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

[gunpowdergelatine]

[Mmkay. Cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.]

[yourheartstrings]

Ghosty manifests at the Janepoint.

[mind_game]

Jane contentedly serves as interdimensional transit.

[lifes_sake]

The final tally is:

Amariah, definitely going. Kas, also definitely going.

Cam, going if his experiment with Grace works out.

Shell Bell, going. Pearl, hanging around to hold her duck-thing. (It turns out that this sort of duck is called a smew.)

Alice, going, recreationally; Stella, not going but hanging around for his daemon.

Ghosty, going recreationally.

Sue, going to link everyone but not intending to separate from Ivy.

Aianon and Ansharil, showing up just to see what will happen, and Isibel along with an anti-raccoon wish in place for moral support.

Elspeth, Glass, Golden, and Angela as backup; Juliet as emergency backup. Elspeth is hanging out in Alethia as the most likely necessary backup and because she was already there. Jellybean has gone home.

[edgeofyourseat]

When Alice appears in Alethia, no daemon appears with him.

[yourheartstrings]

The same with Ghosty.

[endragoned]

The same with Aianon and Ansharil.

[dark_light]

"...That's weird. Sue got one this way," Amariah says.

[lifes_sake]

Cam returns from depositing Grace in a safe place some hundred yards away from the clearing around Amariah's house. He assesses the situation and asks the alethiometer, "Why don't the three Jokers who just arrived have daemons?"

[truthwright]

"It is not in their nature," says the alethiometer.

"Let me," says Kas. He asks about the three of them separately.

"Okay, so Alice's power is apparently stopping him from getting a daemon. Aianon and Ansharil aren't the right species, and Ghosty's just... not. I think it's kind of confused about Ghosty," he says. "I mean, the world is confused about Ghosty, so the alethiometer is too. And the world being confused about Ghosty is why she's not getting a daemon."

[lifes_sake]

"Okay then," says Cam. "I wonder if they can comfortably enter the afterlife." He asks the alethiometer.

[truthwright]

Of Alice, the alethiometer says, "He cannot enter."

Of Ghosty, the alethiometer says, "There is no precedent."

Of Aianon and Ansharil, the alethiometer says, "If one goes, the other must stay."

[lifes_sake]

"...Is the one who stays going to be a daemon?"

[truthwright]

"Daemons cannot enter the afterlife."

"Yes," Kas translates.

[lifes_sake]

"Okay, you guys get the exciting opportunity to have one of you be a daemon, I guess, and Sarion can hang out with that one and hug him," says Cam. "My turn."

He makes a conditional wish.

There is a half-instant of discomfort, so quick as to be almost more vividly imagined than felt, and then from where he left Grace comes a hawk. She lands on his shoulder and starts fussing with his hair.

[truthwright]

"Cute," says Kas.

[endragoned]

Aianon and Ansharil confer.

[edgeofyourseat]

"...So I guess there's no point in me being here," Alice observes.

[self_composed]

"Yeah, likewise," shrugs Stella. "Unless you want to hang around and help Isibel hug whichever one of those two is a daemon. I'm going home, though." She kisses Alice and cues Jane and vanishes.

[lifes_sake]

"You guys could pull off the same trick I did with Grace," Cam points out to Aianon and Ansharil.

[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.