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The garden is set up for a tea service, the way it would for a casual gossip session with some of her friends or now-grown children, or perhaps for a more formal interview with a subject before she set to work on a new portrait. Two settings are in place, her favorite tea blend from Flowers spiced with cinnamon, cardamom and orange peel.
Today, it would not be a casual gossip session. Nor will her visitor be the one answering questions.
“Master.” Jubilee bows her head slightly and fixes all six of her eyes on the cobbled ground.
“Good to see you, Jubilee.”
She lifts her head.
The archangel is dressed...not formally—Creation never was one for formality—but to send a message as a Mercurian Archangel does. If she could sketch the details accurately enough, one of them could tell her the exact meaning of the flower in his lapel, or the material of the buttons fastening his shirt. The specks of colors may be paint spatters or a trick of the light. She reads Truth and paintings, not fashion. The color and folds of a shirt, and if she squints she can see streaks of green, as though he were rendered in oils and the garden background blended into his image.
He greets her with a kiss on each cheek, and waits for her to escort him in.
The last time he showed up for tea—a proper one-on-one meeting sort of tea in her own space—as opposed to being on a guest list for one of her larger parties...was almost two centuries ago when he had the new assignment for her. She is more prepared at this time for the topic at hand. Perhaps not at the Symphonic level where the inherent Symbolism of any language gives way to Truth, but at the level where Symbolism becomes legible.
The paints and supplies are packed away. An easel holds a drying rendering of the landscape beyond her garden—not the portraits she’s been assigned to render as part of her project, but a personal work and reminder of a view slowly disappearing. The plein air paradise, the outdoor galleries, the open parks where children run, and the alcoves where lovers embrace.
The scenery remains the same, but the figures grow more sparse every day. She captures the image of stray relievers floating in the distance, and a far flung neighbor working on its bonsai.
Closer in, a letter sits by her teacup, folded in three, opened but not flattened. Refreshments are not strictly necessary on the celestial—beings in Heaven requiring neither sustenance nor the appearance of such to maintain a Role, nor is Jubilee inclined towards cooking herself--but a few sweets in the center of the table fill out the scene. A still life would have more props, a bunch of grapes or perhaps a skull.
He sits on one side of the round table, and she takes the spot opposite him.
—
“How are the children? Have you heard from them recently.”
Some of this is Mercurian formalities, to ask of relational bonds prior to addressing the topic of the meeting. Some of this is also the topic of the meeting, if indirectly. The key word being ‘recently’.
“I’ve sent them all letters, and most have written back this year. They are….” She pauses to find the precise Truth she needs. ‘Doing well’ is neither true nor false. “They are generally carrying on. Some of them are quite well. Others are apprehensive about the sudden changes in their assignments.”
“What about your youngest? Preerana. She’s been down in the corporeal for a few decades now. How’s she getting on?”
“Endlessly mutable.” Not literally endlessly, but a constant change in form with no clear ending in sight, signing her letters with a new name each time, from new locations, in new handwriting. She was the one who taught Preerana of endlessly becoming, and the young Kyriotate had taken the lesson to Heart. Perhaps too literally, in a manner only a Hive could accomplish.
“She is doing poorly?”
“No.” Jubilee cannot say that. “She seems happy enough, doing good work, and making connections in the communities she’s visiting. I’m only baffled at how the letters are arriving with different names and different handwriting each time. I have to resonate for truth each time just to confirm the letters actually come from her hand, never mind the actual content. Is this a function of being a Kyriotate?”
“It’s not unheard of. Especially for those completely new the the corporeal. My Kyriotates start with the affinity for changing their shape and image, so it’s not surprising when they want to collect a wide range of references before settling into something more consistent. Most of them get there. Preerana probably will too in her own time.”
“I hope so. What are you planning for her?”
“You have a better sense of your daughter. I was hoping you would have a suggestion.”
