Cemeteries were so... dull. They lacked in both color and life, and at least a million people lay dead in the ground, where they would rest forever. Sleep came easily for the rest of eternity, and nobody had to worry about anything under the ground.

But that's what was bothering him. They rested forever, and they wouldn't come back. They were dead, forever, and that was the end of that. How could they rest, so peacefully? How... did they die?

There were plenty of ghosts out there today, but what did that mean? Did that mean that they died? Why, could they no longer return to their bodies? Why did they get to live on earth... again, for the rest of forever, instead of resting? Was that fair? Was that... what happened when someone died? Their soul simply roamed the lonely streets, waiting for the earth to be destroyed?

Lucifer sat, crouched, beside his mother's grave, head buried in his palm. The cold night air settled into his bones and chilled him, and the wind whistled past him, blew his actually combed, dark brown hair every which way, and stung his face. But Lucifer didn't move at all. "Wish... you... were here." The English words, even though he was now fluent at speaking English, seemed so foreign to him. The words poured out of his mouth like liquid before he even thought about it. The words solemnly formed on his lips.

He was barely clothed for a night like this. Plain, new beige cargo pants. Short sleeved t-shirt with a black turtleneck over top of it. His old black combat boots were fit comfortably on his feet, and the heels were lifted off the ground as he sat on his heels, staring at the grave with sad, green eyes. The full, bright moon made his eyes glint slightly, while tears were forming his eyes.

Finally, he moved. He wiped the tears out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. No. I must... remain strong, right? he thought, though he wasn't so sure about it.

"Miss... you... mom," his words came out in a slow murmur this time, almost as if he had to fight to say those words.

When he looked at that grave, it made him filled with more sorrow than he had felt in his entire life. That was his mother. His one and only. He tried to remain strong.

Noch ist Polen nicht verloren... Down but not out...

"What are you doing?" Barbello asked. It was perched on a tombstone, clawed feet gripping the stone like a hawk or a tyrannosaurus. "You're leaking seawater."
Barbello sniffed, its deep black eyes forming that inevitable maroon spark. It had a tendency to dance in the depths of Barbello's corneas, slowly, full of menace.But to be frank Barbello didn't need any help on that count.

Today it had decided to call itself a she. The human personal pronoun was amusing to her. Humans had such odd naming traditions. THey named everything. Often in confusing ways. Certain words meant the same thing but sounded different. Others sounded exactly the same but meant something like 'wambat'.

This odd shaped human was staring at one of these funny stones with its eyes. It was leaking. Barbello could smell the scent. She snuffled again behind her mask.

She hoped this human wouldn't run away. It hurt her feelings when they did that. She supposed they had reasons, yes, but she wasn't always hungry.

The demon had been thought kind of cute in the hell dimension. At least until her 1000th year, when she'd gotten rebellious.

Barbello sighed. BEings were so unhelpful. Even demons. They hadn't supported her new habits. They hadn't understood her at all. It wasn't about the garments--it was about her feelings. Her inner sadness!
Her gnarled body was wrapped neck to toes in strips of supple leather. Black, because it was her favourite, with bits of red thrown in for good measure. Barbello considered herself an artist. Her demon poetry was improving. But there was no one here to listen. Her sires would have laughed at her, too.

She was glad the human couldn't see her face.

As always, it was covered with a red leather mask that covered chin to just below her large and catlike eyes. She didn't like them. Too human. Humans were gross. She'd never had the scaley lizard bumps that were so fashionable nowadays. Instead they were smooth with dark lashes. Imagine! Lashes!
She'd started wearing her hair in a mohawk after they'd grown in. It was a fiery red, a good offset to her black and nubbly skull.

She supposed she'd been getting more human with each day. But the humans had had one good idea. This metal-skin thing. Take the metal, poke it in your skin. It was great. She had rings of metal all the way up her large and pointy ears.
Some of the other humans had tried this style. She'd seen their metal bits glistening and jingling. It was very exciting. But hard to chew.

She betted her parents wouldn't take her back now, even if the dimensional time gap had suddenly sucked her back in.

You see, Barbello may have been a demon of the sixth layer...but she was also...shamefully...a humanitarian. And she dressed in human skin. It was appalling. She had no good taste. She was doomed to be laughed at forever at if she ever went to any demon parties. Barbello sniffed.

Oh right, this human was still here. Her stomach growled but she ignored it. She hunched over the stone and peered at the being.

"You're leaking!"

Wha...?

It took Lucifer a moment to realize that he was being talked to, and to register what the voice was saying. A voice that Lucifer couldn't place on either a man or a woman, as it didn't have any particular... masculine or feminine tone to it. Instead, it sounded... genderless. It was hard to place.

