"Well, how long a trip? I ate, but I could eat again if we'll be hours."

"Three hours to Sinai. Maybe a little slower if I'm carrying you," she says. "I could use a snack myself, honestly. The kitchens are this way."

"I carry people now and then - Serah most often, she's mortal. I have never dropped anyone. I didn't even drop that one fellow who was delirious with fever and was trying to make me - angels are very strong." She picks up a large snack tray from the kitchens and leads Micaiah away to where Eyrie residents take their meals. She finds them a table with one angel chair and one mortal chair, sets down the tray, and picks up a little cucumber cup filled with beans and spices.

"If I had a way to hold you and - two, maybe three other people your size, without any of you slipping out of my grip just from sheer bulkiness - I could still carry you through the air, although I'd be much slower and clumsier," says Isabella. She tries one of everything on the platter and then monopolizes the ham and the rosemary crackers. "If I didn't have to fly, maybe twice that."

"Amazing," he says. When he sees her going for the ham and rosemary crackers, he leaves those alone and attacks the rest of the platter.

She smiles. "It's ordinary for angels. Elisha's stronger than I am, at least in flight carrying capacity - wingspan helps and mine's nothing special."

"Your wings are pretty too," Micaiah offers.

"Thanks," says Isabella, fluffing them a little. "I always liked the speckles. The fashion's always been utterly white, spotless wings, but I'm fond of mine."

"The speckles are nice," he opines. "And I bet they're cuddly." With another of his broad grins, "The wings. Not the speckles specifically."

"Uh. Have you... been around angels much, before?" Isabella asks, a crease forming between her eyebrows.

All innocence: "No. Edori, remember? Why?"

"Well, Edori go everywhere, I'm told, you might have run into some," she shrugs; it makes her feathers flutter. "You don't go around touching people's wings, at least by default. It's... approximately the equivalent of grabbing someone's rear, only less potentially playful, does that make sense?"

"Perfectly," he assures her, still smiling but more serious than she has seen him yet. "I won't, then. But I still bet they're cuddly. And warm, angels are warm, right?"

"Very warm," she agrees, taking another one of the cucumber cups. "That you'll notice as soon as I pick you up. And a good thing too, or you would be very uncomfortable at cruising altitude." She's wearing unremarkable flying leathers, a wing-cut vest and pants and boots, and her bracelets with the curlicue gem pattern of her mother's family, and that's all.

Micaiah just smiles, a little dreamily. And scoops up another snacklet.

"I'm glad you don't seem alarmed by the whole... Kiss thing," Isabella says. "I know a lot of people might be. A lot of people might be even if I'd been named Archangel instead of just harboring ambitions. They say Rachel and Gabriel had that problem."

"It's not alarming," he says. "Well, maybe it's a little alarming. But it's too much fun to be very alarming."

"Can you sing?" she asks, a little suddenly.

"Edooooori," he laughs. "I'm all right. Why?"

"Well, there is a not inconsiderable chance that I'll go ask Alleluia my question, and she'll say yes, and then in eight or ten years someone will ask an oracle who the next Archangel to be and he'll tell them, "Isabella, daughter of the angel Rinnah and the mortal man Charles," says Isabella. "And if all that happens then you'd be obliged to lead the Gloria for twenty years."

"Sounds fun," shrugs Micaiah.

What a blasé reply. "All right. I'm glad that doesn't bother you," she says. "I read a lot of history, and while Jovah's choices usually work out in the end, there are sometimes... inital trials."

"You seem pretty set on this Archangel thing," he observes. "Why's that?"