"Well, sure," says the Joker.

"You mean metacausally?" says Brilliance. "Like how?"

"Like," says Glass, "Corona and Felicity are the same kind as each other but not anyone else, and you and Aianon and Ansharil and Nona and Celo are either representatives of yet more kinds or one-offs, and the rest of you are all of a kind."

"How 'bout that," says Queenie. "Makes sense. But if you asked me to divide us up into kinds, that's not how I'd do it."

Glass squints at them. "When you're all standing like that there's kind of - but that's not kinds, it's... amounts? No, not amounts. Um. Gosh, I don't know what that is at all."

"They're something about how we think," says War. "I couldn't begin to put it in words - I'm not even sure I could summarize it in link. But I see a lot of it 'cause I'm the hub when we link up. The retirees are one thing, and me and Sue are another thing, and the middle bunch are all different flavours of a third thing, and Alice and Nona are a fourth thing, and Aianon and Harley are fifth and sixth things."

"We grow through 'em, some of us," says the Joker. "That might be where you're getting 'amounts'. I used to be a lot like Alice, and after that I used to be a lot like Kas. And then there was Gotham, and now there's me."

Kas studies Alice thoughtfully, then turns the same look on the Joker.

"Like..." Glass starts tracing lines between the clusters of assembled Jokers. "Yeah, that's why 'amounts' popped into my head even though it's wrong... Anyway, Felicity is that 'amount'." She waves in Alice and Nona's direction. "But Corona's kind. And a new face - I'd tell you where he looks like he's from but it wouldn't mean anything to somebody who wasn't from Chronicle."

"Well, what's he look like?"

Glass conjures up a little illusion of Felicity.

"That's," says Glass, and she peers at them all again, "a serviceable word for it, better than 'amounts' anyway."

"Harley got rescued before he was any phase," War continues, "he's been off course for most of his life. Me and Sue... I'm not sure, it's harder to see from the inside. Aianon, I feel like he got off course just about when he hit his island; the way he remembers being before then is like middle-phase with more fear. Ansharil is weird, he was never on course in the first place but when he met Aianon he got to be the same phase right away before they went off to the island."

"You and Sue had that Battle School thing," says Queenie. "Pretty sure that's where it starts for you."

"I wonder what affects when you move from phase to phase."

"It's pretty obvious how you become a retiree," says the Joker. "Not gonna say that's the only way, but there's only the one we've seen."

"I'd almost say... but Nona killed her dad, and she's still not in the middle," says Queenie. "For us old folks it was definitely that."

"...I killed him," she says slowly, "but I didn't leave home. We're still living in the castle. I didn't - wander."

"Mmm?" says Ghosty inquiringly.

"Just, wandering seems like an apt word for the middle bunch. Fits aesthetically."

"That it does," the Joker agrees.

Glass nods. "That's a sub-phase."

"Mm, more like a variant," says War. "Sub-phase would be like it's something everybody goes through. Did I do school instead of wandering that way? Guess I did." He and Sue both glance thoughtfully at Jellybean.

"As you like. I'm only getting this very faintly," says Glass.

"So what do we call the other thing?" says Jellybean. "The kinds. Just 'kinds'?"

"Clusters, maybe?"

"'Clusters'. Sure," says Jellybean. "What are they? I mean, can you tell us anything about the way that Corona and the new kid are different from the rest of us are different from the extras?"

"Not just by looking at you. Maybe if I looked at you next to whatever's different, or something. I mean, I can make guesses. It's near the requisite-amount-of-suffering attractor..."

"It could be the obvious thing," says Corona. "It almost has to be the obvious thing, at least partly, doesn't it?"

"Er, what obvious thing, should I know the obvious thing?"

"No, I don't think you do," says the Joker.

"Oh. Um, should Elspeth know?"

"I dunno, should she?" says Corona. "I don't know her as well as some of you guys."

"Of people in this room probably Harley knows her best, but mostly I mean - will it affect how she ought to interact with him? Is it likely to be important to him to have the chance to say or not say himself?"

"Everything seemed calm when I left."

"Give it time," says Corona. "Now that we know he's one of me and not any of the rest of you."

"I'm wondering now if I should warn Golden, only I'm not sure what there is to warn about."

"Yeah," says Corona, "except that he'll do his damnedest to piss her off if he ever meets her, I guess." He adds after a reflective pause, "Probably. He'll probably do that. Might decide not to. We're not a hugely predictable bunch that way."

"I imagine she will meet him. I mean, her daughter is being his guardian. She met Harley, didn't she."

"She did," says Harley. "We get along okay."

