CHAPTER 161: needs.

We sat there side by side, looking out over the other people together. Until I smelled the metallic scent of blood. I looked to my side and saw how Leonor pressed her hand against the stump where her arm had been. She had moved too much, and her wound had opened up again despite nearly being healed.

She eventually managed to stop the bleeding. Tough it was not that much in the first place.

"I am sorry for your arm."

"No don't be. If you didn't, I would probably not have been around this long."

"And all that, that has led to is you having a meaningless conversation with a demon."

"You are the only one awake. If I don't have a meaningless conversation with you. Then with who else?"

"Still. I don't think I actually deserve it."

"But you do need it. don't you?"

Confused I looked down at Leonor who was still pressing a piece of cloth against her wound.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, sentient creatures have two modes of needs. Having needs and being needs. Having needs are stuff like food and water. Tough I am not sure if you need that as much as other lifeforms. And being needs are things like being happy or being in friendly relationships. A lot of people try to satisfy their needs the wrong way. One can't satisfy their need for being happy simply by having a lot of stuff just as much as one can't satisfy their need for having food by being okay with not having it. Tough I am not sure why you bother to be around humans… and that one weird dwarf that I am sure of has the mental age of seven."

I softly chuckled so that I would not wake the others up. "Yea I guess you are right. But why do you think that it's so weird? I have seen a lot of other demons keeping humans around, tough most of them tend to treat them a little more like tools or pets than I do."

"Well, that's the thing. You seem to treat them as friends instead of tools or pets. They are not that useful to you since you can do pretty much everything on your own. And your friendship with them can't be because to think it is simply fun to be around them. you seem quite annoyed whenever Alex won't shut his mouth and when that dwarf treats you like a child. So, a friendship like you have with them can only form when two are equal or at least see each other as equal. A king wouldn't want to be friends with a farmer and the farmer would not dub himself worthy of being friends with the king. And the way I see it, you are not at all equal with them. you can enter other worlds and either choose to save or destroy them. you can manipulate everyone around you at will and you might be unable to die by human hands. You are near perfect."

I took a deep breath and looked out over the sleeping bodies in front of me.

"I don't think that that is the case. Like you humans I am also just something between beast and God. The only difference is that I happen to be more powerful. I might become better later, but now. I get distracted by emotions or impulses. I am too flawed and divided to be as close to perfect as you might think. And maybe these emotional impulses make me equal with humans."

She stood up and directly looked at me. despite the fact that I was sitting, and she was standing upright we still were not completely at the same height. I was no longer used to being this close to humans, so it felt a bit uncomfortable.

"Don't think so low of yourself. Most humans that I have know either wanted wealth or power and a lot of them even both. We are greedy of putting animals that think we are so incredibly important just because we can talk and suppress our needs for having for a little while. But you, you had no reason to help me. you could have just entered my mind and force everything I knew out of me and then leave me behind. but still here I am. You helped me to see and realise so much more than I could ever have imagined. And you might not see yourself as perfect, but to me you are better than everything that came before you."

She moved a little closer, to the point where I was almost certain that we were breathing the same air. I could always hear her heartbeat and breathing. But now those seemed to be the only sounds that had ever existed.

"Are you reading my thoughts right now?"

Before I could answer she brought her hand to the back of my neck to gently force me to bow a little so we would truly be eye to eye. Then… she kissed me.