Chapter Text
One of our crows catches a glimpse of a particular calico cat out on the street, collar already gone, looking almost as bedraggled and harassed as she did the first time we met her. There’s a sigh that takes place entirely within our Forces as we take hold of her again.
Preerana, wherever you are, keep holding on until we can see each other again.
Months have passed since the force catcher broke away from us. Summer is ending, and the first signs of autumn have started to touch the trees. Mother still sends us messages regularly and we keep thinking we’ll send a response...next month.
(Calendars exist on the Corporeal, and we can actually tell she sends them monthly.)
It’s not that we don’t want to see her. Almost all of us do. It’s just that contacting Mother means contacting Judgment by extension, and we’re doing a thorough enough job of judging ourselves on our own. We don’t need to turn it into a formal trial.
We’ve taken this cat into our hive four times since summer began. Each time, we’ve gotten her fed, cared for, and set up with a new home. And yet, she still returns to the street. Maybe the fifth time’s the charm?
Sure, it might be pointless to do the same thing over again, but honestly, it’s not like we’re doing anything more important with our forces. Back in Hell, we thought we could be back to our usual work within a few days. Our more realistic minds might have extended that to a few weeks or maybe even a month or two once we cleaned up the loose ends (our dissonance, our debts). But after almost a year, not only are we not back to our usual jobs, we haven’t even addressed those aforementioned loose ends.
(Addressing them means talking about their cause. Do we want to hear a Seneschal lecture about why it was bad we learned Helltongue? Or explain to some random Trader what three years in Hell does to an angel’s Essence reserves?)
Some cats are feral, raised and socialized to live out on the streets in little families or colonies that those who spend all of their time here in human bodies don’t really pay attention to. The cat we’ve taken hold of is not one of those cats. If she were, managing her situation would be as easy as integrating her into one of the local groups, preferably one being cared for by some animal-loving human in the community.
The truth is, we’re not the Kyriotate we were four years ago. The need for the support we give hasn’t gone away. If anything, our ears are better at catching the people who need help now: Conversations between people who have impossible crushes on each other, secret aspirations sighed out from underneath someone’s breath, new parents who just need a little respite. Just…every time we think we might be ready to take on a human host, our eyes catch a flash of light on a glass watch face or the shine from a gemstone on a ring—to say nothing of actual crystal pendants—and turn away. We’re not ready to risk our freedom on ‘probably safe’.
And sure, we’re not required to use human hosts to do our work. We’re Creation. If we put a couple of minds to it, surely we can figure out ways of doing most of what we used to do in human bodies with a cat or a crow instead. (And of course raccoons! Let’s not forget raccoons!) But, we couldn’t do it as well; we’d bring undue attention on our critter hosts, and overall, it just doesn’t seem worth the bother. We went down to Hell, why? Because we wanted to help an old lady bake her family’s famous cookies. Now, we’re out after seeing a whole Hell-side Vapulan operation at work from the inside. Our old job of moving amongst creatively-blocked humans to look for potential Soldiers seems just as trivial as helping out this cat whose body we’re currently licking the hind leg of.
The first time we met her, we found her a new home. (So we thought.) The second time, we tried to return her to that same new home only to break her out because she didn’t want to be there and we didn’t want a second note of dissonance. The third and fourth time we took her to other houses. We vetted the people ahead of time, made sure they were nice folks and kind to animals. We observed them for days before leaving her. Even Jordi might have approved of our selections.
We need a new approach, and not too long ago, we would have found it as easy as making one. As easy as sliding a spare force into a sparrow. As easy as sketching out a composition on a gridded page. But now, we’re well and truly blocked. If we can’t make ourself talk to Mother because of Judgment, then maybe we should get in touch with War. We could send a message to Cole, and—leave time permitting—it would meet up with us so long as it wasn’t in the middle of a vital operation. But it very well could be busy, and we’re not sure we could handle a ‘not right now’ response.
The cat left all those houses with all those nice people. Hosts make their own choices, and it’s silly of us to forget that principle applies to the owners of all bodies, and not just the talkative, Mercurian-shaped ones.
(Especially when the host in question is a cat of all beings.)
