"I hope this is a silence of 'of course not, that is a completely left-field sort of question, what could possibly have inspired you to ask', because what has inspired me to ask is that apparently while Amariah was gone, Kas went slightly mad and had their firstborn child all by himself without waiting for her input. Said firstborn child is now thirteen."

"Leaving aside surmountable technical problems, I cannot think of a single earthly fucking reason why I would want to have children in your absence, and if I did, they certainly wouldn't be yours. What happened to Kas? Or is the answer just 'Jokers'?"

"He didn't mean for her to be Amariah's, in all fairness, I think he was trying to have some unspecified variety of offspring and just got an Yseult-alt. As for what happened it's only what I said - she was gone a long time. Sixty-six years. Meanwhile Aegis's Joker handled her political campaign for her, so, you know, if you happen to spot Amariah looking murderously in Aegis's direction at the next Bellparty see if you can distract her."

"Noted. Will do. What did Aegis's Joker do with her political campaign, exactly? Get her elected in absentia? Impersonate her? That would've been a trick."

"No, he got elected himself, it was kind of time-sensitive, but behind the scenes they can work out whatever now one of them has the position," shrugs Bella, "and maybe they can wrangle a changeover at some point, I don't know enough about Peace politics to guess."

"And I suppose 'let him keep the bloody job if he's handled it this long' was never an option."

"Maybe it is," shrugs Bella, "like I said, I don't know about Peace politics. I somewhat doubt he wants it indefinitely though."

"Because that would be incongruous. I always lose track of how many levels of incongruity I am supposed to expect, with that lot."

"Six," says Bella decisively.

He snickers and hugs her.

"Under no circumstances am I going to inflict Sunshine on a Carinna. I'd be hesitant to inflict myself on a Carinna."

"The other two seem more portable. How would you personally upset one, though?"

"Has it escaped your notice that I don't have a soul?"

"No. I noticed that. Would the bare fact of you not having a soul upset a Carinna, do you think? I wasn't modeling her like that."

"Quite possibly, but apart from that, it's not exactly a cosmetic fucking difference. In the hypothetical distant future where I am for some reason considering having a child at all, I'd just as soon aim for one who will laugh when I joke about getting them fresh demon heads for their birthday."

"Okay, I could see you doing that," concedes Bella. "A Kiawen would totally laugh, I'm not as sure about a Tanalin."

"I haven't heard as much about the other two; Carinna has the obviously relevant characteristic."

"I talked to Kiawen for a while. She seems to think that the entire multiverse is divided into hilarious wonderful things and things that will soon be fixed."

"Appropriate, I suppose, for the context."

"Yeah."

"But not, unfortunately, true."

"Depends on your definitions of 'soon' and 'fixed'. Anyway, I last talked to any of the little beads when they were like seven, maybe in the intervening years Kiawen has begun wearing black and writing moody poetry, I don't know. We did stop in Chronicle while re-pealing everyone, but we were mostly picking up Wellspring magic and catching up with each other."

"Is this question relevant to any immediate concerns, love?"

"Nah. Hey, speaking of Wellspring magic, apparently that is the mysterious way in which Wellspring is related to Sunshine worlds. Same kind of magic, except Sunshine has icky 'patterns' stuck to it. We might have a Matilda-type guest seeing if she can unglue them here at some point. My magic system switched from Sunshine, which my opacity wasn't letting me use, to Wellspring, which it will, when a Matilda floated me for long enough. I got better than Cam and not as good as Glass."

"Fascinating," he says. "Does Wellspring also have demons, or are those separate?"

"Separate. Probably responsible for gluing on many of the icky patterns."

"I don't doubt it. Well, well, well."

"Glass also thinks that Bells are intensely susceptible to magic addiction wherever it's possible, so even though that's not something that should technically happen with Wellspring patterns in place of Sunny patterns, I went ahead and made a wish against it before doing any -" She crooks a finger in the direction of a rug's edge, rolling it up. "Of that."

He laughs and kisses her.

Ooh, kisses.

Very kisses.

Oh, that's the best kind.

Naturally.

"Three new? Where do they all come from?"

"Turns into a swan, you say. Of all things. Have you ever considered the theory that the circumstances of the peal are one big cosmic joke?"

