for the world slows and the stars falter

[jovahs_heiress]

Isabella sings harmonics - including with Micaiah, once he's learned the mass to performance quality; there's a forty-five minute section in the middle that's perfect for extracting and presenting to the wee hours of the morning at the Eyrie.

She flies on intercessions, and generally brings him along, for rain, to halt a blizzard, to calm a storm, and once she finds a plague flag and puts Micaiah down far away from the settlement while she quizzes the healthier community members about their symptoms. Angels rarely catch the plague; she feels safe enough picking Micaiah up again so he can listen to her sing through the verse designated for each complaint (this for fever, that for cough, the other for the rash) and watch the pills fall to earth. The flag comes down and they continue home.

She keeps half an eye on Nathaniel, and quietly informs Baruch of the situation as well so he'll be mindful of the boy's potential sensitivities.

She falls into an assistant role with Delilah - nothing so formal as the situation she had with Linus, because Isabella would be living at the Eyrie either way, but Delilah sends her to greet visitors and has her take notes at meetings and occasionally even asks her opinion on questions about this or that.

And one morning, Isabella opens her door to leave her quarters and sing a pre-dawn duet with Serah - and the hallway is not there.

"Micaiah," she murmurs.

Comments

[pythbox]

Micaiah peers around her wing.

"...That's new," he says. "I wonder what happened? Let's go find out!"

[jovahs_heiress]

"There is supposed to be a hallway here," says Isabella, bewildered. "This looks like a bar. This isn't even the Eyrie."

[pythbox]

"Doesn't look like it," he agrees cheerfully.

[jovahs_heiress]

Well. This is the only way out of her quarters; her windows are little slits of skylight, she's not at the edge of the mountain in one of the most desirable rooms with a nice view. If this door is determined to lead to a bar...

She steps, slowly, as though afraid to put weight on the floor, but she goes in.

[pythbox]

Micaiah follows, without any of her hesitation.

[jovahs_heiress]

The bar is full of a multitude of people. Isabella is the only angel there, and most everyone is dressed strangely; some people are shaped strangely. Of the people with visible forearms, no one appears to have been dedicated. The bar is unstaffed, but someone, too far to make out the words, orders a drink - and it appears.

"What kind of place is this?" murmurs Isabella.

[pythbox]

"I don't know," he says, looking around them with a grin, "but I like it."

[truthwright]

The person who ordered the drink turns around. There's a brilliantly coloured snake coiled around his shoulders.

He looks an awful lot like Micaiah.

And when he spots them, he grins and waves.

[jovahs_heiress]

"Sweet Jovah singing, it's - did you have a twin - he's not dedicated, Jovah wouldn't have known -" Isabella asks, reaching for Micaiah's hand to comfort her when in the past this gesture has more been for the transfer of comfort in the other direction.

[pythbox]

He squeezes her hand, then kisses it.

"No!" he says. "Not that I ever heard."

And the stranger looks... Micaiah isn't sure what he's seeing, exactly. He just seems different in some subtle, indefinable way. Maybe it's the strange clothes. Or the snake. It could be the snake.

[truthwright]

Kas makes his way across the room to them; Petaal holds his strawberry milkshake coiled in the end of her tail.

"Hi!" he says, beaming at both of them. "You're new, aren't you? You must be new."

[jovahs_heiress]

"We've never been here before," Isabella says, looking between the snake holding the milkshake and the unstrange stranger's face with unbalanced tentativeness. "It's... not where my door is supposed to go. Where are we? Who are you? Why do you look like Micaiah?"

[truthwright]

"You're at Milliways!" he says. "Lemme guess, your name's some version of Isabella? You can call me Kas. And there's somebody upstairs I bet you wanna meet."

[jovahs_heiress]

"...I'm Isabella. How did you know that?" demands Isabella. "What is going on?"

[truthwright]

"It's a magic bar," says the snake. "It brings people from different worlds together. Our girlfriend's upstairs and she's another one of you, wanna meet her?"

[jovahs_heiress]

"Jovah's bones, the snake talks!" shrieks Isabella.

After she processes what, exactly, the snake has said, she says, "...Another one of me?"

[truthwright]

"That's how we know your name," Kas explains.

[pythbox]

"So you're another one of me," Micaiah concludes.

[jovahs_heiress]

Isabella rubs at one of her temples where a headache is being born, still eyeing the talking snake warily. "Why are there several of anyone?"

[truthwright]

"Different worlds," Kas reiterates.

"If you're not coming to meet our Isabella, I'm going to get her," says Petaal.

[jovahs_heiress]

"I'll - meet her - but why would different worlds have copies of people on them with talking snakes, or - anything?" asks Isabella, stepping further into the bar to follow where they lead. "We were carried to Samaria from another world, but not in such a way that I would expect copies of our ancestors to produce copies of us over the years."

[truthwright]

"Different kinds of 'world'," says Petaal, turning her head to watch back over Kas's shoulder as he sets off toward the stairs.

[jovahs_heiress]

"Okay," says Isabella tentatively.

Up the stairs she goes.

She hasn't let go of Micaiah's hand.

[pythbox]

Micaiah walks close by her side.

[truthwright]

Kas takes them all the way to the Belltower and pokes his head in.

"Sweetie, sweetie, I found more of us!"