Keziah plays along with all the eptness and clumsy enthusiasm one might reasonably expect from a two-year-old.
Delilah is alive, well, and only in her fifties, but she thinks Isabella could use the practice and she could use the spare time.
The family moves into a more central suite.
Phebe moves to Cedar Hills in poorly disguised disgust.
Everything is much busier, all at once. Isabella is obliged to ratify or overturn all manner of hold and province policy, and instead of being a plausible first port of call before taking a problem to Delilah, she is the ultimate authority.
Sometimes people go to Micaiah first. He is now a plausible first port of call before taking a problem to Isabella.
Micaiah turns out to be pretty good at solving people's problems, especially when the problem is that they need to air a grievance or don't feel listened to. Dealing with people just seems to come naturally to him.
Anything that makes a buffer between Isabella and all this work is appreciated. It's interpersonal enough that she can't just speed up and handle everything in her head and with magic, and people have already started noticing that she doesn't seem to set aside much time for sleep.
Pretty soon it's almost more common for petitioners in the know to come to him first.
The hold's angels aren't quite thrilled about taking directives to go here or there for this or that from a mortal, which is the most common suitable response for petitions, but Isabella perfects a withering why did you drag me here just to repeat what my husband said look that usually keeps anyone from soliciting confirmation of his instructions twice.
Life goes on. Isabella gets pregnant again. Serah gets married to a mortal and moves to Velora with him. Elisha finally gets one of his angel-seekers pregnant with an angel and she moves into the hold and proves much more able to hold his attention when she's nearby; they don't get married, but they live together. Isabella has baby the fourth, who is named Peninnah, after Isabella's recently deceased oracle mentor.
It is easy for days to go by without anything reminding anyone that they were once part of a peal of interdimensional Bells, but -
[Love, I think sometime soon we should tell Damaris about magic, and Jehovah, and the other worlds. She probably already suspects something. If nothing else she's had every opportunity to hear Ithiel's story.]
[Tonight after the other girls are in bed? If she takes it well - or if she takes it badly, if she's attached to the idea of Jovah by now - we can possibly tell Keziah soon too.]
"Damaris, treasure, will you stay up a bit? We'd like to talk to you about something."
"Well, first of all," says Isabella, "it's possible you've noticed part of it already. Have you ever suspected that me and your father might be able to do more things than most people can?"
"I don't mean having permission or authority," Isabella says. "I thought you might have noticed that none of you girls have ever been sick, or hurt worse than a scraped knee, and that neither have we - that you might have heard the story surrounding Ithiel's birth; he's only a little older than you are - that I do not forget things, at all - that I don't sleep very much and I never seem tired - that your father and I can often coordinate very effectively with no obvious chance to speak to one another."
"Well," says Isabella, "that's - not most of it, but -" She sighs. "You might also have noticed that I have been a little evasive about Jovah when I am not also carrying a tune."
"No," laughs Isabella. "Jovah is - not what everyone thinks he is, though." She sighs. "I didn't take it well when I found out, so I'm trying to come at the revelation slowly, but perhaps I'm not doing a very good job."