Chapter Text
We realize that Mariah is deliberately keeping us in the (metaphorical) dark when she turns off the radio right as the radio signal fuzzes out from the current station and starts giving hints to where we’re passing through.
Not even our singing gets her to turn the radio back on, and we dig through our memory for some of the most annoying songs (lower-case s) in our repertoire. But no matter what we try—monkeys on the bed, bottles of beer on the wall, men with long names beginning with ‘John Jacob’, rowboats merrily down the stream—Mariah drives on with grim silence.
(If only we knew of a song that truly never ended.)
(An impossibility. Nothing never ends.)
(A recursive song however…)
—
The car door echoes shut and cuts off the bit of gas-station noises coming in from the outside. The radio from a parked car playing songs from twenty years before our capture. Mariah unfolds a sheet of paper at least three—no four—times.
We still have no direct clues pointing to her destination. Mariah didn’t spend enough time in the gas station for us to pick up a town name from the radio, and no one else asked the clerk for directions in our overhearing. We do know that Mariah picked up a map—that sheet she unfolded—and that her finger now traces out a route that moves it away from her body.
(Away from us.)
Which means we can (and will) speculate on Mariah’s planned route despite lacking access to our visual sense. We assume the road map Mariah has acquired is the traditional kind for this region with north oriented at the top. We also assume—a touch more shakily—that Mariah isn’t so committed to keeping her decision a surprise that she would think to reorient the paper to throw off our listening. She might not even realize that it’s information to us.
At one point she turns the whole sheet over and pokes at it.
“Figures.” Mariah mutters.
“What figures?”
“Oh, just some route-planning annoyances.” Mariah folds the map folding back in on itself and being sets down to her right side. “Nothing you should concern yourself with.” She turns her attention away from us and begins the intricate ritual required to start her car: Taps and thumps, the key in the ignition and the click-shift of an indicator.
The engine finally turns over.
“It just turns out that everything has its price.”
(Is she talking about redemption or the tollway? Either could apply.)
—
We [Mariah, myself, the car] continue on the journey. Still no radio, just the sounds of the car running reluctantly. Traffic zips by us, and not just the drivers going the opposite way, but also cars switching lanes to pass. Either Mariah’s car doesn’t have a very high top-speed or she’s in no rush to reach her destination.
(We’d believe either one. Or both. No point in setting up a false dichotomy.)
We still sing to cover up the oppressive silence, though we’ve moved away from deliberately irritating songs to only incidentally annoying ones. If we can’t extra-irritate Mariah out of her silent treatment, we can at least avoid annoying ourself.
What would we even have to talk about?
Her feelings. Our feelings. Her plans for the future. Our plans for the future. We’re surprised Mariah hasn’t tried to wheedle any promises to stay out of us. Maybe she’s tempted and only holding off because she doesn’t want the answer to be ‘no’ yet again.
(Not that that’s stopped her before.)
Maybe she’ll try to force the issue. We’re more than a little afraid that Mariah might try and draw out our time together, possibly by throwing herself into stupid or inadvisable situations in the hopes we’ll feel obligated to stay. It wouldn’t be unprecedented, not when we have multiple examples of her willing to get hurt to keep us near her. She has reason to believe that might work too. While we’re not Dissonance-bound to make sure Mariah’s better off when we leave her, it would be bad practice to abandon her while a laser chainsaw wielding Vapulan renegade-hunter is right on her tail.
(If it came down to it, we’d probably help her out with the first couple.)
(But letting her get away with that would be bad practice too. Sometimes, people need to live with the results of their poor decisions.)
We can feel our imminent freedom. Our second Dawn Essence in years came in shortly before Mariah set off on her journey. Just seven more and we’ll be full up and ready to escape. Seven more days. One more week, and we could be free.
If Mariah insists on staying closed mouthed about her future, then maybe we should take this time to think about our own. Then we think about everything that’ll be in front of us: Our dissonance, our debts, our lapsed friendships. All of that seems too big to think about.
(So start smaller.)
All right, then. Once we’re free, what do we do next?
In theory, we could stick by Mariah while she makes her choice. Extra sets of eyes would be useful to keep Tech and the Game off her back, and we could introduce her to some friendly Elohim of a compatible Word (not Creation) who could answer her questions about what she might one day become.
