"Why are you dressed like that?" asks Kaydi with scorn.

"Uh... felt like it," says Helen, looking down at her clothes and up at Kaydi with a quizzical expression.

"But you're a witch," says Kaydi. "Witches don't dress like that."

"You're dressed like a mortal," sneers Kaydi.

Helen frowns.

"Don't you even want to be a witch? You're gone all the time and you don't even have a mom and now you're wearing jeans and a t-shirt."

"I am a witch," Helen insists, scowling unhappily. "No matter what I do with my clothes."

"Then why don't you act like one?"

Helen turns away and hugs Kas. Kalavar flutters to Petaal's shoulder, where Petaal strokes her feathers.

Kaydi has her own cloud-pine with her; she hops onto it and streaks away.

Helen clings to Kas and cries.

Meanwhile, Ranata is in the Midwest, visiting Isabella's old house in a fit of nostalgia.

"...Kas?" Ranata asks. It's not, but she doesn't have a better guess.

"No. Sue," he says distractedly, turning in circles one way and then the other. "This is their house, right? How long—?"

"This was Isabella's house," says Ranata slowly. "I suppose Kas lived here too. Where did you come from?"

"Peace? How long since - what?"

"Since she left!" exclaims Sue from Peace.

"She's been gone for - sixty years now," says Ranata, "but Kas says she's coming back - look, who are you?"

"I'm Kas's alt from Peace," he says. "My girlfriend's Aegis, she's one of Isabella, she's gone too but it's only been a couple of minutes for me - sixty years? Fuck. I can't stay, then, not if it's gonna be anywhere near that long." He runs both hands through his shortish curlyish hair.

"Alt? Peace? One of Isabella? What are you talking about?"

[Yeah?]

[I was just - visiting Isabella's old house - and a boy who looked like you appeared out of nowhere, and said some bewildering things, and then left.]

[...was he wearing a kind of uniform jumpsuit thing?]

[Yes.]

[What exactly did he say?]

[I - he wanted to know how long it had been, he said his name was Sue and he was 'from peace' and that he was your 'alt', and his girlfriend is 'one of Isabella', and that he - that 'the clock was ticking on this' and he probably wasn't going to get any sleep this month...]

[Why not, I've waited sixty years. Helen okay?]

[She'll be fine, she's just not happy right now.]

[Which kid was it?]

[Kaydi.]

Ranata sighs. [I can have a talk with her mother, if she's a problem.]

[Could be. Could be it won't help. What's Kaydi's mom think of witch kids in mortal clothes?]

[I - don't know, we've never discussed it. Is that what set Kaydi off?]

[Yep.]

[So Helen was playing dress-up or something?]

[Or something, yeah.]

[Why?]

[She just felt like trying some stuff on, and then she felt like getting it, and now she feels like wearing it sometimes.]

[She has to know that will confuse people.]

[Yeah, I think she's noticed.]

[I suppose it's ultimately harmless, and I don't know what Kaydi did exactly, but she will get negative reactions.] Ranata has been meandering the house. The basement won't let her in; she doesn't push it. She lets herself out and takes to the air. [I'm on my way back now.]

[It sure was a negative reaction,] Kas agrees. [Reminds me of wearing drag in high school.]

[It is rather like drag. Species-drag.]

[Wonder what would happen if I started dressing like a witch.]

[I can't claim to recommend it.]

He laughs.

Shura peers uncomfortably at the outfit, but she shakes her head.

"Good," says Helen. "I don't like getting yelled at. It's not fun."

"It's not," agrees Shura.

"...Are you going to be dressed like that?"

"Yeah?"

"Why?"

"Because I felt like wearing it and I don't feel like stopping."

"But why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"The same thing why always means, how come, what makes you feel like it?"

"Well, part of why I feel like not taking them off is 'cause I'm mad that Kaydi thinks I'm not a witch or something," she says. "But I just tried on mortal clothes to see if I'd like them, and then I did, and now I wear them sometimes, there's not a thing that made me feel like it, I just do."

Shura shuffles her feet and doesn't seem to know what to say.

"...Shura? What's wrong?"

"It's weird and I don't get why you're doing it but I'm worried you're gonna be mad at me for not automatically understanding."

"I don't get what there is to understand!" she says unhappily. "Can't it just be another thing about me, like how Kalavar likes being dragons, and I give people cake on my birthday?"

"You never did it before," says Shura.

"Yeah, 'cause I only started now!" she says. "And I never baked a cake before I baked my first cake, but now I like baking cakes!"

"Yeah but - baking cakes isn't a mortal thing like jeans are."

