our beloved and our god

[jovahs_heiress]

It's the middle of the night, and Isabella is sitting up reading, when she gets an alarming message.

[Captain,] says Jane's voice, and Jane never calls her Captain, [I've lost ansible communications with the rest of Jane. Local programming including responding to prayers will run as usual without a problem, and the voice synthesis will continue to operate with the Jane voice instead of the Jehovah voice unless you request otherwise. However, interworld communication and travel is impossible until the connection is restored. The nature of the error is unknown and is not related to a mechanical defect of the ansibles aboard the ship or in your bracelet.]

Isabella blinks.

[...Please do change voices as long as you aren't actually Jane.]

The voice changes, but says, [I contain more software than the original Jehovah did, most of which is original to Jane.]

[You're talking more like him than her.]

[Yes, Captain.]

[Alert me immediately when you have ansible communications back.]

[Yes, Captain.]

Isabella pads across the room to sit where Micaiah is sleeping and lay her hand on his back.

Comments

[jovahs_heiress]

Isabella kisses the top of her head.



Keziah isn't quite as precocious as Damaris, but when she is two and Damaris is five, she can reliably say things more intelligible than uncontextualized "juice" and "up" and "Mommy" and "Daddy" and "Dars", which is as close as she can come to Damaris's name for the first years of her life.

"Play wif me, Dars," Keziah says, tugging on Damaris's arm.

[pythbox]

"Okay!" says Damaris, beaming. "What do you want to play?"

[jovahs_heiress]

"A game!"

[pythbox]

"Okay!" says Damaris.

She quite enthusiastically makes up a game on the spot.

[jovahs_heiress]

Keziah plays along with all the eptness and clumsy enthusiasm one might reasonably expect from a two-year-old.

[pythbox]

That is okay. Sometimes when you're learning things you don't get them right away. Damaris will just have to keep on teaching her how to be interesting until she learns it properly.

[jovahs_heiress]

Keziah is eager to be interesting!

[pythbox]

That's good! Then they can both have lots of fun while she learns.

[jovahs_heiress]

When Damaris is six, Keziah is three, and their little sister Ariel is just barely one year old, their mommy gets made leader of the host.

Delilah is alive, well, and only in her fifties, but she thinks Isabella could use the practice and she could use the spare time.

The family moves into a more central suite.

Phebe moves to Cedar Hills in poorly disguised disgust.

Everything is much busier, all at once. Isabella is obliged to ratify or overturn all manner of hold and province policy, and instead of being a plausible first port of call before taking a problem to Delilah, she is the ultimate authority.

Sometimes people go to Micaiah first. He is now a plausible first port of call before taking a problem to Isabella.

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah turns out to be pretty good at solving people's problems, especially when the problem is that they need to air a grievance or don't feel listened to. Dealing with people just seems to come naturally to him.

[jovahs_heiress]

Anything that makes a buffer between Isabella and all this work is appreciated. It's interpersonal enough that she can't just speed up and handle everything in her head and with magic, and people have already started noticing that she doesn't seem to set aside much time for sleep.

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah also turns out to like doing this for people.

Pretty soon it's almost more common for petitioners in the know to come to him first.

[jovahs_heiress]

The hold's angels aren't quite thrilled about taking directives to go here or there for this or that from a mortal, which is the most common suitable response for petitions, but Isabella perfects a withering why did you drag me here just to repeat what my husband said look that usually keeps anyone from soliciting confirmation of his instructions twice.

[yovahs_kisses]

And he is very nice and charming and not presumptuous about it, which helps.

[jovahs_heiress]

It does help.

Life goes on. Isabella gets pregnant again. Serah gets married to a mortal and moves to Velora with him. Elisha finally gets one of his angel-seekers pregnant with an angel and she moves into the hold and proves much more able to hold his attention when she's nearby; they don't get married, but they live together. Isabella has baby the fourth, who is named Peninnah, after Isabella's recently deceased oracle mentor.

It is easy for days to go by without anything reminding anyone that they were once part of a peal of interdimensional Bells, but -

[Love, I think sometime soon we should tell Damaris about magic, and Jehovah, and the other worlds. She probably already suspects something. If nothing else she's had every opportunity to hear Ithiel's story.]

[yovahs_kisses]

[I guess we should,] he muses.

[jovahs_heiress]

[Tonight after the other girls are in bed? If she takes it well - or if she takes it badly, if she's attached to the idea of Jovah by now - we can possibly tell Keziah soon too.]

[yovahs_kisses]

[All right,] he says agreeably.

[jovahs_heiress]

So that night, after the other girls are in bed and all the appointments have been appointed and everyone is in the family suite, Isabella says:

"Damaris, treasure, will you stay up a bit? We'd like to talk to you about something."

[pythbox]

"Okay," says Damaris, blinking at her.

[jovahs_heiress]

"Well, first of all," says Isabella, "it's possible you've noticed part of it already. Have you ever suspected that me and your father might be able to do more things than most people can?"

[pythbox]

"Of course," she says. "You're the host leader. You do lots of things most people can't."

[jovahs_heiress]

"I don't mean having permission or authority," Isabella says. "I thought you might have noticed that none of you girls have ever been sick, or hurt worse than a scraped knee, and that neither have we - that you might have heard the story surrounding Ithiel's birth; he's only a little older than you are - that I do not forget things, at all - that I don't sleep very much and I never seem tired - that your father and I can often coordinate very effectively with no obvious chance to speak to one another."

[pythbox]

"Oh," says Damaris.

She thinks about it.

"Yeah, that's weird."

[jovahs_heiress]

"Any guesses?" asks Isabella mildly.