☾ ℳℯℙℏℹSⓉℴ ☽

The prince of lies is a cloud billowing, ephemeral and black and sweetly toxic. The prince of lies pulls your chair out for you at dinner; sometimes you feast with him on pheasant, other times on delicacies of the drive-thru. He does not squander opportunities to cheat you out of wealth or spirit or house and home or air in your lungs. The prince of lies may reward you with a wink and a smile and a knife in your back. (He calls this last a kindness. Cannot demons be kind?) Some call the prince of lies Mephistopheles, some a Practical Cat, some simply Mephisto—and once, curiously, Ned. He is prone to acrobatics of body and wit; his tongue is forked and silver; his pick-pocketing skills are magnificent; he commonly leaps from rooftops in broad daylight. You last saw him in the drawing room, but you turn with his tea to find him in the garden. He vanishes at will. He pulls white rabbits and roses and retribution out of your hat. Some claim to have witnessed great feats of his magic. Others claim these witnesses tell whoppers because magic of his kind is invisible. (But telling whoppers about the prince of lies is only fitting, wouldn’t you say?) Do not sign anything he gives you, do not knock on his door until noon, do not turn out the lights if you are waiting for his return. If you are not waiting, he often returns just to spite you.
 
The cloud may be the careless smoke of Dunhills, the chair may have a trick leg, the cutlery may be crusted with something suspiciously red. Play poker with the prince of lies, and it will last two hours, two years, two decades. He carries no watch. He is lazy and reticent on your windowsill, he is moody and malevolent and wuthering on heights, he is picking the souls from his teeth with his tongue and his claws. The prince of lies likes tidiness, but only under great duress. Once upon a time he and Rum Tum Tugger, whom most prefer to call Mammon, were thick as thieves—but Sloth came between them. Now the prince of lies believes he is too good for the Tugging sort of company. He does not come because you call for him; he comes when he wants. But if you call for him, Mephisto will do.