"So?"

"So this is weird and that wasn't."

"Well, I know," says Shura. "You couldn't just decide not to be a witch, that's not how it works, but - you're - wearing a mortal costume."

"It's not a costume," she says. "Any more than Petaal's wearing a witch costume when she puts silks on to fly. Or Kas is wearing a girl costume when he puts on a pretty dress. It's just different stuff to wear."

"...That's what costumes are, is wearing different stuff," says Shura.

"Is it? I don't think so," says Helen. "I think dressing up as something because you want to dress up as the thing is one thing, and just wearing stuff because that's the stuff you want to wear is a different thing."

"But either way you have on jeans and a t-shirt."

"Yeah. But not for reasons," she says. "Just for feeling like it. Kas does the same thing."

"Well, he's peculiar."

"I'm peculiar too," Helen asserts. "Not all the same ways, but I am."

Shura shifts her weight. Nicoa has been hiding under her silks; he peeps a shrew-nose out from a gap in them at her waist.

Kalavar turns into a bee and buzzes away from Petaal to hover between Helen and Shura.

Nicoa hops out of the silks and turns into a jerboa for a bouncy landing, going a few hops forward.

Kalavar buzzes down and becomes a chinchilla.

"Do we have to understand this thing or think it isn't weird?" Nicoa asks her.

"No-o," says Kalavar. "But if you think it's bad weird, or you don't want to be near us when we do it, then we'll be sad."

"It's - weird weird," Shura says. "Like if you were a cat with a turtle shell on."

"What if I'm not a bird?" says Kalavar. "What then? I don't think I'm not a bird. But I don't know what being a bird or not a bird feels like, we're not that old yet."

"But all witches' daemons are birds," says Nicoa. "If you're not I don't know what that means."

"Me neither," says Kalavar. "But if I'm not then I'm not, and that's just how we are. We won't know until I settle. If I do."

"I don't know!" exclaims Helen. "I think I'm a witch. I can do all the witch things I've tried, so far."

"Well," says Shura, "you do more witch things than Petaal. But not as many as the rest of us."

"Is 'wearing silks all the time' the kind of witch thing you mean? I don't think that's the kind of witch thing I mean. I mean the kind of stuff that mortals really can't do. I can do all that."

"It's a witch thing. I guess maybe it's not the same kind," says Shura dubiously.

"I can do the kinds of witch things that are about being a witch," says Helen, "but I don't always decide to do all the witch things that are about witches deciding to do stuff some particular way. Because - if I just feel like doing something some way, and it's not hurting anybody just by me doing that, then that's important. Even if I don't have a really good reason, or if people think I'm weird, it's important that I want to do the thing."

(Kas grins.)

"Okay, well," says Shura, "if I don't have to understand or think it isn't weird, I guess that's okay then."

"Okay," says Helen. "So do you want to go flying?"

"Yeah. She talked it out with Shura and they went out flying."

[I don't know! I don't know enough to know what the places you could start might be.]

[All right,] he says, [well - Sue. Sue is me from another world. I don't mean another world like the kind you already know about; I mean that every world you've ever heard of is all part of one collection called Alethia, and there are more whole collections out there. Sue's is called Peace and there's only one world in it. Me and Isabella found a way to get to different collections - we just call them 'worlds', we didn't realize worlds could have more worlds in them until we'd already been calling them that for a while, I know it's confusing. And in different world-collections, there can be different versions of the same people.]

[...How did he get here?]

[Sue can just do that.]

[What does this have to do with Isabella having gone missing?]

[She went to another world. One none of us had been to yet - there's a lot more of us than just me and Isabella and Sue and Aegis, I think there was thirteen of Isabella or something and a dozen or so of me, and one more of Isabella found us and our Isabella was one of the ones who went to her world to say hi. And... there was this way we had of keeping in touch in between worlds, keeping time moving the same way in all of them, and it breaks sometimes if something happens to Aegis, and Aegis was one of the other people who went, and it broke while they were both there. Without that, time passes all differently in different worlds; that's why it took two minutes for Sue and sixty years for us. So Isabella is in some other world, I don't know where or what's happening with her or even how long it's been for her - but she's extra super immortal, like me, that's one of the things we found in another world, so I know no matter what happens she's gonna be back someday.]

[Why did you never tell me about this before?]

[Because she never did, and I don't know why she never did, and if she wants you to know then she can tell you when she gets back but if she doesn't and I tell you anyway then there's not much she can do.] He sighs. [But now you've met Sue, the cat is pretty much out of the bag, so I might as well tell you the rest.]

