“Wait, soulmates actually exist?” The boy stared wide eyed at the demon.

“Of all the things to be skeptical of, soulmates are what you choose?” The demon spread her wings out and laid back to stare at the stars.

“To be fair, it’s hard not to be skeptical of the good things in life after the literal apocalypse.”

“Ok, granted. But yeah, soulmates exist.”

“So how does that work, like is there actually a destined mate for everyone or….”

“Not necessarily.” She dismissed his assumption with a wave. “So when life began there were souls. Souls are made of this cosmic energy yada yada yada. But eventually it was given form and that form is a soul. For some reason, souls came in pairs. Those are soulmates.”

“But, why do we seem to always end up with the wrong people?”

“Soulmates don’t have to be romantic. Although, if you aren’t already in love with someone when you meet them, you will probably fall in love with them.”

“So soulmates will definitely meet?”

“They’re supposed to, however the worlds have expanded so much that it’s possible one’s exact soulmate is in another universe or even just across the world and neither ends up taking the opportunity that would allow them to meet.”

“Exact soulmate? There are not exact soulmates?”

“Yeah, see, at some point, souls stopped popping out of the magic space stuff. Guess it ran out of juice. Not including the true immortals, there were probably 30,000 souls.”

“But that’s not even enough souls to populate this world! Or at least it wouldn’t have been.” He actually had no idea how many souls were left in this world.

“Nope. That’s when the souls started splitting.”

“Splitting, so we are all just fragments of souls?”

“No, more like the souls started to have children, although no sex was involved.”

“That’s called asexual reproduction. Bacteria does it.”

“Thanks, I could have gone the rest of my existence without comparing souls to bacteria though.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought of souls being anything like Pestilence’s little pets.

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, soulmates always split at the same time, and the souls of those two souls are soulmates, and it goes on from there.”

“So what you’re saying is that we can find people with souls that came from our soulmate’s soul or our soulmate’s soul came from and it would be hard to tell the difference?”

“If it’s the same type of soul, yeah. You can even be happily married to one like that.”

“Type of soul?”

“There are technically two types of souls even though no two souls are exactly the same. What’s that popular Taoist symbol that stands for the duality of nature?” She cusped her hands around each other, making a circle.

“Um, yin yang comes to mind?”

“That’s the one. Some souls are yin, some are yang. One soulmate is yin, one soulmate is yang.”

“I thought yin yang represents good and evil and light and dark.”

“Light and dark yes, good and evil are too subjective but it can be used that way. They also represent masculinity and femininity.”

“Bleh, are you saying only men and women can be soulmates cause that’s homophobic.”

“How many times do I have to say that soulmates aren’t inherently romantic? And no, I said masculine and feminine, not boy and girl. There is a difference. There are plenty of women with yang souls, myself included, and plenty of men with yin souls. Think of masculine as more of a protector/warrior thing and feminine as more of a nurturer thing.”

“Oh, I guess that makes sense."

“There are other factors to what makes a soul, but that one is kinda important for soulmates. Someone whose soul is 90% yin and 10% yang will have a soulmate who is 10% yin and 90% yang. People’s sex at birth isn’t decided by yin or yang, that's just chance and I guess sciencey stuff.”

“So, are we just attracted to people with similar but opposite ratios?”

“Yep. Although anyone can be friends with anyone, you’ll find that the people you like best are going to be those closest to your soulmates ratio. In general, the more a person’s soul resembles your soulmate's, the more you’ll like them.”

“That makes the tendency to choose people that are bad for us more confusing.”

“Not really, since having all their worst qualities still makes them similar to your soulmate.” The demon shrugs. Humans are complicated and weird so she doesn't question their choices in partners.

“So people who are attracted to people who will abuse them, their soulmate shares some kind of quality with them?”

“Maybe their soulmate is naturally aggressive, so they look for aggressive types, or maybe the qualities they like have nothing to do with that. Plus, people are more than just their souls. Your experiences shape your personality too.”

“So it's just impossible to know."

"Look, that's a problem with humans. You are so afraid of being wrong. You think you need to know, but you don't. Soulmates aren't an end all be all of relationships. Still, I guess the idea of a person who is tailor made to be your companion in this crazy world is tempting."

"Since you and I get along so well…"

"No, we are not soulmates."

"No, I just came to the realization I might have a yin soul."

"Yeah. We're pretty good examples of men with yin souls and women with yang souls."

“So what now?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I do with this information? How do I find my soulmate? Does it even matter?”

“Well, I can answer that last one, no. Your life shouldn’t change with this knowledge. Fate will provide an opportunity to meet your soulmate, and you will hopefully take it, but it doesn’t matter if you do. You live a full and complete life without them.” She says this and means it, but cant help but feel hypocritical, considering how she betrayed all of Hell for her own soulmate. She reaches her hand to the sky and hopes they did not reincarnate back into this world where demons rule.