The owl, simply stated and VERY CAPITALISED as it was, made Camilla smile. Thank goodness Susan had the sense to start asking about things. Maybe there would be no more trucker-cap incidents, then! She dashed off a quick reply --
Of course. I'll be at your room in half an hour. - Camilla
-- and she was there when she said she would be, half-hoping all the cats had followed Ryder somewhere. Pied Piper of cats.
The cats had indeed gone off to pester Ryder who, Susan knew, would like nothing more than to skin them all. She let Camilla in--one of the advantages of being Death, in either state, was the ability to know where anyone was at any given time.
"Hello," she said, proud she'd remembered the greeting. Not that it was as hard as it had been--all these little things were trickling back like water leaking from a cracked dam. It was bad, and she wanted it to go the hell away.
"Hi." There didn't seem to be any cats edging their way around Susan's skirts. A blessing; Camilla had begun to wonder whether she might not plausibly feign a newly developed allergy to Susan's pets.
No weird hats, or proliferation of jewelry, or anything else visibly out of the ordinary, either. Camilla's curiosity spiked. She turned Susan's desk chair around so it faced the bed, and sat down, smoothing her own skirt (rueing the cat hair that would surely accumulate on its back). "What's going on?"
There was, in fact, no cat hair--house elves really were wonderful creatures in some respects. Even as Death, Susan was astringently tidy, and that meant no stray hair or claw-marks on the furniture.
"I have...something of a problem," she said, sitting on the bed. She wasn't even sure how to phrase said problem, even to herself--one of the bad things about being stuck somewhere between humanity and Death was that communication became all but impossible. "The thing Shaun calls the Berlin Wall--the thing that's keeping all that humanity locked up--something's wrong with it. And I'm not sure what to do about it." She looked at Camilla with a kind of detached desperation--such a look shouldn't have been possible, but somehow Susan pulled it off.
"Your grandfather didn't have children either," Camilla pointed out. "Maybe Fate adopted someone. Maybe she adopted a little bear instead of a human. Wouldn't that be adorable?"
Susan blinked. Fate...adopting a small bear...adorable... It didn't quite compute. "It would certainly be novel," she conceded. "Though the idea of a bear--or anything--inheriting something of the powers of Fate is a little disturbing." More than a little.
"Then the bear would have soul genetics. Can you imagine a little green-eyed bear cub?" Camilla seemed quite taken by the idea. "And you could buy your way out of a bad future, you'd just need to carry around a bottle of maple syrup with you wherever you went."
Poor Susan, who had only a short time before been purging herself of all kinds of emotional nastiness, was now finding herself hard-put not to laugh. Camilla was being quite serious, and looked at from a certain angle Susan supposed she could see the logic behind it--it just had to be Camilla logic, and thus was rather different than her own. "At least it would be something you could bribe," she said at last. "There's nothing Fate really wants, other than to make your life hell."
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Of course. I'll be at your room in half an hour. - Camilla
-- and she was there when she said she would be, half-hoping all the cats had followed Ryder somewhere. Pied Piper of cats.
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"Hello," she said, proud she'd remembered the greeting. Not that it was as hard as it had been--all these little things were trickling back like water leaking from a cracked dam. It was bad, and she wanted it to go the hell away.
Reply
No weird hats, or proliferation of jewelry, or anything else visibly out of the ordinary, either. Camilla's curiosity spiked. She turned Susan's desk chair around so it faced the bed, and sat down, smoothing her own skirt (rueing the cat hair that would surely accumulate on its back). "What's going on?"
Reply
"I have...something of a problem," she said, sitting on the bed. She wasn't even sure how to phrase said problem, even to herself--one of the bad things about being stuck somewhere between humanity and Death was that communication became all but impossible. "The thing Shaun calls the Berlin Wall--the thing that's keeping all that humanity locked up--something's wrong with it. And I'm not sure what to do about it." She looked at Camilla with a kind of detached desperation--such a look shouldn't have been possible, but somehow Susan pulled it off.
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