Stella is wandering around, between conversations at the moment, keeping her ears open for something interesting.

"Hi. Is someone teleporting people around without asking?"

"Technically yes," says Aedyt. "But it's just Mummy helping, so it's okay."

"Helping you do what?"

"Start conversations. I'm really bad at it," she says self-consciously.

"Did you want to talk to me, then?"

"Ki...ind of," she says. "I'm Aedyt. —Which you know already, because nametags."

"Yeah. I'm gonna guess - Kerron's little sister? What'd you want to talk about?"

"Kerron's little sister," she agrees. "The Joker's daughter. Who grew up on stories of how he met Dad, but never actually talked to you, and - I don't know, I just wanted to... see what you're like, I guess?"

"I'm an approximately prototypical Bell," shrugs Stella. "Not far off from Golden except for vampire stuff."

"I've never actually talked to her majesty either," says Aedyt.

"Really? Huh. Okay."

"She's not very sociable without her princess. Is what I'm told, anyway, the princess has been gone longer than I've been alive, so I've never seen her majesty any other way."

"Well, now she's got her kid back, that should help."

"I guess."

"Why me, with a dozen of us running around? Or - no, on reflection that's obvious, I'm the one who happened to run into your mum before we knew much about the template and put him on an asteroid."

"Yes," says Aedyt. "Yeah, that's - yeah."

"You want me to explain myself? I think my reasoning's pretty well known, but maybe you haven't happened to hear it."

"I've heard Mum's version," says Aedyt. "I think I want yours."

"What's his version?" inquires Stella.

"He never says why exactly, he just says he doesn't blame you and lets me guess the rest."

"Hmm." Stella taps her foot. "Okay - keep in mind that at this time all I knew about alts was that Golden existed. Me and Golden have the exact same childhood except that some of her father's old friends are werewolfish and mine has a different set - other than that there are no discrepancies. The only difference was, she moved to Forks and she found vampires. I moved to Forks and found wishcoins. It's a standard setup - Pattern moves to Forks and finds a killer van, Aurora moves to Forks and finds a Device, Juliet has Sunnydale instead but she moved at the same time for the same reasons and found vampires of a different sort. And then there's the variants, but I didn't know any of that, I only knew there was me, and there was Golden." She sighs. "And there was Alice - and there was the Joker."

Aedyt nods.

"And I liked Golden from the start. We get each other. The Joker, on the other hand, was an unpleasant surprise. Keep in mind that at this time I also didn't know about Downside. And if I had, it might not have helped much, because we hadn't revamped it yet and there were no plans in place to do so. To the very best of my knowledge at that time, killing someone was condemning them to permanent oblivion. I didn't know that a bit later we'd find lots of other Bells, Pattern among them, and take over the afterlife, and have Jane, and that Pattern would be able to set up a program to resurrect every single person your mum ever killed, among others. To the very best of my knowledge, I was sitting at a table with someone who - if only he'd had a slightly different history - could have been my boyfriend, or just like him anyway. And this person had killed a bunch of people and had utterly no intention of stopping, because he wanted a certain someone's attention."

"That must've sucked," she says sympathetically.

"Yeah. I was not thrilled. But he was in another world, I didn't even have mine under control, and, you know what, there are lots of murderers running around, I don't spend my time individually bringing them each to justice. He's not Hitler, he's not even a prerevolutionary Aurum vampire, he's a theatrical terrorist. So," she shrugs, "I figured he was not my priority. I couldn't get into his world anyway, right, I might as well be sociable as long as we were hanging out. I introduced him to Alice." She pauses. "How G-rated do you need this story?"

"I am aware that my mother has had sex," she says dryly.

"Well," says Stella, "I don't know if you know this, but several Bells with Jokers read our respective Jokers' minds. I'm one of those. And when my boyfriend went upstairs with his scary murderous committed-to-a-mental-institution alt, I figured, so what if I'm weirded out, I need to know what's going on. And then guess who sits next to me at the bar while I'm staring into my beverage hoping to hell that I get my Alice back in one psychologically unharmed piece? Because as I've mentioned - this was all I knew about the template. I didn't know he'd be fine. I didn't know the Joker would take better care of him than he did any of his happily admitted-to murder victims. Guess who sits next to me."

"...Batsy," says Aedyt. "Batsy sits next to you. Because of course she does."