"Well, she was one of a long string of people who got turned into swan-people by Nona's dad," says Bella. "It's not like, aside from the name, we are otherwise swan-themed as a group. No recurring swan daemons or swan-related magic powers or whatever, some of us don't even have the surname. Etty can just turn into a swan."

"Right. But Etty can still turn into a bloody swan."

"And as a side effect of the spell the dress she appears wearing when she turns back into a human is made of white feathers. I don't know, we can ask Glass if it's related." She picks up her Janegem and flicks it on. "Hey, Jane, can you ask Glass if she got a look at Etty to see if the swan thing is related to the name attractor?"

[Sure.] And a moment later, [She says they're separate and basically coincidental, the swan transformation thing is a completely different kind of attractor, similar to Beast turning into a cat-monster - Etty was supposed to turn into a swan and Beast was supposed to turn into a beast in about the same way.]

"This does nothing to put a dent in my 'cosmic joke' theory," Sherlock observes.

"I'm hilaaaaarious."

"You are. You're fantastically entertaining."

"I am so pleased. Anyway, latest word on the horrible Janebreaking world that I heard is that Aether's aura will fix it within a limited area, so she can go home, with a Janegem, but not install a Janepoint."

"What exactly does that world break...?"

"Causality. Science - not tech, science - doesn't behave there. If you look at the world's moving parts too hard, or you annoy something sufficiently epic, or it looks like you're cheating, or the universe feels like it, the reliability of induction bids you an impolite goodbye."

"Well, that sounds irritating."

"It kinda stunted Aether's growth, it's sad."

"Yes, you mentioned a projected career as a therapist. Is that a terrible disappointment to the rest of you?"

"We're frankly impressed she made it to adulthood. And she may stay in school, on the grounds that the peal having access to a therapist could be useful."

"Bloody right it would."

"And since she's a Bell there aren't the problems with operational security - and way fewer problems around Bells being cagey - than there would be with anyone else we could procure. But she'll be a few years; she hasn't actually taken courses in therapy, only in being psychic."

"Oh, perish the thought that anybell should have to complete a standard education in something. Can't she cheat?"

"She did cheat, but apparently being Materia-psychic is only weakly amenable to pentagoning. Certainly she'll go faster than standard now she has her speedup and recall and so on. Besides, Glass and Aegis and Amariah all completed locally standard educations for what they were trying to learn before they got the cheat codes. Rose too depending on what you mean by 'standard'. And I am still slightly enrolled in high school because Charlie doesn't want me to be one of those Sunnydale kids who just stops showing up one day, even if I'm ninety-five percent checked out whenever I show up."

He laughs.

"I'm going to be the proud owner of a high school diploma. Aren't I impressive? Nobell else has one. Well, Aether does, if that's the same kinda thing, I don't know about her native education system."

Kisses! [I love you.]

[I love you too,] he says, snuggling her.

[I would not like to be otherwise, I'd probably get all existential about it, it'd be awful.]

[Yes. You are my favorite.]

Snuggles!

Snuggles, snuggles. [The world we got Tab from is super discomfiting. You remember about how Aurum had that problem with the vampire named Chelsea?]

[Not in detail. Something about mind control?]

[Yeah. Chelsea was a witch and she could build up or destroy relationships. The government Golden deposed used her to keep a larger-than-normal people-eating coven together without falling apart, and keep their enemies divided, and collect useful witches, and control the wolves. There's one in Tab's world, and she's stronger and she has better range and the local copy of James used her to take over the world, and Tab, astonishingly, has not assassinated either of them. Her jurisdiction, but it weirds me out.]

[I am sure she has her reasons, although I confess I can't imagine what the hell they are.]

[The Gifts people have there are serious business, it's not just the Chelsea alt who's got major horror potential. I suppose turning everybody into a Care Bear might compete favorably with letting them run amok if people there are particularly prone to running amok. And Aelise - that's the James there - said Chelsa was retired.]

[I think I can see what would tempt a James to take over that world. I'm less sure about the Care Bear part. What does a 'retired' Chelsa look like?]

[They didn't say exactly. I'm sure Tab will explain herself to everyone at the next Bellparty.]

[Now there is something I'd love to hear.]

