we are not truly immortal

[dark_light]

After Glass's party is over with, Amariah and Kas go home.

Amariah fetches down their alethiometers.

"It's about time I took care of Alethia's afterlife, whatever it may be," she says quietly. "What can the alethiometer tell you about what I'll find?"

Comments

[truthwright]

"It is not in their nature," says the alethiometer.

"Let me," says Kas. He asks about the three of them separately.

"Okay, so Alice's power is apparently stopping him from getting a daemon. Aianon and Ansharil aren't the right species, and Ghosty's just... not. I think it's kind of confused about Ghosty," he says. "I mean, the world is confused about Ghosty, so the alethiometer is too. And the world being confused about Ghosty is why she's not getting a daemon."

[lifes_sake]

"Okay then," says Cam. "I wonder if they can comfortably enter the afterlife." He asks the alethiometer.

[truthwright]

Of Alice, the alethiometer says, "He cannot enter."

Of Ghosty, the alethiometer says, "There is no precedent."

Of Aianon and Ansharil, the alethiometer says, "If one goes, the other must stay."

[lifes_sake]

"...Is the one who stays going to be a daemon?"

[truthwright]

"Daemons cannot enter the afterlife."

"Yes," Kas translates.

[lifes_sake]

"Okay, you guys get the exciting opportunity to have one of you be a daemon, I guess, and Sarion can hang out with that one and hug him," says Cam. "My turn."

He makes a conditional wish.

There is a half-instant of discomfort, so quick as to be almost more vividly imagined than felt, and then from where he left Grace comes a hawk. She lands on his shoulder and starts fussing with his hair.

[truthwright]

"Cute," says Kas.

[endragoned]

Aianon and Ansharil confer.

[edgeofyourseat]

"...So I guess there's no point in me being here," Alice observes.

[self_composed]

"Yeah, likewise," shrugs Stella. "Unless you want to hang around and help Isibel hug whichever one of those two is a daemon. I'm going home, though." She kisses Alice and cues Jane and vanishes.

[lifes_sake]

"You guys could pull off the same trick I did with Grace," Cam points out to Aianon and Ansharil.

[edgeofyourseat]

"You know what," says Alice, "I wanna go to Origin and cuddle Queenie. Jane?"

[endragoned]

"We could," Ansharil agrees. "We do not know what we want to do."

[mind_game]

Jane puts Alice in Origin.

[edgeofyourseat]

Where he finds, and snuggles, Queenie.

[she_sells_seashells]

"I guess I'm next," says Shell Bell, leaning on Pearl.

She reverses her anti-daemon wish. Her smew appears in her arms.

"You're going to have to name me, at some point," he points out to Shell Bell.

[sicaria]

Pearl hugs them.

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell melts as soon as Pearl comes into direct contact with the unnamed smew. "Oh I love you," she breathes.

[sicaria]

"I love you too," she murmurs, stroking the smew's feathers.

[she_sells_seashells]

Standing up is hard. Shell Bell lifts one inch into the air and hovers effortlessly, sighing.

[sicaria]

Snuggle snuggle.

...they should probably be accomplishing something right now, shouldn't they.

[she_sells_seashells]

Not really! They're waiting for Aianon and Ansharil to decide things. Shell Bell can totally bask until then.

[sicaria]

Perfect.

[endragoned]

Aianon and Ansharil... are still thinking.

They decide that if one of them is going to have daemonlike characteristics, it should be Ansharil.

"I will go to the afterlife," says Aianon.

[dark_light]

"Okay," says Amariah. "And now the question is how we get there."

She tries a boosted teleportation power, like the one Aurora has to let her get between subworlds of Rainbow - and she tries to carry everyone to the border of the afterlife, where the daemons and their attendants can sit and wait and everyone else can walk in.

This place turns out to exist.

It looks like a dock, shrouded in mist, leading out into murky water.

And here is a gentleman in a canoe.