We haven’t been back to the Tether to check in on Mariah. Sometimes, we think we should. She was a host of ours—if only metaphorically—and we did leave her in a precarious situation. There’s no risk quite like Redemption. But Mariah was never our literal host; we were never at risk of dissonance if she ended up in a bad situation because of us. Besides, we have faith in Mariah—or if not in Mariah herself, then in Lightning’s ability to make the proper assessments and do what they can to maximize Mariah’s probability of survival. Redemption attempts require an Archangel’s presence, and Jean is a notoriously busy Elohite. Why waste his time with a candidate who is likely to fail?
Yes, Lightning would have a method. They don’t improvise the way we [Creationers] do. Mariah is likely fine and settling into her new life as an Elohite. We don’t need to worry.
(What would we be told even if we did drop by? Lightning isn’t known to be forthcoming, and Mariah herself loved withholding information from us until the last minute.)
Maybe we just need to accept that our continuing efforts to find this cat a new home are futile. Sure, we could get lucky and finally find her a home she can accept. Or maybe we just need to accept that we need to let this go for good and and let this cat go on her merry, flea-bitten way. Not every job we take on has a big result. That’s a risk we have to accept when the people we help ultimately make their own decisions. Sometimes, our efforts explode out in ways (both good and bad) we can’t imagine. Other times, they come to exactly nil.
What even was the point of staying in the catcher for as long as we did? What did we accomplish by not breaking out as soon as we had the Essence to try? Despite what our grimmest voices say, it wasn’t for nothing. Mariah almost certainly became an angel or died trying. (We want to think she made it.) As for the Paper Shredder, we at least feel confident that whatever circumstances it currently finds itself in, it has to be better than its previous situation. And yes, we do count Force dissolution in that. The bar was in literal Hell. So, what does that count as? Two demons saved? Maybe?
(For a very loose definition of ‘saved’.)
Maybe it would help, if we’d actually accomplished something from a strategic perspective. Heaven and Hell are in a War, even if we had a tendency to forget about that fact in our day-to-day work. And then we were unceremoniously dragged behind enemy lines. What if we had managed to free our captive Choirmates, or the other angels? Or, since we’d failed that, what if we’d somehow found a way to burn that facility to the ground. Sure, the satisfaction would have been short-term at best, but it’d make a good story to tell Cole and a small group of Warriors. As it is, the best we can hope for is that maybe, somewhere, some collateral damage happened because of us. A newly-freed and very Angry Destroyer might have wrecked something truly important beyond even Tizzy’s abilities to hide it. Or, perhaps, a failure to prevent Mariah’s obviously pre-meditated Renegade situation so close to audit season might have landed the facility in trouble with the Game. If we didn’t manage to rescue anyone or cause any direct damage, then maybe—just maybe—we managed to cause a bit of Hell-on-Hell strife that weakens a subset of both Technology and the Game in the long-run.
(We know, we’re reaching.)
Yet, by the standard of any angel caught in Hell, even those uncertain outcomes count as a victory if for one reason only: We survived. Someone up in Judgment or Destiny probably has statistics of how few angels get taken down to Hell and come out of the experience (mostly) intact, and those numbers would probably tell them that we should be dead or Fallen by now. But no, here we are, the exception, still alive and mostly divine.
(Though currently pathetic and paralyzed.)
Maybe that’s why we keep trying with this one. If we can figure out how to help her, then maybe there’s still hope that we can figure out how to move on. We dash her across the street when the light’s green and into the park we’ve currently been borrowing the crows from. People pass through here all the time, and we can hope that one of them will find this wayward cat cute enough to give her a chance.
The problem with survival is that it costs. We’ve brought perspectives into our hive we would be better off without. The taste of spoken Helltongue the still lingers on our lips. Our ears remain hyper-vigilant at every sound. The once-vibrant Symphony dulls against the near-constant background cacophony. Hell had changed us, inside and out, and seeing our celestial form when Mariah released us hammered it (hah!) all home. We used to be painted all in glowing yellows and oranges—an expression of our mother’s hues given Kyriotate shape—but now our colors reflect the pink and green of the crystal Mariah kept us in. We might have remained a Kyriotate, but we’ll never again be the sunny little Kyriotate we loved being so much.
And that’s the issue here too, we realize as we skulk our little cat body through the park. This stray cat—a lost cat—had a home once and just ventured out a little too far one day. She doesn’t want to be a new cat for a new family in a new home. She wants to be herself again in her home with her people. Sure, it might be easier and more comfortable if she could just accept a new place to settle into, but as long she stays out on the streets, she can hold on to the hope that she might see her home again one day.
