"How're you today?" Nick asks, and James considers this for a moment before answering.

"Strange," he decides at last, and nods, "And you?"

Old Nick concedes that he, too, is feeling strange.

"Perhaps it's your friends," James suggests, "Perhaps the overwhelming revulsion you must feel is getting to you."

"They're not my friends," the devil says, frowning. "They just follow me around everywhere, monkeying me."

"Monkey," James says, and giggles. He catches himself giggling and tells himself to stop, "Stop self."

"What?" asks Nick.

James is about to answer when he thinks of a better question.

"Do you know where I can find an oracle?"

"No."

"You're not very useful, are you?" asks James, and somehow the question isn't rhetorical.

"Not really, no."

"Hmmmm," says James, "That's too bad."

"Fuck off," says Nick, but there's little conviction to it.

James nods, "I think I shall," he says, and sets off again. Not far away from Nick, James is attacked suddenly. This catches him slightly off-guard (only slightly, he's been expecting this for some time), and he bites back a surprised shout.

"Do you have any spare change?" It asks, and James tilts his head slightly, trying to make out its features through the thick, coarse fur.

"Probably," James says, and continues to study It. He slowly works himself into a proper peer: eyes squinted slightly, head tilted tellingly to the left, his mouth pursed quizzically. He finds this is the best way to discover things by sight, and employs it often.

It just stands there, as if waiting for something. It seems about to say something, but James interrupts it. He has his own agenda.

"Do you know where I can find an oracle?" James asks.

It, surprisingly, seems to understand what he's talking about. It points a finger at the center of James' chest, unsteadily attempting to place the finger there, which James allows, grudgingly.

"The oracle's in here, you know?"

"Don't give me that crap. It's not in there, I looked there earlier. If it had been in there, I would have found it. Now have you seen the oracle around?"

It seems flustered by James' questioning, so James lets the subject drop. "Anyway, what did you want?" James asks.

"Spare change," It replies.

"Oh," James says, and is glad that's all It wants from him. "No," he says, and walks away from It.

James feels guilty about this for about five or six seconds, until he sees a girl he knows, whereupon he forgets completely about It, God, and Nick. That longing is gone, the strange echoes of discontent mute in her presence, all other things cease to matter with her around, and he tells her so.

"But weren't you looking for something?" she asks.

"I'll find it," he says, "Later."

There was a moral to this story, but for some reason I can't remember it.

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