we do not bear children until we have so chosen

[dark_light]

Amariah appears in the Belltower, throws herself into a chair, and tries to read postcards, but her eyes won't focus on them. She tries the Bellbook, and scarcely has better luck, although her eyes do catch on a certain word.

"Jane."

"Yep?"

"I want to talk to Aether."

"I'll let her know!"

Comments

[fortissima]

Damaris shakes her head.

[mindfields]

"Mine concerns mindscapes," says Yseult. "They are more understandable to me, and more malleable, than they are to most people."

[dark_light]

"So I guess if you haven't turned up with one yet that's evidence in favor of the mint-parents-at-time-of-conception theory," Amariah says in Damaris's direction, "have Keziah or Céleste demonstrated anything yet, though?"

[mindfields]

The relevant Dominiques

[fortissima]

shake their heads.

[dark_light]

"Huh. I guess we'll see. So far no one has been deliberately reproducing to get specific ingotry, anyway."

[telesonorous]

"Specific...?"

[dark_light]

"Well, Bells all have the same power when we can get powers at all. With variations."

[telesonorous]

"Hmm," says Helen, with a glance at Yseult. "Doesn't seem to work that way for us."

[dark_light]

"Apparently not. So it varies template to template."

[telesonorous]

"Should someone be consulting Glass? I hear she's the go-to for this kind of thing."

[dark_light]

"She is! Jane, does Glass want to pop in and peer thoughtfully at Dominiques?"

[mind_game]

"Inquiring - yep!"

[thaumobabble]

Pop!

Glass peers thoughtfully at Dominiques.

[telesonorous]

Dominiques peer thoughtfully back.

[thaumobabble]

"You have some - themes to you, nothing that unusual to have in common as templates go - daemons, coin colors, obviously appearance. None of you are standing out as the template instance at all. I think you might be - almost a subtype? You are a kind of person, the specific kind of that kind of person that appears for Bell/Joker pairings' firstborns. There might be a theme to the ingot powers but I can't tell until I see more of them, I think. I think you're going to continue to usually be female as more of you appear but it's not a guarantee the way it is with - Matildas, say, I don't think we'll ever see a boy Matilda."

[telesonorous]

"I wonder who else there is that we're - subtypes of," muses Helen.

[thaumobabble]

"I'll let you know if I see any!"

[telesonorous]

"Thanks," says Helen, smiling.

(And she glances at Amariah and looks... maybe worried. Worried might be the word.)

[dark_light]

"...What is it?"

[telesonorous]

"...Kas is still - being sad," she says quietly.

[dark_light]

"Yeah. I'm - not in a position to be really comforting, just yet. I think I need to finish reading the postcards first, minimum. If only I'll do - then nothing doing. If he wants somejoker to show up and be soothing, Jane's up, she can fetch him anybody who'll come. Although I guess the ones who have daemons already are busy so they'd need the star."

[telesonorous]

"Okay," says Helen. "...Do you want to read the postcards?"

[dark_light]

"Now, you mean?" Path utters a considering hoot. "Yeah. I guess."

She fishes around in her bag for the next one.

[pythbox]

The postcards have stopped being postcards, at least primarily; now they're just about anything you could write on.

After a spate of doodled owls - it looks like he went through an entire pad of hotel stationery - the next thing she pulls out of the bag is a crumpled movie poster with her name misspelled in the subtitle and HA FUCKING HA scrawled across it in red Sharpie.