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

[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."

[telesonorous]

"I guess. But she still - stoppped." Helen shivers.

[dark_light]

Isabella nods. "I suppose it must have seemed like a reasonable option to them at the time."

[telesonorous]

"I can't see how."

[dark_light]

"No, me either, but we're the odd ones out, no one else has daemons as a fact of life."

[telesonorous]

"Yeah," she sighs. "It's so - peculiar."

[dark_light]

"Yep. Very much so. Some of my alts and some of your dad's have acquired daemons but I don't think they think of them in quite the same way as Alethia natives with them do."

[telesonorous]

"What other way is there?"

[dark_light]

"It's hard to characterize. Most of what makes me think this is that they're a lot more cavalier about tucking them away. I don't remember Kas ever doing it with Petaal at all, and I only do it when it's crowded or something. Also, Cam's daemon is also his magical notebook, so there's that."

[telesonorous]

"The magical notebook thing is definitely peculiar," says Helen. "And I'd kind of have to be cavalier about tucking Kal away if we weren't separated, especially if I lived somewhere that people mostly didn't know about daemons, but I guess I'm a special case."

[dark_light]

"Yeah. I'd expect the same thing if Juliet got a daemon; a lot of big-cat daemons here are kind of shrunk to travel size but hers was anything but when she got an illusion. But Shell Bell has a smew, and yet." She shrugs.

[telesonorous]

"What's a smew?"

[dark_light]

"It's a kinda duck." Isabella produces an illusion of Neptune.

[telesonorous]

"Ooh, he's pretty," says Helen. "Soph said that Juliet picked a name for her tiger and that means she might maybe hypothetically get one, but she doesn't know why she hasn't yet or what might get her to."

[dark_light]

"I have a guess," says Isabella after a moment.

[telesonorous]

"What is it? Unless it's private. Then forget I asked."

[dark_light]

"If I'm right you probably shouldn't tell Juliet's Sherlock, but I don't think she'd care if you knew."

[telesonorous]

"Okay, I won't tell," she says.