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

[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."

[pythbox]

"Their daemons?"

"Not here."

"No daemons here," says a harpy.

"I've never seen a daemon," says another.

"I have," says the nonconformist. "I've been to the other side of the river, once."

The one who hit her before stretches out a wing again, but this time she is out of reach. She shakes herself, distributing small bits of grimy feather-dust over the surrounding rocks. "I want to be spectacular," she says defiantly.

[dark_light]

"Well, maybe I'll move everyone to some kind of folded space area elsewhere that isn't anti-daemon, if I can't fix this location," says Amariah, "but the shades aren't anti-daemon, only the place."

[pythbox]

Three of the harpies hiss loudly.

"And leave us to starve?" says one of same.

[dark_light]

"I could move you too," says Amariah. "If one of you's seen the other side of the river, you can leave. But I won't bring you if you're going to keep hurting people. There are more of them than there are of you, and they don't deserve it."

[pythbox]

"How dare you!" says the one who complained. "It's our right! Our duty!"

[lifes_sake]

"I'm sure we can figure something out," Cam cuts in, aura still flared brilliantly to emphasize this assertion. "Something that leaves you fed and the dead people safe."

[pythbox]

"Why should we listen to you?" says the complainer. "You want to take our purpose away. It's been ours since the beginning."

[endragoned]

Aianon is on the ground, snuggling some warmth back into Kas. He shakes his head.

[lifes_sake]

"You could have a new purpose," Cam says. "A better one."

[pythbox]

"Better for you," one of them mutters.

"This one's ours," says another.

[dark_light]

"It hurts people," says Amariah. "How would you like it? You've probably dished out more hurt than anyone you've ever screamed at has."

[pythbox]

"Is that supposed to matter?" a harpy says scornfully.

[lifes_sake]

"Look," says Cam, "what would you guys want? If you could have anything?"

[pythbox]

"How about for you to go away and never come back," suggests one of the hostile ones. "I'd like that a lot."

"But they brought us something nice!" the dissenter argues. "Don't you remember? Wasn't it better?"

The others shuffle uncomfortably on their perches.

[lifes_sake]

"Thank you," Cam says to the iconoclast harpy. "What's your name?"

[pythbox]

"We don't have those," she says.

[lifes_sake]

"Would you like a name?"

[pythbox]

"...maybe," she says.

[lifes_sake]

"I'll come up with one for you if you like."

[pythbox]

"Names," another harpy mutters.

"Who needs names."

"Don't listen to these people."

"A name like what?" says the odd harpy out, hopping closer to the living people with a flutter of dark-feathered wings.