alleluia

[jovahs_heiress]

Alleluia and Caleb tell their children about magic, one by one. Isabella meets with each one to clarify a few matters. She gives Ezra a job, at the Eyrie - it is convenient to have more people around who know her secrets. And the youngest, an angel girl named Naamah, just nineteen (a last minute surprise to her parents), wants someone to talk to who is more familiar with magic than her but isn't up to their neck in it like Isabella or Micaiah - or even her own parents, who have been to all those Bell parties.

Isabella thinks about this.

[Nathaniel?]

Comments

[pumpkin_pie]

Aedyt sighs the sigh of one whose parents are unspeakably cute.

[pythbox]

Nathaniel giggles quietly.

[temporal_affairs]

"So what'd I miss while I was listening to Kerron make the case for the cultural importance of the World's Biggest Rubber Band Ball?"

[pythbox]

"Aedyt was telling me about her hobbies. She has a lot of them," says Nathaniel. "What is the World's Biggest Rubber Band Ball? How big is it?"

[temporal_affairs]

"It's a ball of rubber bands - pumpkin, have you got rubber bands, I don't know if they have 'em in Samaria - and it's a little smaller than this house, after a while it starts using these massive industrial ones."

[pumpkin_pie]

Aedyt produces a rubber band.

[pythbox]

"It's... sproingy," says Nathaniel, fascinated.

[manofmyword]

The Joker giggles.

[temporal_affairs]

"Yup," says Nathan. "People use 'em to keep things bundled up. If you use 'em to keep other rubber bands bundled up and then you keep going, you get a ball."

[manofmyword]

The Joker helpfully conjures a ball of rubber bands and hands it to Nathaniel.

[pythbox]

He adds the one Aedyt gave him onto it, then starts carefully disassembling the thing.

[temporal_affairs]

Nathan laughs. This occasion, like the overwhelming majority of occasions, calls for him to nuzzle his mate.

[pythbox]

...That is really cute.

[manofmyword]

It is, it is really cute!

The Joker nuzzles him back, which might be even cuter.

[pythbox]

Awwww. Nathaniel smiles at his slowly diminishing rubber band ball and the neat pile of rubber bands in his lap.

[temporal_affairs]

Nathan hangs out on the asteroid with mate, daughter, and visitor until it is a good time to bid everyone goodbye and pop back into the car with Kerron and resume roadtripping.

[pythbox]

In this time, Nathaniel pulls the rubber band ball apart completely and then puts it back together again. Seven different times.

[manofmyword]

"I think we found you a new hobby," giggles the Joker.

[pythbox]

"Can I keep it?" he asks shyly.

[manofmyword]

"Sure you can," he says, grinning. "So while you're here, wanna see any more of the world? We could go hang out in an emptyish capital site for a while."

[pythbox]

"Sure," says Nathaniel, smiling a little. He tosses his rubber band ball into the air and catches it.

[manofmyword]

The Joker waves to Aedyt and then teleports himself and Nathaniel to a random capital site not currently in use.

[alicornucopia]

No capital sites, these days, are truly empty; they all have some full-time staff, combinations of wolves and nonessential vampires. The Australian site doesn't have any permanent wolf residents in it, but it has a couple of vampires who can talk to visitors and give out pamphlets and generally serve as Golden Coven presence.

One of them is where they land.

She blinks at them.

"Hello," Renata says, tilting her head.

[pythbox]

"Um, hello," Nathaniel says, blinking back at her. "I'm Nathaniel."

[alicornucopia]

"I'm Renata," she says. "Um, welcome to the Australia capital site of the Golden Empire."

She is definitely looking at Nathaniel more than at the Joker.