"All of them?" laughs Belle. "Well. I suppose so, as you seem quite recovered from your misadventure."

He beams and hugs her, scooping her up and twirling her around exuberantly.

Wheeeee!

[Some people are ready. Are you ready for them?] Jane inquires.

"Yes," laughs Rose, beaming, aura radiant with happiness. "Send them in."

Beast kisses Rose's forehead when he sets her down.

All

the

Bells

arrive

at

the

same

time.

And some family members.

And some friends.

Laughing, Beast scooptwirls him too, and does the same with Queenie and Ghosty and Alice and Kas and Micaiah in turn. Sue he kisses.

"Welcome! I am Belle, or Rose," Rose calls to all the arrivals, lifting a few feet into the air so everyone can see her and vice-versa. "Please be aware that you can speak to the serving trays if you have need of something they haven't thought to supply; they do not speak but they listen."

"Aegis wasn't kidding about the aura!" exclaims Pattern.

"I can't make it work, though," says Aegis, "it doesn't go if I try, it seems like it's not a wishable, just an enchantress thing."

"Ooh," says Lazarus. "I can see that."

"Can you?" asks Rose, landing in such a way as to face him.

"Tell us, tell us," laughs Stella.

"I see magic," he explains to Rose. "Yours is very different from minting. It's more... hmm, autonomous?"

"I control spells as I cast them, but as long as I allow my aura free rein it does as it does without my controlling it except in certain details," agrees Rose. "And things like the living castle also have something of a personality. How is it that you see magic?"

"I'm an ingot. That's my power," he says. "Coins can't wish for personalitied things. They have some decisionmaking power, but it has to be pretty well specified in advance."

"Interesting."

"Wait, you just casually enchant personalities into existence?"

"Personality without intelligence," says Rose. "No great ethical quandary about it. My aura or my castle or what have you have dispositions and they react to the intelligences near them in - lively ways, but they cannot suffer or think."

Lazarus nods.

"So wishes are like programs plus gap-filling abilities, and enchantments are like servants minus intelligence?" hazards Stella.

"Pretty much accurate," says Lazarus.

"So I suppose none of you are likely to develop aura unless you can yourselves be enchanters and work on it as I have. Or at least wish for skill at it and then perform a considerable number of spells."

"How d'you be an enchanter?"

"You find your mindscape, and work from there. I can help you with it, if you have the ability at all - I'm not sure if everyone has. I helped my student find his."

"Hit me. My murderer's trial is coming up and I would be highly entertained to show up being distinctly spooky," says Juliet.

"What's a mindscape?" wonders Lazarus.

"It's a - a representation of one's mind. A beginning enchanter has to meditate into it, although I can now do many things with my eyes open. To channel through someone other than oneself one needs to find the channel's mindscape. Mine is a sphere of rosevines, with flowers on the interior and thorns on the exterior - Sue noticed them, when he attempted to link me. My husband has a castle, something like this one of late but more like the one we lived in before. Perhaps the 'opacity' power prevents me from locating Juliet's." She peers curiously at Juliet, then casts out in search of Lazarus's mindscape instead.

"I'm just looking, I won't touch, I can't read anything personal without a separate spell," says Rose. "...It's very confusing-looking. I'm not sure I would know how to channel through you even if I wanted to."

"I can imagine it would be," he says. "Also, ooh."

"On the opacity spectrum I'm one of the more opaque - me and Golden are the ones Sue can't link," says Juliet. "You might be able to check some of the others."

"Me, for example, I have no native defense," Angela offers. "If you can't actually read my mind by doing this..."

"I can read my husband's mindscape, but it required me to cast a spell first," Rose says. "I will be able to see what shape the mindscape takes, but not know what thoughts are moving through it." She backs away from Lazarus's mindscape and peers at Angela's, then reports, "Furnished - caves, of sorts, in a mountain, and background music."

"The Eyrie," concludes Angela, smiling.

"Ooh, do me, do me," says the Joker from where he is snuggling Beast.

Rose, obligingly, has a look.

