Chapter Text
We are currently awaiting transit to a destination unknown courtesy of the United States Postal Service.
We have time. So let’s make a quick introduction of self (selves).
Our friends call us Raye, but that’s simply our favorite corporeal alias. Our friend Cole helped us pick it out when we fledged, and out of all the ones we’ve tried, that’s the name that’s stuck around. Our mother calls us Preerana, a short version of the name we carried as a reliever and haven’t officially changed in the near century since we’ve fledged, and most Seraphim (as well as Judges) follow her example given a choice. We play around with other names occasionally. Making up new aliases is fun, and it’s always useful to have an extra or two at hand.
We are clearly an angel, although we’re not a beautiful human figure with the shining halo and fluffy white wings (different Choir that) or a little pudgy baby lounging on a cloud (some mistaken impression of yet another Choir). We’re not even sure we qualify as ‘biblically accurate’, but if someone lined us up alongside one of our infernal counterparts (ew, Shedim) in some implausible game of Guess the Angel, the contrast in form should be obvious even to an uneducated observer.
We are one of the less human seeming angels, despite being closer to humanity than most. We are a Kyriotate, also known as a Hive or a Domination to those who are in the habit of using the Choir titles. We’re a whole miniature host of eyes and limbs and mouths and butterfly wings held together with a glowing mist. Most of those features are variations on the generic Choir traits, excepting the butterfly wings, which are the result of a conceit we had when fledging, and it’s an aesthetic decision we stand by.
There are a multitude of us contained inside the Hive, and as such it’s impossible to count out an exact number of ‘us’ that make up the whole. Do we count by eyes? Eyelashes? Butterflies? Hands? Smiles? Teeth? We have one Heart to call us home and one Word to give our service. When we’re on the corporeal and also not trapped in a Force Catcher, we’re usually a few bodies. One human a lot of the time, whether that time gets measured in mere minutes or whole days. One or two birds almost always. (We’re partial to crows but not picky most of the time.) Cats or dogs a lot of the time, due to their nearness to humans. Raccoons when manual dexterity is required. Rats on occasion, when locational quantity matters more than individual host efficacy. And anything else as we get the opportunity. We haven’t been an alligator—yet. At least not one that wasn’t safely contained within a zoo enclosure.
The natural division, to measure the amount of us by any kind of consistent, well-defined standard, would be by Forces. Nine Forces, nine of Us. Sure, it’s not an exact one-to-one correspondence, but it gives other celestials a sense of how big we are and how many we can be when we start taking hosts, which is what most people care about when discussions of quantity and Kyriotates come up. But that measure is a simplification at best. We can have hundreds more than nine perspectives, or a few less than nine, and which of us exactly holds what perspective is always in flux. There isn’t a singular part of our Hive that is just brains, or the one who notices the nuances of sound, or can provide strength or speed to a body. Nor does only one of us know how to draw or knit or operate a coffeemaker, while another can Heal or Move or Shape Flesh. No aspect of us is truly isolated from the rest, and very few aspects of ourself are truly unanimous.
Take gender, for example: The plurality of us are feminine, some are gender neutral or identify in terms not easily translatable to human experience and a couple are masculine, and which ones these are at any given moment tend to shift. We think plural and attempt to talk singular to most people. Our mother would call this endlessly mutable, and, as a Seraph, she’d be correct. Cole would wonder why we’d bother identifying with gendered terms in the first place when we’re actually an amorphous butterfly cloud but it would consider our affectation darling nonetheless.
All of this ‘us’ is apparently able to be completely contained within some rock small enough to be worn on a human-sized body as a piece of ordinary looking jewelry. In a smaller Force catcher, bits of us would be left free to act upon the world. Theoretically, we could find an accommodating bird, and set one Force to intercept the mail, or failing that, send it to find our nearby friends and help stage a rescue mission. It’s not useful to think about what we could do if we were just slightly less trapped, but we let one mind dwell on this topic anyway, just for the entertainment value.
We let another mind focus on motivation. Why are we in here? Yes, we’re in here because we didn’t notice the catcher until we were sucked in. But why this woman, clearly unaware of the war? Why such a large catcher, when a small one is already an effective defense tool and much cheaper? Why are we being mailed?
(Not a motivation question, but related and probably more important: Where are we being mailed to? We should probably set another mind to see if we can figure that one out.)
The motivation questions lead to a singular conclusion: We’re not trapped as a protective measure, not really. This is an offensive move. That woman isn’t a human with some level of knowledge protecting herself; she’s an unwitting accomplice for someone else. Someone who distributes force catchers, and then has a system set up to collect them from a wide geographic range. Someone who collects celestials known to borrow human bodies.
