As they left the Church, Azazeal and Cassie preceded Jaenelle, who was flanked as usual by Daemon and Lucivar, and Elizabeth and Lucifer in turn followed them. The first thing Jaenelle did was turn around to look at the building they had been inside all of the times they had visited. She stared open-mouthed at the beautiful facade with Daemon and Lucivar similarly engaged next to her.
"It was a Church, a Temple," Azazeal said from behind them, "A place where the mortals came to worship the Creator, but it has been deconsecrated. Now it is…" he paused and looked at Lucifer for a second, "Now it is our home."
"It is beautiful," Jaenelle said and they all turned to follow Azazeal, in his slow persistent walk, as hed move out of the Church grounds and onto the streets of this English town.
They made a strange sight. Ladies being escorted on the arms of men in the mid-morning as if this were a scene out of a Jane Austen novel, except that they were walking along a side walk and there were cars flying along the street next to them. It took the visitors a moment to realize that these were not coaches driven by Craft and the speed at which they moved shocked them.
"Cars," Cassie said, "Uh, machines that have an engine and you drive them around to get places." She looked to Elizabeth for help but she just shrugged.
"We have coaches," Jaenelle said, "Some pulled by horses and some driven by Craft but…nothing like this."
"Well, just don't get in the street and you'll be fine."
They were just about to move on, Cassie had wanted to show them her old school Mendham, when Lucivar froze and growled at something across the street. Azazeal could feel Lucivar's rage rising and though he was somewhat used to this immediate reaction, he knew that he had to deal with this quickly. He moved next to Lucivar to determine what threat he saw and also spared a glance at Daemon who was also focused, sleepy-eyed, on something across the street. When he looked, Azazeal only saw Araqiel, but he knew that this was clearly the reason for the concern.
"That's Araqiel," Azazeal said almost laughing, "He's harmless," he added but he gave the angel a dismissive nod and Araqiel vanished.
"Our home is their meeting place, you know," Cassie said, "When you come they get kicked out, but they are always lurking around. They will not harm you, on the contrary, they are curious about you. Besides, no one defies Azazeal."
"And what about all of the other people on the street? Is this place safe?" Lucivar asked.
Azazeal smiled in amusement because this should have been a question asked before they left on this journey.
"Our world is not a paradise, but there is nothing in this world I fear," Azazeal said proudly, "Our fierce reaction to your appearance in our world should give you a clue as to how we accustomed we are to being the strongest beings here."
Lucivar and Daemon considered this and then with their fears calmed, everyone again fell into place following Azazeal and Cassie.
They walked and talked and asked and answered questions, and eventually Daemon lifted Jaenelle's hand to his lips and kissed her hand before disengaging and joining Azazeal and Cassie. Cassie, who could tell Daemon wanted to talk to Azazeal, gave her husband a small smile and walked back a few steps to Jaenelle and Lucivar. Jaenelle, never content to remain as she was, made a great show of "secretly" replacing herself on Lucivar's arm with Cassie as he rolled his eyes but played along. Jaenelle then waited for Elizabeth and Lucifer to catch her and proceeded to loop her arm around Lucifer's free one. His hand had been in his pocket and he stared at her for a second before taking his hand out of his pocket and raising his arm to escort level.
Lucivar was less than happy about his new arrangement and slowed Cassie so that they could take up the rear and he could keep his eyes on Jaenelle. All the while he was muttering about crazy females, males that didn't know how to serve, and something about the lack of the shield around Elizabeth that Daemon had told him to expect. Cassie ignored this and began to question him extensively about Eyriens which got him engaged enough to stop muttering.
Daemon walked next to Azazeal from a while in silence and it was Azazeal that finally broke it.
"Why did you come back after we told you that we were not harmless?"
Daemon smiled wickedly, "We are not harmless either, despite that you might think. Besides, there's no stopping Jaenelle and I believe you when you say that your main concern is the safety of your Ladies. If we can agree on that, as you said, we should be able to interact without violence."
