Nika is impatient for everybody to come home already so she can show them her new stuff and Miles can show them that he can walk if he learns now and Ivan can - well, Ivan doesn't really have much to show for the trip, what kind of altly help is 'don't try aged fish, you won't like it' - well, Ivan can be a firebird, that's something. Ivan can tell them that he is a firebird. Except he doesn't seem to have been pleased about it. Well, whatever, Nika will let him show the grownups about... pens. Wait, if she let him do that, she would not be able to use her pen in the intervening time in case the grownups arrived. Oh well. Ivan will not get to do anything interesting. Maybe that will be okay with him. If he wanted interesting things to show off he should have done more magic bar stuff.
So Nika waits by where she expects grownups to come in, and she reads about magic on her pen.
Generated:
Post last updated:
smallts
Konstantine Bothari
washed-in-blood
Miles is not sufficiently patient to mimic her strategy. He gets Bothari to call his mother.
"Ma'am. You should come home. It's Miles - he's not hurt, but - you should come home, ma'am."
This is not the explanation Miles would have produced if he'd been in charge, but it seems to be inexplicably effective.
"Ma'am. You should come home. It's Miles - he's not hurt, but - you should come home, ma'am."
This is not the explanation Miles would have produced if he'd been in charge, but it seems to be inexplicably effective.
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
It definitely gets Cordelia to go home immediately.
Where Nika is waiting!
"Hi Mama! We went a magic place and got stuff there. You should let Bothari take Miles out of his braces now, the magic people fixed him. Also there's a letter for you."
"Hi Mama! We went a magic place and got stuff there. You should let Bothari take Miles out of his braces now, the magic people fixed him. Also there's a letter for you."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
...well.
"Where is the letter? And where is the Sergeant? Was he with you when you went to the magic place?"
"Where is the letter? And where is the Sergeant? Was he with you when you went to the magic place?"
"It's on my pen," says Nika. "Gimme a sec. Bothari came with, he had to carry Miles in." Nika finds and pulls up Cordelia's letter on her pen and then offers the device to her mama.
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
...Cordelia examines the pen. And the letter.
"And where are Miles and Bothari now?"
"And where are Miles and Bothari now?"
The letter is moderately long and has several attached items.
"This way," says Nika, hopping up to her feet, falling over, getting up more carefully, and walking to where Miles and Bothari are. "And Ivan came too but he didn't bring home anything interesting, his grownup was boring and just told him not to try aged fish because he won't like it, Ivan had the most boring grownup."
"This way," says Nika, hopping up to her feet, falling over, getting up more carefully, and walking to where Miles and Bothari are. "And Ivan came too but he didn't bring home anything interesting, his grownup was boring and just told him not to try aged fish because he won't like it, Ivan had the most boring grownup."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
She glances at the first few lines - enough to see that it's addressed to her, and references another letter given to Sergeant Bothari - and then follows Nika.
"So you and Miles and Ivan and Bothari all went to the magic place? Who did you meet there?"
"So you and Miles and Ivan and Bothari all went to the magic place? Who did you meet there?"
"I had grownups and Miles had grownups but I think one was gone doing other stuff and Ivan had one really boring grownup and there might have been somebody else who was also off doing other stuff, I was mostly paying attention to my grownups."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"I see."
She doesn't quite, but she thinks she can probably get the details out of poor Bothari if she can get him calmed down.
She doesn't quite, but she thinks she can probably get the details out of poor Bothari if she can get him calmed down.
"And we brought back a lot of stuff. That pen is mine, you have your own one."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"Does mine also have this letter on it?"
"I dunno, I didn't look at yours. Probably. It's for you. I read it though. While they were writing it."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"I need to talk to Sergeant Bothari, and then I want to read the letter, and then I will give you back your pen," she says.
"Okay."
And here is where Nika last saw Sergeant Bothari.
(Ivan is sitting on the floor, playing with some of his toys by himself. He waves at Aunt Cordelia.)
And here is where Nika last saw Sergeant Bothari.
(Ivan is sitting on the floor, playing with some of his toys by himself. He waves at Aunt Cordelia.)
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"Hello, Ivan. Nika told me you went to a magic place," she says.
Ivan nods.
"I found it, and I got Nika, and she got Bothari to bring Miles."
"And his grownup is boring," Nika says.
"He was nice! We played whirligig. And he said I don't have to turn into a firebird."
"I found it, and I got Nika, and she got Bothari to bring Miles."
"And his grownup is boring," Nika says.
"He was nice! We played whirligig. And he said I don't have to turn into a firebird."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"I need to talk to Sergeant Bothari. Do you know where he and Miles went?"