(Yes, yes, we can see the uncomfortable parallels.)
The sound of metal scraping on metal catches our attention. They’re not the harsh mechanical sounds like those we constantly heard in Tartarus, but more of a soft whisper that beckons to us. We keep the cat hidden in a bush and do a quick flyover in one of our crows to identify the source. He’s easy to spot from the sky what with his very colorful, very elaborate hat—the kind of Frankenstein creation that factories just wouldn’t produce even if they could. He’s currently sitting on a bench and knitting…something complicated that involves more needles than we could manage even in our celestial form, and the last time we met with him in person, he gave us a new attunement and an artifact pencil.
We crawl our cat out of the bushes and into the Archangel’s Eli’s line of sight. He recognizes us immediately with the same privilege that let us recognize him. Archangels and their servitors simply know each other. He pauses in his knitting and beckons us over with a hand gently tapping on his knees and a tck-tck-tck of his tongue.
We leap from the ground to the bench. Perhaps it’s just the cat’s own hunting instincts, but that yarn looks tempting to pounce on, and we have no reason not to. Our archangel isn’t one for formality. Crow and cat both focus on him as he smiles down at our nearest body. He still has that same reassuring smile we’ve always known—a good, Mercurian one that knows how to tell someone they’re valued. Our cat stops her woolen wresting and draws her front paws over his leg. We lift our feline head up to bathe in the sunbeam-like warmth of that smile.
His hand rests on our forehead. “So, kitty, long-time, no see. Tell me, what have you been up to lately?”
And we do, a shortened version of the whole ugly story bottled up inside us. When it ends, we’re staring down at the bench. Eli is the first person we’ve told this story to, and we don’t know how he’s going to react to it.
He tilts our chin up. “That was a tough situation you were in, little one, and you did very well just to make it out of there in one piece. It’s all I could have asked of you.” Our Archangel gives us an amazing scratch under the chin, the kind that makes us squint our eyes in contentment and nudge our face up against his hand. Our paws instinctively make a kneading motion against his paint-stained jeans. It’s as much an effect of being told we did well as it is the physical contact itself.
Then, too soon, he pulls his hand back, and the look he gives us turns solemn—not as stern as we could imagine Jean or Michael or Dominic being, but definitely more serious than we’ve ever seen him before. This is probably the worst mess he’s ever seen us in, and that includes the time we accidentally trashed his studio. “But you need to get back to your work. The world hasn’t stopped needing your help.”
“We’re sorry, boss.”
(We don’t feel the pressure to speak singular to our boss. He understands.)
He graciously nods at our apology, and then with one stroke of his hand down our cat’s spine, the faint buzz of dissonance we’ve been carrying for four whole years just vanishes. We welcome its absence like the silence after a persistent and annoying background noise finally stops.
An image of a house fills our mind. It’s a split level, and there’s a large front window with an empty space where a cat should be looking out of it. “You can start by getting this kitty home.” Seven digits fill our mind, presumably a local phone number that we could dial to reach it. We put the pieces together—Dial. Telephone. Talk. We’ll need a human host to talk to humans for the good of this creature we keep grabbing on to.
(Strictly speaking, we could find ways around the human host requirement. A raccoon or squirrel host could break into someone’s house and dial a telephone, while a crow tags along to make human-like speech sounds. However, this would defeat the purpose of the exercise.)
(This isn’t just about the cat.)
Then, Eli stands up. His knitting vanishes seamlessly into a jacket pocket, yarn and all. “Once you’ve done that, call your mother; she misses you.”
With that, he wanders away deceptively swiftly leaving us with a cat to take home and a piece of our old life to connect with. One loop after another. One bit of help. One bit of opportunity. We helped Mariah, who helped the Paper Shredder. Our Archangel helped us. Now it’s our turn to continue that chain. We take a crow to the sky to get a birds-eye-view of the people around us—those enjoying this bright, almost autumn day and those who are stuck inside. All we have to do to is pick one of them to host us and trust they won’t send us to Hell this time. We’ll give this cat a chance to go back to the life she wants.
(We’ll give ourself the chance to recapture a bit of who we used to be.)
Now, let’s just see if we can avoid making a mess of it.