A Dæmon Called Hamish

"Where's my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that she's just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she can't change?" "We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not," said the witch, "or die of despair."

she was meant to tackle him more like she does in the book :(

Like what the fuck do you mean Lee Scorsby is "a New Dane from the country and Texas" what the fuck is new Denmark

Then occasionally the narrator breaks in the explain big super important stuff, like the majestuirum but start it with shit like "After the death of Pope John Calvin" HELLO JOHN CALVIN WAS POPE WHAT THE FUCK

What a daemon is is literally never explained the reader just has to take in the vibes of how character talk about them

It would be so out of character for a person in real life to just exposit history or explanations about how the world works because everyone already knows, barring situations where a person might not know some vital information and the fact none of the characters do this is genius.

Collected Writings in Experimental Theology, Oxford Press

Bathrooms usually have a bed and/or a perch to give daemons a comfortable place to rest while their human bathes or showers other than the bath mat. Some daemons are happy to join their human in the bath/shower, but many don’t like getting wet or have forms that would make it difficult / possibly dangerous (e.g. a lot of rodents), and even for those that like water soaked fur can take a long time to fully dry so bathing isn’t usually an everyday thing.

Daemons don’t normally wear clothing, but there are times when it’s necessary or at least much more comfortable - for the same reasons animals sometimes wear clothing in our world. Not all fur and feathers are created equal, and a fennec fox, or a chihuahua, or a serval, or a parrot wouldn’t have a good time in cold climates. Children’s daemons can just turn into arctic animals and/or crawl into their human’s clothing (as shown in The Golden Compass), but daemons with warm-weather settled forms are out of luck, and often wear sweaters, hoodies, and/or earwarmers. Superheated pavement in warm climates, and road salt in cold ones, can also hurt a daemon’s feet just like a real animal’s, so many wear protective paw booties.

Human clothing made to accommodate daemons is also common. The most obvious is arm and shoulder pads which allow large birds - especially birds of prey - to land and ride on their humans’ arms or shoulders without injuring them. People don’t really wear falconry gauntlets because it’s not like they’re just putting them on for a hunting or training session with a bird, it’s daily life including times when you need to use both your hands for something else. Clothing may also have special pockets for very small daemons to ride in, sometimes incorporating clear plastic windows. Daemons that are too big for a pocket but small enough that walking around in crowded places is awkward - e.g. rats, ferrets, rabbits - most commonly ride on their humans’ shoulders, but sometimes being carried in a sling is easier, more comfortable, and warmer.

It is very common for tailors to have a primate daemon as this allows the human tailor to measure the human while the primate measures the daemon. There are also daemon weight scales in all tailors to ensure that specialised pockets etc are made secure and strong enough without a one-size-fits-all approach that could lead to unnecessary bulk, while also embedding it in the clothes in such a way that it does not strain the rest of the fabric in an unseemly way.

It is just a universal fact of architecture that all buildings are designed with perches of some kind dotted around a little over head height, particularly in seating and dining rooms. Styles have varied throughout the years, from stylised carved poles of stone or wood either coming straight out of the walls, to coming out a little and then running parallel for a more integrated look, to shelves or wide picture rails, and many more. You can use the style of perches to guess the age of a building.

The conclusion the story comes to is that, our duty, it seems to me, is to increase the presence of Dust in the world.