[Santa Claus?] she says whimsically.

[Pff. No. Shell Bell and Juliet stopped in. Jane's still down, but Shell Bell has an aura feature that interacts with Milliways doors and Juliet has a self-aware building that can let her into Milliways anytime, and they swung by here.]

[Ooh. Introductions?]

[Sure, they're in my house.]

[I'll be there in a minute. Preference for where I should land?]

[Same place you landed last time will be fine.]

"Is she coming?"

"Yeah, she'll be here in a minute."

Matilda teleports into Aurora's living room with Adularia in her moonstone pendant form.

"Hi!" waves Shell Bell.

"That's Shell Bell, I'm Juliet," adds Juliet.

"I'm Matilda," says Matilda. "For redundancy purposes you can call me Agent Honey."

"That works. I assume Aurora already told you the other two are 'Tilly' and 'Matilda'."

"She mentioned as much, yes."

"I actually met Matilda when we were both six, in Milliways, and we conducted experiments with her magic until I got spooked by a giant squid in the lake," says Shell Bell, "and ran away and didn't find her again until I was older."

"That sounds adorable."

"It was," laughs Shell Bell. "And then it turned out she has contagious magic, but it didn't like me. I got some other magic later, though, I was the second Bell to mint."

"Contagious magic, you say?"

"Yeah. Cam tried it too, and he got a little bit, enough for small telekinesis but nothing huge. Glass was going to schedule an appointment to try it too but then Jane broke."

"I will have to try her contagious magic," says Matilda.

"Tilly got plenty, but it's not consistent within our template so we don't know about yours," shrugs Shell Bell.

"Although you can be sure that if any of us get more than enough to just barely pour milk into our cereal in the morning we'll have the distributors' calendars booked till we've all got it."

"We'll see, I guess."

"Yep. If you're impatient, I can get you a door to Wellspring."

"I'm patient. But I'll take the door anyway if it happens to be convenient."

"It's Shell Bell's aura power. Doesn't even need a coin," says Juliet.

"But," Shell Bell says, "getting contagious magic can take a while - if it was just a minute per person we'd have all tried it by now - and we'd have to all come with you so nobody would be stranded without me. I have a design for an anniversary festival to work out; do you guys have stuff to do?"

"I have books on my to-conjure-and-read list about various demons. Always with the various demons. And also I need to catch up Aurora on what's happened in Sunshine since Jane went down."

"I apparently need to be caught up, and Agent Honey recommended me some books on local magic - apparently we are 'mages', not 'sorceresses'," says Aurora. "Sounds like we're all set, let's have a door."

Shell Bell flares, and opens the door, and lo, it is Milliways. "After you," she says, and the other Bells file in.

Aura still unfurled, Shell Bell closes and then reopens the door to Wellspring. [Hey, Matilda!]

[Fancy seeing you here,] says Wellspring's Matilda. [Do you know anything about "error 18920: cannot connect to monitor lizard"?]

[Jane broke. Worse than last time. I can't fix her, but I can door places. Rainbow turns out to have one of you and she wants Wellspring magic.]

[I see,] says Matilda. [Well, why don't you all come visit? I'm at home and Jenny's at work. It'll be just us.]

"Porting to her place," warns Shell Bell, and she transports the entire party to Matilda's location.

Shell Bell laughs, and floats in the air, and starts working through her aforementioned festival design in her head.

Juliet laughs, and starts explaining to Aurora about Soph.

The Matildas have a short discussion that ends in Agent Honey levitating while she reads up on the local magic system using a conjured laptop. Adularia shimmers contentedly.

"Since we're going to be here a while anyway, can you get me and Juliet too while you're at it?" asks Aurora.

"Yeah, even if we don't all get it sticking at the same time it'll shorten future attempts, right?"

"Sure," Matilda says agreeably. Aurora and Juliet also begin to levitate.

"Thanks." Juliet finishes her Soph-summary, then conjures a large onionskin-page grimoire and finds her spot on page 344.

Aurora conjures a book about Rainbow magic and starts at the beginning.

Book-reading levitation party!

Yep!

"Anything sticking to me or Aurora?"

"Not so far. Do you want to keep trying?"

"Later," says Aurora. "Unless you want to come to Rainbow with us."

"Actually, is it contagious if anyone does the levitating? Can Agent Honey do it now?"

"...Yes," say both of the Matildas simulatenously. They exchange a glance, then giggle.

"Cool, maybe next time we talk you just float me the whole time?" suggests Aurora.

"And me too, especially if you come along to meet Rainbow Libby."

"Deal," says Agent Honey.

"Am I taking you back to Rainbow right now, or do you want to hang out a bit more?" asks Shell Bell of the Matildas.

"I'm good to go," says Agent Honey.

"Okay." Shell Bell reaches for the nearest door, flares, turns the handle.

In Milliways, Aurora opens the door back to her own world.

[Hi! Guess who showed up!]

[I couldn't begin to imagine.]

[Shell Bell and Juliet dropped by. Shell Bell does doors and Juliet has a Libby, you want us to come by and show you Milliways? And Agent Matilda Honey is here, too.]

[Agent of what?]

[The Time-Space Administration Bureau, they go around making sure no one is damaging spacetime. Matildas are a friendly template.]

[I approve of no one damaging spacetime! All right, you can come visit.]

"Porting to Libby," warns Aurora, and poof!

"Hello, everyone," says the local Libby. They are in her living room, which is very similar to the Eos Libby's, not that anyone present has ever been there. It's clean and tidy and sparsely but exquisitely decorated.

