"Meaning, the higher-ups wanted to know if he was likely to destroy any planets, and I said no. So if it turns out you want to play Death Star after all, I'm on the hook for it."

"Me and Brilliance are agreed on no planet-destroying, so you're safe."

"Good to know."

"Left to his own devices he would probably mostly eat ludicrous amounts of pie. I'm more the do-gooder type."

Matilda giggles. "He eats pie?"

"He eats everything, he is very into gustatory experience, one time I walked into the kitchen," she waves a hand kitchenward, "and he just had this stack of pie plates, he's bottomless, he just turns food into mana."

"That is precious."

"I know, right?"

She nods firmly.

"When I met him he had never tried any kind of food, I gave him some random leftovers and a banana and he was over the moon about it."

"Awwwwww."

"He's very cute."

"I can tell!"

"Anyway, I assume you are very busy, I don't want to tie you up talking about how cute it is that my boyfriend eats a lot of pie if you have other things going on and only meant to drop by for ten minutes to see if Lexi and Persica got along."

[Excuse me?]

[Oh! Cool! You exist! Hi. Uh, I haven't had to explain magic-and-so-on from scratch before, where do you want me to start?]

[Your name would be nice.]

[Bella,] laughs Bella.

[Where you know me from, next.]

[I don't know you. I have met four alternate-universe versions of you and only just now thought to check to see if this world had one. And it does!]

[How are we currently communicating?]

[It's called the brainphone, it is made with offworld magic. It also has a text channel, busy messages, and conference calls.]

[What exactly do you mean by 'offworld'?]