"Yeah," says Ivan, "that way."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"Thank you."
She goes that way.
She goes that way.
Konstantine Bothari
washed-in-blood
It's not hard to find Miles and the sergeant.
He's not looking so good. But when he sees Cordelia, he looks at her with raw hope.
He's not looking so good. But when he sees Cordelia, he looks at her with raw hope.
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"Hello," says Cordelia.
"You need to let me out of this thing now, the magic blood from the magic place fixed me," insists Miles.
"I will take you to a doctor to check that in a little while," she says. "But first I want to talk to the Sergeant. It's very important."
"Fine," Miles grumbles.
"Sergeant, will you come and sit with me over here?"
"You need to let me out of this thing now, the magic blood from the magic place fixed me," insists Miles.
"I will take you to a doctor to check that in a little while," she says. "But first I want to talk to the Sergeant. It's very important."
"Fine," Miles grumbles.
"Sergeant, will you come and sit with me over here?"
Konstantine Bothari
washed-in-blood
"Yes, milady."
He pulls the letter out of his pocket and offers it to her. "I have this for you. From - from―" He breaks off, shakes his head, silently brandishes the folded paper.
He pulls the letter out of his pocket and offers it to her. "I have this for you. From - from―" He breaks off, shakes his head, silently brandishes the folded paper.
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"Thank you," she says, taking it from his hand and unfolding it.
Well. That's... that's something.
She reads it through. Then she looks up at Bothari.
"Did you meet... another Miles, in the 'magic place'? Did he give you this letter?"
Well. That's... that's something.
She reads it through. Then she looks up at Bothari.
"Did you meet... another Miles, in the 'magic place'? Did he give you this letter?"
Konstantine Bothari
washed-in-blood
"...Yes, milady."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"I have another letter here, from different people. I'd like to read it too, to make sure of what I'm seeing."
Konstantine Bothari
washed-in-blood
Bothari nods understanding. This seems like a very sensible thing for her to do. She is a very sensible person. She will make everything all right again.
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
Cordelia manages to get Nika's pen to produce the letter again. She reads.
Dear Cordelia,
We assume you can distribute portions of this letter to whom they may concern in some sensible manner. See also the letter Bothari was given.
"We" is two of Nika's "alts", this apparently being the term of art for versions of the same person from alternate universes; a picture of us with Nika is enclosed. Our names are Isabella T'Mir (the one with the pointy ears, from a world substantially different from your own in many ways) and Linyabel Miriat Vorkosigan (the one with the hair, from a world very like your own except in our own respective origins and quantity of hiding magic), the latter surname acquired by marriage (yes, this was very awkward to discover). If you or Nika want to find out where she came from the name regularity may provide a clue, although since we look much more like each other than like her it's possible name sound also varies, perhaps too much to be useful.
We and several other people have all accumulated in a magical interdimensional bar by a combination of coincidence and summoning our friends and family. Attached is a picture of the bar's explanation of how her door works. Being enterprising people, we have taken considerable advantage of these circumstances and sent your children and nephew home with some items.
Linyabel's universe being a few years ahead of your own and Isabella's having proceeded along a markedly different technological track, we have sent some devices of Linyabel's invention, called "pens", which should interface reasonably well with your computing technology, and have loaded them up with various useful contents, including a) how to reverse engineer the pens themselves; b) information from Isabella's universe on faster than light travel, which may or may not be physically instantiable in universes unlke hers in some way; c) textbooks originating from your own universe but apparently highly obscure to much of the population, on the subjects of magic and relatedly the presence of non-human creatures which can be disguised including from themselves as humans indefinitely.
We would prefer that Nika directly receive the profits of the development of pens, as her alt invented them. It is probably reasonable to delay consulting her on business decisions, and to keep most or all of the money in some sort of trust or just reinvest it, until she is at least six, perhaps older. (We can't be sure precisely how to expect her to develop based on ourselves, as Isabella is half-alien, which may have slowed her down, and Linyabel is haut, which certainly sped her up. Both of us think that we could have been responsible with a fortune and adult non-binding advice at or by age six.) Linyabel has a version of Gavril Tsipis and approves of him wholeheartedly; he could probably manage the enterprise to good effect with at least one technically-inclined helper and at least one offplanet distribution agent (unfortunately, Linyabel's offplanet distribution agent is likely eight years old in your world right now if she is present there at all).
Pen sales figures are attached to help with initial budgeting, and deployment order of operations. We have included plenty of spare pens for Simon to suspiciously take apart, including the versions which Linyabel's alt of him consulted on wrt cryptographic security. The children have already claimed their own pens; we have also included (labeled) copies of the models selected by Linyabel's alts of you, Aral, Simon, Alys, Gavril, and Gregor.
