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

[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."

[dark_light]

"Must have been a whole lot of postcards. I can conjure them in batches," she says, "right now I'm too glad to be home - I wasn't gone nearly as long on my end but the world was pretty terrible, Glass puked when she saw it through the door." She conjures up the first couple hundred, starts reading.

[telesonorous]

"—Who's that?" says an uncertain voice out of thin air.

[truthwright]

"Fuck." Kas rubs his face with both hands. "C'mere, button."

[telesonorous]

A somewat confused thirteen-year-old girl teleports into the room, hovering on a cloudpine branch.

She sees Amariah.



She stares.

[dark_light]

Amariah stares back.

[That's an Yseult. That is an Yseult. What did you do.]

[truthwright]

[I had a kid!] he says. [I wished myself pregnant and I didn't specify by who and apparently the magic picked you!]

[telesonorous]

The Yseult in question is looking increasingly uncomfortable.



"Hi?" she tries.

[dark_light]

"Hi," says Amariah automatically. "I - apparently haven't - gotten to that part yet." She waves the postcard she's holding, drops it negligently into the "done" pile.

[telesonorous]

"...I could go away," she offers. "Until you've caught up."

[dark_light]

"Yeah."

[telesonorous]

"Okay. Bye," she says, and tilts her head as though listening, and vanishes.

[dark_light]

"How old is she?" asks Isabella quietly.

[truthwright]

"Thirteen," says Kas, also quietly. "Her birthday's in August, I said the third but I could've been wrong. It's in a few months - you've been gone exactly sixty-six years minus a day."

[dark_light]

Path goes slowly fluffy, all his feathers standing on end.

"I am not old enough to have a thirteen year old daughter, fuck, I'm not even old enough to be her irresponsible preteen mother!" says Isabella, "I just - we never even talked about having - goddesses all - I can't." She gets up. She conjures the remaining postcards into a magic bag that will hold them all. "I can't right now - I am going to the Belltower, I will be back, this place is synced and brainphoneable twice over if you need me or you can get Jane to send you after me but - I can't." She flicks her bracelet.

Jane picks her up, and puts her down.

[truthwright]

Kas sits by himself, on her living room floor, and he hugs his daemon, and he just... doesn't do anything. Not a thing at all.