"So I observe," says Sherlock. Hug hug. "In what way was it awful?"

"It has this - anticausality. Not even just metacausality - metacausality lines things up and lets them go, there's reasons for them, layers and layers of reasons, you can pick apart the line of dominoes if you want, find out why this person was here and that one there. On Materia, cause and effect can just - stop - working. It's most likely to do it around certain kinds of entities - half Aether's aura now goes to advertising that she belongs to that class, even though the other half keeps causality behaving around her. It would also do it if you - looked too hard at things. Formed too much of an expectation that it would go on doing as you'd seen it do."

"It was. It was awful. So - little unambitious people without incorrigibly scientific minds can live there - and a handful of ambitious people, if they got lucky or the world liked them, could live there too - and it was a terrible place for a Bell to be. She managed, basically, with - stunted growth of sorts - and now she can go enforce a - a bubble of sanity - but it was so awful to look at."

"I don't have to go there, no - I didn't even actually go there before, I just saw it through the door at Milliways - although it should be okay as long as I'm within her aura, and it might be good to get a second less - sickly - look at the place."

"I will be here to hug you when you come back."

"I love you."