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The other wordly consumed Bagi's mind, far longer than she was capable of remembering anything.
As where there were meant to be memories were feelings, thoughts–ones she drew down with crayons and a tiny fist. Ranging from spooky men in clothes, the shadowy figures in her room, and more often than not, demons. Demons whose horns curled into knife-like edges, gangly bodies, and claws who knew just how vulnerable human flesh is.
Her obsession sent her into a spiral.
From scrawling demonic pentagrams out of crayons, to drawing pentagrams out of her own blood in high school. It had amounted to nothing in the end.
No breakthroughs or an even simple summoning gone right.
So she had to become an adult when she was out of excuses. She became the proud graduate her parents wanted, and went to solve the mysteries of the real world.
But the itch to settle old affairs never left her.
So her brother presents her with a book, rustic and its bindings rotting–but ancient with a story: A witch that lived isolated in the woods. One day, the children of the nearest village began to go missing, one-by-one. A mob was sent knocking at the old hag's hut the next day, and what they found was not a rugged woman cooking their children for stew, but a creature ripped from the underworld. The mob, forced to watch in horror as it gnawed their children to the bone.
The witch was never found, and the story's ending equally lost to time.
The book had been the only trace left behind. Awaiting for its next champion.
So Bagi accepted it and followed it like a commandment and she was a prophet. She wasn't quite in her right mind. Like the witch, perhaps she too was going insane from her isolation, from the mundanity of real life.
And the book offers to fulfill her what she desires most in the world.
So she gets Tina.
There'd been many scenarios Bagi played of what ifs, the first was what if she had gotten her hands on a demon? The first was taking its head to the street and proving everyone wrong.
But she couldn't do that. Because Tina was prettier with her head attached to her body.
If Bagi had summoned her with the holy bible, she'd have gotten down on her knees and believed she was a goddess herself. And gladly Bagi would've spent the rest of her years groveling just at Tina's feet to be saved.
But no, Tina is a demon, a woman from hell who makes Bagi feel small, with claws that know the exact pressure to make her bleed, and skin that's a delicious shade of violet.
And Bagi loves her.
It's a realization that shouldn't have taken so long to deduce–Bagi would argue that she fell in love the moment she laid eyes on Tina; her chest had burned with a fire so hot when she took in the demon for the first time, Tina who was still doused in the glow of the summoning circle for which she came from.
The fire in her chest never ceased–even when Tina pestered her, when she once pushed a plate to the ground in an act of defiance when Bagi rejected her deals, offers of riches and fame, time-and-time again. Even when Tina had watched Bagi's chest heave up and down in her sleep every night, it only ever added fuel to the fire.
Because Tina cared. Sure, Bagi had been the reason Tina was bound to her, a chain handcuffed the demon through an oath before Lucifer himself, an unspoken tie between an evoker and the very thing invoked into existing in the same plane. But she stayed, she stayed even when she wasn't exactly trapped with Bagi only. There had been a world beyond Bagi's shabby walls, Tina could readily explore at the tips of her claws, a world she surely missed. But she stayed.
The night they changed, Bagi asked only a question.
“Were you a human before?” She asks through her fatigue. The flashing colors of the tv bathed them both in its artificial light.
Tina had stood behind the couch where Bagi lounged, while her stature dwarfed it, she somehow leaned up against it, craning her spine.
Tina looked cute being so memorized by things so simple–so human. The tv has only a rerun of a show which had been background noise for Bagi, but somehow the center of Tina's world that night.
Such a simple question had ripped Tina out of that world. Bagi had to learn to forgive herself for it.
She looked perplexed, almost solemn as she had lamented over decades of her life.
Still she hadn't speaked, so Bagi almost forgets about it in the fog of her mind.
But like the sun, Tina parts it like clouds. With a somber, “yes.”
And it hadn't been a shock or a revelation for Bagi. There'd been the small things, like how she'd somehow recognize and listen to niche singers, how she seemed obsessed with an American cartoon show about a bird and cat, that she knew the aroma of tea by heart–all of these things hell surely wouldn't have.
After that, Tina became shy, a shell of that cocky demon when she thought she had Bagi wrapped around her finger on behalf of all of hell–which she did. When Bagi so much as spotted her, whether a shadow or of the mortal plane, she'd rush off in a flurry of mist.
Bagi hadn't blamed her; she felt like a teenage girl all over again. Obsessing, overthinking every little move a girl of the week made–for a second, she believed Tina hated her, was tired of the mundanity Bagi trapped herself in.
But that wasn't the case. When the thought manifested, a delusion always shoo-ed it away because as she said, Bagi was obsessed. And when she's obsessed, Bagi vision tunnels where she sees only her feelings–and it's unfair, it's unfair to Tina who's been back on earth for however long, who's still not used to the changes that manifested in her absence, and snuck into the world as visitor than a human, a mortal.
So the only thing Bagi was left to do was wait. She was willing to wait forever. As whatever haunts Tina, she'll talk about it–she'll talk to Bagi.
And talk she did. When Tina was finally tired of hiding in her shadows, and places far from Bagi's grasp–she leaned down into Bagi's embrace one day.
The smell of flora choking Bagi in its intensity, but it's addicting, like the cigarettes she had in her pocket that'd surely kill her one day, but no, Tina is a different type of addiction. Because she saved Bagi, and never will Bagi promise to stop the day after.
“I'm fucked up, Bagi.” Tina pleaded against Bagi's neck. But her warnings fell to deaf ears, as all Bagi could remember was the warmth of Tina's breath on her neck, and the vicious grip Tina had on her hips.
Tina ripped herself away, to balance both hands on either side of Bagi's head – she desperately missed her touch.
So Bagi took her cheeks in both hands to wipe away the stray drops of blood pouring out her eyes with a thumb – she could only remember Tina crying.
“You'll fucking hate me.” Tina warned the second time.
Bagi couldn't help but smile to her. Because it was ridiculous, a nightmare never to come true.
“I would never.”
“You will.”
Bagi's hands explored the ever foreign anatomy of her love's face–they eventually found its home, nestled behind and in Tina's white hair.
“It's impossible, Tina.”
“Why not?” Tina hissed, claws sinking into Bagi's pillow–fluff leaking out. But Bagi had never been deterred once.
“Because I love you.” It made Tina's face soften, her bloody tears slowing, her shock had been palpable–but there'd been a doubt, she studied Bagi's face, looking for any crease in her expression that'd contradict her otherwise. Hoping she had been lying.
To silence it, Bagi leaned up to do something she'd been wanting, praying to do for eons. But it was Tina who kissed Bagi first, maybe, because it's Tina who pulled Bagi up further and connected them at last.
It's not what Bagi had dreamt of. It wasn't as passionate as she wanted, but better, so much better because it's Tina, and her world seemed more bright with Tina.
Amidst it, Tina whispered against her lips between breaths: “I will hurt you.” Spoke like a prophecy rather than a doubt. Bagi would allow it, she'd let Tina feast on her flesh before she went a day starving, she'd let Tina's claws draw wounds on her back if it meant she wouldn't be bored. God, Bagi would accept every slap or scratch, or really anything if it meant Tina would stay.
It hadn't occurred to Bagi then, but perhaps Tina meant hurting her in a different way.