though you turn your face away

[jovahs_heiress]

They leave Milliways, eventually, and tell Rinnah and Charles about Zion-or-Damaris, and Isabella resumes her usual routine. Singing. Socializing. Interceding about weather or other needs of petitioners. Assisting Delilah. Showering Micaiah with affection. Coaxing Nathaniel out of his shell. (He seems to like Rinnah, and she finds him precious.) And slowly, thoughtfully, carefully - magic.

She is not as quick to add powers to her repertoire as her counterparts, and will install one only after spending a day or two noting instances where it would be useful and determining that the best way to handle this class of problem is with this magic power. She acquires teleportation, but not boosted physical speed; she acquires a perfect memory, but nudges her cognitive processing capacity upwards only gently. She has no "agony beam" but her voice and she goes on sleeping on a nightly basis and her defensive powers are only present because of the unknown hazards that may roam Milliways, not because of any threat she fears in Samaria. She fears no shortage of coins - Micaiah steadily outputs squares just from being in the room with her and a distribution of the larger wishes whenever she practices masses or has harmonics or brings him along for prayers - but exercising circumspection and judicious restraint will surely show Jovah that she is not abusing her permission to use magic, that she does not seek the power for its own sake but to do good in the world.

She is more generous with magic that is not about granting herself more abilities.

Isabella's work is beginning to be noticed.

She is doing nothing overt. She claims no miracles. But everyone is having such a run of good luck these days. The weather is as ever - drought here, flood there, duststorms elsewhere - but there is an established system for handling those things.

Isabella's working elsewhere.

Ships do not sink anymore, and this was never terribly common to begin with or no one would sail - but there is a terrible storm through a fishing harbor off the Jordana coast, and not a single craft capsizes, let alone goes under.

Plague is mysteriously absent - there are, admittedly, prayers for this too, but they bring medicine, they don't prevent the initial lost work, suffering, death. Plague was never so common either, but no angels have seen a flag that was raised for its traditional purpose for a month and a half, now.

Locusts have begun to leave crops unmolested as though of their own accord. Priests dedicating children to the god find their surgeries met with less weeping, and no infections. Nothing in the whole of Samaria will catch fire without someone intending to set it alight. The primitive cars that carry goods from here to there do not skid on ice or flip on rubble.

Angel-seekers, and those who lie with angels for less mercenary reasons, are surviving their attempts at bearing winged babies with astonishing regularity. Isabella isn't adjusting the species ratio, as she suspects it may be a purposeful test of angel-seeker character to give them mortal children and she's mindful anyway of Micaiah's concerns with the children already being this or that - but they don't kill their mothers coming out. No babies are born motherless anymore, in fact, but it's most obvious at the holds, where the most historically dangerous births are undertaken.

And Isabella begins to think, if I have wrought this, and Jovah sees it is good and does not strip me of my wishes for my hubris or command me to stop for my presumption or even contrive to display before me a warning that shows me some terrible consequence of my actions -

then why did he not make the world this way himself, when we settled it, why was I not born into a world already free of famine and disease and pain and babies who grow up without their mothers and destroyed vehicles that kill everyone aboard and infected Kisses that sicken with fever?

She thinks this, but she does not write it down, or speak it, or change anything she is doing in response to the question.

Today.

Or the next.

Yet.

She announces her pregnancy to the hold, and is made much of, and Phebe sends her a bowl of flowers that might be sniping or might be a genuine gesture of conciliation.

She's not the only pregnant angel in the Eyrie. Abjah, a golden-angel type in her thirties who has three children already by assorted fathers (all mortals), is much farther along, and a few weeks before Isabella's wedding, she gives birth.

To a lucifer.

The screaming brings concerned friends and neighbors - there is always screaming during births, but not usually a sudden chorus of it, not usually cries of horror instead of pain. Isabella is one of them, but she's not just there to stare and gossip. Whatever is going on, she can help, and she shoves herself past wings and bodies and sees what's happened.

