31 Prompts: sticks and stones

Abaddon Lucifer

Good morning, Milan!  I call out cheerily in the mindspeech, accidentally waking Mephis, who growls at me and pulls his pillow over his head in an attempt to get back to sleep.  It might be 6:45 in Milan—where I currently live—but it’s midnight in Churchill, Canada, where Mephis lives.

I don’t bother apologizing; if he wants one, he’ll ask when he actually wants to be awake.  In any case, I need to be getting to my job at the Italian Stock Exchange in about a half hour, so I walk over to the small sink across from my bed and splash some water on my face.  I then pull on one of me more expensive suits, careful not to rip it when I thread me wings through the holes in the back of the jacket and me tail through the one in the seat of me pants.  It near killed me to put those holes there, but if I ever wanted to actually wear it, I had to do it.  As Satan very bluntly pointed out.

I’m in something of a silver mood today, so that was the type of jewelry I wore:  silver, no gems, largely geometric design.  And not a lot, either; me bosses don’t like it when I flaunt me wealth too much, and me Italian isn’t all that great.  Well, it’s good enough to let me get and hold a job in an Italian city…just don’t ask me to cuss or hold me own in a prolonged conversation.  I speak most fluently the language of money and riches.

I kindly greet the elderly members of me apartment complex when I clatter noisily down the concrete stairs.  Mrs. Bartolomeo wants to stop me and talk about her cats again, and I have to politely refuse, promising her that I’ll come by later on today and visit.  Maybe it’s weird that I’m such a people person, but maybe not; either way, it’s who I am, and I don’t really care.

I’ve never seen the need to drive in Milan; the streets are quite narrow in a lot of places, only wide enough to permit one car through at a time.  The guy who goes first—and this surprised me when I found out the first time, too—is the guy who cusses the loudest.  Sama was listening at the time, and he cracked up.  And that made Belial crack up, which made Satan nervous, which made everyone else crack up.  Including me.

In any case, because of both those reasons, I have no car.  I walk/run/glide the five miles to work every morning and evening.  It’s good exercise, and I also get to meet a lot of interesting people.  Some of them I liked, others I didn’t.

The people who are threatening me with heavy clubs and guns fall very firmly into the second category.  I gather after several seconds of listening to the obvious leader’s growling that they wanted me money and jewelry and they’d hurt me if I didn’t hand it over within the next thirty seconds.

“Molto gli darò i miei soldi,” I growled back in me best Italian, and I whipped me stinger out and forwards, towards the leader’s neck.  He dropped to the ground, and the rest attacked me instantly.

It would have gone pretty badly if a very familiar presence hadn’t suddenly exploded on me mind.  A bellow shook the alley, and two thugs were hurled into opposite walls.  Satan smashed his fist into another thug’s face, just barely not killing him, and the rest scattered, but for one very foolish one with a particularly large club.

Abaddon?  Satan began, wanting to know how to say something in Italian.  I told him my best guess, and he then walked forwards, not even crying out under the rain of blows the thug delivered.

The moment he was close enough, Satan grabbed his wrist, breaking it and forcing him to drop the club, and then he hoisted the poor man up by his neck and repeated my rough translation very softly, intended for the thug’s ears alone.

“I bastoni e le pietre possono rompere le mie ossa, ma non riterrò una cosa.  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I won’t feel a thing.”