In practice, staying leaves too much room for ambiguity and too much temptation for Mariah to want to make it permanent. It’ll be best for both of us [her and me] if we [I] just leave. No ceremony, nothing drawn out, just a quick good-bye and a clean break.
We’re briefly tempted to consult with her on that topic. How does she want us to leave? Does she want advance warning when we’re ready to try our escape. Would she prefer if we just float away while her attention is elsewhere, farewells optional. But even as some of us feel that giving her that choice seems like the kindest way to do it, even more feel the cruelty that would come with forcing that decision upon her.
So we let the ride continue on in silence except for our chorus which slides from Dancing Queen to Bohemian Rhapsody (always a favorite).
Mariah’s only acknowledgment of our presence is a small, resigned sigh.
—
Even in a vessel, Mariah doesn’t have most of the biological needs that humans do, which means there’s no need for her to stop for meals, or bathroom breaks, or even sleep. She could, of course, but so far, despite staying at or under the speed limit, her only stops have only been for gas.
(Cars, being distinct from celestials, still have their usual requirements to run.)
The only disruption from this pattern comes when Mariah pulls off the road too soon after the last tank of gas and parks the car. Is this our destination?
We focus our ears on the world around us, trying to get any input we can. Sounds of gathering humans surround us: parents cajoling with children, children begging for money to buy snacks from the vending machines, dogs snuffling about as they do their business and then running about to stretch their legs, even a little bit of wildlife tolerating the human presence as they scavenge around for any stray food.
This must be a rest-stop—one of those innately corporeal places that we celestials rarely have reason to be at. At least, not without a native in tow.
(Mariah only has us.)
What’s Mariah’s purpose here?
She doesn’t do much, that we can tell. She just gets out of the car and walks a bit—not much, just enough that the her steps take her from crumbly asphalt to soft grass, and then she…just sits down at a picnic table and does nothing, says nothing. She just breathes silent even breaths as the minutes (hours?) pass by. Sometimes she touches our crystal and pulls it slightly from her neck. We lose count of the groups of (assumed) humans who arrive, do their business, and head out. Flocks of geese call out overhead.
(We swear we can hear the slow, steady flap of their wings.)
“Sunset,” Mariah murmurs. It’s the first words she’s spoken to us since she planned her route.
“Is that what you’ve spent your time waiting for?”
Mariah doesn’t answer with words as such, but she finally does walk back to her car.
—
Mariah can remain silent about her intentions, and she takes steps to prevent us from guessing where where’s going (like keeping the radio off), but there’s no way to hide the drive itself from us. We dangle from Mariah’s neck like a pendant, and we can’t help but experience everything she does.
The drive has changed from rural highways and occasional towns to the more populated patterns we’ve previously observed from the bodies of various migratory birds. The cars that pass by us now all go in the same direction as Mariah—we must be on an interstate now. Traffic moves, slows and stops erratically. At one point, Mariah stops the car and speaks tersely with someone to demand coins in exchange.
(If the toll-collector hears us sing, they don’t say anything to Mariah.)
(They probably witness weirder phenomena on any given day.)
Mariah drives on.
Most of us know not to get too optimistic. Yes, Mariah seems to be going in a direction that’s familiar to us, but Chicago isn’t the only major city within driving distance of Mariah’s starting point. And even if she were heading in that direction, that doesn’t mean her destination will be the one we’ve suggested to her—especially when she’s gone out of her way not to ask for directions.
But the signs are adding up, and we have reason to hope.
—
It’s not much longer before Mariah reveals her decision—or we should say—when Mariah is forced into revealing her decision. Her vehicle stops (is stopped) suddenly.
Mariah rolls her window down.
“Name, credentials, and reason for visit,” a voice demands. It’s neither cheerful nor bored. In fact it sounds suspicious of Mariah, whether that’s due to the demon herself or the day and time at which she’s arrived.
We feel Mariah take a deep breath. Her vessel’s heart pounds beneath us. The harsh act she’s put on this whole trip is at the edge of crumbling. “My name is Mariah, and I come from a…a rival lab. I’m here to talk about a job change.”
