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

[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."

[dark_light]

"Okay."

Amariah disentangles from hug to pick up Path and stroke his feathers.

"You're the first person to get a daemon who didn't want one. Sue wanted Ivy. Voice wanted - whatever he's wound up calling his."

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes," says Sherlock. "I expected that she would be unhappy, and look how right I was."

[dark_light]

Isabella nods solemnly.

"Are you unhappy? In general. Systematically. I know you didn't want to stay in Alethia this long, I don't just mean this week."

[eversomuchfun]

"I am sufficiently unhappy about being trapped here that it's hard to tell how I would feel without it, and then of course even before I came here I was not short on things to be unhappy about."

[dark_light]

Isabella squeezes his hand.

"...After Jane comes back online. Assuming she does, goddesses all I hope she does. After she's back we should ask the various Jarvises if they want to network into some more worlds. For backup time-syncing and - communications. Time has to have gone out of sync because there's a Jarvis in Sunshine; Juliet could get a door any time, force the Milliways door to here - or to Peace to get Sue and send him, or to Atlantis, we've all been there now, since Shell Bell can make doors cooperate with aura."

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes. Well, we can ask."

[dark_light]

"Yeah."

[eversomuchfun]

"And now Kas and Petaal are awake," Sherlock observes.

[dark_light]

[Morning, sweeties,] says Isabella. [Sherlock's no-daemon wish unexpectedly wore off.]

[truthwright]

Her sweeties appear.

Kas hugs Sherlock.

[eversomuchfun]

Sherlock hugs back.