Authors notes: a little drabble I wrote about what it feels like to have a human daemon, from Vlad's POV. Mostly reference-y for a roleplay I'm involved in, and just stored here for the sake of storing it somewhere.
Daemons are animal shaped. Everyone knows it. It's like knowing the grass is green or the sky was blue, or that if you stay out in the snow too long you'll die. Everyone knows. No one asks why, because that's just the way it is.
Most of the time.
It's a rare occurrence, to be sure. The odds of having a daemon the same sex as you are better than the odds of having something other than an animal as daemon. Sometimes unsettled daemons might try for a human form, normally ending up with something small and gnarled and frighteningly humanoid. No one ever settles like that.
Or if they did, we can't find any record of them.
Having animal shaped daemons is supposed to be right and proper, as the Church would put it. It makes it easier to distinguish between the kind of love one feels for their daemon and the love one would eventually feel for one's life mate. If daemons were human shaped people would love their daemons more than other people, and would be doomed to a life of sin. We've heard stories about that, about people who love their daemons like they would love a husband or wife, or stories about people having sex with their daemon. Everyone talks about it like it's wrong.
We have a hard time understanding.
Maybe we're just immoral. Isaiah was always good at human shapes. He started with small shapes, sometimes with little wings like the monsters we saw painted on the church walls, but always mostly like a person. It got easier for him as we got older. Then bigger and more unique, until he could look like a human and not a daemon at all.
We were fifteen when Isaiah settled in a human form.
Mom was livid. She kept telling us it wasn't funny-that it was wrong. People would think things about us. We were overjoyed. I'd been so afraid Isaiah would settle as a dog or a squirrel or something small and normal. I would have been okay with a coyote, or a snowshoe hare, but this form is best. He's beautiful…he'll always look a little older than me, but we're the same height. He's skinnier than I am and his eyes are mismatched-one blue and one green. He keeps his hair long, with purple dyed into the black. I want to cut it and see if it grows like a normal person's, but we're afraid it won't. I'm in love with his hair more than anything else about him.
And yes, the Church is right.
I never want to love anyone but Isaiah. We're both boys, and someday soon I know it will be a problem. If Isaiah had settled as something animal shaped maybe I could get married or at least date someone, and try to love them the way I love him. But with my Isaiah shaped like this, I can't stand to lie to him. I don't want to kiss any lips but his, don't want to hold anyone but him. Why lie to ourselves about it?
