Golden is chatting pleasantly with Juliet, over here.

Steel is eavesdropping.

"...so I think there must be something weird about how translation interacts with magic, because otherwise there's no reason for whatever Glass speaks to translate a word for particular sort of magic user as 'witch' - hi, Steel, what's up?"

"Oh, do continue."

Juliet laughs. "So Amariah's a witch, and Golden's a witch, and Glass is a witch among other things, and the first two you can explain by the fact that they're both from Earths where English is spoken, but your language - super pretty, by the way - is matching up one of the kinds of magic user Glass is to the same word, and other kinds to other words, and I popped into Milliways for a second to check and started talking to a random person about it and he heard 'witch' in both cases too even when I used your language. It's weird. And Cam's a wizard, which matches word-wise with a kind of magic you have here, too, even though the execution is different, and Aurora's a sorceress but she just made up calling herself that so I don't know how to count it."

"Translation magic is indeed a mystery," says Golden. "I'm not sure how to go about solving it."

"Interesting," says Steel. "Does it need solving?"

"Well, otherwise we won't know why it's happening," laughs Golden. "It doesn't seem urgent for any practical reasons."

"Do you suppose that's the kind of thing her aura-sense can do?" wonders Juliet.

"I think there is one obvious way to find that out, and no obvious downside to trying."

"Yeah, fair enough. Hey, Glass!"

Glass appears and kisses her wife and says, "What's up?"

"There are some odd regularities in how various languages are magically translated into one another and we were wondering if you could shed light on the subject," says Golden.

"Uh. Hm. Say some of the words?" Glass asks.

"Witch, witch," says Juliet, switching between languages, "wizard, wizard, sorceress, sorceress."

"And you only just noticed this because the local language has words for those things and isn't English. Hmmmmm." Glass nibbles her lip, closes her eyes. "Witch, witch, witch - There might be a - no, I can't really make sense of it. I'm still figuring out how I work now."

Sherlock kisses her anyway.

Kissees!

"What were you going to say? I promise not to take it as an irrefutable fact of the multiverse."

"I was going to say, meta-language," says Glass, "but I have no idea what that would mean."

"Can it not just be essentially a coincidence, deriving from the fact that the kinds of magic user in question don't have direct counterparts in the various worlds but the magic chose to translate the terms anyway?"

"Nnnno, I think it's not that - not on the level I'm seeing through aura, anyway, that might be what we'd find on a causal level. There's some sort of reason wizards get the same terminology as Cam and witches the same as Amariah or Golden."

"There's witches on my world too," Juliet adds. "Just, I'm not one."

Glass nods. "And it wouldn't be just as good to call them sorcerers-in-my-language, and when you pentagon the language you know that, and Milliways knows that."

"Do we trust their judgment?" wonders Steel.

"I'm not at all sure. It doesn't seem to be making any egregious mistakes?" offers Glass. "...I think there's a reason we have all-male wizards and Amariah has all-female witches, I think we'd never find the reverse case but I don't know why."

"Interesting again."

"Those words in English do have some gendered connotations, in those directions," muses Juliet. "I think in my world it's technically gender-neutral, anyone can learn the magic, but women are somewhat more likely to use the word 'witch' - I don't know for sure, I haven't met many of these people in person and my written sources are not overwhelmingly reliable."

"There isn't another word for the phenomenon in English on Aurum, and among people who are clued in to it being a general phenomenon - which is most people without their heads in the sand, at this point - it's gender-neutral, but historically media of various sorts which has fictitious varieties of magic-user gender-biases the words like that."

"English, or some distilled meta-version of it, could easily be the metalanguage I'm hypothesizing," says Glass.

"How many languages are spoken among the peal?"

"We usually speak English when we're just talking to each other. We've picked up different sets for use at home," says Golden. "I know all languages on my Earth with a non-negligible speaking population."

"I speak a bunch of demonic languages," says Juliet. "Not so much human ones, I'm starting with tidying up the underworld before I address the more run-of-the-mill problems with Sunshine."

"Sarion speaks an Elvish language and a Thilanushinyel common tongue, Amariah picked up a witch language that she didn't originally speak fluently but added once she had access to coins, Aegis speaks recognizable English and a slightly less recognizable form called 'Stark' that was centrally standardized in Peace's history, Shell Bell has an accent and different idioms here and there but speaks intelligible English to us standard-Earthlings, Rose speaks something mutually intelligible with but not identical to Earth French and many of the other languages on her world have similar parallels including one that's close to English, Cam has his magic language which it turns out we can't use for magical purposes probably because we acquired it as adults, and Angela speaks Samarian and when she got coins she added Edori."

