16 Light of a New Day

"Hyacinth?"

His arms were around her. She was dreaming then, some sweet, fleeting memory glimpsed before her final annihilation.

"Hyacinth!"

His voice, too. The agony was fading. Only darkness and cold, now.

Cold. She was so cold!

And yet she felt warmth, too. His arms, surrounding her.

She couldn't move. Except for where his body touched hers, she was frozen, glacial.

Then fire kindled again in her chest. Pain, but a different pain from before. Her chest burned. Hyacinth cried out, and as she cried out she felt something spill into her from her mouth, something cool and unfamiliar.

She gasped as it filled her. Air. She was breathing air?

She gulped the air down thankfully and shivered. The fire in her chest abated. The arms around her turned her about and again she was enveloped in warmth.

"Hyacinth? Hyacinth!"

"What?" she muttered. It was hard to speak and breathe at the same time. Every part of her was sore.

"Hyacinth! I... I saw you burst into flame!"

His voice. She opened her eyes and grit her teeth at the pain as light spilled into them. What was wrong with her? Why did everything hurt? And why was she so cold?

The kiss.

She blinked, at last seeing the human before her. His face blossomed with joy and he collapsed on top of her, crying her name over and over, his tears spilling warm against her cold skin.

She held him. "Shh," she murmured. "Please. No need to cry. But why does everything hurt?" Was this some new torment?

"Hyacinth!" The human's voice was not panicked, she now realised, but ecstatic. He lifted her to her feet. "Hyacinth, look! This is why your body hurts!"

He guided her in faltering steps to the bathroom. Hyacinth looked down at the sink. It was filthy. He hadn't cleaned it in weeks.

Then he drew her gaze up to the mirror itself. Eyes blinked back at her, strange eyes without cat-irises, dark instead of red, but still with a hint of their previous redness.

But she quickly forgot about her eyes. Her skin was no longer grey, but pale pink; and her horns? She ran her hand over her head. Her hair was its usual dark unruly self, but her horns were gone. No, not gone - the stumps remained, buried deep in her hair.

And not just her horns - she'd lost her wings as well.

"No wonder everything hurts," Hyacinth murmured. "Gone. All gone." Even though she had never truly been happy with her wings, she knew she would miss them.

"Hyacinth?" He was standing behind her in the mirror. "I don't understand. What does this all mean?"

Hyacinth shook her head. A smile timidly slipped onto her lips. Perhaps she could risk believe all this was true, she thought. It didn't feel like a dream.

"A human's kiss is deadly to a succubus," she said, still staring at her new self in the mirror. "Your kiss... our kiss killed me, but only part of me."

"Part of you? What do you mean?"

"Remember when you asked me how succubi are born and I told you that they grow from human seed mixed with demonic essence? Well, that's all that's left, the human part. The demon is dead and only the human vessel remains." She drew her now talon-less fingers across a soft pink cheek. "Miss Lucy told me earlier that my heart was connected to my human half. I guess having a heart helped the human part of me to survive the demonic part dying."

Sudden fear flashed across his face. "But you remember, don't you? Everything that happened between us? Everything we did?"

Hyacinth, laughing, turned and threw her arms around his blushing neck. "Let me show you what I remember! But you'll have to teach me how to kiss properly, first."

And she pushed her lips against his, hot and hungry and joyful as only a human's can be.

~oOo~

"Are you ready?"

Hyacinth looked down at herself. The underwear had felt strange enough, but wearing a dress was weirder still. How could humans deal with being robed in such lewd items? The cotton of her underwear was rubbing against her most sensitive parts while the soft, flowing edges of her dress felt as though they were caressing random spots on her body every time she moved.

"Is it really okay to go outside in this?" she asked him, her face flushing in embarrassment.

He just smiled at her. "After all the trouble getting me to leave my basement, you want to stay down here now?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Now, I'll admit, if I was stuck down here with you, I don't think I'd mind that much. But the whole world is out there, Hyacinth. There are all sorts of wonderful things I need to show you about being human. I want to share them with you. And you're hungry, right? You can't exist on just orgone anymore."

Hyacinth swallowed. She was still getting used to the idea of drinking and eating, although she did enjoy both very much. Almost everything a human seemed sexual in some way.

And they say demons are lewd!

"Alright," said Hyacinth at last. She nodded her head, determined.

He looked her over. "You look beautiful," he said. "I'm glad I was able to get something in your size."

He turned and opened the front door a crack. Sunlight spilled into the hall. Hyacinth gasped and grabbed his arm, pulling herself against him.

"It's okay," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "I'll be with you every step of the way."

Then he opened the door wide and together the two of them stepped out into the light of a new day.