"Yeah. Out of costume, at the time, so I didn't know that it was her. But we start talking, and I explain why I am looking at my beverage in this way, and what do you know, my dining companion is from the Joker's world. She does not have anything reassuring to say. So now what I know about the template is that there's my boyfriend, and there's the Joker, and what I know about the Joker is not good and corroborated by another source who really does not like him."

She nods again.

"And then Alice starts having traumatic flashbacks and he puts up a busy message when I try to talk to him and I discover that I cannot yoink him out of that room with any coin I have on me."

"Ouch," she murmurs.

"Yeah. At that point, your mom was officially my problem, officially had my attention, relatively smalltime otherworldly terrorist or not. And I'd already told him, if I ever found myself in his world, I would put him on an asteroid." She sighs. "And who should be sitting next to me but someone who could door me to his world and thought that sounded like a fine idea?"

"Yeah," says Aedyt.

"So she held the door, I terraformed an asteroid, I put the Joker on it, I woke him up, I put him back to sleep, I woke him up again, he said he got to Milliways and therefore did not require me to hang around supervising the consumption of hemlock, I left. Then I had a fight with Alice because I didn't warn him first, but that's probably not the part that interests you."

"Well, I haven't met Alice, either," she says. "Just heard about him. Mum was going to show me off to the whole deck, but—" she waves vaguely in the direction of the stairs.

"Yeah, that happens," says Stella. "They'll emerge eventually. Probably. They were all out a minute ago determining what to do with the baby one, but then they went back up again."

"...There's a baby one?"

"One of the worlds that got away from Jane produced a suspiciously familiar name born to a suspiciously familiar set of parents," says Stella. "We talked about it, Elspeth kidnapped him and is going to bring him up."

"From what I've heard about Mum's childhood - good call," she says. "Why the princess?"

"She produced some truth-out-of-nowhere declaring her a good idea and none of the Jokers contradicted her, pretty much."

"Well, that makes about as much sense as I expected it to."

"I mean, it does make sense. It would be weird for a Bell to raise him, weirder still for another Joker to do it, nobody else was lining up."

"True."

"I imagine little Harley Andrea will grow up in Aurum. You could probably be involved in his childhood without much weirdness later."

"Also true!"

"Anyway, now you have my side of the story you wanted. What do you think?"

"I'm not sure I think anything," says Aedyt. "I mean, for one thing, if you hadn't done it my parents might never have met, so... thanks? In a weird way? But also - thanks. For telling me your side."

"You're welcome," says Stella.

She smiles tentatively.

"Why do you suppose the Joker wanted that conversation to happen? Or were you dithering about talking to me in front of him?"

"I wasn't dithering in front of him, but I was definitely dithering."

"Does he drop you in front of folks you're considering approaching routinely?"

"Do you get the impression that 'routinely' describes a lot of things my mummy does?"

Stella glances in the direction of the stairs.

She rolls her eyes. "Gee," she teases, "thanks, I sure needed reminding of that."

"I'm just saying, the regularities exist."

"But not for the teleporting thing. I mean, it's not uncharacteristic, I'm not surprised, but he hasn't done that specific thing before."

"That's all I wanted to know."

"For any particular reason, or were you just curious?"

"Just curious. Bells are a curious breed."

"Yeah, so I've heard."

"Now I'm imagining myself as a fairy tale trope that gets told to little half-vampires as a bedtime story," snorts Stella.

"Not... actually that far off," says Aedyt. "Well, for this little half-vampire, anyway."

Stella laughs. "Is this the part where - I dunno, you have to give me half your dinner or I won't tell you how to break the curse on your love interest?"

Aedyt giggles. "Nooo-o."

"Were the fairytales in question all true stories or have rumors of Bellish deeds been greatly exaggerated?"

"Well, you know, they're my mum's true stories. So I wouldn't swear to all the details, but they all probably more or less happened."

"I do know your mum, but I haven't experienced a wide sampling of his stories, so I wouldn't say I know, no."

"Okay. Well... I don't know, I've never really had to explain it before... his stories aren't always one hundred percent true to the original, but he can really make you feel like you've been there. If I had to write a history textbook, I wouldn't take my facts from him, but if I had to write a novelization I'd take his storylines. Does that make sense?"

"It does. I guess that makes sense with his aura."

"Yeah! Like, I am pretty sure that when Mum and Dad met, Dad did not actually give off a shower of tiny pink hearts. But it sure gets the point across."

"Aww," giggles Stella.

She grins. "Mine are the most adorable parents," she boasts.

"I dunno, Micaiah and Angela and Beast and Rose have kids now and they're awfully cute couples too."

