we can live wherever we find ourselves

[dark_light]

Isabella takes awhile catching up with her parents, and the queen.

She is back at the house late that night, not tired but a little ragged. Path alights on her shoulder when she reappears.

She inspects her house.

"I'm going to keep this place, since people sometimes use it as a landing pad to get daemons, and sometimes I want to be able to receive visitors from within the world," she decides, "and a castle in the afterlife won't do that, but I'm going to go build a castle in the afterlife, who wants to see it?"

Comments

[dark_light]

Amariah adds windows - glass in the marble parts, cutouts leaving webs of wood in the outer trunk of the tree and dappling the inside with light - and reveals furniture and interior decoration. "I've had a while to think about eventually having a castle."

[telesonorous]

"I guess so," says Helen. "That's pretty."

[dark_light]

"Thanks." Amariah makes a few adjustments - she didn't, after all, have the layout picked out before now. She fills in the illusion courtyard with plants and bejeweled-mosaic paths. She nudges the arrangement of the cloudpine branches, and hmms, and then she taps into her custom plane and there they are, on the ground floor of the tree-tower.

[telesonorous]

Helen proceeds to the middle of the tower, stands in the open central column, and looks up at the spiral stair winding around and around and around all the way to the top.

"Awesome," she says.

[dark_light]

"Thank you," says Amariah, taking a little bow.

[telesonorous]

Helen grins at her.

[dark_light]

There's a Janepoint here, and Amariah has sped up the castle environs to match outside time in contrast to the rest of her afterlife plane. She makes an ansible; Jane takes half and the other half plugs in. "And now arbitrary people can visit me without having to spend stars to ward off their potential daemons."

[telesonorous]

"That'll be handy," says Helen.

[dark_light]

"Quite. Especially since the star only lasts about a week, did you hear that story?"

[telesonorous]

"I didn't!" she says. "What happened?"

[dark_light]

"Minus - Juliet's Sherlock, from Sunshine - came over for a visit, and while he was here Jane went down for the first time. After he'd been here about a week he woke up in the middle of the night with a genet. She went by Subtrahend, till I told him what the canonical Sherlock Holmes's daemon was called - didn't like Stephirashal entire but she took Steph. They weren't thrilled, though, either one."

[telesonorous]

"Why not?"

[dark_light]

"Well, she wasn't on purpose, and Sherlocks have some mixed feelings about existing, so existing more was an unpleasant surprise."

[telesonorous]

"Oh. Poor Minus. Are they okay now?"

[dark_light]

"I don't have up-to-date information," confesses Isabella. "All kinds of things could've changed since I last saw him, I don't even know how long it was in Sunshine."

[telesonorous]

"Well - I met Soph, and she said somebody from her world got rid of their daemon and then got her back later. But I didn't ask her any questions about it. I'm pretty sure it was the same person, though."

[dark_light]

"That would be him, yes, nobody else from Sunshine ever had one in the first place." Isabella shudders slightly.

[telesonorous]

"Yeah. People with no daemons are only slightly unsettling, but - " She shakes her head.

[dark_light]

"It took me some getting used to. The first time I walked into Milliways I called everyone a zombie, for a while."

[telesonorous]

"I hardly notice most of the time, and then something reminds me and it's weird all over again. But I'm getting used to it."

[dark_light]

"Steph didn't like it that it made me more comfortable around Sherlock when she existed."

[telesonorous]

"...I don't get it," says Helen. "Why?"

[dark_light]

"It was a reason to continue existing, with which she had issues."

[telesonorous]

Helen thinks about this.

"Steph is confusing," she concludes.

[dark_light]

"Very confusing, yes. If she's stopped and then started again that's promising."