"I'm what?" He sounded offended. He had every reason to be offended. It was not exactly polite to stroll in on one's personal matters like its some kind of show. Plus, Lucifer is easily offended.

He brushed his bangs out of his eyes with his left hand, that was his good arm. The other one, his right arm, was weak from being shot and sliced open, so lately, he didn't use it much.

"Could you please explain to me what you mean?" He asked in a raspy voice, indicating that he was quite upset, and squinted his green eyes at the bright light the moon was emitting.

He looked over, to barely make out a figure perched on a tombstone. Huh. Where had he seen this scenario before? Dark, depressing night, vampire poking in his personal things. How odd. That voice, though, however much he wanted it to be, was not the vampire's. It belonged to someone else.

Barbello sighed. Human language was so inaccurate.

She considered leaping off teh tombstone and landing next to the human, but she was beginning to realize that such actions were frightening to them. They were jumpy creatures. She supposed that came from having bodies that were just sacks of flesh.

So Barbello paused for a moment and then answered, "Don't be afraid, but you're leaking salty water. From your face. Its weird." The human was looking at her strangely. THe moon was very bright, something usually not in Barbello's favour.
She hoped the being wouldn't run.
She wasn't hungry right now, honest. But maybe he would listen to some of her poetry...? Leaking seawater might mean something, she suddenly thought. Like when the humans bunched their faces at you. Barbello quashed a little wave of excitement. This could be useful!

She had eaten her last human a few weeks ago. It had been a sorry affair. It had turned out to be a feisty morsel with long hair. It had leaked seawater too.

Barbello was suddenly uncomfortable, but she didn't know why.

Human language? Assuming there are demon languages?

He could still hardly make out the figure of Barbello, but after a few minutes of squinting against the moonlight, gave up trying to see her. Whoever was talking to him obviously didn't want to be seen. After all, maybe it was a good thing that he couldn't see her, or he would've been scared... shitless, for lack of a better word on Lucifer's behalf.

"Afraid?" He questioned wiping more "sea water" out of his eyes, that was partly blurring his vision. "No, not afraid. They're tears." Huh. Funny, how that works. Lucifer doesn't question at all how she refers to tears, and doesn't think anything of the fact that she doesn't even know the correct term for them.

And yet, the fact that she was inhuman never crossed his small little mortal brain.

Barbello was instantly intrigued. "Tears?"
She had heard this mentioned before. Several times in fact. Tears were near the waterfront. Large, usually hard structures. But that didn't appear to make sense. Perhaps the being was being poetic. Metaphorical, even! This was Barbello's type of human.
She scampered forward. "Does this mean you are a poet? I love poets. They're just...just...so..." Barb lapsed suddenly into Demon tongue in a gush of clicks, gutteral syllables, and one long wail. Behind her mask, her hideous face formed a look of bliss. She rolled her eyes skyward.
"Your language is insufficient," Barbello sighed.
"To translate, I said that poetry makes my loins shiver." She fixed him with her oddly pretty gaze. "It is pity that this 'english' is such a piece of excrement."

"Of course, tears." He eyed what he could see of the creature with an odd expression. Face twisted in an odd way, brows wrinkled. "No, not a poet. It's a... human term, for emotion. Tears. Do you understand?" Apparently Lucifer found her blunt way of describing things... almost disturbing, in a manner.

"Poetry... there's lots of it out there." He fell backwards onto his buttocks, tired of supporting himself on his heels.

"And yes, it is a pity."

There's nothing strange about conversing with a demon, right?

Barbello pondered this.
SHe would have liked to say that her superior demon intelligence effortlessly grasped what the human was saying, but it wasn't so. In fact, she was confused.

Barbello hated being confused.

She had never been at the top of her class in demon school. By demon standards...well, Barbello just wasn't the brightest lightbulb in the box. Several most unpleasant demons had made this clear to her. In agonizing sadness, her skin had responded by forming pebbly bumps. Not even the good ones, the scaley ones that make one an instant fashion hotplate. No, these were ones of pain and rejection.

Barbello hunched her shoulders. "I don't like being confused!" she announced, eyes darting to the side. "It makes me feel insignificant! I don't like it."

Oddly, the human had shifted its mass onto its lower torso, which was bent splendidly in half. Barbello supposed this was a human mannerism. Strange. Demons seldom did anything but stand, and if they say, it was with all four limbs.
Barbello didn't like feeling left out.
She did her best to fold herself as well, and lowered herself to the ground.
She fixed him with her gaze.

"Tell me, human, why you are the way you are. If your tongue fails to make poetry and you leak 'tears'...well, something must be wrong with the species." She leaned forward, studying the human's head. "Deficient."