Cacopheny was up and about, after a fashion, by afternoon on the next day; he'd been awake and alert when the family started moving the next morning. Sentio went back to school, but at the end of the day he and Chario and Kenjista all went back to the Watcher home, because Cacopheny wasn't up for the walk all the way across Sanctuary yet. They were quite surprised to find Cacopheny at the kitchen sink, clumsily but earnestly trying to wash dishes. According to Akija, sitting at the table and trying hard not to giggle, he'd actually asked if there was anything he could help with, and Chaith had obligingly put him to work. Still, she kept close beside him after the first dish he dropped and broke, doing the drying herself, instead of letting him handle the slippery ceramic outside the safety of the sink.

While they were gone, Akija had apparently stripped her bed of its quilt and blankets, bringing them out to enlarge the corporate nest in the living room with them. "Well, we won't all fit in my room!" she'd exclaimed cheerfully when asked why, leaving Sentio and Chario a little amused and Aeta, with whom she shared the bedroom and whose bed she had not stripped, more like bemused. Akija was tickled absolutely pink that Cacopheny seemed to like their company even while he was too comatose to notice it, and so had spent the night in the living room with him and Sentio. By default Chario and Kenjista ended up coming out, too. Apparently, that pile was going to be the norm until the half-demon was ready to go back to the manor, and though no one seemed to know when that might be, no one seemed to mind, either.

After his few moments awake and piecing together what had happened, Cacopheny had only woken briefly again that night. So briefly, in fact, that he only took long enough to eat a little of dinner and give the Watcher family a stammered though obviously heartfelt thanks for their presumably unexpected kindness before collapsing back into exhausted sleep. Chaith only gave him an indulgent smile and tucked a lightweight blanket around him before shooing the rest of the enlarged household into dinner clean-up and baths. She even forced a too-large Sentio into the family tub for a scrubbing that left him a little dazed. He hadn't been scrubbed in at least a decade, he thought, not since he'd had a nurse when he was sixteen. That both a squealing Akija and a resigned Aeta got the same treatment was a little reassuring: he didn't have to be subjected to the four-armed daemoness' embarrassing ministrations alone!

And now that he was alert enough, Chaith was actually assigning a pathetically eager Cacopheny chores! Sentio was amazed. Even though an hour of dish-washing left him trembling and weary again, it was still amazing. At least he didn't fall asleep over his meal. Sentio noted a little sourly, though, that after dinner she let Cacopheny wash himself, while Sentio was once again at the mercy of her scrub-brush. "He's a grown man," she'd explained patiently when he got up the courage to complain, "and you are still a little boy." Then she'd dunked his head under the water again, and he was too busy sputtering to say any more.

Aloia came to visit on the evening of the fourth day of Cacopheny's stay at the Watchers', concerned about Sentio's unexplained, unprecedented two-day-long absence and, even more so, Cacopheny's five-day-long-- and still running-- absence. The Watchers were amazingly closed-mouthed about just why the half-demon and his bond were staying with them, even more so about Akija's still-obvious wounding, all without once being impolite. It was a fascinating little dance of pleasantries and avoidances, small talk and vague answers. All in all, though she left smiling, Aloia didn't seem to leave with the kind of answer she'd wanted. Sentio was just glad that Chaith, Deiv, and Akija did most of the talking; so, it seemed, was Cacopheny, for he was silent the whole rest of the evening.

Over the next six days, Cacopheny steadily grew stronger, able to trail around the house after Chaith doing what she asked of him for hours at a time. He spent his mornings, while Sentio and Chario went to school with Kenjista, with Akija and sometimes Deiv, watching avidly while they worked their spells, or trying to coax Akija's tongue to produce more demon-like sounds. He never talked about the demoness Rao and only rarely talked about his shadows, which Sentio wasn't sure whether to worry about or be relieved for, but on the whole, he seemed fairly content. He'd even let Sentio spend an evening trying to work out how to put letters together into their names, and he didn't throw the bespelled slate of blackboard across the room once.

By the beginning of the next school week, Sentio thought they might be ready to go home, though no one had so much as mentioned the idea. He, for one, was feeling cramped, crowded, and ready to bite someone the next time they touched him. He'd spent most of his life alone in a giant house, or the even more giant libraries of Sanctuary, and he simply wasn't used to such close contact. Though part of him was glad for company, even the overwhelming motherliness of Chaith and the teasing of Deiv, another part of him just wanted a little peace and quiet, the familiar sanctuary of his bedroom, and his personal supply of books, languages, and logic puzzles.

Finally, a whole week and a day after escaping from Rao, Sentio came home from school determined to broach the subject with his bond. He wanted to be home for the next time his parents came home for a night or two-- they'd been lucky, if one could call it that, that they hadn't been home yet and wondered where their son was!-- and, probably more to the point, he wanted a night to himself. He finally pinned Cacopheny down for a conversation after dinner and before the nightly ritual of bathing, while the family was sitting around the living room doing various individual tasks and chatting idly.

::Cacopheny, how much longer do you think you need?:: he asked simply.

::Need?:: came the vague response; Cacopheny was watching Deiv, Akija, and Aeta put together a puzzle on the table in the living room with a curious little frown. It seemed to fascinate him, watching seemingly unrelated, oddly-shaped and colored pieces come together into a picture, though he hadn't yet seemed to figure out just how to choose where pieces went, on his own, so he just let the daemons work while he watched. 

::Until you're ready to go home,:: Sentio clarified.

There was a pause, and he saw the black eyes blink, though they didn't move away from the puzzle. ::I didn't think about it,:: the half-demon finally admitted.

::We should probably go soon. It's been over a week now.::

Another pause. ::Do we have to?::

::Cacopheny, it's... really crowded over here. This house isn't meant for four people and a growing Fire dragon, much less five people and two dragons.::

::I... suppose.::

::Besides, I feel all weird, taking advantage of their hospitality so long. I bet we cost a lot to feed and stuff... not to mention the extra work of just looking after us.::

Though Cacopheny had yet to tackle the idea of money and spending, he had a rudimentary understanding of the fact that more people meant more work. ::But we help some-- I help. Is that not enough?::

::I don't know... but we've got a whole mansion waiting for us, Cacopheny, and people who're probably worried.::

Cacopheny sighed a little, actually glancing his way. ::It is nice here,:: he began, ::but you are probably right. I do not want to be trouble for them.::

Sentio tried not to sound too relieved. ::When, then?::

::When would you like to?::

::Um. Tomorrow? Maybe?::

There was another long pause before, with another sigh, the half-demon said, ::All right.::