"...But it might be better if she hears what she's gonna hear about it before he pisses her off," says Alice. "I dunno."

"Bells in general tolerate things with known explanations better than things without," says Glass after a moment's thought.

"Yeah," says Alice. "But would that even be enough of an explanation for her?"

"Well - what do you mean, 'enough'?"

"I mean," says Alice, "if we tell her he's twelve years old and fresh out of hell and he's gonna be dealing with that by being a total little shit to everyone in sight, will she get it, or will she walk off thinking he should know better?"

Glass lifts her hands. "What do you mean, 'get it'? I can pass on recommendations about what to do, and she'll more likely follow them than not. She is also more likely than not to privately think that she emerged from hell and promptly conquered the world."

Alice sighs.

Ghosty disintegrates and rematerializes to hug him.

Glass sighs.

"It's not like it's your fault or anything," says Corona.

"Not exactly hers either," says the Joker.

Harley sighs.

Glass looks at Harley questioningly.

"...I feel weird 'cause I'm on the other side of this from most of us," he says. "I was never the kid they're talking about. But I wish there was a way for Golden to understand it better than that. But I get what the Joker's saying about her, too; she's the way she is because that's the life she's lived and the way she's lived it, and you can't just wish people would stop being themselves."

"I mean, she will probably follow reasonably well-operationalized advice about how to interact with Felicity. I just can't promise she won't feel smug while she does it."

"Fuck it, then," Corona mutters.

"How about 'don't ever talk to him, 'cause he can smell smug from a mile upwind and he'll hate you for it'," Corona suggests, "is that operationalized?"

"'Don't ever talk to him' is operationalized," says Glass. "The rest of it would probably only serve to make her defensive."

Corona opens his mouth, and then shuts it again.

Queenie hugs him some more.

Glass looks at Corona, but doesn't actually formulate a question.

The Joker nods approvingly.

"So - am I telling Golden not to interact with her new grandfosterling?"

"If she's going to be smug about him—" says Corona, and then he stops himself and takes a breath and continues more calmly, "yeah, that's a pretty good plan."

"I don't know that she is!" exclaims Glass. "She's in a position from which smugness is easy, that doesn't mean that she'll react to everything that way."

"Well," says Corona, "if she's smug about him, and if he notices - and I'm pretty sure he'd notice - then either he won't give a shit about her any which way, or it'll hurt him and he won't deal well. So maybe better just to avoid the whole problem. Unless she wants to take the chance, I guess. But you said telling her what's up would make her defensive, so..." He shrugs.

"Putting it the way you put it would. I'm trying to think if there's - I mean, if one of my daughters were bringing up a fosterling, I'd want to meet the kid," says Glass. "If the kid needed particular care in handling, I'd do my best to accommodate that - but then my eldest already requires care in handling, so maybe I'm just used to it."

"Yeah?" says Corona, slightly hopeful. "Do you get it, then?"

"I still don't know what you mean by 'get it'. I think maybe all I get is that I don't get it."

"Well, that's a start," says Corona.

"I keep thinking about Carinna. Probably Felicity isn't anything like Carinna. Carinna's not traumatized, she just - she got all my malcontentment and most of Sherlock's depressive tendencies and none of either set of coping mechanisms."

"I hestitate to - but - Golden has that empath brother-in-law, is this the sort of thing that could be usefully addressed directly?"

"Yeah, long shot. Should I bring him a poof?"

Glass looks at Corona, again without forming a question.

"I think it might be good for him," says Corona. "To have a happy fuzzy little thing that couldn't hurt him if it tried, to take care of."

"Okay. I'll get him a poof. I'll try to think of something not-counterproductive to tell Golden. Anything else?"

"...About talking to Golden," says Alice. "The way being terrified all the time is like being in the sun, it's also kind of like turning. Might make it easier to think about, that way; she knows what turning's like."

Alice shrugs. "I hope it helps."

"It seems likelier than other methods of presentation, anyway."

"Are you gonna talk to her first, or give Felicity his poof first?" wonders Harley.

"Poof first. Felicity can have a poof either way," shrugs Glass. "Do you suppose the color matters, or should I just teleport into the Gentle Cave and pick the one that most insistently follows me?"

"Is there any reason you can't take him to the Gentle Cave and let him pick one?" says Harley.

"Oh, that works too," agrees Glass. "I'll do that, presuming he wants to come."

Harley smiles.

"All right. Here goes, unless there's any last-minute advice - he's not going to be offended or anything if I teleport him right away from the Chronicle Janepoint rather than run any risk of him interacting with Carinna, is he?"

"Nah," says Harley. Corona shakes his head corroboratively.

