jovahs_heiress | yes, we believe in the wisdom of our god

Isabella is generally referred to as: promising.

Angels in general are a breed apart. Of course they've all got lovely voices, they've all got classical music training and know the masses and prayers, they're all blessed winged creatures -

But that doesn't mean they're all smart, or all good, even (Isabella was taken to see Windy Point, once, or what's left of it, and of course she sees the scars on Galo Mountain every year at the Gloria; there stood angels who were not good). And Isabella is smart and good.

Isabella is always the first to volunteer for an intercession. She likes them. She'll call down weather, plead for seeds, pray a shower of medicine to fall from the sky, and she will get what she asks for, and she loves nothing more than to dive from hours aloft in prayer and clasp the hands of the people she helped and go home to the Eyrie to take on her next assignment. When there are none - when there is the right amount of rain and sun in the province, when there is no plague and no famine - she studies. She studies a bit of everything, but she fancies herself particularly a historian, investigating the accounts of Archangels' reigns past. From books, mostly, although once she wrangled herself a year in Cedar Hills to assist the Archangel Linus, and when she is in the Eyrie she closely follows the leader of the host there, the former term-lapsed Archangel Delilah.

She tried to get in with the other living former Archangel, too, Alleluia the oracle who served as Delilah's interim while the latter's wing recovered from an injury, but after a few hours' conversation Alleluia said that she could not accept Isabella as even a temporary acolyte and sent her to Peninnah instead. Isabella learned a lot from Peninnah, but she's confused about why Alleluia turned her down personally only to send her to another oracle, after such a prolonged interview. Particularly since Sinai is in her own province; what was the point in sending her all the way to Gaza?

But the instruction came from an oracle, and oracles' words more often than not come from Jovah. She went to Gaza, learned from Peninnah, and went home.

Now she is back at the Eyrie, and the first thing she wants to do is let Delilah know that she's back. Her wings aren't so tired that she can't immediately fly to the Corinnis or the outskirts of Semorrah or anywhere and accomplish something. Failing that, she'd love to sign up for harmonies again now that she's home and wants to know what she ought to schedule around.

Delilah is with her husband Noah, and a visitor. He doesn't seem like a petitioner, and he doesn't look like an Edori, although the fact that he and Noah are talking in Edori suggests that he might be an adopted one. (There are hardly any Edori of either sort left; most of them live in Ysral, now.) Isabella waits patiently outside the door for the host leader's attention.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

pythbox

"Yes, angela," says Nathaniel.

From:

jovahs_heiress

She ties it. She shakes Judith's hand.

And she picks up Nathaniel, gently and carefully, and goes aloft.

"Let me know if you have any trouble breathing, or if you're cold," she says, "and I can fly lower or slower or both."

From:

pythbox

"Yes, angela," he repeats obediently.

From:

jovahs_heiress

"I don't think I ever told you my name. It's Isabella," says Isabella conversationally, as they reach a reasonable cruising-with-mortal-passenger altitude.

From:

pythbox

"I'm Nathaniel," he says hesitantly, as though he expects her to object.

From:

jovahs_heiress

"It's a lovely name. You know, the first leader of the host at Cedar Hills was named Nathaniel. Although he went by Nathan."

From:

pythbox

"I didn't know that."

From:

jovahs_heiress

"I study history in my spare time, so I know these things," says Isabella. "What do you like to do besides sing? Practice for the choir is a few hours a day, but you'll have time to do other stuff too."

From:

pythbox

"I play piano," he says. "And I have lessons. But Mother says I'm allowed to miss those while I'm not at home."

From:

jovahs_heiress

"Would you like to go on studying piano?"

From:

pythbox

Softly, without excitement: "Yes, angela."

From:

jovahs_heiress

She's not sure she likes that voice. That is the voice of someone who is routinely obliged to "like" things.

For that matter, now she's not even sure if he likes singing. But she didn't have any other ideas for legitimate ways to get him out of the house and directly under Delilah's purview, and she would really need to check with Delilah first before pulling even a small-scale equivalent of the Archangel Gabriel's Exodus of the Jansai Women at the behest of the angel Obadiah, barging in and commanding the release of the abused member of the household on pain of Jovah's thunderbolts.

"Well, you could probably locate a teacher, if you looked, but you could easily find yourself too busy to have time to work on piano," she says. Carelessly. This is not an angel who cares whether Nathaniel plays the piano, certainly not.

From:

pythbox

"Thank you," he says after a moment, as though he's not sure what the correct response is and is just falling back on a likely guess.

From:

jovahs_heiress

"You're welcome."

She can't ask this kid point-blank if his father hits him. She can't. There's no way he doesn't, but Nathaniel would assuredly lie to her.

So she'll just have to get him set up and then use the months before the Gloria to get Micaiah to talk to him, that's all. Micaiah will have a better shot if he's willing to try.

And failing that she can always just tell Delilah everything.

From:

pythbox

Nathaniel is, predictably, very quiet for the rest of the flight.

From:

jovahs_heiress

Isabella finds cause to sing for the cessation of a rather excessive storm (they fly over, not through; it isn't one of those towering thunderheads so huge as to be impossible to detour around, the kind that felled Delilah early in her tenure) but otherwise she allows silence to reign as well.

She lands at the Eyrie when it's almost dusk. "Let's go introduce you to the choir director," she says, setting Nathaniel down and offering him her hand.

Edited Date: 2013-02-11 03:07 am (UTC)

From:

pythbox

Hesitantly, he puts his hand in hers.

From:

jovahs_heiress

Baruch, the choir director, is just finishing up a practice - it's bedtime for the children, who range from seven to eleven years old. The choir is almost evenly divided between mortal and angel, and several of them look curiously at Nathaniel as they depart their practice room in clumps and pairs. "Hello, Baruch," says Isabella.

"Hello, Isabella. I didn't know you were back. Who's this?"

"I remembered hearing you say the last time I was visiting that you wanted to find more children for the choir from farther away than Velora but could never find the time to get away," Isabella says. "This is Nathaniel. He's got a very pretty voice and he's even been trained most of the way up for you. I found him in Semorrah and his mother thought putting him in the choir would be a lovely idea."

"Hello Nathaniel," says Baruch, squatting with some awkward re-angling of his great tan wings to make level eye contact. "I'm Baruch."

From:

pythbox

"Hello, Baruch," Nathaniel says quietly. "It's very good to meet you."

From:

jovahs_heiress

"Likewise. Isabella, you can leave him with me, I'll get him situated - Jehiel's been homesick and I think a roommate will help - what sort of music do you like to sing, Nathaniel...?"

Isabella notes the prospective roommate's name, and she pats Nathaniel on the head and tells him that he can ask anyone in the Eyrie to help him find her if he needs to, and she goes to grab something portable from the kitchens and take it back to her room, hoping to find Micaiah.

From:

pythbox

Nathaniel is listing the songs he's best at when she leaves him with Baruch.

Micaiah, when she finds him, is in a music room practicing that same Gloria mass.

From:

jovahs_heiress

Isabella is, by the time she tries the music rooms and is informed by a passing mortal that Micaiah's in that one, halfway through her chicken salad wrap. She hesitates - you don't walk in on people in practice rooms! - but she opens the door anyway and closes it as soon as her wings have followed her through. She doesn't interrupt the singing - she joins in on Prisca's part at the next phrase.