Celestials like us. Or if not Kyriotates, then Shedim.
Another set of minds debate quite vigorously in the background about what to actually do about this situation. This is a trap, yes, but not necessarily one crafted specifically with us [a perfectly ordinary Kyriotate of Creation] in mind, just for Celestials like us occupying a certain corporeal niche. And likely it’s not a lone trap, but one among many.
Then the minds shift and ask: Well, should we try to escape the trap before it fully closes around us? Do we stick around for a little longer in hopes of getting some more information? Who else gets caught up in these kinds of traps? Can we build up some essence to manage what comes next? How long do we have before inaction stops being an option and becomes our decision?
Continuing the escape attempts is our best chance to save ourself and our worst chance of helping any others who might be caught in this situation. Not trying is the reverse. Do we really want to meet the mastermind behind this and figure out what it, they, he, or she want from us?
When our options are as limited as they currently are, all of these questions are basically thought exercises. We’ll build up essence and make another escape attempt. That’s all we can do.
Through all these lively internal debates, the world outside our prison keeps moving along. We make out the muffled sound of oldies playing on the radio (1950s isn’t ‘old’ in absolute terms, but it’s not current to this era), and then we’re moved again and every outdoor sound gets a bit louder. We’re officially mail. Presumably a little red flag has just gone down.
Motion has no cardinality from the inside, and time itself loses most of it’s meaning. We just feel the starts and the stops and the periodic turn of a vehicle going around corners. Ambient sounds draw near, pass, and grow distant. Songs change on the radio, interspersed with periodic breaks for commercials and station IDs. Small talk: lunch recommendations, weather conditions, plans for the weekend. Machinery shuffles paper. Then, there’s near silence when everyone leaves for the night, and that reminds us that dawn will come soon. We count out our daily essence and hoard it for our next attempt to unstick ourself. Four essence regained at dawn, four days of travel time in unknown directions. Four days from our point of origin to our arrival at a destination.
We won’t exactly know where or to whom until they come and get their mail.
—
‘Where’ winds up being a generic post office in a generic small town in North America. The ambient corporeal language still sounds like English, in a similar accent to the place we were previously. The weather is generic sunny spring day with a nice breeze. The second half of April showers and May flowers. It’s warmer than it has been these past few days. (If nothing else, all the small talk is good at keeping current with the surrounding weather conditions.) Another contrast with no meaning in our current state: Inside versus outside.
Then the constant motion stops. We’re set down, and lock clicks closed in front of us.
So this is what being in a mailbox is like. Well, we’re not literally IN the mailbox, more like we’re inside something that is itself inside an envelope that is itself inside a mailbox. Thus far, what it’s like is listening to the activity of people dropping off and collecting mail while somewhere above us the second hand of a clock relentlessly ticks off the time. One mind tries to keep track of the seconds until enough stack up to become irrelevant, probably about 24 minutes give or take.
Daily Essence tells us we haven’t been in this Force Catcher a week yet, and that it’s time to try again. We can almost feel that rock-candy coating shake loose from us this time. Will we make it?
No. We’re still stuck. Try again in a few days.
It’s right after someone leaves for their lunch break that the lock on our mailbox opens. Their mailbox. They have the key; we’re just borrowing the place.
We’re taken out. The sounds of the post office grow slightly louder, and we can hear someone complaining about the price of stamps just a little bit away. Much closer in, there’s the quick catch of a breath followed by almost giddy squeal and a quick motion forward. Whoever just received their mail is happy about this package.
(It’s a safe bet to say they are much happier than we are.)
“Just before the deadline too.” A voice says above us. It’s female, young-sounding (this is not necessarily an indication of age, even when talking about mortals, but some voices do just have a young tone to them), and a little bit saccharine—sweet but artificially so, with no substance behind it.
We hear the outside sounds again (the birds, the squirrels, the rustle of that nice spring breeze), and then the creak of a car door opening and then the echo of that door slamming and world being shut out once again. The engine turns over with a noise that indicates that it might be a minor miracle that the car even started.
As the vehicle starts to move, the saccharine voice addresses us directly. “You can speak up if you have anything you want to say.” It’s almost friendly.
There’s lots of things we want to say, some of which are probably inappropriate for an official Angel of the Lord or whatnot, and most of which probably aren’t any kind of useful for our situation. Several of us would like to string together a bunch of obscenities and leave it at that. We also want to know why, ask what the fuck, maybe ask how that lady of all people managed to get her hands on a Force Catcher, what happens if someone much bigger than us gets caught, and so on.
In all this din, a very cautious mind points out that we probably shouldn’t be saying anything at all. It’s probably right. And it already knows the plurality of us are going to ignore its suggestion.