"The Belltower. Via Janepoint. Harley and Corona think you might like to have a poof - they're a cute little animal my world has. Want to come with me and pick one out?"

"...sure," says Felicity, after a moment's thought. He climbs to his feet and wipes apple juice from his hands onto his pants.

Glass taps her Janegem, and they're in the castle for the briefest instant and then they're in the gentle cave. "The poofs are the featureless round ones, but if something else catches your fancy I don't see a reason to restrict you."

"Nope. They don't even have teeth."

"How do they eat, then? Do they even eat? Or do they just - cute all the time and that's it?"

"They need the flavored water from those springs," Glass points, "I can magic up a little fountain for you, and they manage to eat plants in very small bites. Any kind of plants, and they don't need much."

"They are. Is that the one you want?"

"You're welcome. Where's Elspeth?"

He shrugs. "Doing something."

"Huh. Okay. Well, enjoy your poof."

"I will," he says, hugging it.

Jane confers with Glass. "Sure," she says.

"Okay," says Harley. "Is she there already, or going soon, or are they still in the Gentle Cave...?"

"She just gave Felicity his poof fountain and is currently waiting in the active capital for Golden to get out of a meeting. Golden's not going to be at the entire meeting like Elspeth is, just the overview, so she'll be done in a couple minutes."

"Hi," says Glass. "What are you thinking you'll add to the - I mean, I'm totally on board with having you there, but what wasn't covered when I was asking for advice?"

"I don't know," says Harley. "But if I'm there, then if something comes up..." He shrugs.

"Okay. So, Felicity has a poof and a fountain now. It's sort of rose-pink."

He smiles. "Aww."

"Wanted to know if they bit."

Harley smiles again, wryly. "Yeah. I'm not surprised."

"But he seemed to believe me that they don't, anyway."

"That's good."

"Yeah. I mean, where would a poof even keep teeth? Did you ever name yours?"

He laughs and shakes his head. "Nah."

Golden emerges from the meeting room. "Hi, Glass, Harley. What did you want to talk about?"

"It looks like the twelve-year-old Joker that Jane found is going to be living with Elspeth," says Glass, "but, since he's twelve and not a baby, he's probably going to be harder to deal with than Harley was."

(Harley grins wryly.)

"It's possible," says Glass. "The possibility that you shouldn't interact with him at all was floated."

Harley... decides not to say anything.

"He's twelve. He had enough of a dose of Terrible Childhood that the minimum-suffering attractor is all done pulling on him. And Corona's concerned that - Corona's particularly relevant here, he's metacausally clustered closer to Felicity than the others - that he'll be able to tell if there's any hint of 'smug' going on, on your end, when you evaluate how he deals with having recently been traumatized. How he deals with it is probably going to boil down to 'not well'."

"I am aware that most people do not cope as well as me with devastatingly unpleasant events."

"Yeah, that's not quite the - not quite it. Alice says," Glass adds, "that the state Felicity is in right now, where he's sort of background terrified of everything, is comparable to turning."

When Golden doesn't reply immediately, Glass puts in, softly, "You're not better, you're luckier. Not the same way as me, but still -"

Harley shrugs.

"He'll need a while. I don't know how long a while. The resources don't exist yet in a - usable way."

Harley nods, relieved.

"Carinna may yet grow better coping mechanisms," Golden adds to Glass in what only sounds like a topic change.

Glass sighs. "She may. She may not. She wants me to tell all the other Bells with Sherlocks to skip her. I can't expect it to get any better. At least there are test cases demonstrating a light at the end of the tunnel for Felicity."

"Yeah," says Harley. "Jokers even out. I think... if you give us enough time, we might all get to that last phase."

"Even the off-course ones?" Glass asks. "Oh - Golden, when they were all in the Belltower they were dividing themselves into phases. Sort of the Joker version of the Bell life-cycle."

"The off-course ones I'm less sure about," says Harley. "But I still feel like we're all headed to something like the same place, even if no two of us are getting there exactly the same way. I mean, I'm never gonna be a retiree, right, I'm not planning to go back to my Gotham and blow a bunch of things up and then die, but... I'd like to get to where Ghosty and Queenie and the Joker are, someday. That way they have of just being okay, even when they're not. I don't know, maybe it doesn't make sense if you're not a Joker."

"Maybe not."

He smiles crookedly. "That happens."

"Anyway. Have I satisfied you that I won't be conspicuously self-satisfied at Felicity?"

"Yeah," says Harley. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"Time for me to go home, I guess."

"Guess so," says Harley.

Glass taps her Janegem. She goes.

"Regardless of this conversation I think I'll give him a little longer to settle in before I pay him a visit," remarks Golden.