The thing is twisted. It has - well, several limbs, at least four, maybe eight or ten depending on which protrusions count, and feathers in places feathers don't belong, and it has lungs enough to bawl a suffering screech like no infant Isabella has ever heard.

"Someone has to kill it," says Abimelech, and "who's the father, who besides Abjah has been putting wing to wing?" says Eliou, and "I never thought it would be so horrible" says Zelpha and then someone repeats -

"Someone has to kill it."

"No!" screams Abjah, sprawled in mess and barely covered by her blanket, reaching towards Rhoda, the mortal Eyrie midwife who has the lucifer held in her hands.

"Someone has to kill it," Zelpha agrees, and Isabella pushes forward again and blurts, "Give it to me."

"You? Isabella?" says Eliou.

"Give it to me," Isabella repeats. "I'll take it away."

No one else is leaping to volunteer. Abjah is only weeping softly.

But why should it be that putting wing to wing results in this misery? Why was Isabella born in that world, and not in another?

Well, she can wonder about that all she likes, but she can see to it that this suffering thing isn't born into a world like that. Rhoda hands it over. A pentagon will kill its pain, whatever's hurting it; it screams on, but softer, and there's a stifled murmur from Zelpha while Isabella carries the lucifer away.

"You're going to kill it, not just leave it exposed to cry itself to death," Eliou says, "right?"

"First," says Isabella, "I'm going to pray. But I will not leave it to cry itself to death."

They get out of her way. She cradles the thing in her arms and makes for the nearest takeoff point and flings herself into the air until she's so high that no one will be able to see what's happening.

She can't even determine the lucifer's sex. If it has one at all, it's not displayed in a conventional way.

Isabella does pray first. She has no song for this, just the air around her and her tuneless voice and her incomprehension.

"WHY?" she screams into the blue expanse. No one can hear her here, the air is so thin it won't carry, but her shout is ringing in her ears and the lucifer whimpers. "Why is this something that can happen? Why does Abjah's mistake and her lover's mistake condemn this baby who has made no mistakes until I step in? Who am I? What are you doing? You place it in my path, but there have been lucifers now and again for centuries and no one saved them then! Why? Jovah is good, Jovah is merciful, Jovah makes babies so confused by their own warped bodies that they cry without ceasing even when they've stopped feeling any pain, why? Tell me why and I'll do as you say! Tell me why and I'll see the wisdom in it, Jovah, you gave me a mind, it's not so tiny and ignorant as all that, tell me why and I'll follow your guidance forever, tell me what I'm meddling with so I'll know better how to go! Tell me!"

There is no response. There is never a response to an unsung prayer, one which isn't from the standard books, one which doesn't simply ask for weather or seed or medicine. Weather seed medicine weather seed medicine weatherseedmedicine weatherseedmedicine that is all he can do, that and issue cryptic answers to questions through oracles and make Kisses burn and glow, that is all. Five things. She could count them on the fingers of one hand.

The lucifer is still crying. All her importuning of the god has not erased its deformities.

And it only takes a pentagon to turn it into a healthy angel. A boy, as it turns out. One medium-sized coin. Micaiah makes them easily if she holds a note for longer than a second.

...He made them in Milliways, too, where Jovah was not. Jovah did not even answer a prayer for weather when she tried it there, but the Kiss still worked.

Isabella looks down at the angel baby in her hands, no longer crying, but blinking unfocused eyes, confused.

There is simply, simply, simply no way in which this would not have been a better way to arrange things from the start. Let Abjah have an angel lover if she can't resist, let her get with child by him, and let the baby simply be an angel like Nathan's and Magdalena's daughters were save Tamar. Why should that not work? Why should Isabella have had to bring offworld magic in to do what Jovah - ought to have done? Ought to have woven into the workings of bloodlines when he made angels to begin with? Ought to have seen better, made better?

If he is not going to stop her, if he's not going to strike her where she hovers and the ex-lucifer with her because there is some hidden flaw in the change she's made, then he is not saying she is wrong. And if she is not wrong, then he is.

Something is the matter.

