Midas escorted Dubhra to her car. The creature seemed extremely confused by it, they had never seen one in their life and insisted on grabbing the edge of her shirt while she was driving.

"Is this some kind of magic trick to make an empty rock walk? Where did you learn it? It's shaking— and growling!"

She had never taken her gaze from the road. "Welcome to the 21st century, I guess."

***

Midas brings the metal beast to a halt with a low growl that shudders through its bones.

Now it’s quiet again.

Her door opens and shuts with a loud thud. She’s already outside. Moving fast.

They fumble with their own, the prosthetic hands are clumsy and unsure. The mechanism clicks wrong under their fingers, too modern, but it finally releases them. Cold air rushes in and their metallic feet hit the ground with too much force. They sway, almost folding under their own weight.

Their knees kiss the floor. It doesn’t even hurt, just another new texture, they’re too numb to register anything real.

“Get up,” she says, hurrying them.

They lift their head. A house waits in the near distance, more than that, a fancy forgotten relic, its corners are sharp, too sharp, all of dark stone, veined with vines that claw up the walls like they’re trying to drag it underground.

The windows are tall and there’s a strange stillness clinging to it.

Something should have ringed a warning bell in Dubhra’s head, yet nothing. They simply get up and follow.

Midas stands at the door, already unlocking it with a small ring of keys, the metal catching the last of the light like stars in her hands. She glances back at them, her eyes empty.

“Get in,” she says, as the door opens with a groan.

“I—“ They stand, barely. “This isn’t our house.”

“It’s mine,” she answers, not turning. “You said you wanted to come with me, didn’t you?”

They don’t question her.

She reaches out her good hand and when they don’t move fast enough, she takes their cold wrist, not cruelly but not gently either, just with purpose. Her grip is steady and they find comfort in it, even now, as she pulls them past the doorway and into the dark mouth of the house.

The door shuts behind them.

It feels final, but they don’t notice.

Inside, the air smells strange: clean, sweet, mixed with something like expensive perfume.

The lights are soft and golden, but they don’t flicker like candles, they burn steadily from glass orbs embedded in the ceiling. Everything glows.

A long room stretches out before them, the house is pretty big and spacious, just not as large as a castle. There's one big living room, what Dubhra guesses to be a kitchen and, above it all, a spiral staircase that winds toward the second floor.

There’s a hearth too, but no fire.

They don’t understand this place, but Midas’ presence will suffice.

Her and that pull at their arm.

Their whole body starts to hum, a strange ache in their chest that reaches all the way into their head. Midas moves fast, tightens the grip and urges them forward, up the stairs.

They can’t feel her hand on theirs, but they’re sure it’s warm. They lean on it.

Each step is a blur, the walls feel close, like they’re leaning in, listening. Midas doesn’t slow down, they keep going because she’s leading them.

They reach a room right in the middle of the hallway.

Dubhra steps inside and freezes. Their gaze sweeps upwards, their breath itches. On the ceiling, chains dangle like iron snakes, each one framing rusted hooks, jagged blades, twisted metal contraptions. Some look centuries old, others gleam like they have been sharpened yesterday. The faint scent of iron lingers in the air, sharp enough to taste.

A chilling feeling runs up their spine again as the silence between them grows uncomfortable and the creature finds themselves fidgeting with their prosthetic fingers. They’re pretty sure they’ve never been to this place, but she looks so familiar with it, contrary to how unfamiliar she looks with them. At last, they say, "Oh, what a nice room! It suits you, it's very you."

Midas turns her head. "What do you mean 'it's so me'?"

She is taken aback. Maybe she expected Dubhra to stiffen, to get a grip of what's happening to them, instead they are there looking at her with their tired but happy eyes, screaming I trust you.

"I mean, I didn't think you'd trust them enough to keep them on the ceiling, especially when it's hanging so low." Dubhra observes, more confused than bothered.

"I collect them. Better to keep them here than anywhere else." She keeps a cold, distant demeanor as her thoughts are rushing to something else.

"You collect them? You mean you don't use them?" They sound even maybe disappointed.

Midas gives them a distant smile. "Sometimes I do."

She's thoroughly looking through a huge box sitting in a corner of her room.

When she got out of her house she was so determined to quiet her thoughts, but now that this person is there in front of her, a lump is rapidly forming in her throat.

She turns around again.

And they are there, this otherworldly looking person, their back leaning against the door with a dazed expression as they look around.

Like they fell from the moon and landed on Earth face first.

She audibly exhales with frustration, then she looks at Dubhra again. From their head, what looked like strange braids at first glance stretch into tentacles, to touch the blades and torture devices hanging from the ceiling. It looks like they’re alive.

She grabs a dart from her box and quickly throws it at the creature, pointing at their head.

They move again.

Not their hands, not their arms.

Those tentacles, dark and sinuous, float in the air and intercept her darts.

Midas' eyes widen with shock. "What— is that?"

Dubhra plays with the spikes a bit and then walks closer, they place the weapons carefully back in the box. "What is what?" Their smile is tired and heavy now. "You don't really recognize me at all, do you?"

The realization hits her, Dubhra's words, their calm demeanor and the unsettling familiarity in their presence.

They aren't human. And those are tentacles, real ones.