“Angel or demon or neither?” We ask once the internal debate is settled. Of all the questions we were thinking about asking, this is the one that strikes the right balance between useful information and good manners. We haven’t talked to anyone besides ourself since we determined that our friend Barbara would NOT listen to reason, and we could use something akin to a friendly external conversation right about now. It would help to distract us from the singularity we’re feeling. One of us [me] should be flying around. The rest of us should be hanging out elsewhere, not staying in here all clumped together. It’s not right for a Kyriotate to be stuck this way.
“Why, an angel, of course.” The saccharine voice provides no additional details like Choir or Word service that could help explain this situation. ‘Angel’ does surprise us; our first guess would have been a demon, but perhaps they were trying to hunt down Shedim after all. “You may call me Mariah. Tell me, do you have a name to go by?”
We debate which name to give her, though we rule out ‘Raye’ and ‘Preerana’ quickly enough. Those are the ones that are part of official records and paperwork, and once we get out of here, we do not want this ‘Mariah’ to have any way of connecting to us. (Yes, we are remaining optimistic, to think we’ll get out of here.) We consider a half-dozen other names we’ve used once or twice in our correspondence. Most get discarded, but there is one we’ve taken to using in uncertain situations—usually, but not always, involving demons. That seems like our best choice here.
(We haven’t ruled out the possibility that our friendly saccharine-voiced angel is actually a Habbalite. Those kind do have that ‘angel’ delusion. It’s just asking the question directly falls on awry of the good manners approach that the plurality of us have decided would be most useful.)
“You can call me Kira.”
“Well, Kira, I see that you are feeling confused about what’s going on. You are a Kyriotate, correct. Tell me, are you Outcast?”
That question makes a few of us blink. Elohite…of Judgment, maybe? (Habbalah can do a limited version of emotional reading too, right? We set a mind to remembering one of our pre-corporeal classes, the one specifically covering the major Bands of Demons and more obscure uses of resonance.) The method of using randomly distributed Force Catchers doesn’t map to anything Judgment is known to condone, nor does it match to the reactions she had earlier, but we can see how this kind of unorthodox method might be effective in catching an Outcast Kyriotate once they were known to be in the area. Or not even Outcasts necessarily, but ones in good standing who have earned a reputation for being difficult to pin down for routine questioning. It can’t be standard. Certain Words would certainly raise a fuss if it were. (War and Fire especially. Wind, for the possible dissonance issues. Creation too, if this approach were targeted towards us specifically on account of recently acquired Word prejudice.) We’ll call it a possible explanation, not a satisfying one.
“Yes, we’re a Kyriotate, and no we’re not Outcast.” We pause and then run through the usual Judgmental questions. “No dissonance either. No discord. Not inclined to overindulge in corporeal pleasures, though I suppose that’s a subjective position there.” It hasn’t even been two months since we’ve had to answer these questions to a Triad’s grudging satisfaction. We’ve never been the kind that’s difficult to find for a routine inquisition, at least not so difficult that they would need to get unorthodox to find us. Not this kind of unorthodox, anyway. Usually if it’s been too long, they’ll send a Triad down with our mother when we’re doing our once a year meet-up. It’s what they’ve done before, and, unlike Creation, Judgment tends to stick to one method, so long as that method continues to work.
“I think you’re lying.”
Well, she’s definitely not a Seraph. We’re starting to doubt the Elohite bit as well. (We would prefer the Habbalite guess to be untrue. Please let it be untrue. It would be welcome novelty this week to get something as we’d prefer.) What objective reason would there be to assume a lie and say that out loud? Accusing a demon of lying? Maybe that could be useful but only with solid evidence at hand and even then, only when immediately calling out the lie would improve the situation. But from one angel to another? That’s a hostile move.
“Are you?” we ask, risking a bit of a hostility ourself. “Outcast, I mean?” Wouldn’t that be a thing, to be the captive of an Outcast Elohite of Judgment? It might explain the Habbalite vibes we’re getting from her, and we wouldn’t blame her, exactly, for going Outcast from that Word. It can’t be an easy one to work for. Judges have to deal with high internal standards and lots of external hostility, deserved or otherwise. We might have gone running if we were in her position. Still, if she is Outcast, the chances this is a basic misunderstanding are—slim. Best case, she might be looking for a fellow Outcast to use as leverage to get back into Heaven. The worst case almost certainly involves Hell.
“Not at all. I still do good work for my Archangel. In fact, Kira, you are going to make some amazing contributions to Science.”
Oh. Oh fuck. Somehow, we have a feeling that the ‘Archangel’ in question is not based in Heaven. Or that we would agree with Mariah regarding her angelic nature. That is not an Elohite we are sharing a car with.
We’re on the road to Habbietown.