does not anymore work

[campanas]

Here, in a place where she is quite an unexpected sight, is:

an eight year old girl with brown-flecked white wings, looking dismayed and lost.

with Prime (Aestrix)

with Edie and Emily (Maggie)

with Gloria (Maggie)

with Gren (Rockeye)

Comments

[whatamithinking]

"...Just Dad's parents, I think," she says, looking to Charles for confirmation.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Charles looks uncomfortable. "I wouldn't want them to be dead forever, but...if there's a confirmed afterlife, I'm certainly in no hurry to have mine back."

[mind_game]

[Coming right up. Do you want them deposited directly here or for me to run them through standard explanations first?]

[bellfounding]

"The standard when resurrection is generally known is a waiting list and request-based system with filters."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"An explanation," Erik says heavily, "would probably be useful, considering that their fourteen year old son is now fifty."

[mind_game]

[Sure. In progress.]

She awakens Edie (senior) first. [Hello, Edie. My name is Jane and I'm the manager of the afterlife. Your son has requested that you and your husband be resurrected. It has been thirty-six years since you died. I can answer any questions you may have and whenever you are ready I can put you where he and his living family are.]

And Grandpa next, with an equivalent introduction.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Edie-the-elder takes a long time to respond. "So he survived, then," she says finally. "Good. Where is he now?"
Jakob's response is a little quicker in coming, but similar in tone. "He made it out, then. Is he alright?" Jakob had lasted a little longer than his wife, had seen some of what that doctor had put their son through. Alive did not necessarily mean whole, physically or mentally.

[mind_game]

Jane finds out their geographical location: [Westchester, New York.] [He looks all right, and is anxious to see you.]

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"New York," she murmured, "I wonder how that happened. Alright. You can take me there."
"Well. Best not to keep him waiting any longer," Jakob concludes.

[mind_game]

Put!

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Hugs. Extremely hugs.
When they're done hugging--
Nope.
Well, if we wait a while--
Nope.
They can't go on hugging literally forever!
Don't try to tell Magneto what he can and can't do.

[autokinetic]

"Soooo, while we're here, do you actually like being in a wheelchair for reasons or anything?"

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Ah," says Charles, taken aback. "Well. Not as such, no."

[autokinetic]

"Because like, we're very magic? So we could fix it if you want. I ditched my assistive device when I got magic and it was cooler than a wheelchair."

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"That would be lovely, now that you mention it. I'm afraid I've just gotten so used to it that it hadn't occurred to me to ask."

[autokinetic]

Aegis snaps her fingers.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Charles looks very bemused for a long moment.
Then he stands up.
He looks at his legs like he doesn't quite know what to do with them.

[whatamithinking]

"Has anyone ever told you guys that you're the best thing ever? Because you're the best thing ever."

[bellfounding]

"When everybody else is falling down on the job we remind each other," says Pattern dryly, patting Aegis on the head. (Aegis is an inch taller than she is, but she can still reach.)

[whatamithinking]

"Good. Because you are. I just--you casually waltz into my life and fix everything that was broken. Everything I had accepted was broken forever. And we weren't unhappy before you showed up, but--the English language does not contain a strong enough word for thank you."

[iamnotpolaris]

Emily squeezes her sister's shoulder and smiles at the Bells.

[bellfounding]

"You're completely welcome. It's our job."

[autokinetic]

"Yeah, our pleasure. I'm getting the impression my relevant expertise isn't actually. I'm gonna go home and politick with the space colonists. See you guys at the next Bellparty maybe."

Aegis disappears.

[whatamithinking]

"So how do you guys fix worlds, generally?" Edie asks Pat. "I mean, I'm not thinking objectively, my brain is trying to tell me everything's already fixed, but I do actually know that my family is not the whole world."

[bellfounding]

"Well, you don't have your own Bell to live here and deal with this world full-time. Honestly most worlds that don't have Bells in them get left on a waiting list, so far, because Jane is our way around and she's broken a couple times - we just recently recovered from the most recent outage, my world was out for a particularly long time, when she goes down time stops syncing. The difference here is that most of those other worlds don't have anyone we're in contact with - like, Wellspring does, and it has a Matilda who basically does a Bell's job for her world, but most of the rest we just grabbed when we got Downside and they don't have anybody we know well enough to give magic powers. I'm not going to give you a complete set of magic powers here and now, Jane was lukewarm enough about giving you torching, but we will listen to you if you tell us things like 'hey, the world could totally roll along without anybody freaking out too badly if malaria stopped existing'. Can I make malaria stop existing or would something bad happen in the public consciousness? Malaria personally offends us."