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.
(She has the data to guess, but not the perversity.)
"Is it still hurting you?" she asks, uncertain of whether that would be desirable or not.
"Okay. I wonder if that's why yours hurts and mine doesn't. I wouldn't like it," Bella muses. "But I think it's fairly typical for them to hurt, and I don't think everyone likes it... perhaps it's also got to do with how hard Jovah has to work to get the person's attention," she concludes.
"Well, I don't know, but I try to be a good listener, and that doesn't mean only hearing things that would happen to amuse me."
Isabella notes the impulse she has to say, "For eating?" and puts it aside. "That sounds very freeing," she replies instead.
"I like the holds. I don't think I would have been half so happy anywhere else. I don't exactly go wherever I want - I go where I'm needed, where I can be useful - but wherever I go I'm accomplishing something. Even if it's a political goal, attending someone's party, instead of fixing a drought, although I much prefer the latter."
"Some of them are, I'm sure, fine parties," says Isabella diplomatically. "Although things outside the holds aren't usually designed to accommodate angels - they keep the rooms so warm, and there's dancing, and none of the chairs work with our wings. Things aren't designed for angels in the places that have problems with drought, either, but we're not obliged to stay long after singing the prayers."
"We can," she says slowly, "but our wings get in the way - people bump into them or step on them, and we don't really have quite the same gait as mortals either, because of the weight of them. So dancing is awkward and most of us don't like it. I'm particularly inept at it and usually manage to beg off if someone wants me to try."