A few days later, something fell out of the sky and landed in our garden.
I was in the kitchen when I heard it: a long, rushing whoosh, then a crash that rattled every dish on the shelf.
I ran to the window.
In the middle of our vegetable patch stood a very large demon in black armor, with curved horns, folded wings the color of midnight, and a tail as thick as my arm.
She held perfect military stillness, one hand over her heart, with the face of a woman about to deliver terrible news.
She was also standing directly on the tomato.
Behind me, the front door slammed open.
"VALERIA."
The general turned.
In the space of one second, her face went through relief, joy, and the first stirrings of horror as she saw the expression on her lord's face.
"My lord! I come in the name of the Third Legion, and I bring..."
"You are standing on my tomato."
"...Your what?"
"My. Tomato."
Noctavia's voice had dropped to the temperature of a grave. Dark light was already flickering around her fingers.
"Step. Away."
General Valeria looked down.
Under her left boot was a small green sprout, flattened against the dirt.
Slowly, like a woman defusing a bomb, she lifted her foot.
The sprout stayed flat for a moment.
Then, very slowly, it began to bend upward again.
"Oh," whispered Valeria. "I will fix it at once..."
She raised one hand, glowing with healing magic.
"DON'T USE MAGIC ON IT."
The general froze with her hand in the air.
The finest officer of the Third Legion, who had once held a pass against ten thousand human soldiers, looked at her Demon Lord with an expression of pure, helpless terror.
"I'll get a stick," I said, and went to get a stick.
By the time I had propped up the sprout, Noctavia had calmed down enough to invite her general inside.
It wasn't much of an invitation.
It was, "Come in, and take off your boots."
Valeria sat at our little kitchen table with her wings tucked behind the chair and her horns nearly scraping the ceiling, and a bowl of soup in front of her.
She looked at the bowl as if it might explode.
"Eat," said Noctavia.
"My lord, I did not come here to..."
"Eat."
She ate.
Her eyes widened.
"This is... acceptable," she said, in a strangled voice.
"I know."
Valeria's gaze slid to me.
I had been sitting across from her, smiling, since the moment she sat down.
I could see her working out what to do with me.
At last she squared her shoulders and said, in her most chilling voice:
"Human."
"Yes!"
"You are weak."
"Thank you!"
"...You are a worm."
"Please, go on."
Valeria's mouth opened.
Closed.
She turned to Noctavia with the look of a general whose battle plan had just been eaten by a goose.
"My lord. Why is she smiling?"
"She does that."
"Is it a trap?"
"No."
"A curse?"
"It's worse than that," said Noctavia. "It's her personality."
Over the soup, we learned why Valeria had come.
Officially, she said, she carried a message from the Legion. The generals awaited orders, and they had wished to know whether their lord was truly certain about the army.
"I answered that," said Noctavia.
"You did."
Valeria pulled a crumpled piece of paper from inside her gauntlet.
"'Yes. I am certain. Do not ask again. Eat something.'"
She looked up.
"My lord, is the last part an order?"
"Yes."
"...We held a feast. It was a very sad feast."
I tried to hold in my laughter, and I did not succeed.
Noctavia kicked me under the table.
"And unofficially?" she said.
The general set down her spoon.
"Unofficially," she said stiffly, "I wished to see for myself. Whether you were being held here. Whether the human had done something."
"I wasn't kidnapped."
"The letter said 'Do not ask again.' That is what a hostage would write."
"It's what I write when I'm annoyed."
Valeria considered this.
"...That is true."
After dinner, I washed the dishes, while Noctavia took Valeria out to the garden to "inspect the tomato," which really meant to talk without me.
I didn't mean to eavesdrop.
But the kitchen window was open, and I'm not a saint.
"You left the Black Throne for a human," said Valeria. It was not a question.
"I left it for me."
"My lord, I have served you for two hundred years. In all that time, I never once saw you look the way you did when you stood in that doorway."
"How did I look?"
Valeria was quiet for a moment.
"Like someone who isn't waiting to be attacked."
Noctavia didn't answer for a long time.
"She was persistent," she said at last.
"Persistent?"
"Very. She kept asking me to stay. She kept bringing me tea. She kept talking to me as though I was a normal person."
"That sounds like Elise."
"Yes."
"Annoyingly persistent."
"Very."
"Did you like that?"
There was a long silence.
"...Eventually."
Valeria gave a quiet laugh.
"Then the human won."
"No one won."
Noctavia's voice softened.
"I just wanted to stay with her."
"Then you made the right choice."
There was another silence.
"The Legion will remain where it stands," said Valeria, in a rough voice. "As ordered. For as long as you wish."
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me. It is merely my duty."
"Don't be difficult."
I heard a soft clink of armor, which I think was Valeria bowing very low.
I dried a plate and tried to look like I hadn't heard anything.
She left at dusk.
At the garden gate, she stopped and turned back.
"One more thing, my lord. There are humans camping near the cabin."
Noctavia's ears twitched.
"Humans?"
"Four of them. They've been there for several nights. I saw their camp from the air."
"Pilgrims," I said. "Maybe they're lost."
"Pilgrims don't usually bring spyglasses."
"They're curious," said Noctavia. "They'll lose interest."
Valeria looked toward the northern ridge.
"Perhaps."
Then she looked at me.
"Human."
"Yes?"
"You are... tolerable."
"Thank you!"
"That was not a compliment."
She spread her wings and took off, and the wind of her launch flattened the entire garden, including the stick I had used to prop up the tomato.
"THE TOMATO!"
It took us twenty minutes to fix it.
When we were done, Noctavia stayed outside in the dark, arms crossed, standing guard over a sprout that was barely taller than her boot.
"I'm not guarding it," she said, when I brought her a blanket.
"It's just in my line of sight."
I thought about what I had heard earlier.
She was persistent.
Translation: She was beautiful.
I did hear that.
I just didn't tell her I did.
I decided it was probably safer that way.
Noctavia would probably find some other way to give me something I liked anyway.
I could live with that.
I wrote She is tolerable in the dictionary that night.
I didn't write anything about the people camping near the cabin.
We forgot about them almost at once, and I would like to say that was a mistake, but at the time it felt very easy to forget.