[How much are you like Sue - or how much is Aegis like Isabella - why are there several of people? Are there several of anyone else?]

[There's several of you; the Bells all have the same set of parents,] he says. [The Jokers - that's me and my alts - mostly do too, but some of us have different ones, or don't have any parents at all. Speaking of which, Helen happened because of some magic we got from another world. I used it to make myself pregnant, but I didn't specify another parent, and I guess the magic just picked one. People are... more like their alts than they're like anybody else. It's different for different sets. We don't really know why; one of the Bells has magic that can see stuff about alts and things, but she can't see that.]

[...Are there more Helens?]

[There's two. One named Damaris, one named Yseult.]

Kas covers his face with his hands.

[I'm sorry,] says Ranata helplessly.

[I love Helen so much, but - I had a kid because I couldn't stand waiting, fifty years of waiting, I needed to be doing something that wasn't completely about how much I miss Isabella, and, and shit.]

Ranata hugs him.

Kas hugs back. He cries on her a little.

[So - what are the other worlds like?]

[I barely remember, it's been so long. Um... Sue is from a couple hundred years in the future or something, I forget what year it actually is for him, guess there's less of a difference now. Nobody else has witches or daemons or armoured bears except us. Samaria, where Damaris is from, has angels - humans with big fluffy wings - Damaris is one, so's Angela, her mom.]

[I guess.]

[Can't anyone else do what Sue does?]

[Not so far.]

[Goddesses all.]

[Is this otherworldly magic also why you can do all the other odd things you do - and - how Isabella did what she did?]

[Well... yes and no. Petaal didn't settle because that's how I am, and she can be a witch and fly cloudpine because that's how she is. But this thing we're doing right now, that's otherworldly magic. And not dying when somebody hits me with a death curse, or stabs me somewhere important, that's otherworldly magic too. And Isabella fixed the afterlife with otherworldly magic, and some otherworldly help.]

[This is a lot to take in.]

[Yep.]

[At least now I don't have to just - take your word for it that she'll come back.]

[...you still kind of do. But yeah.]

[I mean, there's a more complete story now.]

He nods.

[What else haven't you been telling me? Does this have to do with how Helen can talk over such distances?]

[Yeah. One of the kinds of otherworldly magic, I think - Helen is only about the second or third time it's happened - that if you make a lot of it, your kids get born with superpowers.]

[Make it?]

[It's called 'minting'; the magic comes in the form of coins that grant wishes. I've made a bunch but hardly used any in comparison, and same for another of me who also had some kids who came out with the kind of superpowers that people from Eos sometimes get - Eos is the world where minting comes from.]

[This is a lot of worlds. How did you keep track of them?]

He shrugs. [I dunno. I don't, anymore, I know there were a bunch more but I couldn't list them or anything.]

[Nope.]

[Are you going to tell her?]

[Yeah. I just don't know when.]

[How are you going to tell her?]

[What do you mean?]

[What are you going to start with - are you just going to drop in bits and pieces or sit her down like the talk about how sex works or something - what are you going to do?]

[There's a talk about how sex works?]

[...Most people get one, at about her age, sometimes a little younger. I can do it if you haven't and don't want to.]

[No, information has changed hands there, it just hasn't been a big sit-her-down conversation. Whatever. I don't know. I've got time to think of something.]

[Okay.]

He sighs.

Ranata hugs him again.

He leans on her.

Inkeri is on her cloudpine, sitting in the sky among some treetops, watching clouds; Veravia is a crane at the moment, perched beside her.

Helen pulls up next to her and says, "Hi," somewhat uncertainly.

"Thinking about stuff," says Inkeri, shrugging.

"What kind of stuff?" wonders Helen.

"I was thinking about people, especially my dad, but now you're here and I'm thinking about you instead."

"What are you thinking?" she says curiously. She's never bothered asking before.

"Well, you're dressed differently, so I'm thinking about that because it's new and I haven't thought about it before."

"Yeah," says Helen. "Kaydi got mad and Shura got really weirded out and you're not doing either of those. I think I like your way better."

"You aren't brandishing a bloody dagger or reaching for Veravia or trying to knock me off my cloudpine or announcing that you are the bearer of a prophecy about the end of the world," says Inkeri, "or doing anything else that would make that happen."

"Well, sometimes there are actual prophecies. I don't think I would like it if there were one about the world ending. Because then the world would end."

"Well, yeah," says Helen. "I like the world. Maybe if I make up a joke prophecy I'll make it so there's a way to save the world in it. Just in case."

