It was said that when the world evolved, the demons evolved with it. 

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      It was difficult for Joy to say what she believed on that front. Things were what they were, and wondering at their origins didn’t fill her quiver, wallet, or stomach. What she did know, even from casual observation, was that there were more abandoned houses than there were humans in the world.

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      Some said that demons were the diseased people of the old era who had survived the initial waves of epidemic at a terrible cost to their humanity. One stops by Joy’s home quite often, so she asked the demon out of a rare curiosity. 

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      She’d replied, “Some of us,” and left it at that. 

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      More quietly, Joy wondered why the demon would visit a monster hunter’s home so regularly. There were several possible reasons, some better than others. Joy might be the only human who’d directed no arrows, narrowed eyes, nor judgement whatsoever towards her.  After all, during all her trips to the nearby village Joy's customers would ask why she lived so far from other people, why she had chosen such an ugly profession, and why she hadn’t killed the demon that trespasses on her territory. Like a wild snake who allows themselves to be handled after being held without injury, she guessed that the demon saw no threat in her.

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      One theory was that the demon, Jai’la, was just a customer who lingered longer than was strictly appropriate. Sometimes they’d both just sit on the porch and ponder the river’s flow, but more often than not, Jai’la would put down a bag of payment (not money, but parts for spells and wards,) and ask Joy to go kill this demon or that rapist. She’d linger, perhaps sing a song in a tongue Joy never bothered to learn, and always headed out before the day was red. 

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      Another theory was that Jai’la had known Joy’s parents, wherever they may be, and stopped by to check on their abandoned offspring. If it was out of request or an obligation to the dead, she wasn’t sure. Joy hated this theory the most, though she didn’t know why. Maybe that’s why she asked another question. 

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      “Most of us knew of your guardians,” Jai’la answered, as she always did, “But I was too new to the world to know them.” 

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      Joy did some slow addition and subtraction in her head and deduced, for one, that would put Jai’la’s age at about twenty-seven to thirty years old. Secondly, that made her just five or so years younger than Joy. And third, she’d put far too much math and mental energy into finding out the age of her regular customer. It made her happy to know though, for some reason.

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       Joy noticed Jai’la stared at Joy’s  hands and the soot tattooed under her fingernails, at the silver rings and white lines on each knuckle. Jai’la stared at the scar on Joy’s lip, the crook in her nose, and on hot summer days she stared at the sleeves of protection wards, enchantments, and curses on each of her muscled arms. She even ventured to touch.

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      “What’s this curse for?” Jai’la asked, trailing a gentle claw along the symbols like she wanted to gouge in and break the magic. 

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      “I was paid a lot of money to take a little curse off a noble. It annoyed them I guess… it gets me a lot of food though.” Joy halted what she was doing, nervous that her demon would slice through the runes and call an angry ex-customer to her door demanding money she’d already spent. Still, she didn’t move her arm away from the touch.

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      “Oh? What was the curse?” 

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      “Well, now geese always attack me on sight. No hesitation.” Joy shrugged, but Jai’la’s laugh was like nothing Joy had ever heard. It was loud, it was unashamed, and it was a familiar staccato song. The sound always made Joy blush, which convinced her of  a third theory: Jai’la came by so often to inspect her for weaknesses. The scars, the wards, the flushing… if she let her guard down much more, then Jai’la may strike down the one who hunted the errant monsters of her kind. Joy had noticed, after all, that Jai’la was staring at her coal-grey eyes an awful lot, and there were no runes of protection around those. 

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      Joy noted the little things about Jai’la too. She never wore clothes, but her flesh was covered in hard plates of white, like marble armor with a beetle-wing sheen in the sunlight. The plates on her hands were delicate and they often shed with a new one right behind it. Every so often, Jai’la  would take a lost plate (it was always shaped like the one on her ring finger) and, over the course of their scattered conversations, would let the warbling of the river drown out the meticulous scratching of her claw on the shed shell. By the time the golden hour descended, Jai’la  would leave the mysterious carving on her seat. Joy considered throwing these away. 

