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]

"Cold," he murmurs, drawing back his hand.

[alicornucopia]

"Always," murmurs the old woman.

[dark_light]

"I didn't notice," murmurs Amariah.

[alicornucopia]

"There are some like you," says the man she's been talking to. "Who don't notice the cold. They notice everything else, though."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Everything else?" prompts Shell Bell.

[alicornucopia]

"The nothingness," says the man.

"The hurt in your heart, that never goes away," murmurs the woman Kas tried to touch.

"Nothing feels like anything except cold," complains a wisp of a girl from the crowd of more distantly observing shades.

"The dark. The way you can't quite sleep," says another girl who stands with her arm in the same space as the other girl's; they look a bit alike.

"The harpies."

"The hunger and the stillness and the sameness."

"The -"

[lifes_sake]

"Excuse me," says Cam, "harpies?"

[alicornucopia]

"They come up on you when you're dozing," says the shade of a young man. "They know everything bad you've done, ever, they scream it at you, you can't ignore them."

"Maybe you could," says another shade doubtfully. "With your colors still in."

[truthwright]

"I'm pretty good at ignoring people screaming at me," Kas says cheerfully.

[endragoned]

Aianon laughs.

[pythbox]

Ghosty giggles out of thin air.

[dark_light]

"What do the harpies want?" Amariah asks. When the shades have no answer ready to hand, she turns to Cam. "Cam, ask it if the harpies are - the thing."

[lifes_sake]

"Are the harpies the thing that hungers for truth?" Cam murmurs to the alethiometer.

[truthwright]

"They are known by that name," says the alethiometer.

[lifes_sake]

"Yeah, that's the thing. So, based on what we learned before, I guess they'll quit screaming at people if we find them and - unravel this truth-hunger business," says Cam. "Where do we find harpies?"

[alicornucopia]

None of the shades know where to find harpies on purpose.

[truthwright]

So Kas does the obvious thing.

"They're around, but they move," he says. "If we stay here long enough, we'll run into some."

[dark_light]

"Let's split up, talk to more people, congregate wherever the first person to find harpies is," says Amariah. She lifts into the air - provoking breathless surprise from the shades - and says, "I'll go that way."

[lifes_sake]

Cam picks another direction.

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell goes a third way.

[truthwright]

Kas starts walking in yet another direction.

[endragoned]

Aianon takes wing in a fifth.

[pythbox]

Who knows what happens to Ghosty.

[alicornucopia]

Kas is the first to find a harpy.

She lands. She looks at him.

She takes off and flies away.

All of the nearby shades cluster close and cold around him, murmuring about how he sent her away.

[truthwright]

He shivers, thinks about going after the harpy, and then reports this event through the link instead.