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Isabella Amariah takes a little under a day to fly to Québec City from her teacher's home in Maine. She doesn't have to spend that long in transit, but the book she's fetching isn't urgent; as long as she's faster than international overland shipping it's worth sending her.
Witches are politely ignored by customs on undefended borders as long as no clans are giving either government particular trouble. As long as she's in the air, obviously a witch and not a human dressed up as one to play a stereotyped character on television, she doesn't even have to dip down and show her clan tattoo to prove that she's descended from those who give allegiance to the Olympic clan. (Clans still refer to themselves by geography, though her teacher is as Olympic as she and lives on the other side of the continent and cloud-pine hasn't gotten any faster recently.)
Isabella touches the symbol inside her left wrist: two concentric circles, two lines. It doesn't mean anything, it's just unique, simple, easy to draw on the floor in herbs or honey or lighter fluid for a spell that refers to the coven.
"If only you were a proper Harry Potter owl," Isabella tells Pathalan, "I could send you for the book, you'd be able to carry it all by yourself, and I could be working out the kinks in this latest impossible assignment."
"Perhaps you wish I were an albatross," says Pathalan dryly, coasting through the air in her wake. "To fetch and carry and be not a bit like you at all."
"No," laughs Isabella. "Owl's fine. Soft and see-in-the-dark."
"It's never dark," says Pathalan. "Never quite."
She approaches the city, and attracts attention; witches are known but hardly common. A teenager - not even old enough to look properly ageless and spectacular like Metis Imestha, her teacher, or even Ranata Ekamma, her mother - dressed in raggedy black silks that whip around her in the wind, soaring over the streets on cloud-pine, is more unusual still.
Isabella Amaraiah coasts to a stop outside the correct address - witches can benefit from Google Street View even when they do not use streets - and descends to ground level.
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"Oh."
She finishes her chicken, and the side of green beans, and puts the Carmichael credit card on the table. "I think offering condolences is traditional but you don't seem to have a place to put them."
She finishes her chicken, and the side of green beans, and puts the Carmichael credit card on the table. "I think offering condolences is traditional but you don't seem to have a place to put them."
"It's good that you noticed, I hate having to explain to people that I don't really care."
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The waiter takes the credit card. "I suppose if he's going to be dead either way, that's convenient."
Kas grins. So does Petaal.
"Yep!"
"Yep!"
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"I still have my father. I'm fond of him, so that's also a convenient combination. However little sense he and my mother make together."
"...Why don't they make sense?"
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"He stays put. She can't stand to, and she knows he'll be gone in the next fifty or sixty years so she has to keep coming back to make the most of their time. But she can't stand that little town he lives in. He gets to miss her or be unhappy that she's unhappy. It's worse when he takes time off work and tries to go somewhere with her. It could barely be more awkward if his daemon needed to live in freshwater and hers in salt. But he just has a wolverine, nothing too inconvenient. Purely a personality matter. If she weren't a witch I think she'd have left him."
"...Awwwwww," says Kas. "That's really sad."
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"It is," sighs Isabella. "They get along really well with each other. Just not with each other's habitats. They're both good parents, though."
"Better than it could be, I guess," he says. Petaal flicks her fluffy tail and nods.
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The credit card returns to Isabella. She writes something incomprehensible followed by her clan symbol, just like on the inside of her wrist. "Home I go," she says. "Thanks for the restaurant recommendation."
"Bye!" says Kas. "Hey, what's Kas Petaal the god of?"
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"Oh," says Isabella, "every goddess has about fifty portfolio items and I haven't got them all memorized, but off the top of my head, witches address her about their sons or husbands, sacrificial magic, things to do with or going on during the new moon or autumn, ambiguous things in general, food, injury - but not healing, just the injury - and any object of obsession."
"...I like it," he declares. "Suits me."
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"Glad I picked something appropriate," laughs Isabella. "Bye! It was nice to meet you!"
And out the door she goes, and she and Pathalan both take to the air.
And out the door she goes, and she and Pathalan both take to the air.
Just as Isabella is getting on her branch, Petaal shifts to the form of a tiny sparrow and darts out to bump her head against Path's chest.
She pecks playfully at his feathers, not actually connecting, and then zooms back to Kas to burrow into his hood.
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Isabella waves as she settles on her branch and goes up. Path beats his wings to stay in place a moment longer, then follows his witch.
Kas waves after them, then turns and trudges away, stuffing his hands in his coat's enormous warm pockets.
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