“I’m not sleepy now,” Jemi started skipping around as if to prove the fact, her bi-coloured tail flicking behind her. Her dirt-golden hair, which had begun to grow out, bounced around her shoulders. Her cheeks were more fat-filled, less gaunt than they were before, and days out in the sun had tanned her complexion, warm even in the glow of the moon. “I wanna show you what I’ve been learning. Check this out.” She clutched her left wrist with her right hand, and began making a face of stern concentration. After grunting and hawing for around two minutes… SHING! Five silver claws extended from where the human’s short pink nails once were, constructed of glowing Lunaki.
“...Sure,” Medusa said. “A bow or gun would be a better weapon for you.”
Jemi’s face twisted. “But I don’t wanna use weapons. I wanna be a real Beast. I don’t have snake fangs, so at least I can have chicken claws!” She ran to a nearby tree and slashed her claws into it. They fizzled out into sparks on impact. Through her mask, eyes blinked. Sheepishly, she rubbed her head. “I still need some practice to get it right.”
“Okay,” Medusa said. “If that’s done, you can go.”
“Nooo, I still have things to show you!” Jemi dug around in the folds of her hunting cloak: now modified with extra pockets, from which she pulled out strings of jewelry, which sparkled in the emanating moonlight. Next came a number of coinpouches. “My loot of the day~ Ta-da~”
Medusa observed her. “It’s only been a week since your training. How are you so good at this?”
“Oh,” Jemi shrugged. “Umm… I guess it started at home. During mealtimes, my dad gave me less rice than my siblings, because he said that they worked for it and I didn’t, so they deserved more. I mean, yeah, they needed the energy. But I was really hungry, so sometimes I snuck my siblings’ rice onto my plate. Do that enough… and you get really good at it.”
In school, Jemi had also stolen her classmates’ things for fun. Not because she needed them, but because she wanted to see how much she could get away with, and it turned out she got away with a lot. It was both because of her deft hands, and also the fact that people jumped to defend her whenever she was suspected. Jemi had spent most of her life pretending, pretending she was fine, and this was no different. She put on farces like they were clothes, had played the school environment like it was one of her chess games, crafting smiles and choosing words that would get her what she wanted. What she was doing now wasn’t so different.
After all, she knew better than anyone what happened to a runt who wasn't adored by the herd.
Medusa considered the girl.
“Why do you not take off the mask?” she asked, out of left field. “Are you afraid of the others finding out you are half-angel?”
Angels and Beasts were enemies by very design—everyone knew that. That first onikuma, Bouro, had snarled it at her when he'd first seen her sunblooded eyes. It was understandable that Jemi would have wanted to hide that identity from the others. But-
“-Oh, they already know,” Jemi said nonchalantly. “Can't exactly pickpocket with my mask on, can I?”
See—she’d been careful about her reveal. She’d made sure to gain their trust first. She showed them that she was on their side; in front of the Beasts, she demonstrated resentment against humans and angels. She instilled within her minds her image of a guileless child. So that by the time she was ready to pull off the mask, the Beasts would comfort her, rather than shun her.
And then again, Queen Medusa herself had been an angel, once.
“So why don’t you take it off now? It’s heavy, isn’t it?” Medusa would know, as the one who had bestowed it upon her. That thin sliver of wood contained was physically light, but it extoled a great mental weight—it had to be, in order to contain something like the Death-darting Eye.
“......” Jemi stared into the white light of the moon with a smile. “Don’t like looking at myself,” the girl mumbled, too soft for anyone to hear.
“What was that?”
“Nah,” Jemi hoisted her head with a grin. “Lemme tell you about how I stole, um, this other thing!…” And she barrelled past the topic. It was never brought up again.
~~~
As the months passed, Jemi talked to Medusa about everything. Reports about her learning, and her little accomplishments, but also random stories about the things she saw and heard in the undercloud, food that she ate, friends that she made in the Den and random friends outside of it, boyfriends and girlfriends that never seemed to last more than a week—but she looked like she was having fun.
Most of the time.
There was one night when Medusa asked her, “Are you on your monthly bleed?”
“Huh?”
“You seem in incredible agony,” she stated.
Jemi lifted her head from the grass. On this night, the was curled up on her side, like a cooked shrimp. The Queen had drifted up to the edge of the moon beside her. The immortal’s eyes were closed, but her head was tilted at an angle to ‘look’ down at the girl laying on the bank.
“Even though you have had your refuel,” Medusa continued. “Do you know what I’m referring to? Human girls usually start to get their bleeds around your age, unless you were born a boy.”
“Oh. I know about periods, we learnt about them in school. Nah, I haven’t gotten mine yet. I’m like this for a… different reason,” Jemi said quietly.
“And what’s that?”
Jemi seemed hesitant at first. But upon Medusa’s expectant look, she finally caved. “I, uh… I get sick easily. It’s my joints… or muscles… the doctor could never figure it out. Today’s just a particularly bad day.” The girl winced. “It’s also been a while since I took my meds. Moon refuels help me with energy, and some of the Beasts tried herbal remedies on me, but I’m probably going to need to get my actual human medicine to treat the root cause.”
Medusa considered it. “If it’s that important, then the Den may provide you some funds to buy your medicine.”
At that, Jemi’s face twisted. With a lurch, she rolled herself back up on her knees. “Provide? No, I’ll get my medicine myself.”
“How will you do that, child?”
Jemi drummed her fingers on her lap. “Well, I’ve already gotten pretty good at pickpocketing, right? How about I steal the medicine? It would be useful to have a stock of human drugs in the den too. Some Beasts fall ill with conditions that only lab-synthesised drugs can treat.”
“You plan to raid a pharmacy?” Medusa raised her brows. “Ambitious.”
“I told you, your Majesty,” Jemi said. “I don’t wanna be no liability. I want to help everyone in this Den. I don’t want to be just like any other one of your Beasts… I want to be the best. I want to be your ace.”
Medusa chuckled. “You might as well say you’re aiming for the sun.”
A figure of speech, in common parlance. However…
“Isn’t that precisely what we’re aiming for?” Jemi gave a vicious grin. She had no real fangs, but her human canines were sharp, too. “If you let me assemble a team for the raid, I’ll show you how serious I am. And after that, I’ll show you much more.”
“As long as you’re able,” Medusa responded.
“I’ll do it,” Jemi declared. Her eyes flashed through her mask; for a second, her left eye caught the moon’s light, gleaming silver.
~~~
Jemi’s medicine raid was a spectacular success. She hadn’t been alone in its planning, of course, but she had been the one spearheading the operation. And so, if she hadn’t been popular before, this propelled her to stardom. Even those who had been wary of her could not help but gain respect for her. And it would only be the first of many such incidents to come.
In the den of the Beasts, Jemi carved a place for herself. In turn, the Beasts took great care in raising her. She learned to pinch and scout the streets of the undercloud. In this way she passed three years. Soon, the child grew into a friendly, confident teenager.
Perhaps too much so, for when she was fourteen years old, she befriended an angel.