we have a complex relationship with our sisters and our cousins

[dark_light]

Amariah is starting a circle in her yard - minting and enchanting can pull heavier duty than witchcraft, and faster, too, but they won't scale unless she wants to hand out copies of her trump cards; novel spells will, since there are many witches across the globe.

And then Jane asks if she wants to be visited, by Juliet's Sherlock - Minus - and Amariah's reply is "Sure, I could take a break." Because she's been at this for a while now and was just about to wish a crick out of her back for the second time this afternoon.

She puts down her pitcher of oil and waits for him to appear.

Comments

[eversomuchfun]

"You don't expect that to be true?"

[dark_light]

"I put Path away when I'm nervous someone will touch him. It's a little like - wearing sneakers to go wading. It's uncomfortable, it's not what sneakers are for, the shoes get waterlogged and it's hard to make forward progress - but if the water's infested with piranhas, it's safer. I'm less worried about it now I have my aura and he can make it clear to everyone that they need to back off, and sometimes I want to have sex with someone who doesn't have a daemon and then it's more comfortable than him just being neglected - but it doesn't feel right to have him folded away like that. He's not my dagger, only useful when I happen to want to do something that calls for a sharp object, he's part of me, if he's not there then I'm not all there."

[eversomuchfun]

"Steph and I do not feel that way," says Sherlock. "Steph doesn't want to exist. Steph hates that you are more comfortable with her around because it is a reason for her to continue existing. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be that suicidal."

[dark_light]

"That's - that's bad," says Amariah. "She came out of you. I don't think it can just be because she happens to be a daemon and this has some resonance with something else. She's your daemon. And she appeared now, not back when you were more - obviously like that."

[eversomuchfun]

"She doesn't want me to stop existing, at least. She just doesn't want to be an active participant in the process."

[dark_light]

"Well." Amariah shrugs. "Maybe you'll be more comfortable like this, then."

[eversomuchfun]

"Maybe I will," he sighs.

[dark_light]

"Around here - if Path started acting like that I would assume it meant I, the entire person that is us, was in a really bad way. But you haven't had her forever, so - maybe it's different."

[eversomuchfun]

"She has only just begun to exist. The advent of self-awareness is not an easy time for Sherlocks."

[dark_light]

Isabella hugs him again.

[eversomuchfun]

He sighs, and hugs her back.

[dark_light]

"Well, how did you deal with it?" Amariah asks. "Having self-awareness."

[eversomuchfun]

"Self-awareness is not intrinsically the problem. The problem is that I didn't like myself very much. And mostly I dealt with it poorly, until I lost my soul and stopped caring. Oh, there you are," he says, blinking. "I'll just bet she feels like shit; to a first approximation she is the literal embodiment of my natural tendency to self-loathe. Which I dodged resuming with magic when I merged my soul back in, but apparently that only took for the everyday, because I am definitely miserable in a soulful way right now. No fucking wonder."

[dark_light]

Isabella wraps her arms around Sherlock and hugs him tight; Path trills unhappily.

[eversomuchfun]

Sherlock hugs her back.

[dark_light]

"I don't think Kas and Petaal are discernibly more comfortable around people with daemons than people without. Maybe Petaal would be a better how-to-be-a-daemon tutor," says Isabella. "If Steph's ever going to come out and want lessons again, I mean, if she's not I guess it doesn't matter."

[eversomuchfun]

"I'm honestly not sure if that would help," says Sherlock, "but I suppose it can hardly make things any worse."

[dark_light]

"Petaal's pretty unconventional about it, though, and not in any of the ways I'd expect you and Steph to be, especially since she's not settled."

[eversomuchfun]

"For curiosity's sake: in what ways is she unconventional, and in what ways do you expect us to be, and how do they differ?"

[dark_light]

"Petaal is unsettled - more unsettled than the average toddler's daemon, and those can change too quick to identify all the species sometimes, she doesn't even have a fixed sex. She spends a lot of time in human - or witch or angel - forms, talks to non-daemon people a lot more than even the chattiest daemons usually do, and is dramatically touchier than any other daemon I've ever heard of. And her personality is just about identical to Kas's modulo the practical matters. You on the other hand - I'd be pretty surprised if you wanted to let Juliet or your Tony touch Steph, anytime soon anyway, let alone me or Kas or your alts. She's settled, or at least it sure looks like it, and while she evidently doesn't refuse to talk to any non-daemons besides you like some do, she seemed within normal range on attention paid to Path versus to me."

[eversomuchfun]

"Is a daemon's personality not usually identical to their - person's?"

[dark_light]

"It's usually close, except for some division of labor in interpersonal interaction. There are - moods, circumstances, when they won't match. Back when I was worried about going all crazy-possessive-witch on my sweeties I told them I wouldn't kill somebody I loved in front of Path. In that eventuality, which is not going to happen, we'd feel differently about it, and I'd have to leave Path home. You and Steph already observed that you don't act just alike."

[eversomuchfun]

"True. Well. Perhaps we should talk to Kas."

[dark_light]

"Do you want me to go wake him?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I think we can wait. No rush."