There’s a little bit of a pause while the guard consults with someone over the phone. The stray words that escape speak of plausible deniability. Mariah could be a demon looking to redeem or someone working an unexpected night-shift. Finally the guard hangs up the phone and sighs. “All right. Go ahead and park over on Discovery Road and stay inside your vehicle. Someone will be by to escort you shortly.”
Mariah follows the guard’s instructions. Then, she turns off the ignition and leans back into the seat. We feel the deliberation of her breathing as she tries to regain some control over her reactions. It’s similar to what we’ve helped her through before.
“You took our suggestion, then.” We say as we [Mariah and I] wait for the promised escort to arrive.
“I suppose I did,” Mariah’s voice is completely blank. “It wasn’t hard to get to, once I knew where to go.”
“No. I suppose not.” We shift topics. “What made you decide?”
For a moment, it seems like Mariah won’t answer, but then she sighs and tilts her head upward. “The Emptiness made me realize my whole worldview was entirely based on delusions. I put so much of myself into trying to get back what had been lost for good or trying to hold on to something I never really had. My whole head is a mess.” She picks us up briefly and settles us back down. “Maybe this is what will finally fix me.”
“I don’t know if it’s that simple,” we say because anyone walking up to Redemption deserves the truth.
“Of course it’s not,” Mariah says sharply, “but what better choice do I have? My Resonance is broken because of one Discord. That second Discord makes it difficult for me to blend in with humans. It’s only a matter of time before the Game or my former Prince catch up to me. You’re about to—”
Mariah cuts off that last statement. The someone to escort us has arrived. Multiple someones actually, as two sets of footsteps approach us—a heavy thud of work boots and a lighter patter of what might be flat dress shoes. We’re back to an upright position, and Mariah rolls down the car window again.
The footsteps stop. An imperious, feminine voice (Dress Shoes) calls out from slightly above our position. “Stay in the car, and keep your hands visible.”
Mariah shifts slowly, slightly.
“State your name, Band, and Word.”
“Mariah. Habbalite. Formerly of Technology.” We note the lack of correction regarding the word ‘Band’. Smart. Or maybe her delusion really has been broken for good.
“You stated an interest in a job change. Are we correct to interpret this as an interest in becoming an Elohite?”
Another of those deep breaths. Mariah’s desire to present herself as cool and collected for these angels (we assume) fights against the somatic signals coming from her vessel. We can feel her shaking beneath us and the way she struggles against the urge to hyperventilate. The decision Mariah makes now takes her between life and death and we wonder how readily these angels will let her walk away from it if she changes her mind.
Her voice is dead flat when she speaks. “I would like to stop serving Hell. I would like to see Heaven. Becoming an Elohite seems to be a necessary prerequisite to fulfill those desires.”
“Noted. Next question: did you arrive here alone and under your own free will?”
(We are in a War and—as Cole has told us—Tethers are essentially strategic outposts. While very few demons would walk into a Tether and declare an intent to to redeem as a method if infiltration, it’s not impossible.)
Mariah hesitates. Her lack of introduction tells us she’d prefer to have kept us a secret, but she must also know that it would be bad form for her to lie right now. “I have a Kyriotate in this Force Catcher,” She admits at last. We feel ourselves being lifted up slightly. “Otherwise, I came here alone. No coercion.”
“True,” Dress Shoes—almost a certainly a Seraph—says. Her attention turns to us. “And who are you in the Force Catcher?”
“Kira, a Kyriotate.” Normally we would have chosen a different name to introduce ourself with in this context, as well as volunteering our Word affiliation (especially since Lightning is decently friendly towards Creation) but we have Mariah to think about and the concept of multiple aliases and missing information is not one we want to explain to a Habbalite on the brink of—something. Redemption? A nervous breakdown? The two don’t seem mutually exclusive right now.
“Kira,” The voice hesitates to use the name we gave her because the name, while not quite false, matches neither our True Name nor our preferred nickname. Definitely a Seraph then. “Do you vouch for this Habbalite and her sincerity?”
For all of Mariah’s recent opacity, we have a surprisingly short internal debate. She’s never been the kind to half-ass any notion that’s come to her mind.
(The sounds of her carving that hole in herself vividly replay in several of our minds.)
“Yes.”
We don’t worry whether the Seraph believes us; that’s the beauty of talking with that Choir.