But not with this baby. This baby is now perfectly fine. She will tell everyone that she prayed, and then the child was made whole, and no one will ask her any further prying questions. She'll claim she can't remember the words.

Isabella descends.

Comments

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah missed most of the excitement; it's only coincidence that he's there to see her land.

"Isabella? What's wrong?"

[jovahs_heiress]

"I - I'll explain the details later, in our room -" She has to give the baby to Abjah; she can hear the elder angel weeping even over the chastising voices of others demanding the father's name.

Isabella, the baby cradled against her chest, shoulders her way past the knot of people and then holds him up, above her head.

"Behold!" she cries, hoping that the fact that she may burst into tears at any moment sounds like she's overwhelmed by Jovah's power, not having a crisis of faith. "Behold, I went aloft and I prayed, and the child is whole! An angel has been born! Jovah dances!"

There is a moment of perfect silence, and Isabella uses it to stride forward and place the baby on Abjah's chest where she lies on spine-supporting pillows with her wings sprawled to either side.

When Isabella turns to face the room, eyes watering, jaw trembling, the reaction is cacophanous.

[yovahs_kisses]

...Micaiah is confused.

But he can wait for the details if Isabella wants.

[jovahs_heiress]

"I'm exhausted," Isabella tells Eliou when he insists that she go straight to Delilah and explain. "Please let me go back to my room for a bit of quiet," she tells Zelpha when Zelpha demands the words of the prayer, the tune and the meter. "How's Ithiel, I've always liked that, please let that be all you want from me now," she tells Abjah, when Abjah begs her to name her son.

And she steps out of the room, tiny steps as people reluctantly part for her, and when her path reaches Micaiah's position in the hall she takes his hand and breaks into a longer stride and doesn't slow until they're in her room and she's thrown herself into the middle of the bed, wings outflung, pouring tears into the nearest pillow.

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah cuddles up under her wing and kisses her forehead and hugs her.

[jovahs_heiress]

The room has long been magically soundproofed the way the music rooms are. Mostly because Isabella feels bad about monopolizing the music rooms on occasions when she and/or Micaiah are likely to be noisy in less than musical ways. "Do you know why angels aren't supposed to take angel lovers?" she asks in a murmur, turning her face away from the pillow to look at Micaiah.

[yovahs_kisses]

"Something about their kids...?"

[jovahs_heiress]

"Their kids are deformed. Lucifers, they're called, even if no one kills them they soon die on their own, they're - tragic. Abjah had one. I took him - I couldn't even tell he was a him, then, but I took him and I flew up and - I have never been so angry. I begged and I screamed and I demanded an explanation, I wanted Jovah to account for himself, for making angels this way, and nothing happened. I wasn't struck for my impudence, I felt no shift in the air, I certainly wasn't answered. You know, I asked at Penninah's, once, why lucifers occurred? And Jovah said -" She has her perfect memory now. She can produce the exact words, at least as Penninah rendered the translation. "Angel blood is not meant to mix with its like save by dispensation. Dispensation, like Nathan and Magdalena, they got special permission through an oracle and their children were all healthy, but Abjah didn't get one and Abjah slept with some angel she's refusing to identify and she got a lucifer. And I was hovering, and holding him, and he was crying even though the first thing I did was take his pain away, he felt warm so he wasn't cold like a mortal baby would have been, he was just - confused. Too many limbs. Too sick and wretched to do anything but cry. And Jovah did nothing. There are no prayers to heal that, no medicine I could have called down to reshape Abjah's son. But I did it anyway. It was only a pentagon."

[yovahs_kisses]

...

He hugs her some more.

[jovahs_heiress]

She wraps herself around him and sobs into his shoulder. "Jovah made angels. If I had made angels I would have made us different, in that respect at least. And he didn't stop me from changing it! He didn't forbid me the magic, he didn't smite me out of the sky, he didn't make the wish fail or kill the lucifer before I had the chance to fix him! I'm changing his creation in ways he could have done himself. I'm not using the usual mortal tools that he gives everyone, to do it, I'm not just singing and hoping and grinding manna roots for salve, I'm changing things in big ways, and if it's all right for me to do that - then why weren't they already changed? Isn't he mightier and wiser and better than I am, whatever trinkets Shell Bell gave us?"