"Like, The Shade-Dreamer will return on the eve of the sixty-sixth year of her vanishment, and call on the magics of all the worlds," says Inkeri, closing her eyes. "Then I would be much less worried, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah," says Helen. "Yeah, I would. That sounded very prophecyish, do you read a lot of prophecies or something?"

"...No," says Inkeri, "not really, they're very uncommon."

"I'm not sure I've even ever heard one before," she says. "But that sounds like what I think one would sound like if I did."

"They can only be made by people with a certain birth blessing and not all of those," says Inkeri thoughtfully.

"...do you have that one?"

"I have the right goddess and the right domain but it could be something else, my grandma wasn't sure."

Helen tries to think her way through all the goddesses and their domains, to see which one seems most prophecy-ish, and then she shrugs and says, "Which?"

"Evisa Iannakara. Time," says Inkeri thoughtfully.

"What does that blessing do when it's not prophecy?" she wonders.

"I'm not sure. Maybe it makes you be on time to things, or fast, or have a good memory."

"Well," says Helen, "there must be some way to tell that prophecies are prophecies, or we wouldn't know things about them, would we? So how do we tell?"

"I don't know. Probably some grown-up witches do."

"Do you want to find a grown-up witch and say the thing at her and see what she says?"

"I guess. My mom and my grandma are both busy right now, though."

"I'll see what Ranata's doing," she says, and listens.

"Ranata," she says, out loud to the named party but in utter silence to Inkeri, "I was talking to Inkeri and we think she did a prophecy, how do we tell?"

"Okay," says Helen. "Should I talk to the queen like this, or find her where she is and talk to her that way?"

"Find her," advises Ranata, "and bring Inkeri."

"I didn't know you could do that," observes Inkeri, tilting her head the other way.

"It's a thing I can do," says Helen. "Because I'm peculiar. I can listen where anybody is if I know where they are, or where anyplace is if I remember it well, and I can put my voice wherever I'm listening or make it go all over."

"Memma Belir, wind?" says Inkeri.

She shakes her head. "It's not my birth blessing or I would've said. My birth blessing's Amariah Lytess, daemons."

Helen and a now albatross-shaped Kalavar follow her.

The queen isn't there, but someone who knows where she went is, and presently they have found her, in one of the clan gardens, weeding.

"Um, hello, Narida Memma," says Helen, floating on her cloudpine having entirely forgotten what she is wearing. "I was talking to Inkeri and we think she said a prophecy and we want to know how you tell."

"Okay," says Inkeri. She gets back on her cloud pine and flies to Ranata's little cabin that she uses for extended stays on clan lands.

Petaal is curled up just outside the cabin door as a tiger, and Kas is leaning back against her with an arm slung comfortably around her neck.

Inkeri tilts her head and repeats herself, and then adds, "The queen thinks I might be a prophet."

"Why are you telling me this," he says. The words form a question, but the intonation doesn't.

"I'm supposed to," says Inkeri. "I think knowing who I am supposed to tell might be part of being a prophet, because the queen asked me if I was supposed to tell anyone else, and then told me to tell you."

"Well," shit," says Kas. He rubs his face with both hands. "Are you done, then?"

"Yes, that's the whole thing. I am supposed to tell the queen how you reacted."

"You do that," he says, and he gets up, and Petaal turns into a witch and follows him into the cabin and shuts the door.

(Helen winces.)

Helen notices she is listening to the queen. She decides to stop.

After a minute, Inkeri catches up to her. "The queen doesn't want you to talk to her while you're wearing mortal clothes," she reports.

"I know, I heard," she says. "Then I stopped listening."

"Oh. After that she told me that even when I am not making prophecies I'm still a prophet and this gives me special clan status and I will learn more about that soon," she volunteers.

"That's cool," says Helen.

"It might be," allows Inkeri. "Your dad seemed very upset about my prophecy."

"That happens sometimes," says Helen.

"Has he heard prophecies before?"

"No, but he gets very upset about stuff sometimes," she says. "And it doesn't always make sense why."

"I wonder why I was supposed to tell him that prophecy."

Helen shrugs.

Inkeri doesn't seem to have anything else to say, but she flies alongside Helen companionably.

Helen smiles at her.

Whereas Helen prefers to hug Shura when she expresses such concerns.

Helen does not have the important attribute of having, in fact, walked across the Waste - "And even when you do, your birth blessing will help. I'm scared." (Shura is hugging Nicoa hard. He's being a Dalmatian; he's been being mostly mammals in deference to her nervousness.)