“Very well,” The Seraph says at last “You may get out of the car. Carl here will escort you to the main building where the Seneschal will be with you to further discuss your options.”
Work Boots—Carl—steps forward, but Mariah doesn’t move just yet. “Can I get a few minutes of privacy?” Mariah asks. “I won’t go anywhere. I just need to say good-bye to my friend here.” Her voice breaks slightly at the word ‘friend’.
(We don’t know if we’d call the entanglement we have with Mariah ‘friendship’, but we won’t dispute the term.)
(Not now. Not when she’s about to free us.)
There’s some hesitation—probably Resonance use on the part of the Seraph at least—before they both take a couple steps back. “You can say goodbye to them over there. We’ll wait here,” the Seraph says at last.
“That’s fine.” Mariah gets out of the car and walks a bit. The chain we’re hanging from jerks as Mariah’s unsteady hands fumble around with the closure, but eventually she sets us down on a bit of concrete.
“You know,” she says, trying to act casual, even as she can’t quite banish the quaver from her voice. “I finally figured out the other side of the host analogy.”
“The other side?”
(As though there’s only one other side.)
“When you first made the analogy, I took it as your way of declaring your intent to be useful to me and perhaps as a warning that you would use and manipulate me for your own ends. But that was always fine. Hell is Hell, and that’s how things work there. But your leaving was always a part of it too, wasn’t it?”
We could pretend otherwise, but what would be the point? “Yes.”
“So, I guess this is it.” Mariah says—her voice comes slightly more from above than usual. We’re maybe knee high to her. “You’re finally getting what you wanted.”
(One thing. We’ve gone through literal Hell, and all we get is this lousy survival.)
(And one demon turned towards the light. That’s more than nothing.)
“I guess it is. How long have I been in here?”
Mariah pauses, and we can hear her doing calculations under her breath. “Three, four years maybe. You came to me spring three years ago, and it’s autumn now.”
Three years. On the big celestial timeline where our mother—created just after the big capital ‘F’ Fall—can still be considered young by some celestials’ standards, it’s not a long time at all. Hell, it’s not even very long even by some human standards. But we haven’t even been downstairs for a whole century yet, and that time still feels like a lot in terms of all the things we could have experienced and all the people we could have helped.
We can count on one hand (assuming a human-standard quantity of fingers) the number of regular hosts we’ve kept around for at least that long and we struggle to think of many more we’ve worked with for more than a year.
“That’s a long time for me to work with a single being, even a long-term host.”
“Is it?” Mariah paces in a short line in front of us. We could almost be in Tartarus again, in that device on her worktable, except that freedom is so close that our forces almost vibrate with restlessness.
“It is.”
Mariah takes her time with her reply. “You know, I didn’t have to bring you here with me. I could have left you behind in Tartarus. Or abandoned you back in the woods where I first came up to the Corporeal. Or traded you to one of my former Wordmates in exchange for an actually useful resource.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.”
She clearly wants us to ask, and so we do: “Why not?”
“Because I meant what I said to you after you found out how I lost my vessel. We’re connected, and not even the Emptiness could show me that was a delusion. You offered to make yourself a part of me, and I accepted. Carried you around, even. Like I told you: Whatever happened to me would happen to you too.”
“And you meant it,” we conclude.
(Mariah never half-commits to ideas.)
“And I meant it.” Mariah takes a deep breath. We hear her stop in front of us. “Which is why it needs to be this way. To break our connection on my terms. You understand, right?”
“I do.” We think we do, anyway. Rather than waiting for us to collect enough Essence to escape on our own or trying to coax us into stay with her longer, Mariah is choosing to set us free on her own terms. Smart of her.
“You know, if I make it through this, maybe we’ll see each other again someday.”
“Maybe we will.”
“But it won’t be the same.”
“No,” we say wryly, “let’s hope it isn’t.”
—
There are two ways to open a force catcher.
The most common way is via a password or phrase that functions like a key to a cage. Mariah probably does know the ones for the force catchers she uses, if only to handle situations like the one she found herself in with that War Kyriotate without having to sacrifice a valuable Artifact. Freedom could be as simple as a few words—whether that’s in Helltongue or some earthly language. Hey, it might even be lyrics to one of those terrible Techsynth songs Mariah used to listen to back in Hell. We doubt it. But it might be.
