"Yeah, like horoscopes but more reliably - daemons settle into single forms around puberty for reasons having to do with personality. Unless they belong to a Joker and then they never settle at all. Witches like my alt from that world, Amariah, always have flying birds, but otherwise it can be anything."

"Let's hear it, then."

Bella conjures up the bird daemon books, flips through the key guide, and finally finds it. "Green kingfisher. Chloroceryle americana - I think you've got the mathewsii subspecies. There's nothing specific to the green kind, but kingfisher-people in general are supposed to be adaptable, supposedly adopting any of several nigh-contradictory personalities to suit varying circumstances at different points in their lives."

Ripper looks thoughtful.

"What?"

"Sounds like a horoscope, all right."

Pattern shrugs. "They vary in how much information they have. Some kinds of daemons are so common that it's hard to make any general statements because there will be exceptions whose relevant personality features shifted after puberty or something - some are so rare that it's hard to make any general statements because there are negligible data points. Fireflies are in the sweet spot where there's a good amount for information-gathering; they mean insight and - the book said 'intellectual sparkle', I'm not sure exactly what that's supposed to mean."

"It means your brain is sparkly," he suggests.

"Somehow I doubt it. And it didn't appear on my chart when I got hit by the van."

Ripper snorts.

"Interestingly, some of me produce glowy magic. I don't. It seems to match up with which of us have native forms of mental opacity."

"Glowy as opposed to what?"

"Not-glowy. Mine looks like notebook paper; it's pretty painfully generic for a Bell."

"When does it look like notebook paper?"

"Wishes have physical form. Little pointy coins. What color they are depends on who makes them," Bella explains. She makes a triangle, appears it in the palm of her hand. "This is one of mine."

"I don't make most of my own wishcoins; that's what the Jokers are for. But it's nice to know what my coin color is. There haven't been any exact matches so far. If you made coins they'd look like -" She puts the triangle away, pulls a square, wishes on it. An illusion square appears next to the illusion kingfisher; it looks like gray suede. "That. Neat."

"Does that mean anything?" he wonders, looking at the illusory coin.

"You'd know better than I would about your own coin color. Some of them are pretty clearly referring to particular things; if you don't recognize it, though, I don't know what it's likely to be." She banishes both illusions.

"What's so painfully generic about notebook paper, anyway?"

"Until Bells get perfect recall, most of us do this thing where we write down everything we think, so we can look at it from the outside. We're very introspective. My coin color is clearly a Bell thing, but it isn't a Pattern thing in particular. Angela's look like her feathers - Glass's look like little chips of colored glass melted together - Golden's glow gold which matches with her whole empire theme, Aegis's are copper like the assistive exoskeleton she used to wear, Amariah's look like the tree branch she flies around on, Aurora's look like her mana. I guess Sarion's coins aren't any better than mine - parchment, with inkspots."

"I'm going to have to start keeping notes on all these people, aren't I."

She giggles. "If you're having trouble keeping them straight, maybe, yeah. They might be more memorable in person - not that I know, I got my recall less than thirty seconds after I met any of them."

"People are always harder to keep track of when you haven't actually met them," he says. "Well - when I haven't actually met them. It might help if I had some idea where all these nicknames were coming from, though."