When Shell Bell opens the door to Chronicle, she gets the attic Kiawen first led her to. In she steps, trailed by Juliet, Aurora, and Agent Honey.
"I don't suppose meeting in Milliways instead of going all the way to Sunshine makes a difference? If you can't leave the universe at all you won't be able to attend future Bell parties when Jane is back. Presuming she comes back."
"She would probably feel much better about it if she had more advance warning and also if leaving the universe was a thing people did more often," he predicts.
"I'd offer to see about bringing Sunshine's set to you, but without Shell Bell I can't easily exit universes without Jarvises and get into universes that aren't mine. I hope Jane is back soon. Glass, it sounds like you've been waiting longer than me or Aurora, let alone Shell Bell who hadn't even noticed when I forced her door."
"Yes, but it hasn't been so bad. I've had a lot to do. I've read through Rose's enchantment library, now."
Aurora laughs. "No, I'm precisely Glass's height. It's a kind of magic user from Rainbow. I actually don't know that much about the technical details of using it, because until I met Agent Honey the other day my only teacher was Brilliance, who wasn't really designed for teaching magic. But I assume we can conjure up a library at least as good as Rose's for Glass to play with. You will be hampered by the lack of Device, but maybe Jane will be back soon and Agent Honey can hook you up; she found a stray one that got along well with Lexi."
Icarin peers at Glass and Aurora as though trying to verify the assertion about their relative heights.
"We're all almost exactly the same height," laughs Shell Bell, "except when there's reasons for us not to be - Cam is taller, because he's a boy, I'm a little shorter because I didn't eat well growing up and Rose is between me and standard for similar reasons, Aegis is taller because she grew up in space. And if you count Angela's wings she's got a few inches even on Cam, but otherwise she's like everyone else."
"She's an angel. They're big feathery wings - she looks like this." Aurora banishes previous illusions and replaces them with an Angela.
"Pretty," says Valeria, and she makes herself a pair of wings with a roughly similar shape - it's hard to see the details on hers, though, with the glowy undifferentiated whiteness.
Bells continue catching up with each other; if and when the duke and duchess's children become bored, Glass ferries them back home.
"It caught pretty well with you," she comments. "I didn't know it varied that widely by template; it doesn't with us."
"No, it wouldn't," Glass says, squinting, "I think you'll all catch it like fire, it's sort of attached to you as a group - how much did I get?"
"I'm not completely solid on magic-seeing yet," says Agent Honey, peering back at her, "but I'm seeing high perception, medium-high entanglement - do you even know these terms?"
"Nnno, I was going to talk it over with Matilda or Tilly, whichever, and then - Jane broke."
"Okay," Agent Honey says cheerfully. "Short version: there are five qualities that dictate how you interact with magic. Perception is how well you understand the system intuitively; entanglement is how easily you can add new patterns or introduce variations on existing ones; handling is how much power you can use effectively at a time; storage is the maximum amount of power you can personally have 'on' you, so to speak; and generation is how fast you make more power. Your HSG is all within normal range, which I'm given to understand is not that normal for a Bell; your perception is unusually high, and your entanglement is on the high side of normal. These things can all increase over time, roughly in proportion to how much you started with, if you use magic a lot. Oh, and if you use magic a lot, there's a good chance your world will catch it and other people will start coming up with it, but that's generally considered a good thing because Wellspring magic is very very nice. Do you want me to conjure you a laptop with all the latest research notes on it? Will I have to explain laptops?"
"I know a few things about computers. Jane didn't break instantly on being introduced to me, and we talked. But - yes, explaining a few things about laptops would help. I'm not surprised my perception is high; I can see magic as an aura feature - although I can only interpret it once I've learned how; it's a bit like being able to see invisible ink written in all manner of foreign languages I can't even pentagon."
She snaps her fingers. A laptop appears. She hands it over and offers a short tutorial on how to navigate the file system, open files, and read them; it's reasonably intuitive, and the holographic three-dimensional interface is very pretty in addition to being easy to handle.
And then she twitches and squints in Juliet's direction.
And blinks.
And lowers her to the floor.
"Well that's interesting," she says. "I'm not even sure what I'm seeing."