"I'm glad you see it that way," Azazeal replied and then waited for Daemon to ask what he wanted to ask.
"What did Lucviar teach you about fussing?" Daemon asked.
Azazeal looked at him with a curious smile, "Just the basics I am sure."
Daemon paused and then said, "We both spent hundreds of years and pleasure slaves, our instincts to protect females toyed with and used against us and warped beyond recognition…and yet as soon as he was free…he took to it again as if he'd been doing it all his life."
"Well, I doubt that," Azazeal said amused but serious, "But Lucivar does seem to have a knack for fussing even though it apparently entails dumping uncooperative females into the nearest body of water."
Daemon laughed, "But he gets his way that's what matters."
"And you don't?"
"Oh, I bribe Jaenelle into doing what's best for her," Daemon grinned seductively, "But I feel that sometimes, I'm not doing all that I should be, that I'm too programmed to obey to be forceful enough to really help her when she cannot see clearly enough to take care of herself."
"Maybe I'm not the one you should be talking to," Azazeal said, "Lucifer…"
"It's not the same. I have the instincts and I rise to the killing edge quickly enough in her defense but I was trained from boyhood, well they tried to train me, to serve females unquestioningly. Pain could follow any offence, even over-protectiveness…and though I know in my heart that Jaenelle would never hurt me…I still walk the same line."
"Why don't you ask Lucivar for help?"
"Did you see how he treated Lucifer?"
"Yes, I saw," Azazeal smiled, "but you're his brother and will he understand why it is hard for you, while he cannot comprehend why it is a challenge for Lucifer."
Daemon pondered this, but he had hoped to get some advise from Azazeal rather than having to admit to his brother that though everyone assumed that he did the necessary fussing over Jaenelle, he really bribed her.
"Excuse me," Azazeal said all of a sudden and went back to speak to Cassie. Lucivar happily left them to join his now quiet brother at the front of the group. Azazeal took Cassie's hand and murmured a question to her as they continued to walk. She thought for a second and then responded at which point Azazeal smiled, stopped and announced, "I think we should be heading back to the Church now.
When they arrived back at the church, Lucifer was just about to say something to Elizabeth when Lucivar grabbed his arm and whirled him around dramatically. Lucivar, who took fussing very seriously, then proceeded to take it upon himself to detail all of the things Lucifer had done wrong during their walk and to reiterate his utter failure as a member of the male species. Elizabeth couldn't see his face, because he was standing with his back to her, but by the calm way in which Lucifer was waiting out Lucivar's speech, she fully expected him to come back with a snotty remark and see if he could get Lucivar riled up enough to threaten to fight him. It amused her that Lucivar had taken their request to explain fussing so seriously, but when she got a chance she was going to have to ask him to scale it back a notch if he didn't want to get hurt.
Elizabeth had almost turned to join Cassie and Jaenelle who were heading towards the kitchen to get some food together for lunch, when Lucifer turned back to her and she knew she'd done the wrong thing in letting Lucivar loose on him. He looked at her desperately and in his eyes she could see the confusion and despair that he had come to her with when she had called him back after the fiasco with the genocide. In just a few short minutes, he had reverted back to that. All of their hard work in establishing confidence and trust in him that his mistakes would not be punished with abandonment but that he would learn from them, gone!
Lucifer walked slowly towards Elizabeth and she could see Lucivar's annoyed face behind him. She wanted to hurt him but she quickly squashed that feeling because if Lucifer felt it he might assume she wanted to hurt him. When Lucifer reached her, he sank to his knees and leaning back slightly stretched his arms out wide. He looked at her with tears starting to run down his face and he spoke two short sentences in angelic that he slowly continued to repeat. With an anguished and considerably angry glance at Lucivar, Elizabeth moved forward to press Lucifer's head against her belly and he put his arms around her legs. He continued his mantra and Elizabeth spoke back to him in a low voice waiting for him to stop.
