sculpture

[bitterchill]

Ari is currently standing on a broad plateau on the Plane of Gold making a very pretty statue of a woman he loved once. He's not thrilled with the fact that she put him in a coma and swanned about doing horrible things for the span of his natural life, but half a millennium is a lot of time to get over that, and Belinda made herself beautiful enough that he's willing to overlook her faults in order to use her as a model. She was stunning.

For this statue, he's elected to use various shades of corundum. He managed to get the violet in her eyes into a pair of sapphires, and is now deliberating over how to render her skin. She changed it every so often, so he's got choices here.

Comments

[bitterchill]

"No problem! They really are great performances. Lonoro in particular, the lead is played by... somebody, I don't remember, he's very good and he's an ex-mortal and apparently he acted back on Earth too. He's excellent, whoever he is."

[from_scratch]

"How many demons are ex-mortals? Is it the same with fairies and angels? Is it only summoners, or everybody?"

[bitterchill]

"Just summoners, and yeah, it's the same arrangement for everybody. There's somewhere called Limbo where the other mortals go, it's not very interesting. The proportion of ex-summoners to natives is very low. I don't know the percentages, but I think there's a few dozen ex-summoners living in this entire ten-million-demon city. There's a group of them meets every couple of months, I don't attend because I just consider myself a demon at this point. You might go for meet-and-greet potential, I can tell them there's a new one in town. They like to know who's who."

[from_scratch]

"Do they all speak English?"

[bitterchill]

"Nah, but everybody in the region speaks Lagalann, and I can interpret for you. If you'd rather wait until you actually speak the lingua franca, I can tell them to wait a few years on the big meetup. Some of the English-speakers might stop by, though, and they're mostly nice. Not Cheryl, Cheryl's an asshole, if Cheryl stops by nobody's home."

[from_scratch]

"I'm sort of curious, but except for wanting to get summoned and try to talk to my parents as soon as - demonically possible - what does summoning feel like? I haven't noticed anything, yet - I feel no overwhelming desire to identify as an ex-mortal or hang out preferentially with ex-mortals. I should learn the language either way, though. Is it hard?"

[bitterchill]

"Talking is generally not an option, but good luck. Summoning feels sort of like- somebody knocking on your door when you're in bed, and saying that you leave for a trip in five minutes, and trying to pack your suitcase and get dressed and get out the door in time while half asleep. Except in a fraction of a second. And you usually fail. Not always, though, sometimes it goes alright. And a specific summon, one where they're just summoning you, is like having all the time you need for it. I don't know that you'll get a specific summon, though, they only really happen after you've been responding for a few years and you demonstrate a lot of skill in a specific area and somebody writes you up in their personal summoner Yellow Pages. I happen to be in one such book under 'incubi'." He waggles his eyebrows.

[from_scratch]

"Congratulations. So that's what that feeling was, I thought that was lingering anxiety from being murdered. Well, they should be coming in faster now than they were before, now that I've pulled off my thing."

[bitterchill]

"I'm pleased with that! I like summons, they let me help people, it's nice."

[from_scratch]

"For values of 'help' that mean 'incubus for'?"

[bitterchill]

Ari sniffs with dignity. "It's a form of help. No one's complained, certainly."

[from_scratch]

"Not being able to talk must make that tricky though."

[bitterchill]

"I have a certain talent for nonverbal communication."

[from_scratch]

Cam laughs. "Congratulations. So what happens in Limbo, which I gather is where my parents end up if I don't get ahold of them and they continue not to summon anything?"

[bitterchill]

"Aw, I'm sorry. Apparently it's not, like, classical hell or anything, but it's not all that fun. You get one object, the thing you valued most in your life, and the rest is just an infinite plane of beigey dust. People who got houses and stuff get all the contents, which is handy, and there's some stuff you can do with, like, mud bricks made from the soil and water from someone's sink, but overall it's kind of bizarre and terrible. I'd have been alright, I'm more about people than things, but I'm definitely glad I got my summon in. Even though it led to, you know, unpleasantness."

[from_scratch]

"I would like that to not happen to people. I was thinking the humanitarian benefits of publicizing daeva would be enormous, but apparently I will also have improved thing things for a subset of dead people, go me."

[bitterchill]

"Yeah, improving things for dead people winds up being more important than doing it for living people a lot of the time. We spend more time this way. Hell does its collective best to make Limbo as livable as possible, every time there's a concordance we send through necessary goods. I imagine the klen-takk do the same, to whatever extent they can do that with their fiddly little powers."

[from_scratch]

"You're going to have to translate me that word. Angels, I assume, but...?"

[bitterchill]

"Oh. Yeah, it means- eh, it's nuanced. Sort of a fusion of words that implies that half the time they set their halos to shine our of their asses instead. It's a pretty recent construction, the slang gets shifted around periodically as people think of new nasty things to call them."

[from_scratch]

"I did detect racism when I mentioned demons around angels and vice-versa."

[bitterchill]

"Yep! Racism is merited, they're prissy little bastards and you have joined the winning team. I mean, I've known decent angels, but for the most part- ech. Plus, when they're nasty, they're nasty. Belinda was not a lone case."

[from_scratch]

"I see. And why don't they like us?"

[bitterchill]

"Because we're better than them? And I believe I mentioned that they're prissy little bastards."

[from_scratch]

"But some summoners turn into angels. Or fairies. How does the sorting work?"

[bitterchill]

"Yeah, I think prissy bastardry or an unhealthy preoccupation with neatness leads to becoming an angel and coolness and/or rampant egotism gets you demonhood. And people who are generally alright but kind of boring end up as fairies. Fairies are alright."