[Tab herself is safe from Chelsa, of course, and she's got a level of opacity that's competitive with or even better than Golden even though Golden has both the vampire boost and the aura boost.]

[That was also a deciding factor, I'm sure.]

[In Chelsa not having gotten assassinated? I'm not sure, actually. We don't know what happens if a Chelsea-type actually gets at a Bell. Jokers are capable of intense mixed feelings, we know - Harley got got, the Gift Joker got got, I'm pretty sure neither of them acts in a way consistent with unambiguous Chelsa-adoration. But we haven't seen the case where a Bell has her feelings modified like that and I'm not sure what would happen.]

[I think it's safe to say we won't be experimenting.]

[Not deliberately, but now we know Chelsea's a template, and not every Bell has opacity.]

[There is that. Poor hypothetical Bell.]

[Very much so. At least Elspeth can deprogram half of it.]

[Which half?]

[She can undo any positive Chelsea-based affections. She can't put back what was taken.]

[Oh, delightful,] he sighs, snuggling her. [We kill these people when we find them, yes?]

[Golden killed hers. Tab explicitly told her not to kill the Gift one, on the grounds that she still has enough contact with the population for it to be a sharp shock.]

[Right. Never visiting Gift, then.]

[Tab is setting up on another planet that Chelsa doesn't know about, with the resurrected city of It Got Nuked This One Time Toronto, not that there's any reason you need to visit Gift.]

"The next galaxy over is not far enough for comfort."

"Okay." Nuzzle. Idly, "Which part spooks you more?"

"The irreversible one."

"Well, yeah, but what if you factor out Elspeth."

"Is there some purpose to this line of inquiry?"

"Idle curiosity. If I factor out Elspeth I'm way more freaked out by the part she can fix. You don't have to answer if you don't want."

"If I factor out Elspeth they are much less comparable. In a very 'they both lose' sort of way."

"Yes, that's a relief."

Checking, checking...

When she checks for a Lazarus, one turns up who is an interesting new kind of demon: pebbled pine-green skin with iridescent black streaks in a vaguely spiky pattern, 'hair' made of thin iridescent black spines, short tidy iridescent black claws. Controlling for obvious species differences, his face is recognizably that of a Lazarus. He's even the same height, under that spiky crown of hair.

"Got a Lazarus," she remarks. "He's a demon, I don't know the kind."

"Ooh, let's see," says Sherlock. He looks. "Damned if I know. Doesn't seem to be on Earth, either. Perhaps we've discovered a whole new demon dimension. I wonder if he's a friendly sort?"

"It's hard to imagine an unfriendly Lazarus, but we only know the one of him, so who knows. Maybe having a tail wreaks awful psychological damage on the personality type."

"What do you suppose, should I say hi right now, invite Stella's one over to help make introductions, or just be generally aware that he exists and see if metacausality does cause us to intersect in some charmingly coincidental way?"

"The last one. Or tell Stella's that we found him an alt and see what he says about it. Perhaps he'll have a more interesting suggestion."

Nuzzle. "Hey, Jane, can you tell Lazarus we found a demon of him here and could use his input?"

[That... is interesting,] says Lazarus. [What kind of demon?]

[She didn't recognize the kind, but reportedly he's got a tail.]

[I've never considered getting a tail before. Is it a nice tail?]

[Didn't see him myself.]

[Well, I'm not sure what to do about him, exactly. If he's one of me, he might not like to have the entire multiverse situation dropped on his head all at once. Or he might get his first hint of something extraworldly going on and demand to know the rest. Or both.]

[The options being currently considered are Juliet saying hi, importing you to say hi for her, or doing nothing to see if metacausality presents him to her by coincidence.]

[The last one seems to have the most potential for interesting but probably not disastrous surprises.]

[Shall I pass that on as your recommendation?]

[Yes.]

"This will be an interesting observational experiment."

Sherlock laughs and hugs her.

Hugs! "No, seriously, this is the first time there has been preexisting knowledge of a template's presence followed by not showing up and telling the template All The Things. If metacausality does drop him on my doorstep that'll be interesting."

"It will! I look forward to seeing what happens."

"It is however super tempting to drop in on him and explain him things."

"But that would spoil the fun, love."