Everyone, of course, gathered around this spectacle and Jaenelle gave Lucivar an irritated scowl, knowing that this had something to do with him and his scolding of Lucifer. She then asked Azazeal, "What is he saying?"
After a pause, he responded quietly, "He says: I am your servant. I am yours to command."
"And what is she saying?"
Again Azazeal seemed reluctant to translate, "She says," and he paused trying to find a word to translate the gentle and accepting affirmative that she was expressing to him and finally settled on one, "She says: Yes."
"Why?" Lucivar asked carefully, obviously not pleased with himself but not understanding what had happened.
"It's what he needs to hear. He's more fragile than you would think," Azazeal shrugged sadly, seeing in Lucifer the same fears that would always lurk deep inside himself, "He is what he is. Those are the only two things that he is sure that he can offer her."
"But..." Lucivar started.
"When they wed, Lucifer promised her that he would take care of her but that does not come naturally to him," Azazeal said.
"He didn't even try today," Lucivar said indignantly.
"You don't understand…he's not like you or even me. He obeys remember? He has to learn what it means to take care of her and how to do it. You were supposed to help, but you managed to make him believe that he has already failed unforgivably," Azazeal shook his head sorrowfully, "He wants her to tell him what he was supposed do so that he can do it, so he can try to make it up to her, because if she does then it means she forgives him. He doesn't realize that she doesn't care about what you were complaining about."
Lucivar shot an apologetic glance at Jaenelle and moved off to where Daemon was standing a bit further away.
Lucivar had managed to find the most inappropriate time to confront Lucifer about the things a female needed. As Azazeal had sensed in Cassie earlier, there had been a need rising in Elizabeth that had just reached the level that it pricked at him sharply, but like Azazeal before had asked Cassie, he had absolutely no clue what it was. He had been just about to ask her, well, bother her about it in his adorably annoying way, when Lucivar had harassed him. For whatever reason, Lucifer had accepted what Lucivar had told him were the reasons for her lack of contentment and had only became more and more miserable as the number of offenses grew. Thus simple fact that Elizabeth was hungry, well starving in fact, and the way it pulled at Lucifer were blown all out of proportion by Lucivar unknowingly ascribing her discontentment to much more serious reasons.
Elizabeth had finally gotten Lucifer standing again. She was smiling kindly and slightly mischievously and then she whispered something to Lucifer. His eyes glittered with angelic happiness for an instant before he disappeared.
"I sent him on a errand," Elizabeth said with a small smile, "Lunch will be very…exotic."
Then she went off towards the kitchen with Cassie and Jaenelle following.
When they got there Jaenelle said, "We seem to cause problems between you two and I am sorry."
"Oh, no, take it from me…well, Cassie can tell you too…he's always a bit of a handful in one way or another."
"What set him off?" Cassie asked.
Elizabeth said shyly, "I'm starving," and Cassie laughed immediately.
"That's why Azazeal turned us around, I'm starving too."
They shared a laugh and then Jaenelle's confused expression made them realize that they had to explain. They told her about how the boys can sense needs and desires in them and get agitated until they can fulfill them but cannot identify them without asking. Jaenelle then told them about the Ring of Honor that she had had made for the males and the females of her prior Court and how it had channeled strong emotions like fear and anger to the whole group.
"So, they do fuss then," Jaenelle said.
"Yes, they do in their own way," Cassie, "but luckily only about real needs whereas I think Lucivar decides on his own when Marian and you need to be fussed over." Jaenelle laughed and nodded.
"Lucifer does have some things to learn, though," Cassie said.
"Yes," Elizabeth agreed, "but he actually does better than he thinks, he just not consistent and not always aware of how human I am."
"When Elizabeth was pregnant with their second son," Cassie said, "I'm certain he put Lucivar's fussing to shame. Elizabeth was dying to get him preoccupied with something else but it never worked."
"He'll get the hang of it eventually," Elizabeth said, "And he has learned to deal with your snarly males, right? So that's a step in the right direction."
The girls laughed and raided the kitchen.
