Be vewy vewy quiet. Stella's hunting Whistles.

Well, Stella can open the box and let him out. "What happened to you?" she asks softly, though she fears she already knows.

He stares uncomprehendingly at her.

"I'm Bella. What's your name?" she tries.

He shakes his head slowly.

"Can I call you Whistle, is that all right? You don't have to be stuck there anymore, me and a bunch of my friends have come to fix Downside," murmurs Bella. She touches his hand, half-reflexively.

"Okay." Where to go, where to go - she winds up picking the office in the catacombs. Amariah has already been and gone about remodeling it. "Okay, here we are, now."

"Okay, Queenie. I came and found you special because I know a lot of versions of you from a bunch of other worlds."

"Several. Nearly as many as I know copies of me. I think - I could be wrong, but I think - that one of them was stuck where you were stuck. She's okay now. You'll be okay too eventually."

"Oh, sure I will," he says dismissively. "Any of these other me's around here?"

"Not here here. But -" She blinks, tilts her head; she's gotten a message - "In a while, probably a day or so, a bunch of us are going to have a party near where I live, and some of you will be there. I could bring you."

"So," he says, watching her thoughtfully, "until then...?"

"You could go back to wherever you live - reside - here, if you like, or I could take you back to my world ahead of time and introduce you to the copy of you who lives there," shrugs Stella. "I don't know about long-term. I don't know how long ago you died or if there's anything much for you to go back to."

"Oh, I don't want to go back," he says. "Why would I want to go back? I liked it here just fine until... mm. You know."

"I do know. You could also wait in Milliways until the party," shrugs Stella.

"Hmm... think I'd rather go meet your me," he decides.

He teleports directly to hug.

[Ooh, alts. Where?]

[The afterlife which me and the other Bells just went and remodeled. You want I should invite them to the giant party on Mars we're going to throw after some immediate tasks have been handled?]

[Oooooh. Yes!]

[Awesome. So what are they like?]

[You and Anna are more of a match than Sandy and Chainsaw from what little I've seen, but, you know, they're yous. Like me and Juliet and Shell Bell and so on are each other.]

[Uh-huh. So are they, you know...? Masochism parties?]

[They are professional masochism parties, except for the part where we fixed the place up and there is no longer a call for either of the operative professions.]

[I'll pass along the invitation to the party.]

[Count us in!] says Eights.

[They have,] says Stella when this is relayed back to her, [accepted the party invitation. We'll all assemble when everybody's finished with their more immediate tasks. We'll probably wind up waiting on Golden.]

[Why, what's Golden up to?] asks Anna.

[She knows a lot more dead people than anybody else, so she's collecting them out of queue order.]

[Gotcha.]

[If, by the way, you know any dead people, those can also be fetched out of queue order, but we are going to set up something systematic for larger numbers. I should probably call various Presidents and Prime Ministers of things.]

[Sounds very empressy,] laughs Anna.

[Yes. Have I mentioned lately that I really like being empressy?]

[Nooooooo,] says Anna. [I had no idea.]