"I'm sorry," says Helen. "It's okay to be scared. Kas was scared when he did it."

"He didn't have to, though, did he? He's not a witch, if he didn't then he wouldn't have been a little kid forever."

Helen says, a little hesitantly, "He kind of had to. Somebody he cared about was in trouble, they were going to die, and the only way to save them was for Petaal to be a witch and fly to where they were and rescue them."

"...Oh. I think that might be worse," muses Shura.

"Yeah," says Helen. "And he was really scared, he says, and it was awful and scary and sad, but then he rescued his friend and hugged Petaal a lot and everyone was okay."

Shura nods. "I know witches all do it, but it hurts if Nicoa even goes - over there." She waves at a tree.

"Yeah, it does," says Helen. "We pulled pretty hard once, and it hurt a lot."

"And you have the thing. I don't have that thing."

"I don't really know what the thing does," says Helen. "Maybe it hurts me less to pull, or maybe it's just going to be - easier another way, less distance maybe? I don't know."

"Oh. I guess there's no way to tell."

"But it does hurt," she says. "I'm a little bit scared too."

Shura lets go of Nicoa and hugs her.

"I don't know!" says Nicoa, turning into an armadillo. "I don't know why it happens."

"I don't know why either," says Kalavar. "But it's got to help if you don't want to be mad."

"Maybe it doesn't," says Nicoa.

"Yeah," sighs Shura.

Helen sighs too, and hugs her.

When Nicoa does settle, Shura's almost thirteen. Her trip to the Waste is scheduled for the next day.

And Helen hugs her again, careful of Nicoa.

"I - I don't know," says Helen. "We can ask somebody. Is there somebody we can ask? Somebody old, who's known a lot of witches? Would that help, asking somebody?"

"Nnnnno probably not," sighs Shura, "they'd just - tell us, I guess, and whatever the answer is it can't be good if we've never heard of anyone who did it."

"Okay," says Helen, hugging her some more.

"It's cute," says Kalavar. "Want to snuggle?"

Nicoa bobs his head in a ptarmigany nod.

Kalavar turns into a long-haired cat and snuggles up fluffily.

...Is it time for Helen to hug her some more? Helen thinks it is probably that time.

It is definitely that time.

Hug hug hug hug hug.

Shura is quiet, but very huggable.

Helen is also quiet. And very huggy.

Nicoa doesn't fly as fast as a cloudpine, but he is seen on clan grounds a bit later. He lands in a tree within eyeshot of Shura, but doesn't come closer.

"What happened?" murmurs Kalavar. She's sitting with Helen and Shura, curled up next to Helen as a black dragon with silver-edged scales, but her voice reaches Nicoa and only Nicoa.

Nicoa picks up one foot, then the other. "We went to the edge. And she put me down. And she walked away. And I tried to follow her but I couldn't go, and I screamed at her to come back when it hurt too much and she didn't. And then it didn't hurt anymore and she left. And I left too after a while."

"That's sad," says Kalavar. "I want to snuggle you."

"She didn't come. I called her and I know she heard me and she didn't come back. They would have let us try again and she didn't come back."

Nicoa hesitates, but flutters down for snuggles.

Kalavar snuggles him.

Helen and Kalavar snuggle their respective snuggles some more.

"We'll be fine," says Shura.

"Sure."

They go flying.

"If you don't settle I wonder if you have to separate anyway?" wonders Shura.

"I don't know," says Helen. "I don't think it's happened before."

"I wonder how come you're last. You'd think Inkeri, since she's younger than us."

"Like - glue setting," says Nicoa. "I was fewer and fewer things, and then I was this thing."

"Weird," says Kalavar. "I can't imagine."

"It might be different for different people."

"I've never heard of that," laughs Nicoa.

"It's peculiar," says Helen, giggling.

"He's super, super peculiar. He should be in superhero movies. Super-Peculiar!"

Helen cracks up.

"Actually having an unsettled daemon and being a grownup would be a pretty good superpower," muses Shura.

"It is! It's useful," says Helen. "Petaal can do all kinds of stuff."

"Maybe one day I will draw comic books and they can be Super-Peculiar and fight crime."

"It would! But it'd be based on a true story, or at least a real person, like all the ones where the Shade-Dreamer does stuff."

Helen snorts. "Yeah."

"If we'd been born earlier we would've gotten to meet her. She was in our clan."

"I know," says Helen.

"I just think it's cool," shrugs Shura.

"I guess."

"You don't seem to think it's that cool."

"Don't I?"

"You don't! How come?"

"Yeah, okay."

Muffins!