I was Astaroth’s secretary.”

“Demons have secretaries?”

“Kind of. Basically, any two rate magician can find a grimoire and try to conjure a demon. If you’re a big one like Astaroth, or Cain. You wind up getting way more calls than you care to answer. You send someone else to pretend to be you. An experienced magician will be able to tell, most do not.”

“But you told me right away who you were.”

“Well that’s cause. I mean… one of the things you did “”wrong”” was you used cannabis as an offering. Asty doesn’t care for the stuff, but I do. I wanted to hang. I guess I forgot about my job.”

“Wow.”

“Please don’t tell anyone I told you. I mean it’s common knowledge, again, amongst experienced magicians, and demons alike, but the last thing we need is spellbook kiddies getting uppity. It’s for their own good too.”

“Yeah, I understand. Thank you for telling me.”

“I figured it was time. That’s another thing I like about you, which in general I would say is incredibly stupid, but it worked out for us. You’re very laissez faire. I couldn’t see you doing quote unquote proper Solomonic magic, which requires taking a very strong hand with demons.”

“It’s true, but why do you think it’s stupid” She said handing him the fresh joint.

“Because you can get hurt that way, specially at the beginning. Like Astaroth, being in her presence can hurt a human, if they don’t take the necessary precautions. Asmodeus, will outright try to trick you into doing all sorts of things. One way to avoid that is following the instructions of the magicians before you to the letter. Problem is, that guarantees your safety. It doesn’t exactly guarantee the demon will have a good time. Together we’ve been able to figure out better ways. How’s that book coming along by the way.”

“Uuuuuh.”

“You haven’t worked on it again have you?”

“No I haven’t.”

“It’s fine, you have bigger things on your mind. But some day it would be nice, the world needs some new grimoires, with properly credited demonic co-authorship.”

“I know. Speaking of grimoires. Did you know there’s faerie grimoires?”

Plaz did something that can only be described as ‘spitting out his marijuana smoke’

“What?!”

“It’s true, I’ve been doing some research. Hey pass the joint”

“Oh sure sure.”

Rosario took a puff

“Yeah, there’s a handful,” she said “they’re not as popular. I want to ask Bren what fae thinks about them.”

“Hmmm”

“What?”

“I don’t trust it”

“Oh come on.”

“I just, I don’t  know. I can’t see why a faerie would want to be helpful to a human”

“Well they are, there’s a whole like court of faeries that all they do is be helpful, they’re called seelie”

“hmm”

“what?”

“the whole seelie, unseelie thing is suspect to me to?”

“you know about it?”

“everyone who knows anything about fae knows about it.”

“well I would like to ask Bren about that as well.”

“When are you seeing… faer. Again.”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to schedule something but fae’s so… flighty.”

“Reminds me of someone I know OW!”

“You knew it was coming.”

“you’re really strong, have you been working out?” Plaz said smirking

“No not really.”

“hmm. Hey pass the joint back.”

“Oh sorry.”

He took a puff.

“So.. what do we do now.” He said

“I dunno. Do you want to do something?”

“Not really.”

“Want to do some magic? we haven’t done any in a while?”

“Maaaaaybe. Maybe not. I think I should just go back to hell for the night.”

“Oh, ok? Everything all right?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired.”

“Ok, take care man. I love you.”

Plaz looked startled

“You’ve never said that to me before.”

“Well, it’s true. You’re my best friend. I should’ve said it before.”

“That’s… I love you too, Rosario.”

Rosario smiled.

“All right, let’s not get all mushy now. We’re just friends, who love each other.” She said.

“It’s nice to hear though, thank you. Stay safe out there, Rosario, call me if you need anything.”

“Sure thing, dude.”

As he dissipated into a cloud of smoke, Rosario slumped back onto her bed. She took out her phone and thought about texting Bren again, she opened up Signal and saw her last message had been read, but not answered yet. She put her phone down again.