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"Honey, did you see that?"
"See what?"
"I could've sworn that I just saw two tieflings on the other side of the plaza."
"Dear, tieflings are quite common in these parts."
"But they were both purple."
Aven and Lilac had arrived in this bustling city a few hours ago, travel-worn and tired, but at least Lilac's wound was all but healed by now. They'd been travelling together for almost a month already, and Aven couldn't help but feel some sort of familial bond towards the other tiefling, something beyond just the fact that they were both purple that Aven couldn't quite place. He had learned a lot about Lilac, although still had no idea where Lilac had come from on the day that he found him. Lilac was a paladin, much like Delearys (that thought was still painful to Aven), although Lilac's deity didn't seem to be one of the celestial gods, from what Aven could gather. Lilac also seemed to be confused by Aven having both his horns, and the feeling went both ways, as Aven, while limited in the tieflings he *had* seen, never before had heard of a tiefling with one horn broken voluntarily.
Despite all this, the pair got on quite well, and worked efficiently together when fighting monsters and hunting food. So, when they got to this city that neither knew the name of, they didn't part ways, and Aven booked them a room each at the inn, as Lilac didn't seem to know common sign language. That was another odd similarity, that they both were selectively mute, although Aven had taught himself to sign in every single language he could speak, so at least he was able to communicate for the both of them as they walked through the city.
However, as Aven picked up a piece of fruit he had never seen before to ask Lilac if he had, Aven noticed that the other tiefling was nowhere to be found. This caused Aven to start panicking, at least until he saw Lilac around fifteen feet away, being subjected to an onslaught of speech from a middle-aged woman, who appeared to be part-tiefling, as a pair of small horns atop her head glinted in the sunlight. Relieved, Aven made his way over, readying himself to explain anything the woman was asking.
"-Are you sure you were never adopted? You just look so much like my husband, and I've never before seen any other purple ones!"
'Excuse me?' Aven signed, subtly pushing himself in between Lilac and the woman, who gasped at seeing him.
"Oh my god you're both here!! And you, you have his eyes, it must be you two! You must come with me!"
'Who are you?' Aven signed, noticing how this woman's face seemed an awful like if Aven had a human skin tone, which was utterly bizarre to look at. However, before the woman could answer, a great roar of thunder shook the town, despite the sky being clear as day, and then, Aven saw a fully fledged demon for the first time in his life.
He had just appeared, this demon, as if out of thin air. He was also floating, no, *flying*, a few inches off the ground. His hands and feet were tipped with vicious claws, his wings jagged and spiked at the tips, and his tail lined with flat spikes that were identical to Aven's own, although a lot larger in scale. The demon's face looked very similar to Lilac's, although his eyes, *oh god his eyes*, those were the very same eyes that Aven had looked into every time he washed his face in the stream, or looked in a mirror back at the guild, and the horns, elongated versions of Aven's horns erupted from the demon's head, easily dwarfing Aven's, making his carefully measured 10 centimetres of added height feel minuscule.
The demon slowly looked between Aven and Lilac, eyes glowing faintly, before he landed on the ground, long claws clacking against the cobblestone. His gaze was fixed on Lilac, and a confused look crossed the demon's face, before sadness took over.
"Another demon attempted to mark you as his own," the demon spoke in Infernal, his voice deep and grave. "I apologise for the pain that must've caused you."
"Is- is it them Vel?" the woman asked in Common, eyes beginning to glass over.
"Yes, Ari," the demon, Vel?, spoke, again in Infernal, but his next words were in Common, in a thick accent. "Our little girls have grown into these two young men."
"I'm sorry?" Aven spoke then, too stunned to feel the anxiety that normally fuelled his mutism. "Your - us - what?"
"Every demon places an invisible mark on their children. Most do it as a way of ownership, to claim the child as its own, but I merely did it so if we were ever looking for you, we would find you. And, finally, it has worked. I can see the marks I gave both of you on your birth day, clear as I can see the way you both mirror me. My children," Vel paused, "We have finally found you again."
Aven was utterly baffled. His... parents? His birth parents? And did they mean that Lilac was his *brother*? Aven's head was spinning, even as he felt himself pulled into a hug by... his mother?
It was explained slowly, that Velvis and Ariette, Aven's father and mother, had had Lilac taken away the night they were both born (they were fucking *twins*, Aven still couldn't get over that he was a twin), and a year later, a fire had burned down their house, claiming Aven from them (at least, they thought he had died at the time, but Aven had been found in the rubble and taken to an orphanage, that much he knew). It was almost unbelievable, to hear about the first year of his life, and to have his actual mother holding his physical hand as she and his father spoke.
But then, as the shock died down, a new feeling was left in its place, as the four of them sat in a rather cosy living room, and Embo was asleep not too far away. A feeling, that Aven had only ever felt once before, walking through the Rosebridge forest after six years. It was the feeling of being home, and it was stronger than ever now, and Aven couldn't help but smile from it. He was home.