"Probably a good idea," says Harley. "Glass gave him a poof; I bet that'll help."

"Ah, poofs."

Harley giggles.

"How have you been doing, anyway?"

He shrugs. "Better. I can, like, move now." Demonstratively, he opens and closes his hands. "I might go get my aura soonish."

"I wonder what you'll get."

Harley shrugs.

When the rest of the meeting has concluded, Elspeth teleports to Isle Esme. She lands in the house, first, to see if there's any sign of Felicity having picked one of the bedrooms.

None whatsoever. Felicity, however, is curled up on a couch with his poof.

"Oh, did Glass bring you a poof? That's a good idea."

"She did! It's cute and snuggly," he says, snuggling it.

"Poofs are both of those things, yes. Do you care which bedroom is yours? Jake and I will take the other."

"The white and yellow one, I guess," he says after a moment's thought.

"Okay. Did you see much of the island while I was gone? Do you like it?"

"I saw some," he says. "It's a nice island."

"My grandpa Carlisle bought it for my grandma Esme a long time ago." She snaps her fingers. "I said I'd get you a computer." And she conjures up a tablet laptop for him and bounces an overview of how to work it in simple enough terms for a twelve-year-old from the nineteen-eighties. "The hookups to the internet from Origin will roll out in a week, and Gift will take a little longer, and once the kinks have been ironed out we're going to add Atlantis too."

It's a nice computer, fast and sleek and with standard software already installed. And it has Internet, albeit only the Aurum internet as of this day.

Felicity is entranced.

"If you have any questions I'll answer them," Elspeth says, and she makes sure there is a fountain for the poof and then conjures herself a bottle of bubbly. "Jake will be here to introduce himself around dinnertime."

"Okay," he says absently.

Elspeth finishes her bubbly, makes a couple of teleporting trips between the Québec house and the island for personal effects, arranges them where they belong, and then sits on the other sofa with her own computer.

Felicity messes around on his computer and snuggles his poof. It's pretty obvious when he discovers the games, because they make sounds.

Felicity... observes this interaction.

Felicity has no comment on any of this, apparently.

"Sure," says Felicity.

"Fig slices? You know what, go for fig slices," says Felicity.

"All right, one with fig slices, coming right up." Jacob conjures two pizzas, on platters rather than in cardboard boxes; his is covered in assorted forms of meat and cut into very wide slices, Felicity's is dotted with sliced figs and has more standard cuts. Jacob proceeds to sit in front of and eat his pizza. He gives Elspeth a bite when she leans over his shoulder.

Felicity eats his pizza and snuggles his poof.

Elspeth is satisfied with one bite of pizza, but she sits next to her wolf and continues computing.

Most of Felicity's pizza goes by before he slows down. (He manages not to smudge the computer any more than slightly.)

When he does slow down, Elspeth takes five triangles out of her coin sorter. Two of them are the same color as her hair, one of them is Harley's white-and-streaked-with-color, and two are a warm, chocolate brown sort of like the weird magnet-clasped uniform Jacob's wearing. "Here are some little wishcoins. They'll make little wishes - they'll clean off your computer screen or braid your hair or flick a lightswitch from across the room, that sort of thing."

"Cool," says Felicity, inspecting them.

"If you run out, let me know."

"Okay."

"They're different colors depending on who makes them. These are mine, those are Jake's, this is Harley's."

Looking at the coins and their respective sources that he can see, he asks, "Does Harley wear a lot of funny rainbow shit?"

"Not especially. And Jake's uniform is brown because his fur is brown, when he's a wolf, so that's the Imperial pack color. His sisters' packs wear black and white respectively."

"Uh-huh," says Felicity. "So where's Harley's coin colour come from?"

"A lot of the Jokers do rainbowy coins, actually. The eponymous Joker, the one who works for my mom, makes these -" She pulls out a clear triangle, also streaked. "It's not always clear why coin colors are what they are, though. Sometimes they're obvious." She tugs at her hair. Then she pulls out one of her mother's triangles, gold and glowy. "Bells' coins glow if they have native magic for defense against mental spying and tampering, in all different solid colors, and they're other, non-glowy patterns if they don't. Do you want to see what yours would be?"

"Sure," he says.

Elspeth puts away excess triangles and spends a square.

"It is!"

He smiles.

Felicity scoops up his poof and wanders out of the house with it. He takes his supply of triangles.

Neither of the adults present follow him. Unrelatedly - really! - a giant brown wolf with a half-vampire on his back may be seen making a lazy circuit of the island while the sun sets.

They're very cute. Elspeth waves at Felicity while they go by.

