i might as well be the man on the moon

[truthwright]

Their Isabella having just gone to welcome a new Bell into the peal, Kas and Petaal snuggle up together and take a nap. They'll want to be well rested for the party.

When they wake up, she still isn't back.

[Jane?]

No response.

Kas teleports down to the Janepoint, Petaal wrapped snake-shaped around his shoulders.

The display reads: error 7788: lycanthropy

"...So that's new," he says.

"No shit," says Petaal. "Now what?"

He shrugs. She coils tighter.

"Hang around and wait, I guess."

Comments

[truthwright]

[What are people saying about the dead?]

[alicornucopia]

[People are saying that the dead are contacting them in their sleep. I haven't been contacted, but Mother says Father has spoken to her and plans to invite me, later. And people are saying it has something to do with Isabella.]

[truthwright]

[Yeah, that was all her. She fixed the afterlife.]

[alicornucopia]

[Is - that why she's gone? That must have been - I can't even imagine the spell that would take - and some of them - require sacrificing - things -] says Ranata plaintively.

[truthwright]

He hesitates.

[...She had help,] he says. [She's going to come back. I just - don't know when.]

[alicornucopia]

[Oh,] breathes Ranata. [Oh, that's good, if she's going to come back. Do you know approximately how long...?] She says this with the mild curiosity afforded an immortal.

[truthwright]

[There's no way to know.]

[alicornucopia]

[Oh. Well. Thank you very much for letting me know, Kas.]

[truthwright]

[No problem,] he says wryly, and goes back to his wandering.

It's not all that different, really, from having her waiting for him at home. There's only the one thing between them.

But she isn't waiting for him at home, and it is different, and he hates it more than a little.

He drifts around the States, then up into Canada. He visits his friend Augustine in Quebec City. While he's there, staying in a mediocre hotel, he buys a postcard.

He writes on it: I miss you. And when he checks out of his hotel, he drops it in the trash.

[alicornucopia]

At least in this subworld in the Alethia sheaf, the effects of the revamped afterlife slowly becomes more well-known and well-acknowledged. People who have communicated with dead individuals go on television and talk about it. Several dead people are haphazardly dictating books. Amariah made it so inconvenient and - relatively speaking - pointless enough to return to life that not many have done it, but the first few are met with fanfare and media deals.

[truthwright]

He wonders vaguely if any of the dead people he knows will invite him to visit. None of them do. He's glad.

After the first one, he writes more postcards. None of them reach the mail. Sometimes he's passing by a store and sees a cute one that he wants to write on; other times, he thinks of something to write and goes out and gets a postcard.

I love you. I miss you.

You wouldn't believe the cookies we just made. Love you.

Got laid last night! Fuck, I miss you.

A month goes by like this, and then another one. He shoves his postcards down gutters and into recycling boxes and occasionally burns one.

Eventually, he checks on the house.

[alicornucopia]

There are a few letters from various witches and news outlets tucked into the mailbox.

The Janepoint is undisturbed.

[truthwright]

He puts the witches' letters with that first one and the news outlets' letters somewhere else, and he cleans the place and stays there for a few days cooking and sewing and feeling sorry for himself. Then he gets the hell out.

For lack of anywhere better to go, he takes Petaal to the cloudpine forest where they cut their first branch - the long way, no teleporting. They cut another one and fly to England. Why England? Well, why not?

A lot of things are like that, these days.

He cries. He writes a postcard about it. He writes a postcard apologizing for the postcard about crying. He giggles over that one for so long that he starts crying again, and a stranger asks if he's all right, and he says his girlfriend might be dead, and the stranger says that's not so bad these days, and he wants to hit something but instead he just cries some more.

His supply of coins is - well, not running low, but it's been neglected for a while. He and Petaal spend a week on a certain asteroid replenishing it in creative ways. He feels better for a little while after that, until the next time he bursts into tears in the middle of breakfast.

It occurs to him one day that he hasn't seen a movie in a while, so he spends a day in a movie theatre, writing on his tickets like they're postcards before he throws them out and goes to get one for the next show. Little miniature reviews about which parts made him laugh or which characters he wanted to fuck or how fucking much he misses her. (He tears that one in half before he throws it away.)

