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

[truthwright]

"...Yeah," says Kas, after consulting the alethiometer, "good plan, because right now it's possible for a shade to die and if they do they just - stop."

[dark_light]

"...has that happened before?"

[truthwright]

He consults.

"No."

[dark_light]

"Okay, that's good. Is there a way to catch all dead people? Including angels, who I gather don't leave shades?"

[truthwright]

"Uh..."

He asks.

"...So there's this stuff called - the concept I'm getting is something like 'sparkles'," he says. "It's a particle, but it doesn't work like most other particles. It's generated by conscious thought. If somebody makes this stuff, they're a person. So you can tell who is and who's not, empirically. That should be enough to wish on, right? If there's even a coin big enough to do that."

He asks that, too.

"There are no coins big enough to do that currently in this worldsheaf," he says.

[dark_light]

"...I. Have an arrow on me."

[truthwright]

"Then I'm pretty sure the alethiometer's telling me there's at least the potential for a coin bigger than an arrow to exist. But I'm not lining up to make it," he laughs.

[dark_light]

"Goddesses all. Ten pointed coins. Can you think of anybody in the deck who would? Or should I pop Downside and ask Eights?" asks Amariah, shaking her head.

[truthwright]

"Try Brill?" he suggests.

[dark_light]

"Okay. Tenners. Yambe Akka take me if I'm ever in screaming distance of the minting process for one of those."

She pauses.

"Kas?"

[truthwright]

"...Yeah?"

[dark_light]

"I just walked up to the Judeo-Christian God and tapped on his box. Do the witch goddesses exist?"

[truthwright]

...

He asks the alethiometer.



"No," he says. "They're - kind of symbols. Like the ones on the alethiometer, but a different set, for a different purpose."

[dark_light]

"Oh."

Amariah allows herself a minute to process this information.

And then she says:

"Okay."

And she asks Jane to kindly inquire of Brilliance if he'd be willing to make a couple tenners, and she sits and thinks about the afterlife she is going to make.