Chapter Text
Kadar was more of a magpie and less of a demon. Every time he escaped to the surface, he came back bearing increasingly bizarre gifts. Once it had been a camel, once a dentist’s chair and several times now a pile of socks and phone cords that he insisted incited chaos on a grand scale.
But never before had his brother burst through the barrier between their pleasantly warm home and the muddy surface world with anything so monumentally stupid as a full-grown human. It was not forbidden (exactly) to kidnap humans and bring them back but it was generally frowned up on as a practice. Kadar rolled into the living room knocking furniture out of his way as he went. HIs thick wings closed around his body to make himself as much like a ball as possible before he flopped out on his belly and jumped upward. The pride on his face was obnoxious. There was dirt all over his clothes and several scratches across his neck and chest. His hair was thick with filth and his bare arms were littered with deep gouges in his skin as he motioned downward.
The human was already springing to his feet, the alarm at having been ripped through a thin layer of reality into an alternate plane evident on his face. He was feral (at best) with bare teeth and sharp fingernails.
“We are not keeping it,” Malik said. His own wings flexed behind his back as he looked at the human. It was tall and suitably strong but it was still a human and the care and keeping of such a creature was simply more than effort than Malik was willing to expend.
“Him,” Kadar corrected. He said, “his name is Altair. You will like him. I found him fighting other humans. He killed them all with only a knife!” He was clearly proud of the stray he’d found. "Can’t we keep him, Malik?“
Malik did not like humans. They were made of fragile skin and breakable bones. They were flightless and pale and cold to the touch. "It does not want to stay.”
“He,” the human corrected.
Malik glared at him. Anger flushed his eyes red and the sight was usually enough to make even the bravest of humans back down. This one only stiffened and refused to be intimidated. "It does not belong here. It must have an owner already.“
"Nobody owns me,” the human snapped.
Kadar was delighted. "See! Nobody owns him. We are keeping him. You’ll see. He’ll be perfect.“
Malik refused to believe that but he left Kadar to make their new human a nest in the spare bit of space their home still had. He listened to Kadar arguing with the human about how it had to eat and when the human persisted in starvation as a means of protest, Kadar relented.
This went on for many days. Kadar trying to coax the human into accepting its new life and the human refusing on all accounts to be anything more than intensely displeased with its lot in life. At the end of a week, the human crept into the small kitchen of their home on its toes and came to a brief stop when it found Malik making himself food.
"Hungry?” Malik asked. He held out a skewer for the human to take if he wanted it. The look of distinct distrust did not waver even when the human took it from him. "It will not be so bad,“ Malik said softly.
"You’re demons,” Altair said. He made a point of motioning at the stretched black skin of his wings and the curled twist of his horns when he said it. He might have eventually happened on the scales that covered the backs of his shoulders if not for how he seemed to have stalled out in his ability to comprehend anything.
“Even so,” Malik said. "Adapt or die. You cannot go back. You will not survive if Kadar decides to release you into the wild. The hounds have a taste for human flesh.“ Then he handed another skewer over to the human who took it with a frown.