"It would spoil some fun and replace it with other fun. I will have to get my other fun someplace else, I suppose. If I become desperate to explain everything to someone I can always go surprise Renée. Or sit down a minion or three and present them with a slideshow."

Sherlock giggles.

"Minions are sometimes convenient."

"So I see!"

"If you ever want to borrow one, I can ask them how they feel about being loaned out."

"I don't anticipate the need, but I suppose you never know."

"Yep. I did not set out to acquire them in the first place, but they're handy regardless."

"Indeed they are. And sort of cute too."

"In an ugly way. Like those wrinkly dogs."

"Yes, exactly."

"It is pretty weird that they unanimously want to be minions, but it would be unkind of me to second-guess their lifestyle choices."

"Perhaps there's some reason for it. Cultural or otherwise."

"Presumably. I don't feel right about asking pointed questions as long as they're being miniony at me, and they don't volunteer the information when hinted. Maybe I should get Soph to ask them or something."

"Or someone could spy on them. But perhaps you wouldn't feel right about that either."

"Indeed not. Also I'd have to find them talking about it amongst themselves, and they might all consider it such common knowledge as to not be worth discussing."

"Well, I could spy on them."

"I am very curious what you might see or overhear that would lead you to a conclusion about why they like to be minions if they didn't actually talk about it, but not enough to authorize spying."

Nuzzle. "If someone does a template sweep and finds a Sherlock they weren't expecting what do you think the protocol should be?" she giggles.

"Get all the Sherlocks together to talk about how to say hello. It might be a very short conversation, but it might not, depending."

"Sometimes you guys just look at each other and pretend to be telepathic, it's half funny and half eerie."

"Have there been any cases of inter-Sherlock misunderstanding with the Pretend Telepathy Technique?"

"None that I know of. I wouldn't expect any."

"How does it even work, it must be fascinating - Bells get each other more than typical interacting persons do, I think, but we're doing, 'if I were a No Questions Elf with thus and such a traumatic past and a Joker-and-a-half and I was from that world, why would I say that', and I think you're just doing a more efficient version of the same thing you do all the time with everyone, not so much deploying special template knowledge of each other, right?"

"Oh, debatably. What makes it so efficient is that I know very accurately what another Sherlock is going to notice about me, and about our surroundings, so I don't have to waste time with unnecessary explanations. And if I observe them failing to pick up on something, I am very likely to know what it is and deduce all sorts of interesting things about them from there. It's the same thing we do with everyone, but the special template knowledge and the symmetry is what makes it so pretend-telepathic."

"What kinds of things do you gather from another Sherlock failing to pick up on something?"

"Oh - Pearl and Steel have their respective shifted cultural contexts, and even if I hadn't guessed from how Steel dresses, I'd know from how they both react to how I dress in comparison to the other Sunshine-family Sherlocks. They can tell the difference, but their understanding isn't as fine-tuned as it would be if they were from the same time period. Pearl is picking it up a little faster, because Panem fashion is closer to our sort of Earth than Chronicle's is. Or for another example, it's screamingly obvious that Plus knows what it's like to lack a soul. The other Sherlocks are all guessing about the relevant bits of my internal architecture; he knows. Not that it's easy for most people to tell the difference. But every so often, he'll notice something before they do."

"Huh. That's close in some ways to what Bells do and different in others. The peal all have a sense now of what things are Us Things and what things vary more or less freely, and the new ones get the gist pretty fast - so if I meet a Bell, I assume whatever she's wearing, less the crown if applicable, is either a completely unexceptional thing to wear, or overwhelmingly convenient for some reason, or something someone around her somehow induced her to wear. And the less to my taste it is, the more likely it is to be towards the end of the list of reasons than to the former. Etty's feather outfit and Aegis's uniform are convenient, all the jeans-and-T-shirt-crowd are unexceptional and so are Angela and Amariah with their leather and silk, I'm pretty sure Sarion's kind of elf is vaguely communist and she wears whatever some clothes-handling person gives her, if I see a Joker-having Bell in a pretty dress I assume her Joker made it for her. Or in Aurora's case that he is it for her. The mental architecture bits - vary less, although Shell Bell sometimes - sort of twitches. And we all know why, not because we've been there but because we don't twitch like that so it must be the different thing. If a new Bell does the same thing we'll know something awful happened to her."

