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

[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.

[alicornucopia]

He blinks once.

"That's new," he says.

[dark_light]

"I'd be stunned if it wasn't," Amariah says. "My understanding is that the daemons have to stay here. The rest of us can go over the water with you? Is that where the dead people are? Who are you?"

[alicornucopia]

"I can take you there, if your daemons stay behind," shrugs the boatman indifferently. "It's what I do."

[lifes_sake]

"There's something dangerous there. Do you know what it is?" Cam asks.

[alicornucopia]

The boatman shrugs. "I only go as far as shore."

[dark_light]

"Are you the only one? Or are there other ways in? It should be more crowded, here, if you're the only way there."

[alicornucopia]

"If I've missed anyone," says the boatman, "I don't know it. Time doesn't matter, not here."

[lifes_sake]

"Even in the minute we've been here, with Jane syncing us up there should have been dozens, hundreds, of dead people accumulating... Jane."

There's no response.

Cam grits his teeth, and wishes himself away, and reappears a moment later. "She can't see out of our gems down here," he says. "But from her perspective we've been gone less than a second, and that and the failure of the dead to accumulate means we can continue, just have to wish out instead of getting Jane to grab us."

[dark_light]

"...Okay. I guess that's one of the things that doesn't work down here." She looks at Shell Bell, who's still floating. "But apparently we can fly. We might not need to take the boat."

[lifes_sake]

[Brainphone... works,] Cam reports.

[mind_game]

[I can hear you when you do that,] Jane reports, in text, all as a block. [But time-dilated like you're traveling much slower than I am. I can compensate with more sample data like I can when I'm talking to an accelerating spaceship, though, say something else.]