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

[temporal_affairs]

[Yeah, sure, I'll be up when the time is right.]

[manofmyword]

[Love you, sweetie.]

He consults Nathaniel.

[Yeah, he says it's okay,] he reports, and the optimal time to appear in Aedyt's living room occurs shortly afterward.

[temporal_affairs]

Pop!

Nathaniel may be a guest, but Nathan's mate has his attention first. Kiss! And then:

"Hullo, Nathaniel. We've got excessively similar names, so if you want, you can call me Timer."

[pythbox]

"Okay," says Nathaniel. "They're not really all that similar except when you write them out, though."

[manofmyword]

The Joker gives his sweetie a hug and a kiss. "Pick me up, honey," he suggests.

[temporal_affairs]

Scoop! Nathan is highly obliging about this sort of thing.

[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.