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      This shedding irked her. One horrible night Jai’la came back, and Joy had the experience of seeing how her shell mirrored the moonlight such to make any opal envy. 

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      “I need you.” Jai’la whispered, as if granting permission to herself to step forward and enter. Joy stepped aside and let it happen, though she was at a loss of how to treat the black ooze seeping from the cracks in her armor. 

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      “Sit.”  Joy gestured to a stool in front of the fire, and soon enough the hunter was kneeling  and delicately dabbing away the blood, disinfecting the claw marks, and sewing her flesh whole again. The first time she'd smelled demon blood, she was surprised to find it smelled of iron and earth rather than rot and muck, but it was hardly a marvel anymore. Jai’la had her eyes closed and, though she tried not to sway, she rocked back and forth to the tune of a weary melody she mumbled. 

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      It occurred to Joy that though she knew of these injuries, she knew of no others. The shedding rid of any scars and her flesh was too dark to show much else. Jai’la could see the bar fight Joy had stumbled into that broke her nose, the errant fishhook that’d torn her bottom lip when she was twelve, she saw the years of fighting and scratching, the struggle to stay alive and alone for one more day emblazoned across Joy’s knuckles. But Joy knew nothing of Jai’la’s struggles or pain aside from this day. Even then, the evidence would be gone in a month as her body rid itself of the weakness. This inequality was what put Joy so on edge.  Jai’la departed soon after, leaving Joy to wonder when  next she’d see the gemstone shine of her shell in moonlight 

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      Things went on like that. Jai’la would come with food and components to pay to be rid of the evils in her world, Joy would stop worrying about whether she was being cursed by the little carvings, and  she stopped caring about the disapproving and concerned looks she got in the human market. Jai’la continued to look her over with eyes too black to divine anything in return.

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      She continued to answer questions, though.

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“Do demons age?”

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      “Not after a point.”

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“What do you do at night?”

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      “I hunt and I eat, same as you.”

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“Can humans become demons?”

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      “With enough work. I’d need your permission, though.”

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“I didn’t ask.”

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      Jai’la smiled to herself. “I know.”

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      She came back a couple more times with claw marks in her back and arms. One raked across her face, narrowly missing an eye. Whenever this happened, Joy would receive a gift of craftsmanship made from the ruined shed shell. Claw marks became the trunks of magnificent pines, and the punctures of fangs or arrows became the eyes of snakes and rabbits. Jai’la was good at painting scenes on her past with her claws and a little patience. Joy couldn’t always sit with her while she worked, but while the hunter was skinning her prey, carving warding runes into the beams of her home, and pulling blessings from the river, her little demon was content to quietly sit on the steps of her porch. The jobs rarely came now, and Joy had to wonder if that was because Jai’la had run out of enemies, or if she stood under the protection of a hunter so often that she’d stopped making them. Perhaps demons and monsters alike knew that those who laid a hand on the mother-of-pearl demon were a bounty at best, but more likely, meat to be butchered.

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      Jai’la didn’t stop making trouble entirely. Joy got her darkest, most guilty wish; Jai’la showed up on the full moon of an autumn night. 

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      Joy took a moment to be stunned by the bright, ethereal glow. Then she noticed the wounds on Jai’la’s chest were straight and uniform, likely from a human blade, and she stomped forward to yank her demon past the threshold of her home. Jai’la gave a hiss of pain, but offered no other complaint.

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      “Did any of them follow you?” Humans were pursuit predators, and the ones who followed Jai’la into the wild forest this late at night, during the full moon of all times, would be the truly nasty and fearless ones. To the question, she got a single nod. “I’ll patch you soon.” She snapped, already stringing her bow on the way out. She might have heard a protest, but it was ignored. With that, Joy started to patrol around the perimeter of her home. 

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      After all of her experience hunting things in the dark, when their shapes emerged from the trees and approached the markers of her territory, she half expected their eyes to flash like an animal’s from the firelight of her windows. However, their light came from their own torches. She discerned three men with silver weapons and just as many scars put together as she had individually. They lowered their swords, but her arrow was still nocked and pointed to their feet. Each side knew each other marginally, but no favors were owed and no grudges were held. 

