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Veron is installed in a nice house in Seattle with the help of Isabella's staff.
The colony gets big enough that Isabella sculpts herself an ice crown and applies permanency to it so it won't melt. She makes Adarin one too out of cypress branches, wired into shape, magicked to stay alive and shaped like that, and then freed of the wire. She wears hers on Earth sometimes, as well as on the colony. Her queen elects not to comment.
Various people are resurrected. Isabella hires more people to sort more requests; she's not going to be able to handle this via descending on charities. (She extracts longer-term promises of help - and nonviolence - from the clans she shares this spell with, though.) She opens an office near San Francisco, puts a lot of poultry in the back yard and makes a deal with an egg producer to save the otherwise unwanted males till adulthood for the purpose in future months, arranges regular deliveries of all the necessary herbs and ashes, and has someone carve out an enormous stencil of all the runes to speed up the process: the diagram may now be drawn with a broom, as long as it's still a witch doing it. (She also has stencils of the immortalization spell made.) There is always some witch in residence, working off their favor to her a few hours at a time, and a security team to prevent unruly demands, interference by religious protestors, and a receptionist or two to make sure the people coming in actually have appointments (or standby arrangements, in case of no-shows) to collect loved ones.
She gets into a bit of an argument with the United States military about resurrecting fallen soldiers. While she originally had no intention of discriminating against soldiers, she insists that resurrected ones be considered honorably discharged and that their re-upping be optional, and absolutely refuses to approve any systematic preferential resurrection of people who are just going to pick up guns and walk into war zones again.
Normally, there would be some clan with access to the spell who'd cut a deal.
On this occasion, with this particular Olympic witch having come up with three (really two, but the portals are still officially credited to her, with everyone understanding now that she's proprietary about the process and capitalistic about the disposition to fund her anti-death projects) revolutionary spells in fewer years than that, they're a little concerned that they won't get a look in the next time she publishes, if they do things she doesn't approve of.
Isabella threatens to move her resurrection office to New Zealand. The military backpedals. Resurrections proceed.
(Isabella does open a second resurrection office in New Zealand. And one in Finland and one in India. There are witch clans all around the world and they are all beholden to her.)
Insurance companies freak out, then remake their actuarial tables and throw lawyers at their contractual language and calm down again. Isabella's insurance company of choice has a small head start. Isabella's insurance company of choice loves her.
Luzia gets her son back. She dithers for a bit about the husband. She gets the husband back. The husband is kind of taken aback by Luzia's activities since then but decides that Zeviana "doesn't count" as cheating. It's up to Zeviana whether she wants to call that close enough and continue carrying on.
Isabella and Adarin have no such problems. They continue to be deliriously happy.
Then, there's a relatively slow day. Isabella flops across her husband's lap on the couch and says, "Want to start looking for places to plague with utopias?"
dark_light
come_midnight
"This is about the noticing thing you mentioned, isn't it. Cricket detests most everybody, but he produces reasons on inspection - that they're careless or cruel or stupid or whatever - and they are reasons that he has observed legitimately don't apply to me, and consequently he's fond of me. He isn't just indiscriminately affectionate or loyal to me because I'm his binder, he loves me for reasons."
come_midnight
"Your wife," says Iobel dryly, "mentioned as a perk of the relationship that you are good at noticing how awesome she is in precisely correct ways."
prodigal_miser
Head tilt.
"Well that's convenient. I hadn't even meant to do that but I am not complaining, my wife is awesome. But on topic - I think queening would help," he says. He looks at Isabella, and adds, "Recall that I find you talking about economics incredibly hot. It would probably help."
"Well that's convenient. I hadn't even meant to do that but I am not complaining, my wife is awesome. But on topic - I think queening would help," he says. He looks at Isabella, and adds, "Recall that I find you talking about economics incredibly hot. It would probably help."
dark_light
"Supply. Demand. Compound interest," deadpans Isabella. "I'm not completely optimistic - I mean, presumably they can do the work, but if she just does the work and isn't smiley and friendly while she's doing it because everything about him is screaming I actively dislike you and expect you to do potentially horrifying things? Remember that when we met I was in a fairly good mood and managed to impress you with pretty much the first substantive thing I said beyond 'yes of course you have a talking bird why wouldn't you have a talking bird'."
prodigal_miser
"Oh goodness, keep that up and I'll tackle you where you stand," drawls Adarin, amused. "And we would scar my poor alt."
More seriously, he says, "I don't think I am capable of actively disliking someone who does what you do. Even if Iobel isn't smiley and friendly, she would still be doing that. So admiration of some kind would follow."
More seriously, he says, "I don't think I am capable of actively disliking someone who does what you do. Even if Iobel isn't smiley and friendly, she would still be doing that. So admiration of some kind would follow."
royal_obligation
"I don't actively dislike her," says Edarial. "She's just - frustrating. And occasionally distressing."
come_midnight
"It's not like I have been eating bonbons and playing board games with my cat for the last several months," Iobel points out. "I've been doing my best."
royal_obligation
"Well, during most of the last few months I was avoiding you because you were - not personable for completely understandable reasons. So I - admittedly might have missed most of it?"
come_midnight
"I'll have to translate them into Marlese and separate them out from neighboring personal things, but yes."
come_midnight
"You're welcome. Shouldn't take me more than a day or so, I haven't found that many things to do."
prodigal_miser
"They'll figure it out, love," he murmurs to her, in English. "I kind of feel like if there's a next time with another pair of us I should just... Not mention the paranoia."
prodigal_miser
"Yeah. So it might not solve anything after all. But you made it past my paranoia wall pretty nicely, and I don't think you were aware how deep it went at the time."