Céleste is inspecting this space plant. It is nice, and has lots of parts, so there is a bunch of it to explore.

If she climbs around on the network of stairs spread over the walls of the main room, she might encounter a person perched on a cloud-pine branch and following them from the air.

"Hi! You're not Yseult and you aren't Damaris! You must be Helen!" says Céleste, waving.

"Hi! You're very logical!" says Helen, waving back. "I am Helen. And you are..." (she peers) "...Céleste!"

"Yep," says Céleste. "I'm a rosebud. You're... something, I guess? Aren't you from the world with animal souls? Where's your one?"

"Kalavar's outside," says Helen. "I'm definitely a something. An etcetera, to be specific."

"Why an etcetera?"

"Cherubs, rosecubs, etcetera," she explains. "I'm the etcetera."

"I guess. If I had an animal soul it would be a griffin," Céleste adds helpfully. "It only just settled into being anything instead of not working when I tried to see, a little while ago. But I already have one as a pet, so I don't want an animal soul one. Are you my age? That's weird. Even Damaris is older than me, and Yseult is a lot older."

"I'm thirteen! Are you thirteen? If so, then we are the same age."

"I am thirteen! Jane said Keziah is too. We matched last time we saw each other too."

"I wonder if that will keep happening," says Helen. "I guess it will automatically if the worlds don't unhook again."

"Yes, but we stayed matching even with the unhooking. I guess it could just be a coincidence. Our sisters don't match since the age gaps are different."

"Yeah," says Helen, "I mean I wonder if it is a coincidence or if it's a Thing of some kind."

"Dunno. Glass can tell about Things! We could ask her. Maybe we will."

"Yeah, Glass does do that," says Helen. "She told me and my alts some Things about us already. Like that our daemons and coin colours are themed."

"My coin color is this complicated - thing," says Céleste. She makes a triangle; it's divided into three parts, one sky blue, one bright gold (albeit without metallic sheen), and one white with a scallopped almost furlike pattern in it. "I don't know about Keziah."

"Mine are like so," says Helen, and she displays a square: it seems to be filled with sprays of pine needles that are always backlit by sunlight no matter how you turn the coin. "Damaris has feathers and Yseult has leaves, but they all do the sunlight thing."

"Pretty!"

"I thought so too!" She disappears the square.

"Mine look sort of like a coat of arms, but it's not any real coat of arms."

"Maybe it's yours," suggests Helen.

"Well, obviously it's mine. But it's not the Cygne coat of arms, we don't have one - and it's not Papa's Marche's either - it's not any one that existed before I started printing it on coins."

"So your coins gave you a coat of arms. Neat."

"I guess. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with a coat of arms! I don't ride my griffin into battle."

"Would your griffin be amenable to being dressed up anyway?" giggles Helen.

"Oooh, maybe, I could make him pretty barding!"

"And then you would have a use for your coat of arms," says Helen. "Perfect!"

"Yeah. I don't know, though, I've never tried to put clothes of any kind on Rainier. Perhaps he wouldn't like it."

"You could try just a little bit of clothes," says Helen. "And if he's not bothered then you could try more, and if he's bothered then you could not."

"That is a good idea. First I will make him a scarf."

"That sounds really adorable," says Helen. "If he likes the scarf I want to see."

"In person? Are you allowed to come visit Rêverie?"

Helen blinks. "Might I not be? Who decides?"

"Your parents, I guess? It's okay for people to visit Rêverie, so years ago we had the older two cherubs over, but we couldn't go to them because people in Samaria don't know about magic."

"Kas doesn't really not allow things," says Helen. "I don't know about Amariah. I wonder if I should ask her." She contemplates this prospect.

"Doesn't not allow things? What, at all?"

"Pretty much."

"I guess Papa doesn't make most of our rules, but Maman does..."

"If something's not a good idea, Kas says why," says Helen. "Or asks me not to do things. But if I wanted to do something anyway, he wouldn't stop me."

"Maman explains things too, but they are still rules even if I still want to do them after she explains."

"Yeah, Kas doesn't do rules," says Helen.

"I guess that could be nice, but I'm mostly embarrassed by times I did things Maman said not to when I was littler. That I didn't think to be embarrassed of back then. If I did more of them I would be more embarrassed."

Helen shrugs. "I like the way I grew up. I wouldn't want to swap childhoods with anybody."

"You liked not having your one of Maman around?"

"I liked some parts. Like having a secret mom, that was kind of fun. I didn't like that everyone was sad about her being gone. I liked going places with Kas, and baking cakes in the wilderness, and not having rules except with the clan. I didn't like getting kidnapped. But I like the whole thing, and how it made me turn out me instead of some alt of me, enough to want to keep it."

"I don't know how I'd be if Papa had raised me by himself."

"Me neither," says Helen. "And I don't know how I'd be if my secret mom had not disappeared and not been a secret. Well. I guess I wouldn't exist, that's kind of an answer."

"You'd probably exist at some point! I mean, Yseult and Damaris do."

"I wouldn't exist now. I might not exist in the next three hundred years. I might not exist ever."

"I guess. My parents had us slower than Angela and Micaiah had our alts."

"And a bunch of other Jokers and Bells haven't had any kids yet at all. I'm not even sure I have the whole list - Stella and Alice, Aegis and Sue, Jellybean and Cam, Aianon and Sarion, Brilliance and Aurora... I wonder if Brilliance and Aurora can have kids, isn't he not even biological? I guess magic solves a lot of things, but I don't know what solving that would look like in the first place."