"So English is by far the commonest native language among Bells," Sherlock concludes. "Cause or effect, I wonder?"

"I think it's a consequence of us generally coming from Earths," says Juliet. "And generally being born in the United States when we do. I'm not sure why Rose came from Sorta France instead of Sorta England; maybe since Sorta England never colonized Sorta America in Rêverie there was no pull to the language above and beyond the pull to the country."

"Overwhelmingly born in the same town, too," says Golden, "except for you, Juliet - I believe you hypothesized that you were pulled to Sunnydale by the Hellmouth attracting interesting things to itself? - and Shell Bell, on whose world I believe the location of Forks is some feet underwater."

"A fascinating bunch, you Bells. Are there any interesting consistencies among those not from Earths?"

"Are we counting Rose and her Sorta Earth?"

"Let's say yes."

"Rose, Sarion, and Angela have married parents. But Glass doesn't, and Amariah does."

"I think the divorced-parents attractor tries to work through regular causality when it can, and it backs off when it can't."

"No very strong regularities that appear predominantly in unEarthly Bells," says Golden. "The non-Earths aren't even all magic; there's not a speck of the stuff natively in Samaria."

"However do they manage without it?"

"Better than Shell Bell's world did," says Golden. "Origin and Peace are also natively non-magical, although Peace has by far the highest technology and Jane is only by the barest technical definition not magic. This world also seems to have much commoner magic than anywhere else. A lot of Earths have it but only a handful of people know it exists."

"How peculiar," says Steel. "I almost think I'd like to visit some of these places."

"There are some cautions about visiting Alethia, Aurum, and Samaria, everywhere else is more or less freely visitable with Jane online," says Juliet. "Alethia is safe if you wish to not acquire a daemon - or if you want one - and the wish, Minus discovered, only lasts about a week. Aurum has this problem with vampires and werewolves falling in eternal irrevocable love with people, but you can avoid that if you see Golden's precog before anyone else and have her check you over. Samaria is not public about magic and doesn't have all that great a place for visitors to hang out, so you need a cover story or to go about invisibly."

"Noted," says Steel.

"Minus's daemon is gone now. So if you wind up with one accidentally - and if it's sad about that - then you don't have to keep it. But it's probably best to just avoid getting one if you mean to visit Alethia."

"I don't completely understand that business. I saw Pathalan, and Petaal, but I'm not - at all - sure what to make of them."

"They're external souls," says Juliet. "Alethia seems to feel very strongly that people should have them, so if you go in unprotected you'll get one, and it's a star to not. That's how Ivy happened - she was on purpose - and Minus had Steph, for a while, but she was miserable. Sherlock self-loathing problems. I never got to meet her."

"...Sherlock self-loathing problems."

"...Is that not universal? I guess yours doesn't have the usual reason or the unusual reason..."

Glass hugs her anyway.

Hug.

"Mine didn't have it for a while. When he didn't have his soul. And then he took it back, and I tried when I did the merger wish, to insert the soul without the self-loathing, but it's apparently impossible, as Steph illustrated - either that or I wished it wrong, because the coin went, I don't know - and now he's attached to keeping the soul, even though..." She shrugs, looks at her feet.

"...Would you like a hug?"

"If hugs helped appreciably I'd be all better now," says Juliet wryly. "It's him I'm worried about; I'm going to go on being intermittently upset till something gives."

"Aha."

"It's a very insistent attractor," murmurs Glass. "It prefers to disguise itself with normal causality. When it can't it will hang around anyway. I'm not sure if there's a way other than - brute causal force of some kind - to make it go."

"Brute causal force?"

"Minus didn't have it, for a while. There's nothing preventing that. It just takes - drastic measures, apparently soul-removal is at least one way, I can't see if there are more."

"I see."

"Oh, honey," sighs Glass again.

"My husband has a little problem with that, but I don't know how closely the manifestations resemble each other; he's not a Sherlock."

"And I have never met your husband."

"He avoids these parties. He's not fond of being around people who closely resemble me without being me. Cam is all right, though. If you decide to tour the world and Alice gives you the all-clear regarding wolves and unmated vampires you might encounter, you could meet him if you so chose."

"I will keep it in mind."