The Joker's mind is a dirty, run-down city on a smallish island-and-a-half, bordered by water on every side.

"A city," says Rose, unable to come up with polite terms for the condition of said city. "On two islands, one smaller than the other."

"I've been to the Eyrie, and it's big, but it's not city-sized," says Shell Bell. "Does that mean anything?"

"There's no - sizes in mindscapes," says Rose. "They all go down to arbitrary levels of detail. The seeing-presence can always take in the whole thing as though it were tiny or the smallest piece as though it were enormous. The real city, if it's a real city, may well be larger than the Eyrie, but the dreamworlds that resemble them are not meaningfully larger or smaller than each other."

"I'm Gotham," he says, laughing.

"What about me?" says Queenie.

Rose checks Queenie too.

Queenie's mindscape is a lot like the Joker's, but worse. And some of the buildings are different, and some of the streets have a patchy look to them as though assembled from disparate pieces of city.

"It's - approximately the same city. It is - in poorer condition. If I didn't know better I'd think you'd been someone's unwilling channel and were damaged by it."

"What about me, can you do me?" Aegis wants to know.

Rose attempts it. "I see a wall," she says. "A metal spherical wall, with bolts and rivets. There's - a door, but it doesn't open for me."

Aegis tilts her head. "That's Sue's door. Now it's yours too long as you're only gonna tell me what my head looks like."

"Stars," says Rose after a moment. "Inside the wall is a field of stars."

"Awwwwww," says Sue.

"What's mine?" wonders Alice.

Rose laughs. "I suppose this is my party trick, is it?" And she looks at Alice's mindscape too.

Alice's mindscape is a small underground suite of rooms with a central staircase spiraling up out of the middle.

Rose describes it.

"Aww, it's your lair," says Stella. "My turn, my turn."

"I can't see yours either," Rose says after an attempt.

"What about me?" says Micaiah.

What about him?

His mindscape is... an entire continent, apparently.

"An island. A very large island, insofar as that means anything - I mean that I need to get quite close to be able to make out anything like individual towns," says Rose.

"I bet mine is boring," says Pattern.

"I don't think libraries are boring," says Rose after a moment.

That startles a laugh out of Pattern. "Sure. A library. Gray carpet and green armchairs?"

"Yes."

"Phoenix Public Library, I can live with that."

"I bet mine is Samaria," says Micaiah, laughing.

Belle makes an illusion of her version of the city, too.

Kas is still admiring his, with its collected pieces of various cities he's seen and loved.

"Wonder what yours is, sweetheart," says the Joker to Nathan.

"Well, let's have a look, can't scare me," says Nathan.

"A clock," says Rose, after a moment's investigation.

...He cracks up.

"Very on-theme," says Nathan approvingly, snickering a little.

"Me too, me too!"

"You're just as bewildering as Lazarus to look at," Rose remarks. "Hundreds of - colored shapes."

"Of course." She kisses his cheek.

"Hey Sherlocks and Tonies!" calls Shell Bell. "Want to see Rose's party trick? She can tell you what your mindscape looks like!"

"All right," says Pearl, as spokes-sherlock. The entire cluster follows her over toward the Bells.

Rose laughs and carries on with her party trick. There is somewhat less variance, with many Sherlocks and Tonies turning up the same handful of houses as their mindscapes.

All the associated pairs have the same house as their mindscape, even though the details always differ - more attention paid to this room over that, loose objects placed differently. And there are architectural differences between the two different pairs whose mindscapes are the same New York mansion.

One of the Eosian guests drifts over to admire the squared illusions hanging in the air.

"Do you want your mindscape read too?" inquires Rose.

"...Sure," he laughs.

"Uh," says Stella. "Maybe you don't want to read it, though, Rose."

"Hm? Why not?"

"I have a power," he explains. "I've got this kinda dreamworld thing and it has people in it. I have no idea what they get up to when I'm not around, though, 's why I want you to look."

"And it might be something I wouldn't like to witness?" Rose asks Stella.

"Quite possibly!"

"Well, I can back out quickly, if it is," says Rose, and she shrugs and peers around for Sandy's mindscape.

