"Eee!" squeaks Ike. "I am surprised and delighted!"

"You are heavier than a regular mortal your size would be, but not four times heavier or anything," grins Lucas. "I'll admit I probably couldn't carry you and your sister at the same time even with a basket or something."

Ike giggles. And, since he is scooped and all, hugs Lucas.

Lucas laughs; he's already using his arms, but he's got wings! Swoosh. Now they are around Isaac.

Isaac is surrounded by fluffiness! "I feel very snuggled," he says.

"Let me know if you get too warm. Angels are. Warm, I mean."

"I have noticed that. It's nice," he says.

Lucas grins. "It's so we can fly at high altitudes and not freeze."

"That's convenient!" he says. "Convenient and also cuddly."

"Yep. Although not all the mortals know about it, so if we stay in inns or things like that the fire's usually piled way too high in our rooms and so on. The angel holds are too cold for mortals and they all go around in long sleeves and extra layers."

He giggles.

"Well, Cedar Hills isn't that cold, since it's at ground level," amends Lucas. "But I live in Monteverde."

"I do not know what either of those places is like!" he says.

"Monteverde, and the Eyrie, where the Archangel-Elect leads the host, are carved into mountains, lots of chambers and it's a long walk if you want to take the stairs. Windy Point used to be the least accessible of the lot, but then the Archangel Gabriel destroyed it and built Cedar Hills instead."

"...For... reasons?"

"Oh, it was a den of wickedness, all of its angels were dead, half on Mount Galo and half because the previous Archangel Raphael had poisoned everybody who wouldn't go with him to Mount Galo." Pause. "Mount Galo is the first thing the spaceship everyone thinks is a god smites if we don't sing the Gloria every year, and that year the Windy Point faction wanted to skip it to prove divine impotence so Raphael could keep power instead of handing it off to Gabriel."

"I take it that did not go as planned."

"Nope. Spaceship exists, spaceship really does smite Mount Galo if we don't sing, a bunch of angels from Windy Point and some of their mortal friends were up there and they all died, it took a long time for the angel population to recover."

"That is sad," says Ike, snuggling up.

"Well, yes," says Lucas, adjusting his wings around Ike, "but if Raphael had stayed in power we'd still have slavery and so on, so."

"Ye-es. It's sad that he poisoned a bunch of people and then got a bunch more killed trying to play chicken with a spaceship," says Ike. "It would have been much better if he had just not done any of that."

"Yes. That would have been an improvement."

"Yes," says Ike. Snuggle snuggle.

"All happened hundreds of years ago, anyway." (Snuggle.)