Jubilee considers the Truth of her daughter, the letters she’s sent, Word politics, those friends of hers Jubilee knows to have already moved service, and of Jubilee’s own desires. She is thankful to not be an Elohite and thus obligated to remain objective in these matters. “Keep her in your service until she settles into her life more.”
Eli nods. “I’ll consider it. And now, Jubilee, have you considered the matter I wrote to you about.”
The reason he is making the visit. Yes, he cares about the children, and making sure they doing generally well. The care of offspring are as much part of his Word as arts, crafts, and sexuality, and it matters that Jubilee still looks after her grown ones. But this is as precise and specific as the catchlight on the eyes, the shadow at the center of pursed lips.
“I have considered.” She has spent the last year and a day considering.
“Have you decided whose service you would like to enter? If you would choose to enter another Word’s service. You could manage the Archive here if you wanted to.”
“Judgment.” Jubilee says this with certainty, and takes a small amount of pleasure in surprising an Archangel. Or at least that the Archangel would express surprise. Knowledge hadn’t way back when Jubilee was young and the War still a novelty, but then Raphael seldom had reason to consider expressing surprise at a pupil’s declaration to be a useful, especially not one as green as she had been.
“Destiny would allow you to continue your current project.”
“Destiny would let me continue my work, but Judgment would let give the skills I learned as part of that assignment to a new application.” She pauses to consider her painting and her next words. The light still isn’t hitting quite right. “They’ll need that new application, won’t they? We’ll need them to need that new application. I have the letters from all my children. Some are already in the service of another Archangel, and many of those that aren’t yet all have friends and lovers who have been placed in the service of another Superior. The painting doesn’t need to be finished, to see the form blocked in on the canvas.”
Knowledge might have had a philosophical argument here, and even Creation can take pleasure in alternate interpretation in another circumstance. Eli doesn’t argue though.
“Judgment works very differently from Creation or even Knowledge. The work you will be given may not be the work you wish to do. Dominic is not known to take suggestions. Will you be able to adjust?”
“I don’t know.” Jubilee says, a statement of absolute Truth. “I just believe that’s where I need to be.”
“I see. It will take time to arrange, but I will arrange it.”
“Thank you, Master.”
Eli stands up and opens his arms.
Unlike most of the angels who started in Creation, she does not consider Eli as a father. As familial terms go, ‘favorite uncle’ may describe it better. That doesn’t stop her from making a coil around his torso and between his wings.
“I’ll miss you.”
Her Archangel kisses her on the forehead, just above her highest set of eyes. “Serve Judgment as well as you have Creation, and Dominic will have no complaints worth listening to.” He steps back to let her uncoil. “Not that it ever stops him. His Word being what it is.”
It’s not Symphonically True—no opinion could be—but it cheers her up nonetheless.
—
Her service takes months to finalize. The painting on the easel is well dried, even the details added after her last meeting with Eli. Preerana has already sent three separate letters with three new names, each more ridiculous than the last. The last one came with love hearts dotted over the i's—which somehow made it into the translation to the Angelic script. More letters from her other children come in with news of their reassignment, one who took up with its twin sister in Destiny. The garden is almost completely abandoned: the Elohite with the bonsai now settling in with Flowers. The last soul she saw had wandered in lost looking for the kitchens.
“Jubilee, Seraph of Creation.”
A Seraph, Cherub and Elohite stand beyond the archway, the Seraph and Cherub solemn, the Elohite placid and unreadable. A set of three, as was traditional. “We’ve been assigned to take you to the Council Spires.”
Not much comes with her: Her correspondence. Her favorite blend of tea. Her favorite tea cup and saucer. The landscape that quickly becomes a window into a past time. It all fits neatly into a pack she can carry between two sets of wings. The paints remain in her garden, alongside the grapes. If she comes back years, decades, centuries from now–everything will be as fresh as it is today.
The Seraph motions for her to follow, and Jubilee does.
What she leaves behind is a scene turned still life. Never dead, never decayed, but devoid of narrative beyond that to be told by the objects left in the garden.