"Interesting. Yes, we don't have any particular special tricks for detecting trauma in foreign Sherlocks."

She squeezes his hand. "Well, you're a stoic breed, I wouldn't expect you to do obvious twitching."

"Not obvious to most people, you mean. We do notice each other's twitches, it's just that we each have a different palette of sensitivities and it's not always immediately clear which twitches are coming from where."

"Ooh, non-transparent highly subtle twitching. Can you elaborate or would that be telling?"

"Not so much that it would be telling as that talking about the details of intra-Sherlock signals using existing vocabulary would be a bit like trying to describe the dance choreography of an alien species from scratch without having specific labels for any directions, limbs, or appendages. Except that I could probably give you a lesson in alien anatomy a lot faster than I could teach you the anatomy of Pearl's emotional expression."

"Is Pearl a special case for some reason? I don't think I've ever talked to her when Shell Bell wasn't around and Shell Bell's an order of magnitude more comprehensible, just because we are both Bells, so she gets most of my attention."

"I estimate that any expression of hers in the range from 'neutral' to 'murderous fury' will read as 'slightly bored' to an outsider. Most of us have some tendency to be excessively subtle, but hers is off the fucking charts even by comparison."

"Probably helps Shell Bell that she can read her mind, I suppose."

"Yes. But she exhibits some ability to tell regardless, which is also interesting."

"How can you tell that she can tell? I mean, I guess she's probably got some giveaway when she reads Pearl, is that all you mean?"

"Pearl said so, love. We do use words once in a while."

"Ah yes, I had forgotten in all this discussion of pseudotelepathy that words are not just a way of communicating with those of us who are not oddly-appendaged aliens."

He giggles.

"Do you gossip about your respective Bells often?"

"Define 'gossip'."

She elbows him gently, repositions the snuggle. "Do you talk about us. How good we are at reading you and so on."

"Good things, I hope."

"Oh, now I'm imagining you whispering about my defects to your alts."

"Yes. Surreptitiously spreading around critiques of your pre-training autopilot."

Bella thoughtfully considers her pre-training autopilot. "It was pretty wretched," she concedes with a light sigh, and then she grins. "But then you fixed it. I can prove it if you like."

"Oh, please do."

Sherlock endeavours to surprise her.

He grins brilliantly.

Yes. This was an excellent plan.

It really was, wasn't it? Kisses kisses. Eventually she's not so much pinning him to the wall as she is plastered to him with the wall incidentally involved as a prop.

At which point he might as well scoop her up and carry her to the nearest couch.

A fine plan. Couches also make suitable props.

They do!

And Sherlock is suitable for kissing. Bella was already pretty sure about this but it cannot hurt to check.

Extremely suitable.

Snuggles are also, certainly, good. Sherlock is also, certainly, suitable as a pillow.

Snuggles are good.

"Be my guest, dear Juliet."

It goes on being adorable. "Sprinkles. Cran-apple. Rug."

These things would not combine into a pleasant beverage!

An Olympic vole would surely be interesting. He isn't sure how the goosedown plays into it. Perhaps the vole is a swimmer and needs to be dried off and snuggled back to comfortable warmth after a race.

"Yodel sprite. Being. Goat."

He giggles softly.

"Spandrel. Once upon a time."

"Yawn, jingle, aircraft carrier."

Steph walks along the back of the couch, climbs down onto the armrest, and curls up next to Sherlock's head.

"Stepladder," mumbles Bella. "Peanut. Perseid."

Also an intriguing combination.

"Bewilderment sandwich. Helicopter hatchling."

The one could certainly lead to the other.

"Hi," says Steph.

"How are you doing?"

"Not bad."

"That's good. Well, it's not bad, at least." Bella closes her eyes and chooses a pastwatching viewpoint from a moment ago above herself and Sherlock and Steph so she knows where it's safe to move, where she won't touch the glowing genet; and then she repositions.

Sherlock snuggles her. Steph continues to exist.

Snuggles. Existence. Both are good things. Bella mentally picks up her attempt to decipher the coy, oblique style of the author of the most recent demonology text she read.