Sandy's mindscape is currently a large mostly-empty warehouse with a bloodstained concrete floor, containing four men who are inventively adding to the bloodstains. They all seem to be having lots of fun.

"Why, were they up to the usual?"

"Does the usual involve a lot of - apparently enjoyable bloodletting?"

"Yup!" says Sandy.

"Then yes. That was what was going on."

"Sorry," he laughs. "So how do you do it? I wanna watch 'em."

"I'm an enchantress," says Rose, with a bit of aura-flare accompanying the word. "I don't know if everyone can do it. If you can, you want to sit down, and close your eyes, and sort of peel back your awareness from your physical senses - eventually you can multitask a bit, but at first visiting the dreamworld involves abandoning awareness of the physical world."

"Ooh," says Sandy. "Magic. ...If I try that, though, I'm totally just gonna end up going into my power."

Rose shrugs. "I don't know enough about your power to say. Yours is the only mindscape with people in it. Even animals aren't present in anyone else's I've seen, just plants at most."

"The girls?"

"The Girls, the boys - my dream people," he elaborates.

"Ah."

"I -" begins Stella. "Oh, if I talk, it goes away. But I think I did it, looked like Moonstone Palace."

"Cool!" says Sandy.

"Getting into and out of it, and using your mindscape and your body at the same time, become easier with practice," Rose tells Stella.

"I want in on this too," decides Aegis, and there's a chorus of agreement from all of the other Bells too, and they all start floatily meditating.

Sandy watches this in amusement.

Aegis is the first to get it.

The others follow suit, taking similar amounts of time.

"Big old indigo-colored swath of nothing with a sun in the middle of it," says Juliet.

"...My and Edward's cottage in Norway," murmurs Golden quietly, opening her eyes.

Sandy awws a little at Golden.

"My aura has been developing for five years," says Rose. "It takes a lot of enchanting to get it to this level. It was barely noticeable for the first year."

"So we pentagon the skill and our Wh- Jokers and in a couple cases our Sherlocks have some fun," says Stella.

"Pentagonable!" reports Shell Bell.

Sandy glances at Juliet and asks, "What's with the face?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Angela hugs her.

"Ooookay," says Sandy.

"I may have a slight problem," Golden observes after a silence.

"Ooh, yeah," says Shell Bell, "I bet he'd volunteer and everything but you wouldn't want to, would you? And it's not like coins where he can just hand you a pile of them and you don't have to involve yourself in the making."

Nathan snaps his fingers. "See about Eights," he suggests. "She's not at this party, but you can always make a trip or just call her. She's not -" He makes a vague gesture. "About it. Not necessarily anyway. Could be very strictly professional about it."

"...Wait, what?" says Sandy.

"Channeling hurts, Jokers get off on it, and Golden is way too monogamous to do anything that's going to turn anybody on with somebody who isn't her husband," summarizes Pattern.

"Ahhh, gotcha," says Sandy, nodding. "Eights is a good pick, then, it's like half the time she doesn't even notice it."

"I'll get in touch with her after the party. I suppose developing an aura is hardly urgent," says Golden, "I've done without this long. It is nicely intimidating, though."

"Yours may not turn out exactly like mine," says Rose. "My books described a variety of possible auras - yours will suit you, and so it could be similar to mine as you are similar to me, but I wouldn't expect them to be identical. Of course, if you don't like it, suppression is easy." She draws her aura back into herself, and she suddenly no longer gives of an outward pressure of power, magic, majesty, and then she lets it out again.

"...Huh, I thought how pretty you are was part of the aura. I think you're just prettier than us. Except Golden, but you're not vampire-looking."

"Am I?" asks Rose, peering at the other Bell faces. "How odd. We're certainly all mutually recognizable."

"You are really pretty," says Sandy.

"My name means it and everything," sighs Belle. "Couldn't any of you have...?" She waves a hand.

"Yeah, we could've all prettied up to match Golden in any color scheme vampiric or otherwise, but none of us appear to feel like it," shrugs Stella.