Kharon waited for Victoria to find out what abilities she had. He was interested in what the girl would do and think, if she would try to do another stupid thing.

Her fingers, soft and gently were touching Lucifer’s feather, transporting all the feelings and painful memories into her soul. They hid. They didn’t want to be discovered. They fussed and swarmed around like gnat-warms. But it was enough for Victoria as well as for Kharon.

The girl completely forgot about the spirit with the loop on its neck, recalling Lucifer’s pictures, his burgundy eyes and fir scent. Because of understating his life, a pity and sorrow woke up for the Lord of hell. What a man with a loop?

That night Kharon and Victoria slept together. On the big bed. It was their first night.

She dreamt about a thick stand of fir trees and a huge eagle-owl which hooted so loud, looking at the world with its big yellow eyes. Half asleep Victoria felt unbelievable peacefulness and calmness. Her beloved man’s warm hands were touching her relaxed body all the night. It was the first time for the long time when Victoria was really relaxed.

That night Kharon covered her body with light kisses. Every inch was enveloped with miracle caress. It was the first time when he felt everything in a different way because his life wasn’t in a dream. He liked so much that new, improved feeling. The girl’s answer was not tricked by a dessert of dream but deliberated.

That night they had nothing between them. Victoria kept on insisting on romanticism and flourished time of court. Kharon was amazed. All what he could do with this woman of the Planet Earth, was to be amazed.

26

^th

September 2013 (Thursday)

The month passed since Lucifer and Victoria had concluded the deal.

September was stealing up to the end. It was getting colder. But wagtails and starlings were still trampling with their little legs the merciless causeways and railway station forecourts seeking for food. They were waiting for people to give them some crumbs as blackflies had hidden already. Fortunately, not all people were mean and in a hurry. They feed plump birds and their fledgy nestlings before they flew away.

Leaves were slowly getting yellow and falling. In the silent park leaves were heard to come off the sleepy treetops and whispering, falling slowly down, dancing in light vorticity. Anyone would be amazed by their marvellous colour. There were so many colours and tinctures on trees, leaves and grass. Were there so many names for all those colours of autumn palette?

Of course, it rained. It rained in a soft, monotonous way but not torrential. Water whispered and whispered about something from the sky. Nobody listened to it. All the world had music in its ears, its neck is enveloped with the wires, devastating its mind with suffering hypoxia of artificial and non-existed sounds. The rain still whispered and whispered, the ground exhaled fragrance before to fall asleep.

For a month Victoria had job that she had got with Kharon’s help. She like her job and Olga Vladimirovna kept on mumbling that her daughter had to be a doctor not a street painter. There were quarrels and scandals. The mother and the daughter understood each other less and less.

Olga Vladimirovna didn’t want to admit the fact that her daughter was already an adult. She could be let to a life sea, sometimes giving a piece of advice if she asked for, but her mum shouldn’t trust down throat.

For the month after work Victoria met her mysterious friend. She was going deeper and deeper into unheard love for him. She wanted always to see him. She wanted his voice to sound in her head and ears for her entire life. Victoria was filled with her desires for the demon. She always touched his hands, examined his long, beautiful fingers, neatly trimmed fingernails, soft skin. His hands didn’t face with household use not orally neither in dictionary.

Sometimes when she stayed with the demon at nights, Victoria liked looking at his fabulous trunk. She liked seeing his fingers move awkwardly, hardly being able to button his shirt and how quickly they unbuttoned it. She liked seeing them tear off cloth when he didn’t succeed in undoing just one button.

His rarely laughed. Kharon nearly always frowned or was suspicious. He studied to live with people. It didn’t amuse him. Besides after the demon had noticed that Moscow wasn’t too much smiley, especially when it was about mornings, Kharon stopped smiling at streets at all, accepting it as ill-mannered and idiotism sign.

Victoria tried to explain that people in Moscow had an original opinion about laughing. Russian people didn’t use to smile just for nothing: it was a bad behaviour, an imbecility wave. But it didn’t mean that in Moscow laughing was tabooed. You just needed to find a good reason to smile and laugh and also convince others that you were mentally healthy, here was your reason to laugh. Kharon was difficult to understand it. He was easier to say good-bye to his smile than to adapt to changeable social mood.

Victoria liked walking with Kharon. The demon sometimes examined with pleasure and admire one or another historically significant building, being amused with human abilities: it turned out that people were capable not only of destroying but also of creating.

Vic often argued with Kharon about this theme. She wasn’t fascinated by the modern buildings; most likely she was irritated with them. She was perplexed with obscure tendency to create phallic forms and structures. Where had all worthy architectures gone who had had perfect imagination and abilities to realize all of those into life? Why were there similar skyscrapers, spread all over the world? It was ok with the world, but did they try to fill Moscow with lean, tasteless and simple buildings everywhere?

Certainly, Kharon enjoyed both modern buildings and past centuries architecture. It was simpler for him as he had had no chance to examine carefully none of them before Victoria appeared.

They walked over the whole capital of Russia on foot in the evenings, speaking about everything what they thought of. The demon confessed that he hellishly liked Moscow, its buildings, structure and movement, frowned people who, despite their gloominess, were ready to help and smile at any time. He liked movement most of all. It was everywhere in Moscow: on the roads, under the ground, in the sky, in buildings and basements, on roofs and railways. There was nothing static in this city. The tartar representatives were fascinated with crazy Russian chaotic conditions.

No Victoria’s arguments worked that to live constantly in turmoil was very difficult, it sucked out of you your energy… life in the long run. Moscow absorbed everything. It was like a black hole, swallowed up you. Few people could notice them be in the centre of the vile city abyss. That was because no one wanted to run away from it.

Moscow made most part of its population exist but not live. It managed to keep millions of people with its beauty and massiveness. Perhaps it was tired of us but due to its habit it kept on absorbing and sucking surrounding materials.

Victoria told about miracles of underground life in the capital, about true architecture that was covered under the strata of the ground.

The demon visited every metro station in the underground, having looked over great mosaics, statues, patterns, frescos… It would be nothing to say that he was shocked. He didn’t suppose people to have done those. People weren’t supposed to have definitions of beauty and ability to give life to beauty.

Certainly, Kharon couldn’t help seeing female part of Moscow. He happened to be with people, but it hadn’t been for so long and as a rule it’d been in Europe and its buttoned-up ladies. He had one-day relations and none of those women did even try to have a walk with Kharon. None of them gave him a possibility to see also beautiful medieval London, pretentious Paris and laid down base of the Elfie Tower. He saw nothing but respectable ladies who were preoccupied with their own desires when they, hiding from their husbands, enjoyed sins of the flesh not only with people but with incubi. Before Kharon had seen nothing bad of it. The demon was had been created to satisfy the fair sex, what did he have to complaint of?