A Demon's Fall to Grace

Ninth Encounter

He sighed as he turned off the water, and shivered as the cooler temperature outside of the shower hit him. Salazar tugged down the robe that was hanging near, and wrapped himself in the immense garment of fluff. In a robe entirely too big for him, and trailing behind him like a train, he decided to continue his explorations that he had forgotten about.

The first interesting room he had come across last time was the room of books, and went to see if anything caught his eye. Both demons and angels knew every language that existed, or ever had, it was something about being so closely tied to God, but Salazar had never really taken the time to think about it. As such, the library was filled with books from around the world, on many subjects, and the demon took a long time just reading covers and deciding what to pick.

One certain book titled, "Commanders of God's Army: Azrael" caught his eye. It seemed to be a series, each one about a different angel. When he pulled the book out, the cover said "Azrael, Angel of Death" and the little demon decided that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be touching that one. Replacing the book, he found a smaller one on down the line called "My Little Demon."

"Hmm..." He placed it on the table in the middle of the room, and came back with a sandwich before opening it up. It turned out to be a young adult novel about a small demon getting transferred to heaven by accident and a form being misfiled.

Malachi returned to find Salazar laughing with tears in his eyes, and smiled as he walking into the library "Hello there Sal, I brought you something. It's hot though so be careful. What are you reading?" He grinned when he was shown the cover.

Salazar took a small bite of the steamy thing in his hand, "Oh wow, this is good. What is it?"

"The natives call it empanadas de manzana. It's an apple pastry. It uses those green apples you find sour, with cinnamon, sugar, and some other stuff so they aren't so strong." The angel watched as the smaller demon blew on the cooked apples before taking another bite. Mal liked it when he squirmed with delight, and food was almost always a sure bet to getting there. "Do you want to come see how I make pictures?" At the demon's nod he smiled. "Alright, I'm going to go get everything set up. When you finish that, I'll be down the hall. You might want to put on something with short sleeves though." He left laughing about the image of the demon drowning in fluff.

Salazar finished the pastry as fast as the bubbling hot thing allowed, changed, and walked his way towards the last door in the hall. He had yet to visit this room, and when he walked in it was filled with photographs. Pictures of beautiful things covered the walls and dangled from strings strewn across the room, as if to dry. It was like his own private art gallery.

An elderly couple holding hands, their faces filled with love, a sunset leaving rays of light streaking over mountains, lightning striking water, leaving its reflection glowing. A father raising his little girl in the air with laughter on their faces, a child leading a blind woman across the street, a baby brother and sister sleeping beside each other in a crib holding hands.

Salazar could feel a bit of warmth grow in his chest, and smiled at the tingling it brought. "Mal?"

"I'm in here." A black revolving door stood along one wall, and as Salazar went through, all he could see was darkness, then red.

"What a strange place. Why is it all red?"

Malachi looked up from a black bag that he currently had his hands in. "Ah, it's red because normal light will damage the negatives and the photo paper. I'm just putting them in canisters right now so I can develop them later." He removed his hands after a moment, then turned to the demon. "So, this is where I work. I've got some negatives already ready for printing if you want to watch. It's just black and white photos of random people for one of the art galleries around town, but it will show you the process."