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

[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.

[dark_light]

Amariah makes an eloquently repulsed face at the movie poster.

[telesonorous]

Helen peers at it.

"Wow, that came out waaaaaay before I was born. They've gotten a little better. Well, they figured out how to spell your name, at least."

[dark_light]

"Wow. Wow this is mortifying." She rolls up the poster, stuffs it back into the magic bag, and grabs the next thing.

[pythbox]

A restaurant receipt - I love you.

A hotel business card - I miss you so much.

A postcard from Vancouver - Just had the most amazing thunderstorm.

A scrap of lined paper - Shitty morning, better afternoon. ♥

A postcard from Detroit - I don't know whether I'm writing these to you or to me.

[dark_light]

She sighs. She keeps reading.

[pythbox]

More of the same - snippets of his life, the constant refrain of I love you, I miss you.

After a while, a letter, looking somewhat the worse for wear - some of these things bear hints of how they were destroyed, and this one was apparently cried on profusely and then burned.

[dark_light]

This letter is crushed a little in her hand and pressed to her lips, not quite in a kiss, and then she puts it away and moves on.

[pythbox]

The tone of the postcards changes a little, after the letter; fewer of them just say 'I miss you', and the rest are somewhat happier.

There are still a lot of them.

And as the years of one-sided correspondence wear by, the 'I miss you's start creeping back in.



One postcard, from Quebec City, says: Augustine died. I didn't even know. Talked to her last night and she says she's not coming back. Fuck.

Subsequent postcards take on a darker tone. He's not happy; he misses her. There are moments of joy, and he tells her about most of them, but there's a melancholy edge to it even when he's talking about the amazing waffles he had this morning or how gorgeous the Aurora is from the air.

[dark_light]

Amariah reads. And reads. She's not paying attention to the Dominiques anymore.