Here is Milliways. It's Milliways with an empty Belltower, but it's still a neat place to hang out between making bits of incremental progress in motion spells and coaxing advice out of the alethiometer and wedging herself into clan politics.
"'Cause I went to the Belltower, literally ten minutes ago, and I caught up, and there was an entry about a Bell who hasn't been here herself but who has a Whistle, and the picture was a few years younger than you but same uniform, same haircut," says Amariah. "Did you read it as well as write in it? D'you remember any of it? I'm Amariah. The witch one with the owl." Pathalan waves a wing.
"Pathalan," says Amariah carefully, "is my soul. In my world everyone has them and most people instinctively avoid touching each other's daemons or at least learn not to by the time they're three. If you touch him you will hurt me. There is no worse feeling than uninvited daemon-touching."
"I try. If I could take you home with me to get you out of solitary, I'd offer, but there's at least two reasons I shouldn't do that - one, you appeared here instead of walking in, so nothing would actually be accomplished if I brought you through my door, you'd still wake up eventually, and, two, we suspect that going to my world might cause your soul to manifest as a daemon like mine, and that'd just be darned inconvenient in a world where not everybody has them. Stella visited once and she made a wish against it, but it took a star, and it might not have worked if someone other than her had done it."
"You know what, if you want to I'll open the door for you, but - their standing opinion is that it's not worth it in a world with no daemons. If you had a daemon, she'd be a lot like you, you know, your soul - and nobody but you could touch her without hurting you, unless they were closer-than-close already. And I assume you'd have to hide her, too, she'd have to be little shapes and tucked away all the time."
"Right now she's - curled up inside you asleep somewhere," Amariah says, "or you'd be a zombie, not a whole person, and right now she doesn't need things - affection, attention, people to talk to - except through you, because she's asleep. You'd be taking one very bad situation and making it a slightly less bad but duplicated situation, and it's not like you could put her away again after you had her out once. I'd recommend talking to Kas and Petaal about it."
"I'll go get them," Amariah says, and she releases Sue and heads for the door and sticks her head out. [Hey Kas! I found a fifteenish you and he's been locked up in solitary, come help me keep him company and be advicey on possibly bringing him briefly into our world so he can get a daemon and not be so lonesome?]
Nothing happens at first.
But there's a glimmer, then a sparkle, then a cascade of golden light in the air next to him, and it coaelsces into a girl, exactly his age and exactly his height but with different body proportions and fewer clothes.
He hugs her immediately.
She turns into a viscacha and cuddles into his arms.
And then she loops.
"Oh, something you should know - you and Ivy can't get too far away from each other," she tells Sue. "It's possible to get so you can by forcing it, but it hurts - not in a good way - and you're not going to want to. Kas and Petaal had to once and now they can be as far apart as they like, and Pathalan and I did it because witches all do, but most humans never try."
"It won't injure you," says Amariah. "But it'd feel like you'd done something cruel and evil and untrue-to-yourself, on top of just plain hurting-in-a-bad-way. A lot of people who separate have kind of tense relationships with their daemons for a while after, sometimes indefinitely - me and Path didn't have that, and neither did Kas and Petaal so you'd probably be fine, but it's something to keep in mind."
"It'd still feel like that - that's just fundamentally how it feels, not a feature of doing it on purpose - but you wouldn't die, and you'd eventually be able to function after the bond was stretched enough to give you arbitrary distance. Except not so functional during the part where someone was putting her in a box," shudders Amariah, "not everyone's me, it won't feel nice if some stranger grabs her."
Petaal turns lioness and bounds over to flop down on Sue's other side, flicking her tail against Ivy's and pressing her nose against Amariah's leg. Kas follows a little more slowly, and sits at Amariah's feet, where he can pet both large felines and give Path scritches should Path be inclined to receive them.