[yovahs_kisses]

"Maybe not," Micaiah says softly.

[jovahs_heiress]

Isabella weeps.

[yovahs_kisses]

He cuddles her and kisses her and loves her, because he can't think of any better way to help.

[jovahs_heiress]

"I can't even ask anyone - a priest, an oracle, Delilah - as far as they're concerned Jovah is that mighty and wise and good, Jovah's the one who healed Abjah's baby, all I did was pray for it," she says quietly, when she's recovered from this bout of sobs. "If only I'd been able to pick up the language when I studied with Peninnah - I could magic it now, but what's the use? I'm not an acolyte, I'll never get time alone with an interface, I'd have to justify my questions."

[yovahs_kisses]

"We could go back to the oracle we asked about magic...?"

[jovahs_heiress]

Isabella laughs, a miserable dark laugh. "And ask her what? Why do lucifers happen? Peninnah already answered that for me. Why was this lucifer healed? We know the answer to that question; who knows what Jovah would say to Alleluia, but it's not information we need, this one was healed because I healed him. Why did he make angels that way? I don't think that'll get any better answer than the one about why lucifers happen. It's the same question."

[yovahs_kisses]

That is not a good laugh. Micaiah kisses her forehead again.

"I don't know, then," he says. "I don't know."

[jovahs_heiress]

"I'm so glad you're here with me, even if neither of us knows what to do," murmurs Isabella. "I love you."

[yovahs_kisses]

"I love you too," he sighs, and cuddles her some more.

[jovahs_heiress]

Eventually, Isabella does have to leave her room.

Ithiel is going right on being a healthy angel baby, and everyone wants to know how she did it.

"I can't remember the prayer," she demurs when asked. "It came to me in the moment, unlearned, I can't remember how it went, I'm so sorry."

"No, I don't know who Ithiel's father is. I imagine only the father himself and Abjah do. Yes, and Jovah," she says, when they ask her that.

"No, absolutely not. My baby's father is my fiancé Micaiah, for absolute certain, and will not be needing any such rescue," she says, when asked a rather ruder question about her personal relationship to lucifers.

"Of course I'll talk to Delilah. Right after dinner. I've scarcely eaten all day," she says. "I'll go straight there when I've eaten something."

And she does. Delilah's questions are much like the others. She's impressed, she wants to know the prayer, she wants to know how Isabella knew the prayer.

Isabella sticks to her story.

She goes back to her room after the meeting, her hands trembling, and she holds Micaiah tight and is too tired to even cry again before she falls asleep.

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah stays awake for a long while, holding her, loving her. But eventually, he sleeps too.

[jovahs_heiress]

The furor dies down.

The wedding approaches.

Delilah officiates, although Alleluia is at the Eyrie for it as a guest. They're wed in front of all the hold, surrounded by Serah's exquisitely-chosen flowers. Isabella wears a slate blue dress and has her hair up in still more flowers. She presents Micaiah with a set of Eyrie bracelets in her family pattern, and she kisses him, because while she has little enough idea what Jovah is doing anywhere else in the world, she knows that he chose her a fine man for her husband. She loves Micaiah with all her heart.

There's music, and not one bit of dancing because this is an angel hold.

[yovahs_kisses]

He loves her right back, and he loves that they get to have a big party about it. He laughs his way through the ceremony and refuses to be separated from her afterward—hugs her, kisses her, leans on her, and generally acts like a helplessly lovestruck fool.

[jovahs_heiress]

Normally they'd mingle with the guests separately, but no one presses them too hard about it when he won't go and she doesn't make the slightest attempt to shoo him. They eat their nibbles and listen to people sing for them and they exchange kisses every few seconds and Isabella doesn't even notice that Alleluia is looking at her strangely.

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah does.