It seems moderately unlikely that Isabella's universe's faster than light transit mechanism ("warp drive") will work in your universe or in Linyabel's, because it is unheard of for species in Isabella's world to develop past about twenty-third century levels of technology at the latest without managing to invent it unless they also manage to extinguish much of their population somewhere along the line, become beings of pure energy and bypass the need for space travel, or repress research into relevant fields entirely. The presence of aliens in her world may be a confounding factor but were not directly involved in the drive's invention by humans on her Earth; it seems likelier that some other obstacle will interfere. Regardless, books on the subject are included. We have no strong preferences about who should benefit from the commercialization of warp if it works. Isabella did not invent it and in fact spent many years distributing it to plagiarism-inclined pre-warp scientists and mathematicians on a volunteer basis.
Our estimate of age six as a probable age of reason for Nika also holds for permitting her to perform magic unsupervised, although depending on how well she takes to the neatness required she may still benefit from help and double-checking on her diagrams. The impression we've developed from looking at the books is that knowledge of the existence of magic is effectively restricted to people who are or know about non-humans. How it has managed to remain secret for this long is unclear and we do recommend finding out before going in any way public. If you locate such a thing as a magic school we recommend allowing Nika to attend unless this is obviously unsafe for some combination of Barrayarans, dragons, Vor, girls, etc. (whether she will want to attend magic school is not in question but we cannot predict the surrounding culture except by rampant speculation).
As far as the non-human creatures go, the bar, which informed us that Nika is our alt despite her dissimilar appearance, also claims the ability to determine people's species, even thoroughly disguised, and we have no reason to disbelieve her claim. According to same, Nika is a dragon, and your Miles a unicorn, and your Ivan a firebird, and your Bothari a bugbear (diagnoses of people who were not present is unavailable). Conventional species inheritance rules found in books from your world imply that at least one biological parent of a non-human is the same sort of non-human. Since unicorns are widely understood in the non-human community to be nonexistent unless our textbooks are systematically misleading, it seems most likely that a strain of unicorns has been dormant on Barrayar since its initial colonization, or in some way arose spontaneously during the Time of Isolation, and that Miles inherited his species from Aral. Incidentally, Ivan does not seem very pleased about being a firebird. You might not want to belabor the point with him.
We have attached a list of unfortunate disasters both within the Imperium and throughout the nexus occuring in Linyabel's universe between the years 2978 and 3001 which could conceivably be averted by the placement of relatively trivial resources accessible to probable readers of this letter. While they may not all match, especially if you succeed in avoiding some of the early ones and this has knock-on effects for later items, preventing even just one would likely be worth the time it would take to try to intervene for them all.
Isabella wishes to register that she is generally prone to calling both of her parents by their first names when they are not around, and she is not adopted; therefore if you notice Nika doing this you should not assume it is because she is adopted or that she has complaints about her parenting. Linyabel has instances of both of you, albeit as in-laws, and expects Nika to have rather few complaints about her parenting.
Attached are biographies of both of us, and more pictures, including a picture of Isabella at roughly Nika's age with her parents on her father's home planet (in case there is any resemblance between her parents and Nika's birth parents which could demystify her origins; we imagine Simon is very disgruntled about her mysterious origins). These are included principally for Nika's own reference and curiosity later on but they contain nothing we are not willing to have seen by viewers of your choice, although another tidbit of peculiar alt-related coincidence of the same general flavor as Linyabel's marriage to her Miles appears in a sidenote within Isabella's biography, and you may wish to be circumspect about springing that on people. (Specifically, in 2979 in Linyabel's world, Miles was cloned - see list of unfortunate disasters for details; the clone's childhood is a tragedy and the project for which he was made a would-be catastrophe - and the bar labels Isabella's husband said clone's "half-alt" despite total lack of physical resemblance between them even to the level visible between us and Nika.)
Linyabel has also taken the liberty of supplying books in the oeuvre of Thalia Gimicar, an author whom her Cordelia favors, some of which are not likely to have been published yet (prior publications are included in case you have the misfortune of living in a universe without Thalia Gimicar).
Best wishes,
Lady haut Linyabel Miriat Vorkosigan
and Isabella T'Mir
We assume you can distribute portions of this letter to whom they may concern in some sensible manner. See also the letter Bothari was given.