"Hi," says Juliet. "I'm Juliet, this is Shell Bell, the one you've been talking to is Aurora. If you'll follow us to Milliways I can stick my head into Sunshine and get James, is that the idea?"

"That is the idea," confirms Aurora.

Shell Bell's aura, calm but powerful, flares, and she reaches for the nearest door, and here again is Milliways.

"Well, that's intriguing," says Rainbow's Libby, who really needs a distinguishing nickname of her very own.

"Yep! I love my aura."

When everyone is inside and the door is shut, Juliet opens it again. [Hey James! Rainbow Libby exists, c'mere!]

"Ooh, a me!" agrees the Rainbow Libby.

Juliet ushers James into the bar. "James, Rainbow Libby yet un-nicknamed; Rainbow Libby, this is James."

"I decline to be named 'Rainbow Libby' any longer," says the referenced person. "Aurora, would you be so kind as to pick a non-redundant nickname for 'Elizabeth'?"

"Nobody's using Betty yet?" suggests Aurora after a moment.

"Hmm, I'm not a fan. Is anyone using Beth?"

"Also not taken, help yourself."

"Nicknames in use are James, Libby, Slipstick, and Granny," adds Juliet.

"And now Beth," says Beth.

"I'll go leave notes in the Belltower, for all the good it'll do," says Juliet, and she pops out.

"So me and Beth are going to go hang out and rudely gossip about you guys behind your backs, sound good?" says James.

"Pff," says Aurora. "Yeah, go for it, me and Shell Bell can hang out waiting."

"Great!" says James. She leads Beth away through the bar.

Aurora and Shell Bell sit at the bar, get drinks, are presently joined by Juliet, and all hang out catching up on things that have happened in Rainbow and Sunshine while Jane's been out. Nothing has happened in Atlantis, but there are half-formed thoughts about the possibility of Atlantean princesses at some point in the future, probably following an Atlantean royal wedding.

"You were going to float us," Juliet reminds Agent Honey, when she joins her alts at the bar.

"Thanks!" And Juliet begins her story about how she accidentally inherited demonic minions, and shows off a pretty illusion of her palace on Mercury.

"Oh, that's lovely," says Agent Honey.

"Thanks! This section of plants is from a dimension where everything makes noises if you touch it. It's really loud all together - the animals scream at each other, the wind blows and all the plants sing and they don't care about sounding pretty - but I picked out some stuff that looked nice and made good chords. The minions have been playing with some of the fruits."

"That's adorable," she giggles.

"The most interesting thing that's happened to me since Jane went down is that Brilliance got kidnapped," says Aurora. "I didn't notice for - I don't even know exactly how long, I should check - until I tried to talk to him and he wouldn't answer. It is surprisingly difficult to intimidate confused space pirates with the mere fact of nigh-omnipotence, did you know? I wound up hexing super-strength just so I could pick one up."

"Hey Bar, can we arm-wrestle here or should we take it outside?" laughs Juliet.

A napkin appears bearing the inscription, Outside, please.

"Agent Honey, you're our ride, so if you please," says Juliet, gesturing at the door, "I want to see how hexed generic super-strength stacks up against Slayerishness."

Agent Honey ferries her cargo out to the lake area of Milliways.

Juliet locates the rock on which Nathan and Aianon once arm-wrestled, patches it up, and plants her elbow on it.

"This is silly," asserts Aurora, but she mirrors Juliet, and they wrestle, and Juliet wins.

Agent Honey giggles.

"Want to see the Belltower, Agent Honey?" asks Aurora, gesturing thereat.

Shell Bell's the one who can move independently and knows the place, so she takes on the role of tour guide. The broken Janepoint, the emptied party setup, the extra floors, the Bellbook and associated other books.

"Ooh, books."

"Feel free to read them," says Shell Bell. "The trade secrets don't get written."

"How to safely handle stars and up; how to deal with a rogue mint."

"Aha."

"I can only imagine being poor Stella before she knew how to do stars. I had to use a tenner the other month."

"Fortunately we know now."

"What are you prevented from doing if you don't know how to use stars?"

"Stars are important for scale," explains Shell Bell. "I needed one to put a city on the moon. Anything that affects an entire planet is probably going to be a star."

"And the next coin up is necessary to get any of our powers to persist through torching," says Juliet, "and the next one after that is good for changes to basic laws of nature over a subworld, and a tenner suffices to make a subworld with desired parameters and give you root access to its reality - or just pick up a particularly magic-resistant hell goddess and put her Downside for the admin to deal with, which is what I spent one on."

"I see," says Agent Honey.

"Of those of us who rely on Aurora's excess the two of us will have the easiest time actually getting to Rainbow in a pinch. I wouldn't turn down a top-up but we should probably check on Glass first in case she's desperately low."

"Agreed."

"We can wait for James and Beth, though."

"Excellent. Thanks, James."

"That will make it easier to do my general Belling, yeah, thanks."

James grins.

Beth smiles.

"Are Libbies and Agent Honey accompanying us to look for Glass?" inquires Aurora.

"I think I'll go home, if it's all the same to you guys."

"Ditto that."

"No way am I missing out on meeting Glass," says Agent Honey.

"Okay, well, James knows and Beth should know that the door will take you both back where you came from; if things are working normally it'll be no time to speak of between then and when we come back."

"Unless something else is going on. I left Tune home and he's syncing me to Atlantis."

"All right," says Beth.

"Yep," says James. The pair of them wander off.

Shell Bell heads for the door after them, waits for them to go home, and then flares again to door to Chronicle.