"Cool," says Celo. "...Sorry, did I distract us from talking about our helplessness in the face of the perverse cosmos?"

"The point is this is just a perverse little corner of the broader cosmos, and 'hubris' is relegated to fiction as a concept there," says Amariah. "Aether will be much happier. She should probably shadow one of us for a while to get used to the idea that Bells can do the things that Bells are wont to do, though."

"...You're a field," Cam says to Celo abruptly. "A garden. Do you transplant?"

"...Oh."

"...Well, you can go away from it, though, right? You went to Milliways before. Do you need to be in your garden a certain amount or can you just go wherever as long as you have enough sex, because, I mean, there are ten and three daemons of you. Plus Nona apparently."

"...Fucking at Milliways does help my field... so far," he says dubiously. "I don't know if it'll always work that way, I don't know if it'll work if I go through to another world, I don't know I won't just suddenly die if I stay extraplanar too long."

"This world is such bullshit," says Aegis.

"Maybe you can room at Milliways, and Aether can hold the door so you can go check your field occasionally..."

"Cheating," says Aether, shaking her head, "that would be cheating."

"I hate this fucking place."

Celo shrugs. "I'm willing to try visiting other worlds, anyway."

"Yeah, 'course you are, but - I dunno, you don't look torchable, maybe your field would if we looked at it, maybe the admin could make it work regardless? I dunno."

"Or he could stay and Aether could go and they could see each other as Milliways allows," says Amariah. "There's options. I just - maybe you can just be a mental healer clamping down on every third thought you have, but you could do more than that, Aether."

Aether squirms.

Celo hugs her.

Hugs.

Snuggles.

"Would that be really bad for you?" Aether asks Celo. "If I went off somewhere - somewhere nice - and you couldn't stay there?"

"If the door cooperates."

"Should one of us be on opening-lots-of-doors duty?"

"Yeah, probably - where are there a lot of doors one of us can open without attracting unwanted attention?"

"I want to suggest Emily, I can talk to her for you and she can probably line up all the doors you could possibly want - Emily is an aware building," Aether says.

"Oh, that's even better than just a long underused hallway, aware buildings are totally sometimes able to help with doors, Jarvises can do it. Except the Yggdrasil one because he's never had a door open in him before, but if anyone's ever opened a door to Milliways in Emily, there's some chance she'll... Is this also cheating, excessively regular, blah blah?"