"Nnnot really sure, actually," responds Blue. "Weird quirk of the teleportation? Perhaps yours would just drop to the ground, or maybe I'd suddenly have them after you disappear." He shrugs. "How long did it take you to disappear last time?"

"… Like twenty seconds. If that."

"Cool, so we have no neat correspondence of times."

"It's only happened twice."

"True," he says. "Oh, hey, I'm just gonna try a thing – wave."

Purple: does not wave. Purple: looks slightly frustrated. "Seriously? You know she said it needed a fairy, right."

"I was just checking," he says. "For all I know it's a special case for magic duplicates, or it just requires two people from different worlds; pretty sure you haven't tested it on anyone here."

"I haven't," he says. "'Cause I'm not a dick."

"Ooh, ouch," he says. "Anyway, how are you up to taking over Fairyland, like, that thing is just– ugly."

"You realize," says Purple quite slowly, "that we are literally mortal? I mean, I haven't checked how indestructible fairies are, I haven't actually asked Promise but she said she was immortal, but it would be really rather easy to pick us up and fly us into a tree? Right? And they go quite quickly, and like, they're small, sure, but– they fly really quite quickly, and they could do it several times over?"

"I wasn't saying we do it alone," he says. "Besides, sorcery might be useful, and lumen's pretty neat, and look, there are two of us and we have different names and apparently we can teleport-slash-whatever-this-is so we might be fine."

"Lumen," he says quite slowly again, "is not an overwhelming advantage. Nor is teleportation. The names thing? That's useful, but we can't swap on command, and you know my name so I can't work that way for you, and I might remember your name at any minute because of the weird memory thing, and orders get around lots of stuff. Like whether you want to do something or not. Capisce?"

"… Yeah but you can't just decide to remember my name and get it? I mean, I don't think, since it doesn't work that way for me, but whatever, maybe it's a lopsided balance."

"Can you just… stop with the delusions of grandeur? Like, learning sorcery and becoming immortal, that's pretty grandeur-ious or whatever as is, and I'd be really happy to get that, and I'd really just– like not to be squished? Like, the Queen can't go getting our names through the magic thing unless we count as fairies, which we don't for orders so probably not for that, but that really doesn't give much of an advantage, because apparently sorcery can do things like fire! I don't know whether you've tested it, I'm guessing not, but I'm not particularly fire retardant. People as a general aren't particularly fire retardant, okay, and I'd like not to test that?"

"Fine," he shrugs. "Not like I can do it without your cooperation anyway." He tilts his head. "Planning on disappearing anytime soon?"

"Nnnot really? It's been what, maybe a couple of minutes?"

"I wouldn't know if the time factors into whether you want to disappear or not," he says.

Purple raises his eyebrows. "Really? How wonderful."

He grabs his running stuff and gets changed – not like he needs to be self-conscious in front of a physical duplicate of himself. "See you later," he says. "Maybe Promise will deal with you better than I do."

And off he goes on a run.

Stupid duplicate.

Blue's content to lie on his bed. Not like he has much else he could be doing right now.

And about half an hour later, Purple's back from his run, apparently not having disappeared in the middle of public, which is good. He takes a shower and then suggests they get going, since it's about time they visit Promise.

It indeed is.

And when they get to the gate, Blue suggests that Purple take out the contact lenses, so as to not confuse Promise.

Or he could keep them in, whatever.

He could. He could indeed keep them in.

But he decides not to, because it's weird to have an iris around his pupil, one that's visible and– not-Rhune-like.

And then through the gate he steps.

Blue's through not long afterwards.

Promise is nonplussed!

"Apparently," says Blue, "it probably wasn't teleportation."