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]

"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.

[truthwright]

Kas consults his, too.

[pythbox]

The harpies, it turns out, like true stories. Nourishment and flavour come from emotion and detail.

[dark_light]

Amariah carries on telling her story. She skips over dull sections, but she dives into extreme detail with the parts she opts to use, when Cam and Kas report on the alethiometer's replies.

She brings up her tale to the present day.

And explains what she and the others are doing here.

"With Downside handled there are two afterlives left that aren't up to our standards. And this is one of them. And I want to fix it. That's why me and Cam and Kas and Aianon are here, and what Shell Bell was doing here before Sherlock had to pull her out, and why we wanted to talk to you."

[pythbox]

There is a general muttering among the harpies.

[dark_light]

"There are billions of shades here. I'm sure some of them would be willing to tell you their stories, whatever they can still remember."

[pythbox]

"And then what?" says a harpy.

"Do you expect us to just... leave them alone?"

"When they're so delicious?"

"And it's our purpose—"

"The Authority gave it to us—"

"Our very own!"

"Our duty!"

"Ours!"

[dark_light]

"...Who is the Authority?" asks Amariah slowly.

[pythbox]

"The Authority."

"The Creator."

"The one who made us."

"Made the worlds."

"Made everything."

[dark_light]

"Where is he? Why did he make you like this?"

[lifes_sake]

Cam has much the same question for the alethiometer.

[pythbox]

"We don't know," says a harpy, as though this should be the single most obvious fact in the worlds. "Why would he tell us?"

"Not our business."

"To know where the Authority is."

[truthwright]

"The Authority dwells at the summit of the Clouded Mountain," says the alethiometer. "He gave the harpies their purpose for reasons of his own."

[lifes_sake]

Cam passes this on to the group, via link.

[dark_light]

"Do you want to be how he made you?" Amariah asks the harpies.

[pythbox]

"How else are we going to be?" says a harpy.

"I'd like to smell better," one of them says wistfully. It's the same one one who asked Cam what it felt like to wake up Grace. The harpy roosting beside her smacks her with a wing, and she glares and flaps off a few yards away. "Well, I would."

[dark_light]

"You could listen to true stories and not scream at people," says Amariah. "You know how to get around this place - you could be guides, listeners, you could help me fix it. And if I can work out how to get magic to work normally down here you could smell like whatever you wanted."

[pythbox]

"Help you fix it?"

"How?"

"Why?"

"What use would that be?"

The harpy with aspirations to perfume remains silent.

[dark_light]

"I'm going to give everyone their daemons back. The alethiometer says it's possible. I'm going to make it so that at least some of them can go out into the world, if I can, the way people from worlds hooked up to Downside can - and either way I'm going to make this place nicer, less boring, less - cold. And the use it would be would be making billions of people's experiences better and brighter. It will be the single most spectacular thing anyone in this world has done so far."