"I haven't met them," she says. "Beast gets points for the fluffy, though."

Stella chuckles. "And if Shell Bell ever reproduces her and her Sherlock are going to blow everyone else out of the water, they are painfully adorable." She points.

"Okay, that is cute," Aedyt acknowledges. "But I still think my parents are cuter."

"You're biased," opines Stella.

"Yep!"

"Have you met the little cherubs and rosebuds? In a peculiar way they're your cousins." Pause. "We should follow through with Pattern's idea of gene sequencing everyone and having Jane compare to see how closely we match."

"I have not met the little cherubs and rosebuds. Bring on the cousinoids!"

"They're clustered over there," laughs Stella. "Cousinoids. That's cute. Could use the suffix as the altish equivalent of, like, 'in-law'. So Aurora's twin is my sisteroid."

"Go for it," says Aedyt.

"I think I shall."

"Hi!" says the smaller of the two cherubs. She peers at Aedyt's nametag and grievously mispronounces it.

"Ee-dit," she corrects patiently. "Like Edith with a T."

"And you are Dominique and Damaris," she says to Bigger Rosebud and Bigger Cherub respectively.

"That's right!" says Bigger Cherub.

"They didn't name their template yet but we're going to be Griffins!" says Céleste.

"And why are you going to be Griffins?" asks Aedyt. "I see one set of wings, but no beaks, paws, or tails."

"You could have an invisble griffin," she hypothesizes.

"You could ask for an invisible griffin," says Aedyt.

"Maybe I will!" says Keziah. And she closes her eyes and tilts her head and then says, "No, Mommy says it would still be too conspicuous."

"Maybe you could keep him somewhere out of the way," says Aedyt. "My mum gave me an asteroid for my unbirthday once. I keep a lot of my stuff there that won't fit anywhere else."

"Hybrids grow up too fast to just have birthdays once a year," Aedyt explains, "so I have unbirthdays every other day of the year instead, and as long as it's my unbirthday people can get me presents whenever they feel like it."

Dominique laughs.

"My Rainier wasn't because of a birthday or an unbirthday or any holiday at all. I just asked for him," says Céleste. "I guess it was not my birthday then."

"Then he can be an unbirthday present if you want him to be!"

"I guess he is!"

Aedyt smiles.

"So who are you? Besides your name?" asks Céleste.

"I'm your cousinoid! My mum's the Joker, he's an alt of your dads, and my dad's Nathan, the Imperial Minister of Temporal Affairs in Aurum."

"Ooh!" says Keziah. "We don't have any regular cousins. Mommy is an only child. Daddy's not but Uncle Nathaniel doesn't have any kids."

"You have an Uncle Nathaniel? That's weird," she laughs.

"He's Daddy's little brother," says Keziah. "He's pretty okay."

"I guess I've heard of him, but Mum never told me his name. Is he fun?"

"Well, that's not bad," says Aedyt. "Better than the other way around."

"And we've never met him," says Dominique.

"Why isn't she nice?" asks Céleste.

"Some people just aren't. She's okay most of the time, though."

"Most of the time?" asks Keziah.

"She can be kind of creepy once in a while."

"She can taste people's magic and sometimes when she talks about it she kind of sounds like she wants to eat me for lunch."

"What does magic taste like?" asks Céleste.

"All different things! Apparently I'm cinnamon and nutmeg, and my brother Kerron is pineapple and coconut."

"I have no idea!"

"Cherie," says Dominique, "it's not nice to brag."

"That's my little sister," says Dominique, smiling at her.

"But we could visit you," says Damaris. "You're allowed to be magic!"

"Yeah!" says Céleste brightly. "That's much better. You should come visit us."

"Yeah!"

Céleste looks around for Maman and Papa. Papa is not in evidence. Maman is over there. "Maman!" she calls.

Maman heads in their direction and regards the collection of cousinoids curiously. "What is it?"

"We want to come and visit you sometimes!" says Damaris.

"I think that sounds like a fine idea," says Rose. "Angela has told me that you're called Damaris and Keziah and you have little sisters at home."

"She is a medium-sized sister!" says Damaris.

"Perhaps someday we will have little sisters and you will also be medium-sized," says Dominique to Céleste.

"We shall see," says Rose.

Dominique hugs her Maman.

Her Maman hugs her right back.

"When they get bigger, they'll stop!" says Damaris with authority.

"But that will take so long," grumbles Keziah.