i bought some postcards

[truthwright]

Kas is sadder, after Inkeri's prophecy. And it gets worse as time goes on. The closer they get to Isabella's return, the more it hurts.

He tries to do the best he can for Helen regardless. Helen, in turn, hugs him a lot and doesn't fuss when he cries on her. They make a good team that way.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"That sounds difficult," says Inkeri.

[telesonorous]

"Yeah. For everybody."

[alicornucopia]

Inkeri nods. "What are you going to do when she comes back?"

[telesonorous]

"I don't know," she says. "I can't help thinking... what if she doesn't like me?" She sighs, and looks up at the Earth. "I'd be okay. But I'd rather get along with her, and I don't know how to do that, or if I can even make a difference to it at all."

[alicornucopia]

Inkeri nods, still admiring the Earth in the sky.

[telesonorous]

"Maybe it'll be okay," says Helen. "I don't know. I guess I'll find out soon."

[alicornucopia]

"Very soon," agrees Inkeri. "I don't know exactly when because I don't know when she left. Do you?"

[telesonorous]

"Late spring next year. That's when Kas says."

[alicornucopia]

"Not long now."

[telesonorous]

She nods, looking up at the Earth.

"Yeah."

[alicornucopia]

Inkeri is quiet.

[telesonorous]

For once, Helen is quiet too.

[alicornucopia]

Inkeri will be content to sit on the moon looking up for a long time.

But after that long time is up, she says, "I would like to go home now."

[telesonorous]

"Okay," says Helen, and she listens to Kalavar and murmurs, "Who's there?", and Kalavar says "Nobody," and Helen teleports them down off the moon.

[alicornucopia]

"Thank you for showing me that," says Inkeri.

[telesonorous]

Helen smiles.

"You're welcome."

[truthwright]

Time goes by.

Helen stays with the clan, more or less; Kas more or less doesn't. He'll drop in to see her, but mostly he keeps in touch by brainphone and spends his time - elsewhere. Every kind of elsewhere.

He cannot handle this. He plainly can't. Late spring gets closer and closer, and he gets less and less sure of what the hell he is doing. He burns an entire stack of half-finished postcards and cries. He cleans Isabella's house and cries. He bakes her a tray of welcome-back muffins and eats them all and throws up in the backyard and cries. He leaves for a month, gets into fights and has sex with strangers and cries in public bathrooms, and then he comes back and cleans Isabella's house again and falls asleep in tear-stained exhaustion on her immaculate living room floor.

[dark_light]

Amariah goes home. She makes sure the local Janepoint is reasserting normalcy, even if it's a bit of a sluggish process from a break this bad. She spots Kas curled up on the floor. She conjures up something more comfortable under him and curls up beside him, the big spoon to his little spoon, Path perched on her head.

[truthwright]

Petaal, wearing one of her big-snake forms, flops a few loops over Amariah in their sleep.

Kas cuddles up, too.

He has definitely been crying; there are still tearstains on his face, long dried.

[dark_light]

Poor sweetie. Jane's fried enough she didn't know how long it had been right away, although she promises to figure it out. Amariah figures anyone who's been waiting besides Kas can wait another few hours. She closes her eyes and goes to sleep.

[truthwright]

Time passes.

Kas wakes up.

He bursts into tears.

[dark_light]

Isabella wakes up as soon as he makes a noise. "Oh, sweetie." She wraps her arms around him tight and hugs him. "How long was it? Jane was so fried she didn't know -"

[truthwright]

"Sixty-six years," he half-sobs, hugging her back. "I love you - I missed you - I could not take missing you like that, fuck."

[dark_light]

"I'm so sorry." Hug, hug hug. Path nuzzles his cheek. "I love you too, sweetie, I'm so sorry - we went to this fucked up world that broke Jane as soon as Aegis walked in - they're going to give Jane her own body and she's gonna sit nice and snug in the Belltower doing fuckall with it and there's a backup for time syncing now."

[truthwright]

Kas snuggles her, and so does Petaal. Cuddly cuddly cuddly.

"I - I wrote you postcards," he says, "you might wanna go to the moon or something to read them, I'm not sure how many and the room might get full if you conjure 'em all at once."