[alicornucopia]

Months wear on.

And years.

Dead people go on trickling back into life at a slow, filtered rate. The afterlife is a decent hub for inter-world communication, since they all go to the same place. Witches and scientists alike are talking about finding a way to make permanent gates.

Someone makes a movie about Isabella creating the afterlife. It's fictionalized to hell and back, they spell her second name "Ammaria", it's clear they couldn't get interviews with anyone who knew her more than passingly, and it makes a ridiculous amount of money anyway.

[truthwright]

Kas... goes on.

After the movie tickets, his repertoire of things he writes to Amariah on expands considerably. He'll scribble a heart on a grocery receipt or doodle an owl on a bar napkin. He writes her little notes on hotel stationery about who he just fucked and how much he got paid for it.

When the movie comes out, he writes HA FUCKING HA in red Sharpie across the first poster he sees. A few weeks later he gives in and watches the damn thing, and by the end his ticket is too shredded to write on and he doesn't feel like stealing someone else's.

One of the postcards says, I don't know whether I'm writing these to you or to me.

[alicornucopia]

It's not the last movie. She's a public figure, not intellectual property; anyone can make a movie (write a book, put on a Broadway production) about Isabella Amariah (subsequent media gets the name right). There are various subtitles for her, ranging from the fanciful "Shade-Dreamer" to the preposterous "Second Coming of Christ" (playing on the absurd self-sacrifice angle; Amariah's old teachers have talked but apparently Ranata hasn't).

She's been gone fifteen years before Kas is likely to run into any information about the little cult that's sprung up about the latter interpretation.

[truthwright]

A little before then - it's been about eleven and a half years - he writes her a letter.

Sweetie,

I can't handle this. I really can't. I miss you too much. I don't know what to do. If you were here I could see you, and if I knew when you were coming back I could wait, and if you were gone forever I could be wrecked about it and then move on. But I know you're coming back, I just don't know when, and it's killing me. I keep wondering what happened, where you are, how you're doing, if you're okay. And I have no idea and no way to find out.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're not coming back.

I love you.

He signs it with tearstains and sets it on fire.

There are fewer notes after that. Writting the letter helped a little. Less crying, less I miss you. But still plenty of both.

When he finds out about the cult, he considers telling these people that he fucked their messiah, but it would be mostly pointless and only a little bit funny, so he leaves them alone.

[alicornucopia]

Isabella passes into the generic public consciousness along with all the other cultural touchstones. Some people name their children after her; some people start using her name as a component of irreverent oaths. More religions incorporate her; the original cult shoots up in membership, schisms twice, settles down into relative obscurity again.

Isabella doesn't come home.

[truthwright]

More years go by.

The frequency of postcards to nowhere waxes and wanes unpredictably. He stops really counting the years. Twenty, thirty. How old is he? He forgets, he doesn't care; he's as ageless as a witch.

He's friendly and chatty but he doesn't make friends. He drops in on Augustine once in a while, but not very often. When she dies, she invites him to visit and it's the first he hears of it. She tells him that she doesn't think she'll come back anytime soon. He hugs her. Her fur is thick and warm.

They don't talk again after that.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata Ekamma witches around as much as ever. She pops up in random places.

Once it's a random place where Kas is.

She doesn't recognize him, but -

She looks a lot like her daughter.

[truthwright]

Except for the broad-tailed hummingbird, yes she does.

Kas recognizes her immediately.

Petaal climbs out of his sleeve as a shrew and then flits over as a sparrow to say hi to Castarilan.

[alicornucopia]

"Hi!" Castarilan says.

He doesn't recognize Petaal, either.

[truthwright]

"Guess who, guess who," Petaal says merrily. She changes into a blue jay in midair.

[alicornucopia]

Castarilan is surprised! He backs up in his eternal hovering a bit, then flies forward again. "Petaal! Hi! We haven't seen you in ages!"

[truthwright]

Petaal giggles, flutters back to Kas, and drapes herself across his shoulders as a linsang.

"Sure haven't," Kas agrees, petting her head. "How've you been?"