"We" is two of Nika's "alts", this apparently being the term of art for versions of the same person from alternate universes; a picture of us with Nika is enclosed. Our names are Isabella T'Mir (the one with the pointy ears, from a world substantially different from your own in many ways) and Linyabel Miriat Vorkosigan (the one with the hair, from a world very like your own except in our own respective origins and quantity of hiding magic), the latter surname acquired by marriage (yes, this was very awkward to discover). If you or Nika want to find out where she came from the name regularity may provide a clue, although since we look much more like each other than like her it's possible name sound also varies, perhaps too much to be useful.
We and several other people have all accumulated in a magical interdimensional bar by a combination of coincidence and summoning our friends and family. Attached is a picture of the bar's explanation of how her door works. Being enterprising people, we have taken considerable advantage of these circumstances and sent your children and nephew home with some items.
Linyabel's universe being a few years ahead of your own and Isabella's having proceeded along a markedly different technological track, we have sent some devices of Linyabel's invention, called "pens", which should interface reasonably well with your computing technology, and have loaded them up with various useful contents, including a) how to reverse engineer the pens themselves; b) information from Isabella's universe on faster than light travel, which may or may not be physically instantiable in universes unlke hers in some way; c) textbooks originating from your own universe but apparently highly obscure to much of the population, on the subjects of magic and relatedly the presence of non-human creatures which can be disguised including from themselves as humans indefinitely.
We would prefer that Nika directly receive the profits of the development of pens, as her alt invented them. It is probably reasonable to delay consulting her on business decisions, and to keep most or all of the money in some sort of trust or just reinvest it, until she is at least six, perhaps older. (We can't be sure precisely how to expect her to develop based on ourselves, as Isabella is half-alien, which may have slowed her down, and Linyabel is haut, which certainly sped her up. Both of us think that we could have been responsible with a fortune and adult non-binding advice at or by age six.) Linyabel has a version of Gavril Tsipis and approves of him wholeheartedly; he could probably manage the enterprise to good effect with at least one technically-inclined helper and at least one offplanet distribution agent (unfortunately, Linyabel's offplanet distribution agent is likely eight years old in your world right now if she is present there at all).
Pen sales figures are attached to help with initial budgeting, and deployment order of operations. We have included plenty of spare pens for Simon to suspiciously take apart, including the versions which Linyabel's alt of him consulted on wrt cryptographic security. The children have already claimed their own pens; we have also included (labeled) copies of the models selected by Linyabel's alts of you, Aral, Simon, Alys, Gavril, and Gregor.
It seems moderately unlikely that Isabella's universe's faster than light transit mechanism ("warp drive") will work in your universe or in Linyabel's, because it is unheard of for species in Isabella's world to develop past about twenty-third century levels of technology at the latest without managing to invent it unless they also manage to extinguish much of their population somewhere along the line, become beings of pure energy and bypass the need for space travel, or repress research into relevant fields entirely. The presence of aliens in her world may be a confounding factor but were not directly involved in the drive's invention by humans on her Earth; it seems likelier that some other obstacle will interfere. Regardless, books on the subject are included. We have no strong preferences about who should benefit from the commercialization of warp if it works. Isabella did not invent it and in fact spent many years distributing it to plagiarism-inclined pre-warp scientists and mathematicians on a volunteer basis.
Our estimate of age six as a probable age of reason for Nika also holds for permitting her to perform magic unsupervised, although depending on how well she takes to the neatness required she may still benefit from help and double-checking on her diagrams. The impression we've developed from looking at the books is that knowledge of the existence of magic is effectively restricted to people who are or know about non-humans. How it has managed to remain secret for this long is unclear and we do recommend finding out before going in any way public. If you locate such a thing as a magic school we recommend allowing Nika to attend unless this is obviously unsafe for some combination of Barrayarans, dragons, Vor, girls, etc. (whether she will want to attend magic school is not in question but we cannot predict the surrounding culture except by rampant speculation).
As far as the non-human creatures go, the bar, which informed us that Nika is our alt despite her dissimilar appearance, also claims the ability to determine people's species, even thoroughly disguised, and we have no reason to disbelieve her claim. According to same, Nika is a dragon, and your Miles a unicorn, and your Ivan a firebird, and your Bothari a bugbear (diagnoses of people who were not present is unavailable). Conventional species inheritance rules found in books from your world imply that at least one biological parent of a non-human is the same sort of non-human. Since unicorns are widely understood in the non-human community to be nonexistent unless our textbooks are systematically misleading, it seems most likely that a strain of unicorns has been dormant on Barrayar since its initial colonization, or in some way arose spontaneously during the Time of Isolation, and that Miles inherited his species from Aral. Incidentally, Ivan does not seem very pleased about being a firebird. You might not want to belabor the point with him.
