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

[arenaria]

Shell Bell sobs, and shivers, and mumbles something unintelligible.

[sicaria]

"What is it?"

[arenaria]

"I don't know what to do," murmurs Shell Bell, "I always just do whatever makes me feel better but I shouldn't feel better and I want to do something that - but then it's about what I want again - I don't know how to do anything else, I'm so, so self-centered, I can't even be guilty right."

[sicaria]

"I want you to feel better," says Sherlock. "Your suffering helps no one but that harpy."

[arenaria]

"No," whimpers the smew, and Shell Bell is silent.

[sicaria]

"Does it then have some practical benefit which I fail to understand?"

[arenaria]

Shell Bell shakes her head, slowly.

[sicaria]

"So you are in pain, and I am in pain, and nothing good is coming of either," she says. "This is not optimal."

[arenaria]

"But," says Shell Bell, "I should be and you shouldn't care."

[sicaria]

"You should not be, and I do care, and I will go on caring. Your suffering does not help me. Your recovery will."

[arenaria]

Shell Bell has no rebuttal. She weeps.

[sicaria]

Sherlock hugs her.

[arenaria]

The smew squirms under the gyrfalcon's wings, whimpering, and makes a tentative escape attempt.

[sicaria]

There is really no practical way for the gyrfalcon to keep hold of him. So he doesn't.

[arenaria]

Shell Bell and smew regard each other.

She reaches down and picks him up and holds him, not deliberately bringing him into contact with Sherlock but not going far out of her way to avoid it either.

[sicaria]

Sherlock hugs them both.

The gyrfalcon flutters up to perch on Sherlock's shoulder and then bends down to run his beak through Shell Bell's hair.

[arenaria]

Shell Bell peers up at the falcon, wide-eyed.

[sicaria]

He does it again.

[arenaria]

Shell Bell thinks about that.

"Can I sleep, is that okay," she murmurs.

[sicaria]

"Yes."

[arenaria]

Shell Bell puts her head on Sherlock's shoulder and closes her eyes and falls asleep, smew on her chest.

[sicaria]

Sherlock sits down and holds them in her lap and snuggles them. Her gyrfalcon continues to preen Shell Bell's hair.

[lifes_sake]

Meanwhile Cam and Amariah are still looking for the accompanying Jokers and each other. Cam, midflight, asks the alethiometer: "Can harpies attack more than one person at a time?"

[truthwright]

"A flight of harpies will often harry a much larger group of ghosts," says the alethiometer, "although they do not prefer to."

[lifes_sake]

"What about live people, can a single harpy attack more than one of us?"