She freezes.

The breath caught in her throat like stone.

She scrutinizes their mismatched eyes, like she's looking for something hidden deep inside them, somewhere she can't reach.

They insist. "I am your creature, look."

Midas, still in complete shock, drags herself slowly to get farther from them. "My creature?"

Her back is at the wall now, her fingers reach in the box, desperate for control.

Without thinking, she grabs a handful of knives, her eyes narrow and with one quick launch, she throws them in Dubhra's direction.

But the creature doesn't move, they stand there unbothered.

The knives are caught mid air, each one held effortlessly by their tentacles. The blades hang suspended for a moment before being gently and harmlessly laid to the floor.

Maybe they really had fell from the moon.

"Hahaha!" A dry laugh escapes them, it carries all their despair in finally admitting to themselves that this is a completely different place from the one they are used to. And this is Midas, without any doubt, just not the Midas that they have always known. "You almost got me there, just because I haven't had a chance to get my beauty sleep."

She looks at them, stunned. “What?”

She puts some weight on her feet and gets up. For some reason, the realization that this is not a human doesn't seem to scare her more than thinking that she's completely drifting away from her original plan.

The logical part of her brain urging to eliminate the unknown, now relegated to where she can't hear its noise, brings her to voice her thoughts. "Not even a little cut?"

"Well, I don't mean to offend you, but I know you enough to be able to predict how you will attack me." There’s absolutely no fear in their voice, if anything some sort of relief. Something that calms them down, as if to say I know her way too well. “I almost thought for a moment that you really wanted to kill me.”

Midas has already been arguing with herself, so she finds it difficult now to be able to think of any valid backup plan.

In the haze, she brushes off with ease the thought that the being before her could suddenly throw those knives all back at her, they would have already done it if they had wanted to.

Suddenly a realization, an enlightenment, something that brings her back to reason, it’s not too late to back away, this is not right.

"You're faster than you look," she tries a lighter tone.

"How can someone look fast or slow? Is that your preconception? Or is it because I'm wearing ridiculous clothes?"

The lack of answers makes her feel like the ground is slowly sweeping from under her feet, yet there's still something in the air, some kind of spell, calming her mind.

"How can I know these are not just your usual clothes? I don't know you at all."

Dubhra huffs, resigned. "Doesn't change the fact that I know you."

She can't quite wrap her head around it so she tries with something else. "What are you doing here, do you live in the forest?"

Dubhra takes a couple steps closer, as slow as they can, their prosthetics hitting the wooden floor and making little screeching noises. "I don't know. I don't know why I'm here." They sound quite desperate. "I am not from here, I'm not sure I'm even from this world. I tried to make a ritual to—" they stop suddenly, as if saying it only would cause their heart to collapse. "Something must have gone terribly wrong with it."

"And you've been thrown here," she states, nodding slightly, as if it’s not something that completely defies the laws of physics.

Dubhra notices it and for a moment seems to savor it, the taste of understanding. "I mean—" they add, "I appeared in the middle of a wooden house, completely naked, surrounded by people that were blabbering nonsense."

The slight frown disappears from Midas' face at Dubhra's sudden switch of tone, she tilts her head. "So you are a demon, they summoned you."

Dubhra groans theatrically, shooing for a moment the helplessness clouding their brain. "Oh no, not this demon thing again!" They inhale sharply. "The demon! The cursed soul that has been evoked with a terrible impression of a circle on the ground! Beware Midas, or I shall drag you in the pits of—"

They are cut off by Midas' voice, devoid of any tone or emotion. "Wow, that's convincing."

They drop their act and go back to their usual, yet slightly lighter self. "Thank you, I usually prefer to improvise but this time I had this already with me."

She takes a while to speak again. "No kidding."

"But if I were a demon, you'd be in serious trouble."

"What do you mean by what if? So that means I'm not?"

Dubhra throws their hands up in defeat. "I already told you! I am your creature, I could never harm you. Do I look that threatening?"

Midas' senses didn't usually lie, besides the fact that logically what's happening to her makes little to no sense and that she’s not exactly all in her right mind, she feels like giving them a chance. "To be fair, not at all."

Dubhra's mouth twists, like they are pondering a decision. "If I was actually a demon, would you try to cast a spell on me to free my body from evil?"

Her eyebrows frown. "I don't think so."

They bend slightly forward to look better at her face. "Wouldn't sound too bad.”

Midas’ small pupils dilate slightly, her urge not fully gone, just buried, trembling under her skin like a growl she wouldn’t voice.

“Okay,” she says. A tired whisper. “We played long enough. Now go, get out of my sight.”

She stares through them, as if she’s disappointed at the hunger still clinging to her.

But Dubhra doesn’t move. “I’d rather not,” they say softly.

She flinches. That voice, gentle, breathy, doesn't belong there with her. Not even if it belongs to a monstrous creature. Not in the aftermath of what she had almost done.

“I think it would be better for me to stay,” they add. “You won’t even notice me, I’m used to that.”

For a full second, she says nothing, her heartbeat still erratic.

She would have ripped them to shreds if those tentacles of theirs didn’t stop her. And now this creature, this not-human, this soft-eyed, moonlit thing is asking her if they could stay the night? “Do you even know what you’re asking me?”