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

[lifes_sake]

"I want to know why you hurt the shades here," Cam says. "And see if we can come up with a compromise that doesn't involve that."

[pythbox]

"We like to," says a harpy.

"They deserve it," says another.

"It's food for us," says a third.

[lifes_sake]

Cam glances at his alethiometer.

"This truth-telling device says you hunger for truth," he tells them. "Not all truth is about bad things people have done."

[pythbox]

"Isn't it?"

"Then why is that all we see?"

"And all they see—"

"—after a while!"

The harpies cackle.

[lifes_sake]

"Because you are doing screamy-magic at them," says Cam, "that brings it to the surface. One of the other harpies met one of our friends, and screamed at her, but if she'd just talked to her nicely Shell Bell could have told her all sorts of true things about her life, and the things she's seen."

[pythbox]

"Oh, yeah?"

"Like what?"

[lifes_sake]

"Shell Bell was born in a place called District Three, in Panem," begins Cam. "In another world. With her mother Ranae and her father Shark. And he was a fisherman and she was a teacher and Shell Bell decided that when she grew up, she was going to be a clammer."

He pauses to gauge harpy reaction.

[pythbox]

"Why should we care?"

[lifes_sake]

"Why didn't that help?" Cam mutters to the alethiometer.

[pythbox]

"It was not yours," the alethiometer replies.

[lifes_sake]

"All right then," he murmurs, and then he leans on his perfect recall and starts telling them about his own life, instead.

"I was born in a little town called Forks, but when my mother left my father - they get along fine, they just didn't belong married - I moved with her to Phoenix, and lived with my dad summers. I had to go to school, which was all right but not very interesting, till I was fourteen, and I found a certain book in the library."

[pythbox]

The harpies circle slower, and closer.

[lifes_sake]

"And this book was titled So You Want To Be A Wizard. It sounded like it would be fun. Fiction. I checked it out and I brought it home and I started reading it, and it turned out to be a manual. I didn't know it was real, but it was interesting, so I pretended, and I said the Wizard's Oath. In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, is threatened or threatens another. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe's end."

[pythbox]

"Pretend," one harpy jeers, but the others shush her.

[lifes_sake]

"I thought it was pretend," says Cam. "But I found out it wasn't, quick enough. My name appeared in the list of local wizards. I could hear things around me speaking. Especially my collection of notebooks, in which I wrote everything - all my thoughts, everything I did with my life, what I wanted. And they all chorused together to say hello to me, and I was thrilled to pieces. And I talked to my manual too, and got it to teach me the spells I needed to put my notebooks all together in one, magic notebook. And I did, and I named her Grace."

[pythbox]

One of the circling harpies bursts out with, "But what did it feel like?"

[lifes_sake]

"Having Grace to talk to was amazing. I'd put so much of me into all those notebooks that she knew me as well as I knew myself, and she wanted to help me, with anything she could, and I was so happy to be understood that perfectly by something that was a part of me but had her own voice."

[pythbox]

A shiver passes through the whole flock at this.

[lifes_sake]

"Is this what you want? Stories about people's lives and how they felt?"

[pythbox]

"We've never had them before," says one harpy.

"They're tasty," says another.

"New."

"Different."

"Good."

[lifes_sake]

"Amariah, see if it works for you," Cam murmurs.

[dark_light]

"My childhood was a lot like his," Amariah says. "Except my parents are still married even though they aren't happy that way, and except that the part of me with his own voice has been with me since I was born, and he's got feathers that feel like starlight and he always knows when I'm about to do something I'd regret, and he can't come here, but our sweetie's holding him safe on the dock, and when I had to walk away from him when I was thirteen, it felt like my heart was torn out, and some people's daemons don't forgive them for a long time but I knew my Path would and he did, because we understand ourselves and he knew why."

[pythbox]

The harpies circle lower, lower, until they finally settle into perches on the trees and the ground.

(Kas's ghost friends have long since fled.)

[dark_light]

Amariah tells them the story of casting her first spells and the feel of power pouring from her, of cutting her first cloud-pine and learning to fly and the wind in her hair, of choosing Metis for her teacher and moving away from her clan enclave, of meeting Kas and buying him lunch, of finding Shell Bell in Milliways and founding the Belltower. She is lavish in her details.

[lifes_sake]

Meanwhile, Cam whispers to the alethiometer about what's helping and what isn't.