i wasn't looking for this

[from_scratch]

This is a successor to call me maybe and trade my soul for a wish, which were getting crowded.

with Emily (Maggie)

with Alex (ErinFlight)

with Destin (Rockeye)

with Nick (Rockeye)

Comments

[from_scratch]

"I don't think it's smart enough to contemplate the awkwardness of its situation. But I tend not to deal in cats etecetera."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Yeah. Not sure why you'd even want a cat that couldn't walk or meow or whatever."

[from_scratch]

"They can have normal kittens. There is now a decent population of all the more appealing animals, in Hell."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Huh. That makes sense, I guess. How worried should I be about the fact that you are apparently a demon from a Hell? Not in terms of your personal evilness, but about the fact that your world has a hell that has demons."

[from_scratch]

"It's a perfectly nice place to live, if a little tacky. Okay, a lot tacky. And there are only demons there - the 'normal kittens' property does not apply to mindless made humans, for some reason, I think there are similar problems with cetaceans and great apes and elephants, those had to be imported with what must have been considerable awkwardness."

[iamnotpolaris]

"But there aren't dead humans there either?"

[from_scratch]

"Everybody in Hell is a demon. There are some mindless human-bodies around but I assume that isn't what you mean. ...Some demons are ex-humans, but most are not."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I meant are there humans who go to hell when they die. And apparently the answer is 'yes, but then they become the category of person for whom it is not metaphorical hell.'"

[from_scratch]

"Yeah. The lakes of fire are not and have never been intended to contain people."

[iamnotpolaris]

"What are they for, then?"

[from_scratch]

"Garbage disposal. Demons can make anything. We cannot get rid of it. I use a black hole, myself."

[iamnotpolaris]

"And what happens if you need to get rid of the black hole?"

[from_scratch]

"I go somewhere which does not have a black hole to pass the time while mine dissolves into Hawking radiation."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Okay, I don't actually know enough about that particular kind of science to know exactly what that means but I'll take your word for it."

[from_scratch]

"Relatedly, I do feel I should warn you: while to the best of my knowledge no one has ever turned up dead in my world having previously been alive anywhere other than the Earth I'm familiar with, if this is for some possible reasons as opposed to other possible reasons, you as a summoner, however accidental, may become a daeva yourself when you die."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Great. If that happens, how does my sister summon me?"

[from_scratch]

"She draws most of a circle on a floor with room for you to stand in but doesn't finish it, and then around the border writes 'I summon the whatever, insert your full name', where 'whatever' is whichever kind of daeva you are. The options are demon, angel, and fairy. Then, only after writing out all those words, closes the circle. That's for an unbound circle. You are very luck that this unbound circle got me and your sister presumably doesn't wish to magically enforce you behaving yourself. In the strongest possible terms do not ever summon random unbound daeva again."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I didn't intend to do it this time. My sister has zero interest in magically restraining me. To be honest, I'm much more of a restraining influence on her than vice versa."

She looks at the metal doily he appeared on. "You might have to tell me how not to summon daeva, come to think of it."

[from_scratch]

"The basic idea is the same, but I have no idea in what language this might say 'I summon a demon'. Just avoid closed circular patterns on floors, I guess."

[iamnotpolaris]

"That...is going to be slightly difficult, oh well, I guess I'll just make sure that any rugs I put down are rectangles. Or ovals, maybe, do ovals count as circles for summoning purposes?"

[from_scratch]

"The circles need not be perfect but they do have to be more circular than anything else."

[iamnotpolaris]

"You should probably tell me your full name so my sister can summon you later so she's retrievable too if anything catastrophic happens. And maybe some other people."

[from_scratch]

Cam hands her a piece of paper. "I'm not sure that the usual summoning rules apply to this situation, because this isn't the place I'd normally wind up upon being summoned, but assuming all is as normal except now I can be summoned to and dismissed from here, this is how you do it."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Good. So what determines whether you end up as a demon, an angel or a fairy if it's not eternal punishment or eternal bliss that decides your afterlife?"

[from_scratch]

"As far as I know Heaven and Fairyland are also reasonably nice places to live, although I'd definitely have picked demon powers over the other options. I don't know how people are sorted, but my guess is a personality affinity for the associated magic. Demons make, angels change, fairies move."