Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

18th of November 2006 A.D.

The knife sliced right through the bread, it thumped against the board, hard. That was going to leave a mark, the part of Charity that was utterly invested in the task of making sandwiches noted. There were a lot of parts of Charity Carpenter and she was very very good at keeping them apart: there was the part that had taken Amanda to dance class and the part that had dropped Hope off with Mrs Mullings for that slumber party she had wanted so bad, the part of her that remembered Matthew did not like pickles in his sandwiches, and then there was the part that was panicking about not getting a single phone call from Michael or Molly ever since he had gotten that call from her with news that her school friends were taken by some kind of demon. There was the part of her that was praying.

As with most prayers answered it did not come in the form she expected.

Someone at the door, a single long ring, not Michael, he would have just come in and not Molly, she got impatient and rang three or four times before the person inside could even get to the door.

Opening the door Charity was greeted with a sight that chilled her blood, a dark skinned young man in a grey sweeter with a coat over it that has seen better days. His eyes were dark too and serious and in his hand held a little apart from his body Amoracchius. "Nothing to worry about, just a delivery for when Michael comes home."

Only then did the woman see the plastic FedEx badge on his chest, the winged plastic FedEx badge. In all her life Charity has met open messengers of the Lord all of three times and every time an angel showed themselves it was in matters of grave import. She wished she would not meet another, but every time they had the same tell about them 'because you always expected angels to be winged' the first had told her.


But once she saw it, once the suspicion had formed in her mind Charity knew with a sense that almost recalled the youth she had left far behind what she was looking at.

"A delivery?" Her voice sounded faint in her own ears. Pull yourself together Charity, they might need you.

"Your husband and daughter have gone to a place where the Sword cannot follow, but where she had to go and he choose to follow," the man, the angel said as he stepped over the threshold with a smile that looked just a little too perfect, a nod a little too precise, like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. "No fault was found in the choice, but since it was a matter of Free Will, well I was the most fitting to carry it back here."

"Down here from where? Where did they go?" Great job, interrogating an angel, now that's going to be an unusual sin to be doing penance for.

There was an edge of relief to the thought though, if he was bringing the Sword back here than Michael would be alright.

"To a place the likes of which has not existed for a long time," The messenger took off his coat and wiped his shoes. If that did not show that cleanliness was next to godliness Charity did not know what did. "So long in fact that one cannot really call the span between now and then 'time' more... history became legend and legend became myth."

The last few words were said like a quote and one Charity recognized. She had to smuggle those books into the house past her father as a girl and even once things had gone... bad she still loved them. Without even meaning to so smiled, a little more at ease despite the cryptic words.

So it went, not quite small talk, but like he was going through a script in his head, he took his coffee black no sugar and commented new shades they had gotten with 'the weather's been getting hotter' in a way that was probably not meant to be ominous but managed to anyway. There was, Charity had to admit, something almost as strange about seeing Amoracchius balanced on the coffee table as about the one who bore it in. Michael always propped it upright so he could draw if he had some need to keep it close but not on him

"Its strange not knowing how long something will take," the angel said in the same too-light manner. "Apologies for the anxiety I am causing."

"It's nothing," Charity cut herself off realizing that was a lie. "Well not nothing, it's you know something one says." As mother put it. Something about the awkwardness of the situation made her think of her parents more than she did in any given month normally.

"I might as well start now, get some good out of waiting." Again Charity was not sure if he was talking to her precisely , but then those too-bright eyes fixed her and the angel spoke: "This world isn't one thing carved in solid stone, it's more like a book, the pages turning slowly from first to last, though for those who live in the confines of one page, one phrase before they slip off it rarely matters, but there are some things that stain the paper black, passing from one page into the other. Such if the nature of the power Margret Katherine now holds"

"She does not like to be called by two names," the words came out automatically.

Far from being offended the messenger smiled, a soft and weary thing, the most... Honest? Human? Natural? The most something expression Charity had seen him wear. "It seems like I will be getting in a lot of practice apologizing today." After a brief pause he continued. "One can't really tell... I could not tell all the secrets of a stain just from the outside, just the shape, the color of it. Only now that it has come to flower can I see that it is a rare thing precious, perilous thing even among its peers. What indeed is a crown without a kingdom, or a kingdom without subjects..."

The door rang again three times in quick succession. so caught up was Charity in the sheer terrifying scale of what her guest revealed that she did not notice until he got up to answer.

OOC: Second update of the day. This is getting easier, no rolls though, just the background for why Uriel is going to be opening the door when Molly and Michael get home and hey he also broke the news to Charity, that has to be worth some brownie points.