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“Feel better about what?”

“About… nothing!” I manically refreshed my inbox, pressing down too hard on the mouse. “I’m great. I’m always great. Everything’s going great.”

“Okay, let’s talk it through,” Laki said in their annoyingly zen way, but the familiar, soothing sound of their voice did get me to stop clicking.

Laki was the third oldest—only by a few minutes—after me and our sister Daga. They’d been as wild as me when we were kids. Well, until our parents dissolved their matehood and I suddenly felt this weird, overwhelming pressure to help our mom when she took on two jobs to make ends meet in our suddenly single-income household.

Aunt Indi and Uncle Bax had helped out a lot, but there were many nights when I had to make dinner for all my siblings, carefully weighing and portioning our food to make sure everyone got enough. Barking at them until they’d done their homework. Forcing them all to have baths and go to bed at a reasonable time.

I could remember how stressed Mom had been at first, even though it had been so much better for us all mentally without our asshole dad still in the house. He hadn’t been around much even while they were still mated, working long hours and staying out late, but when he had been home, the house had always felt tense. He’d been a total shithead to Greid, calling him a runt when he wasn’t outright ignoring him. He hadn’t treated the rest of us much better. It was like we were just a huge inconvenience. Things cluttering up his house and getting in the way.

“You’re attracted to your weird human event planner.” Laki’s calm voice made my spine snap straight, ears fluttering wildly.

I let out a harsh bark of laughter. “What? No, I’m not. Good one, dude.”

“Okay, well let’s assume for a second that you are,” Laki said steadily. “Do you have a problem with that? Like, do you think it’s weird or wrong because she’s human?”

“What? No, I don’t think it’s weird or wrong to be attracted to humans. I’m just not.”

They were silent for a second. “So… just a blanket ‘no’. You don’t think there’s a single human in the entire world you could be attracted to.”

Okay, well, when they put it like that it sounded unreasonable. “No, I’m not saying that. I’ve just never really thought about it. Are you saying you’ve found humans attractive before?”

“Well yeah.”

I paused at that. “What, really?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait, have you ever… you know, with a human?”

Laki chuckled. “Yeah, dude.”

“What?” How did I not know this? I was pretty sure I would’ve noticed my own sibling dating a human. “When?”

“When I was travelling,” they said casually. “Met a human girl in Cambodia and we dated for a while. Had a one-night stand with a human dude in Spain, too.”

“But how?” I didn’t understand how all these demiurgus were having sex with humans when all we’d ever been taught in sex ed was that it wasn’t possible.

Laki laughed. “It’s pretty much the same as fucking a demiurgus, dude. Just less aggressive. And I can’t speak for Beryl and Greid, but it’s not like I have a dick to worry about hurting them with.”

I rolled my eyes. “No, really? It’s not like I grew up with you or anything. I just meant… humans are so small. And… weak.”

“Not necessarily.”

I struggled to think of another reason. “They’re… They don’t even have tails.”

Tailplay was always fun. I was very partial to gripping the base of a woman’s tail while I fucked her from behind.

Laki was silent for a moment. “Uh… can’t say that came up.”

My ears fluttered. “No, yeah, I mean, I guess that’s not relevant, but… we were always taught at school that humans are so completely different to us. In, uh, those ways.”

We’d gone to a mixed school, but for some of our classes, like sex ed and gym class, humans and demiurgus had been separated. Demiurgus gym class always tended to get a little… out of hand.

Most had ended in full-on brawls.

Most of those brawls had been started by me and Laki.