puerilisgoetia | Excerpt: Choosing Forms

"The way I see it," Malthus begins, stretching out a wing, "we have a few options when it comes to our human disguises." The others look like they're listening to him - Aim even has all three heads pointed in his direction - so he goes on. "If we choose to take on the form of adults, we'll be expected to take on jobs. Otherwise, being able to provide for ourselves will be suspicious, and none of us want to live that cheaply, do we?"

Paimon shakes his head. "Our self-control is already being tested. Why provide more difficulties for ourselves?"

"Exactly. And if we take forms old enough that they wouldn't be working, we'd be too limited in moving around human society. But if we took the forms of children, our only requirement would be to go to school. If we allowed no one to enter our house, then no one would be the wiser that we had no adult human with us," Malthus says. "Children are often ignored in human society, so we would be able to move secretly."

"One of us could take an adult form," Leraje says, one hand on his hip. "Paimon and I already look human enough, besides the camel."

Aim speaks from his cat head. "Are you willing to pretend to parent any of us, Leraje?"

Leraje stays silent for a moment, before admitting, "Not exactly."

"You would not know the beginnings of how to seem to raise children. I would simply have no patience for it." Paimon turns back to Malthus. "Your idea is sound. I propose that we take the forms of human children for our stay on Earth. Are there further objections?"

None of them contradict him, perhaps because he is the highest-ranked demon in the room by far.

"So let's get on with it," says Barbas. "It's not like we'll be stuck like this for that long."

"...I wonder about that." Still, Malthus takes a moment to decide the basics of his new form, and transforms.