"I guess they'd just wish her pregnant with one of you?" shrugs Céleste. "Since they know it'd be a you if it were just solved all by itself."

"Well, but what if Brilliance wanted to be more involved in the process? Kas made himself pregnant with me. When it's just that two people can't have kids the traditional way because they don't have the right combination of parts or aren't species that normally go together, I can imagine fixing that with magic, but I can't imagine what you would even wish for to get a kid out of someone who isn't a kind of thing that reproduces." She shrugs. "I guess it's not my problem."

"...Maybe they would make a Device that was a you like Jane is a Device now? I don't know if Devices are babies ever, though, and people who want kids seem to think it is important that they spend some time being babies."

"Maybe it wouldn't be important for Devices, since they don't," says Helen.

"Maybe. Aurora's a human, though."

"Yeah, I mean maybe it wouldn't be important for kids who were Devices to be babies if Devices don't do that," she says. "But I don't know that much about Devices anyway. I haven't actually met the other Jokers. They'll probably get around to mobbing me in a few hours."

"Probably. I don't know where they all are now, and I told Maman I had lost track of Papa, and she said that was probably for the best."

"...Yeah, I bet they're off somewhere having... fun," says Helen.

"I know, I don't want to think about it though."

"In fairness, we don't actually know that they're not baking an enormous cake," says Helen. "Or making each other silly costumes. I'm now imagining Kas dressed up as a frog and it's really funny."

"...Now I'm imagining Papa being fluffy and dressed up as a bird, at the same time."

Helen giggles. "Fluffy bird! We should tell them, they'll do it."

"He would be like a weird layered griffin. Rainier would be ashamed of him."

She giggles some more.

"And -" Whatever Céleste was about to say get cut off; she turns around. "There's... something coming."

The stairs on which Céleste is standing enter a closed section about a dozen steps below the gathering. Someone emerges from that archway, sipping his tea as he climbs.

The Griffins look at each other again, then approach him tentatively, stepping in sync.

"...Er. Hello," he says.

"We can fix that," they say at the same time.

"Fix... what?"

"Your arm," says just Keziah.

"Have you ever done this before, because I haven't."

"No, but I can tell you can fix it, too."

"What about my arm? What—oh, not that bloody thing again," he says.

"It's okay! We can fix it and then it won't bother you again!"

"Fix it how," he says.

"I'm really confused," says Helen.

Keziah snaps her fingers. "Oh! I was wondering if I'd ever get an ingot power! Maybe this is it!"

"Oh, and then it makes sense that we both do it, too."

"Yes, sorry, please and thank you," says Giles.

"You should let us fix it, though. You don't have to tell us how you got it on you."

"What precisely do you mean to fix?"

"...The thing on your arm. It's... all..."

"Gooky," suggests Céleste.

"Yeah, it's really gooky."

"And you want to get rid of the... gook," he says, "and you have some very good reason to think that will be an improvement?"

"...Well, we haven't tried it before. There isn't any gook around at home."

"But we can tell that we are anti-gook," says Keziah firmly.

"I'm not entirely sure I want to be the first test subject," says Giles. "The, ah, thing on my arm has seen quite enough ill-considered decisions already. Do we have anything more to go on here than... gooky feelings?"

"Well, we could ask Maman? Or her one of Maman. Or some other Maman, there are lots."

"Yes, all right," sighs Giles. "Let us by all means ask a Bell."

"But which one?"

"I'll call mine," shrugs Céleste.

Presently Rose teleports in. "What is going on?"

"I'm not quite sure," says Giles. "According to these girls, I have... 'gook'... on me."

"...Are they correct?"

...He sighs. "Almost certainly."

"Well, then, perhaps Lazarus could look at the three of you and tell us more."

"Ah, yes. And where is Lazarus?"

"I'll find him." She ruffles Céleste's hair and teleports Lazarusward.

"Hello!" says Lazarus.

"Hello. Céleste and Keziah appear to have materialized ingot powers telling them there is unspecified 'gook' on Giles. Before doing anything about any of this I thought it would be wise to consult you; will you come look at them?"

"Oh, of course," says Lazarus.

"Thank you." Teleportation.

"That's what we thought! We can fix him, right? We think we can fix him."

"It... seems that you can fix him," he says. "At least, you can definitely do something, and you're definitely calibrated to expect that it's a positive something, and ingot powers don't really lie... actually," he says, "in a very distant sort of way, you remind me of a unicorn I met recently. You especially," he indicates Keziah, "but it's not much of a difference. You're both... purifiers, I could say. You clean things up."

"I'm like a unicorn?"

"But we're the Griffins."

"I don't think your ingot powers know that," says Lazarus. "It's just a comparison, anyway. But yes... let me look at you again." He turns back to Giles.

"If you must."

"Gooky," mutters Keziah.

"Yes, thank you, I'd noticed," says Giles, somewhat irritably.

"You have a... connection to... something," says Lazarus. "I might be able to get more details if we were in your world. But it's definitely hostile, although very dormant, and it's definitely the kind of thing that the girls' ingotry can get rid of for you. There shouldn't be any unforeseen side effects, unless you were depending on your connection to a malevolent force or entity for something."

"Not especially," says Giles. He sighs. He looks around for somewhere to put his tea, discovers a lack of any such place, and sets it down on the stairs in front of him very close to the wall. "All right, you may... de-gook me."

"You're welcome," says Keziah brightly. "All gone."

"Bye!"