But for us, Mariah chooses the other method.
And we don’t know that until a sickening, splintering sound hits right in the center of the crystal and shatters. Fragments fly away from a center point, and shards shed from our celestial form like bits of broken glass. A sharp stab lands right in the center of our forces—right where that initial blow hit the crystal, in fact. The pain that radiates out from the wound is the first actual sensation we’ve felt since our last Force left that squirrel three years ago.
Angelic curses flow from our mouths.
It is beautiful.
Our other senses come rushing back to us all at once. Eyes that have seen nothing but blank for years open up to the world—night sky, up-lights illuminating a flag pole, scattered lights in the Tether behind us, streetlights in the distance, and most of a moon overhead. Actual lights contrast with actual dark. Wings that have collapsed in on themselves under the confinement of the force catcher open and flutter. Our own celestial form glows neon-bright.
Our colors are wrong.
(We can see ourself. We know we’ve changed.)
(We can’t think about that right now.)
Our newly-freed Forces scatter in an instinctive search for hosts. A couple of them find purchase in a nearby owl. Others venture into a nearby neighborhood to find a cat sleeping on a warm lap. More find a wandering fox. We get drunk on the world. We take joy in motion—of our own self-propelled kind and the flow of air under our wings as we take to the sky. A tired human idly scratches our borrowed head while she reads the next page in her novel. We savor the stretch of our forelimbs as we extend our claws contentedly, while in another body we sink into sensations of the fox’s wilder life: scent and soil, prey and competition.
We’ve missed these experiences dearly, and more beyond, but we have unfinished business.
We fly the owl back to the Tether.
Of course, the parking lot is mostly empty, it’s about half-past-nine (our cat reads the clock sitting on a fireplace mantle) on a weekend night. We catch sight of the guard, back at his post and three figures standing near a mostly empty road. A car that looks like it’s being held together with duct-tape and sorcery is the only one we see. Two figures stand near the car—Dress Shoes, tall and slender, definitely Seraphic in shape as well as behavior, and Work Boots, a stout and slightly shorter man of unknown nature—to observe the third.
(‘Observe’ being a loose and somewhat inaccurate way to describe how the Seraph hesitates between stepping forward and staying back. Her companion stays put.)
We’ve never actually seen Mariah before—not in her native form, not in the vessel she lost to War, and, until now, not the replacement—but we immediately identify the young woman in the plain, tall vessel as her. She still stands in the spot where she broke our Force Catcher, a hammer on the ground next to her left foot.
The figure we identify as Mariah looks out across the water. Looking out, actually, in the direction we parked the owl in after our initial flyby swoops. The expressions that run through her face reflect a mental breakdown in progress—blank and horrified and angry and grieving and proud all in a cycle. She falls to her knees at one point. Our acute owl eyes see the shine of tears in the distant lamplight, and our ears pick up the sound of an occasional escaped sob.
Occasionally we swear her gaze catches on our silhouette.
We resist the urge to come in closer. Even after all Mariah has done to us—and all she deprived us from and our own desire to leave these past few years behind—a minority of us wishes we didn’t have to leave Mariah so quickly. We did, after all, lead her here, and Redemption must be scary enough even with a friend at your side.
(Maybe we should ask Cole sometime.)
But it’s not entirely selfishness that keeps us from swooping across the water and properly introducing ourself. Redemption is scary, yes, but it’s only part of the process Mariah needs to go through become a proper Elohite. She needs to find something to love that’s bigger than a single, isolated Kyriotate: The Symphony, a Word, a way of life. It’s fine that we’re (part of) what led her to seek Redemption, but what will keep her Elohite even after we’ve gone?
(Cautionary tales go around in Creation about demons who fell in love with an angel and redeemed, only to have the relationship fall apart afterwards. Not all of those stories end with capital ‘H’ Heartbreak and a fall, but enough do that we’d rather not put ourself—or her—at risk of becoming the latest example.)
No, it’s best if we leave Mariah to forge her own path. Let it be clear that whatever she walks into tonight is for her own reasons, and let her be the Elohite she’s meant to be.
We fly off.
Maybe in a decade or two, we’ll check in.