He waves back.

And on go the wolf and his imprint along the beach. Afterwards they go back into the house.

She can totally hear him, but has no special reaction. Jake is napping in the bedroom Felicity didn't pick. Elspeth is up and on the couch; she isn't planning to sleep for a while with the Internet thing underway.

He goes straight to bed without looking for either of them.

"Do you need a set of pajamas?" Elspeth calls when he heads into his bedroom.

"Any preferences?"

Shrug.

Elspeth shrugs too, and conjures him a light set of pajamas to match the warm climate, white with yellow edging like the bedroom he picked out. "Here you go. I'll come up with a few outfits to magic into your closet overnight, if you don't have any requests."

"Okay," he says, bundling up the pajamas and letting his poof tumble onto them so he can carry it all back into his room together.

Elspeth continues her work.

And Felicity sleeps. For a value of 'sleep' that includes rather a lot of quiet crying.

In the morning, he stays in the room a long time, curled up with his poof and his computer. He emerges in search of food around lunchtime.

The kitchen is full of ingredients, and Elspeth is eating grapes and tapping away at her tablet. "If there's some sort of food you'd like around that isn't here let me know," she says.

"Mnh," says Felicity. He stares meditatively through the fridge door, inventories all the cupboards (again), and then makes himself a sandwich and disappears back into his room.

Elspeth does nothing to interfere.

He appears again a few hours later, dressed in clothes from his closet instead of the pajamas, and silently begins making spaghetti.

"If you're planning to let Jacob have any, you'll want to make about four times as much for him as you would for a human," says Elspeth. Jake isn't in the house at this time. "He can fend for himself if you weren't intending on sharing, though."

When Jake comes home for dinner, either Elspeth tells him privately the spaghetti's not for him or he figures it out, because he fixes himself a plate of sandwiches and eats them between items of pack gossip that he catches Elspeth up on. Apparently she owes Kim a visit and Alice found an imprint for Sawyer who he'll meet in two weeks and Pamela's thinking of moving to Becky's pack and teaching third grade there.

When the spaghetti is finished, Felicity eats it, leaves the dishes scattered haphazardly, and takes his poof for a wander around the island.

When he comes back, the kitchen is clean, and Elspeth is sitting on the roof to do her work for no obvious reason, and Jake has fallen asleep again.

There is, in fact, a way to climb up the back between the edges of the window and the lip of the roof, if you're very nimble or very determined.

Felicity manages an adequate combination of the two.

"Hi."

"I like the view up here," she comments.

And until he asks her something else, she will remain quiet and talk to Pattern's PR people about rolling out the interworld ansible service.

"I'm talking to the people who do the nearest equivalent of my job in Origin. We're talking about how to reveal other worlds and the upcoming general interworld ansible services to the populations of Aurum and Origin. They'll be able to talk to each other soon enough, so we need to match reasonably well."

"Huh," he says.

Typety typety.

"Do you want help getting down?" she asks.

Okay then.

Once inside, he makes himself some more food and goes back to his room with it.

Elspeth jumps down off the roof and lands on her feet, after a while, and puts her tablet on her pillow while she takes a break (she brushes out her hair by hand, and braids it with a triangle, then sits with her eyes closed and her hands clasped to sort through the many thousands of years of unprocessed memories she still holds).

"Nah," he says.

The house is not particularly flame-retardant.

Perhaps the faint whimpering will guide her.

It's a hex. She spends it.

He whimpers some more, and drags himself out from under the wreckage.

"Did you have fun?"

"...No."

"Oh." She spends a pentagon to restore the house; it's surrounded by enough space that not much surrounding flora has been damaged. She gets up and triangles away the soot.

"Yes."

"Wishes, huh?"

"Yes. It actually took a bigger one to fix you than the house. Living creatures are complicated, and the house didn't have any inherently magical installations."

"It's a little more complicated than that. I wouldn't have left you unsupervised near anything both destructible and irreplaceable in the first place. Had I done so for some reason, I would probably mourn the loss of whatever was destroyed. But in reality I have plenty of magic and I was warned to expect destruction of property, so there's nothing to be mad about."

Elspeth goes out and inspects the smallish amount of damage to the plants around the house. She fixes it as she finds it.

He's back a few minutes later, with his poof and its fountain.

"Aww. You took them out first."

"Poofs," she adds, "emit an anti-injury field. It works on them and anyone nearby."

Elspeth fixes a tree.

Felicity carries his poof inside.

Eventually there is no remaining fire damage or ash that Elspeth can see. She goes back inside and picks up her tablet from her pillow where her wish restored its existence.

Felicity and his poof remain in his bedroom.