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father?” I asked.
    â€œMaster Below is my father. He showed me you,” said Misrix.
    â€œDrachton Below?” I asked.
    â€œHe birthed me into the world of men. He gave me language and understanding,” he said.
    â€œIs he here, in the ruins of the city?” I asked.
    â€œHe is here,” said Misrix.
    â€œI’ve got to speak to him,” I said.
    â€œI will take you to him soon.”
    â€œHow were you birthed into the world of men?” I asked.
    â€œIt was like a great wind blowing out a candle in my head. With the brightness of the Beyond extinguished from me, I could concentrate. I began to think as humans do.”
    â€œTell me about it.”
    â€œVery well, Cley,” he said, and with this reached back into the folds of his leathery wings and brought forth a pack of cigarettes and a small box of matches.
    â€œYou smoke?” I asked.
    â€œFrom what I have read, it is most appropriate that a demon should smoke,” he said with a bashful grin. “But you won’t tell my father, will you?”
    â€œNot if you give me one,” I said.
    He reached the pack across to me.
    â€œWhere did you get these?” I asked.
    â€œIn the ruins. I can find almost anything in the ruins if I look long enough. These spectacles, do you like them?” he asked, leaning his head down and peering over the top of them. “I found them on a dead one. My father says they do not help my sight, but I like them. When I look at myself in the glass, I see ‘intelligent.’”
    As he lit his cigarette and inhaled, his hooves clicked a rhythm against the stone floor. He passed me the matches and coughed profusely, like the muffled roar of a lion. The smoke wreathed his head, and if not for the spectacles, I saw before me an illustration from the catechism of my childhood. He flapped his wings to clear the air, took another drag, and began.
    â€œI still vaguely remember when I was a beast, gliding through the forest, sniffing at the breeze of the Beyond for a trace of living flesh. Then I was captured and brought to the City. All I remember from that time is rage and fear. I escaped from my captors. Food was easy to find, though, and rarely put up much of a fight. Once I battled a powerful man in the underground, and he cracked off one of my horns. The horn grew back, and I went on to hunt again. Finally, there were explosions everywhere, and I flew up out of the City and circled in the air until they ended. After that, it was difficult to find food. I could not eat the dead even though there were so many. To eat the dead is to die. I lived on stray cats and dogs who survived the end of the City. Sometimes I would swoop down on pigeons, but this was meager food, and I was beginning to starve.
    â€œOne day I saw a man, it was my father, before I knew he was my father, standing out in the open. I flew down on him to take his living flesh, but as my claws ripped into him, he was not there. He had vanished like smoke, and what I knew next was a net dropping over me. Then he was there, and he stuck a long, sharp thing into my arm. I was awake and dreaming all at once for a very long time. Through that time I heard his voice always speaking to me. The words seeped into me and twisted around my inside, grew like vines and flowers, blossomed in my skull. It was painful, but the pain was far away.
    â€œ Sheer beauty were the first words I came to understand, and I knew they meant the bite of the needle. When I awoke, I no longer desired living flesh. Father fed me plant meat. I no longer knew every moment what I would do in the next moment, but instead sat for long moments thinking. This thinking was a curious thing at first. It was a clock ticking, a music I did not want to hear the end of. Finally, I was released from my waking dream, and I knew before I stood up and took my first step that I was Misrix. I cried to know that I was born then. My father put his arms around me.