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      “Evening.” The one in front raised his unarmed hand in greeting. Joy’s head came close to clipping the top of most door frames in the village, but this man had a good head of height on her and likely several pounds too. 

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      “Evening.” She nodded. 

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      “We’re here for the demon. Have you already killed it?” 

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      “If you listened to rumor, you’d know I haven’t.”

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      “Rumor also says you’re a bastard crossbreed unfit for civilization, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.” He gave an ugly smirk, but she didn’t draw the arrow. When her expression didn’t deviate an inch from the initial mix of suspicion and cold impatience, he got to the point. 

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      “There’s a lot of money in getting rid of that pest, you know. If you hand her over, we’ll give you a healthy cut.” He offered as he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. 

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      “So you don’t know.” She mused as a small smile finally cracked across her face. He grimaced, the other two looked confused. She addressed the smallest and stoutest of the group.

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      “My demon never steals from the village. I would notice.” Joy pulled on the bowstring, raising it as she spoke until it pointed between her enemy’s eyes. “You’ve been hired by someone rich, someone who knows her actual value, someone who’s taken you for a fool. If you knew as well, you would try to take her for yourself. So what does that make you, hm?” She kept her gaze trained on them, and the suspicion in her eyes turned to cold, clean rage. “Trespassers and idiots. If you step foot on my family’s land and the wards don’t kill you, then I’ll do it myself.” 

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      The first stepped forward and got blasted back by a flash of red light and a wave of force. The second raised their own bow to her and she let them learn for themselves that their arrow wouldn’t make it past their nose. The rest of the fight was simply a matter of shooting two broad sides of a barn from behind walls she’d meticulously crafted, tested, and enforced to a point of mastery. 

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      When Joy got back, Jai’la wasn’t where she had left her. She searched through the rest of the house with visions of a single hunter sneaking past the barrier somehow, instead she found Jai’la alone in Joy’s bedroom. 

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      “I thought you would sell them.” Her demon whispered,  looking over her shoulder at the hunter with a glass jar full of ring finger carvings. Joy was at a loss of words at first. Her eyes darted to the blood dripping onto the floor, then to the mosaic of plates and carvings covering the wall. 

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      “When the sun rises, it—“ Joy began, then found she didn’t want to explain how she’d been using the thanks and payment for protection as wallpaper. Of course that’s what it was for, how hadn’t she guessed? Even if it gave her joy in the gorgeous glow of the dawn, even if she would stare at the intricate carvings every time she sat down at her desk to work on something delicate, it felt… silly.

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      “I’m sorry.”

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      “Don’t be. I…” Jai’la trailed off while tilting the jar this way and that in the moonlight.

 

      “It’s pretty.” Joy offered meekly. “You know how humans are about that kind of thing.”

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      “I was wondering why you hadn’t moved away somewhere nicer.” Jai’la mumbled, then at the indignant look on Joy’s face she clarified, “Your home is-- I love this place, don’t be mistaken. But I figured one day you would want to move on. You can’t live alone for the rest of your life, killing to survive. You’ll go insane.” Jai’la put down the jar and laid a gentle grasp on Joy’s wrist. Joy bit her lip as her world narrowed down to that one sensation, even as the animals outside regained their courage and started calling once again.

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      “I haven’t been.” Joy replied. “Alone, I mean.”

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      Jai’la nodded. “No, you haven’t.” Then, a pained smile. “That’ll never change, will it?”

 

      Joy felt a smile flicker onto her own face, then fade. 

 

      “That’s up in the air. Let’s sew you together.” 

 

      Jai’la huffed and looked away with a conceding expression. 

 

      “You know,” The demon gave Joy a meaningful look as they walked together, “I thought you would be the one to kill me, one of these days. Never predicted you’d save my life.”

 

      “I thought the same.” Joy wetted a rag and huffed a dry laugh. “To be honest, I'm still unsure of your...nature.”

 

      Jai’la gave her a grin full of fangs. 

 

      “Only way to find out is to keep me around, isn’t it?”