D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

"Right so…" said Trigrath "the next story I want to tell you I sadly don't have pictures for. It was so adorable, and really does make me wonder how much of the jelly obsession in this family is genetic"

Kamiko squirmed in Trigrath's grip, trying to escape. She'd heard this story a few times now and it was repeated whenever requested. It was a favourite of her sisters and they loved to bring it up to other people, usually multiple times if they could pretend the other person forgot, and she'd heard enough of it. Sadly, Trigrath was determined to do his best to embarrass his daughter. She could not escape.

"Now, it was the first time I'd ever taking my little girl out shopping. I had her set up in this neat little floating seat that connected to the cart. It's… well, I'm sure you've seen them. They attach to shopping trolleys and allow for you to either move them around the cart and keep items in or you can turn them into a 'child mode' for kids… or well, I guess smaller demons in general, but mostly kids, and it can get fairly large.

"I won't say 'all kids' because I'm sure some of the larger demon species wouldn't fit but none of them live around here. We have sizing guidelines for the various areas of the hub." Said Trigrath

"Actually can you explain those? That sounds interesting." Asked Kat

Trigrath seemed to think on this for a moment. He really wanted to continue with his story and embarrass Kamiko as much as possible, giving her this slight reprieve might give her ideas on how to keep him distracted… on the other hand, he did want to be nice to Kat and it was an understandable question. "Sure" was he answer.

"So, it's not so much a law as it is a convenience thing. So… for example the cyclopes all stand at least twenty metres tall. This means that this area isn't really built to accommodate them.  They can still visit of course, but they can't expect the facilities to accommodate them. Like say… the school.

"There is another law that makes it so that school has to be available to everyone who lives here, but the guidelines mean that if you live here despite being to tall to fit in the building, the school isn't liable YOU are. It just helps to keep costs down. It's much too hard to ensure that demons with such major differences in size live together.

"Because of this there are those guidelines in place. Though, these aren't just one sided. In an area where cyclops live, I'M wouldn't always be able to use the facilities. The stairs would be too tall. Well, my physical strength means I could jump I suppose but it certainly wouldn't be convenient. Anyway, does that answer your question?"

Kat nodded. *That makes a lot of sense. I was just thinking of it sort of like disability ramps and all public buildings have them. I guess they went the other way and make sure that everyone has a public building somewhere and encourage them to live nearby. Though… I guess with teleportation it isn't as hard as it could be so it's not really a big deal.*

"Right now… back to the story. So I was alone with Kamiko and she was in the basket happily looking at all the shelves. I think she was admiring all the bright colours on display and the funny looking characters on a lot of the boxes. She had a nice one piece dress on that my mother bought for her and she hadn't quite yet lost her ahoge but she'd grown out the rest of her hair and she was adorable.

"So, I'm going around picking up what we need, and little Kamiko spots a box of jelly. She starts making… I can't say it was a scene. She was a very polite baby you see. However, I could tell she wanted my attention, and she's pointing rapidly at these boxes.

"It just so happened to be the family's favourite brand of Jelly. Not sure if you'd know it, but it's got a little jelly jewel golem on the front with a cartoonishly drawn smily face on it. Anyway, she started pointing at it and I thought to myself 'should I buy some? No… we already order it in bulk, we don't need more' so I explained that to her. That we didn't need this box because we already had it.

"This was clearly the wrong thing to say. Or well, I didn't realise it straight away but it was. So little Kamiko starts looking through the cart. I thought she was looking at more cool pictures again, but she was actually searching for the jelly box in the cart. She was a very smart babby. Yes you were weren't you" said Trigrath with a bit of baby talk at the end.

"Daaaad! I'm not two still. You don't need to talk to me like that" groaned Kamiko

Trigrath shrugged, lifting Kamiko easily with the movement and clearly unrepentant. "Eh, anyway, my smart little munchkin was searching for it and when she failed to find it, she got upset. Now, Kamiko didn't cry much as a child, so she wasn't crying at this fact, but she was very sad and she had a bright red face from trying to hold in the tears.

"So, this goes on for a little bit and I realise that I forgot something that just so happened to be in the same isle as the jelly. So, we had back and as we walk past Kamiko grabs a box of the stuff and puts it in the cart. I don't notice at the time, and keep going to find what I was after. I think it was some other sweet.

"Now, that should be the end, but I walked back past the jelly on the way out, and here's where things get strange. So Kamiko, she grabs two more boxes of jelly on the way back as we continue shopping. One isle down. Two isles down. Three isles down, and I start to notice something. Kamiko's looking around, but now she's rather worried.

"I can see something is bothering her, but she can't really talk properly at this point, so I pat her on the head, and that seems to cheer her up for a bit. Another isle down, and then she starts panicking again. So… I take her off to the side, and I say 'what's wrong darling'" Kamiko's face is already bright red knowing what's about to come. "and she says to me 'am I a bad girl?'"

"Now, I have no idea why she'd think that, so I just ask, 'do you think you are?' and she struggles with that for a while. I actually considered just going on with the shopping and dealing with it later, but I'd learned from six other daughters that for things like this, you just have to wait and give them time.

"Eventually, she decides she can't figure it out, so she says 'I dunno daddy, I think I did a bad thing' though it sounded a lot worse then that. Once again, six daughters, you learn to speak sad child. So, I give her another pat on the head and a quick hug and I say 'Do you wanna tell me what you did?' which, was probably my best move of the day. Never ask them to tell you, ask them if they want to tell you. Works almost every time.

"She then nods at me and I give her a little kiss on the head. She smiles at me for a moment before getting sad and saying 'I took the jelly', which made no sense at the time. We're still in the shops we haven't paid for anything yet so I ask 'what do you mean'

"And she gives me the biggest puppy dog eyes and says to me 'when we went past I took the jelly' and it was just the cutest thing I'd ever seen. I wanted to laugh. To this day, I almost wish I'd laughed. But, it wasn't a laughing matter. Jelly is serious business of course" Trigrath said in the least serious voice possible "so now I'm stuck. Should I explain the complex inner workings of the supermarket to a two year old and why it isn't stealing because you haven't left the shops…

"Or do I accept that it was sort of stealing, or really just close enough in her mind, and tell her that she did a bad thing but it's ok. It's a tough choice, because while option two is sort of lying, I don't exactly want to encourage her to steal things and it might go over her head. So, I pulled up my britches, and explained as carefully as I could why it wasn't stealing, but that it was still bad.

"Took me a good twenty minutes. Then we put the jelly back and she started crying. Just lightly, like I'd stolen the light from her eyes. So of course, we walk out of the store with five more boxes of jelly" finished Trigrath