We have attached a list of unfortunate disasters both within the Imperium and throughout the nexus occuring in Linyabel's universe between the years 2978 and 3001 which could conceivably be averted by the placement of relatively trivial resources accessible to probable readers of this letter. While they may not all match, especially if you succeed in avoiding some of the early ones and this has knock-on effects for later items, preventing even just one would likely be worth the time it would take to try to intervene for them all.
Isabella wishes to register that she is generally prone to calling both of her parents by their first names when they are not around, and she is not adopted; therefore if you notice Nika doing this you should not assume it is because she is adopted or that she has complaints about her parenting. Linyabel has instances of both of you, albeit as in-laws, and expects Nika to have rather few complaints about her parenting.
Attached are biographies of both of us, and more pictures, including a picture of Isabella at roughly Nika's age with her parents on her father's home planet (in case there is any resemblance between her parents and Nika's birth parents which could demystify her origins; we imagine Simon is very disgruntled about her mysterious origins). These are included principally for Nika's own reference and curiosity later on but they contain nothing we are not willing to have seen by viewers of your choice, although another tidbit of peculiar alt-related coincidence of the same general flavor as Linyabel's marriage to her Miles appears in a sidenote within Isabella's biography, and you may wish to be circumspect about springing that on people. (Specifically, in 2979 in Linyabel's world, Miles was cloned - see list of unfortunate disasters for details; the clone's childhood is a tragedy and the project for which he was made a would-be catastrophe - and the bar labels Isabella's husband said clone's "half-alt" despite total lack of physical resemblance between them even to the level visible between us and Nika.)
Linyabel has also taken the liberty of supplying books in the oeuvre of Thalia Gimicar, an author whom her Cordelia favors, some of which are not likely to have been published yet (prior publications are included in case you have the misfortune of living in a universe without Thalia Gimicar).
Best wishes,
Lady haut Linyabel Miriat Vorkosigan
and Isabella T'Mir
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
She reads it. She reads it again. She peruses the attachments.
She looks up at Bothari.
"It seems you went to a magic place, and met people there," she says. "And they might have done something to help Miles. We should get him to his doctor to make sure."
She looks up at Bothari.
"It seems you went to a magic place, and met people there," she says. "And they might have done something to help Miles. We should get him to his doctor to make sure."
Konstantine Bothari
washed-in-blood
"Yes, milady."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"I'll go and give Nika back her pen and then we can go."
She finds Nika.
She finds Nika.
Nika has been playing with Ivan, but she abandons the toys for her pen as soon as Cordelia offers it back. "Are you going to let Miles out of his brace?" she says. "He's all better."
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"Yes. I'm going to take him to his doctor right now," she says. "When I get back, I'd like you to show me where you put all the pens, but I need to get Miles to his doctor first."
"They're in a box," says Nika. "Go take Miles to the doctor and then I can teach him to walk!"
Cordelia Naismith
greatcomposure
"I will do that."
Off she goes to do that.
Off she goes to do that.
Nika goes and waits by the door some more. Maybe more people will appear.
Drou conveys Gregor home.
Drou conveys Gregor home.
Gregor is a little tired, but not too tired to say, "Hi Nika."
"Hi!" Nika hugs his leg. And then she realizes that she has been misinforming her loved ones and should correct this. "Gregor, I'm not actually a fairy, it turns out, I'm a dragon."
"Are you?" he inquires. "How do you know?"
"The magic bar told me! And Miles is a unicorn and Ivan is a firebird but he seems not to like that and Bothari is a fuzzy bear thing."
"What magic bar?"
"Ivan found it! And he got me, and I got Miles, and there were our grownups in it, and they gave us stuff and we came home from it. Look at this!" She puts her pen in drawing mode - this takes her a couple tries; it's not that accustomed to her gestures yet - and draws a squiggle through the air. "One of my grownups invented these!"
Gregor blinks at the pen.
"...What do you mean by your grownups?"
"They didn't look like me the way Miles's grownup looked like Miles and Ivan's grownup looked like him - Gregor, Ivan's grownup was so boring, it's sad - but the bar said they were my grownups, I'm going to be like them when I grow up except different looking. And a dragon. And adopted, they weren't adopted."
"Where was the magic bar?" he asks next, frowning thoughtfully.
"It was out the door to the garden but it's not there anymore. They said so, but I checked, and it really wasn't."
"Does this have anything to do with why Cordelia had to go home early?"
"She had to come home to take Miles to the doctor to check that really truly the grownups fixed him and he can learn to walk okay now, yeah."
"Hmm," says Gregor. "So being a dragon isn't at all like being a fairy, then, because being a fairy was pretend."
"Yeah. I wasn't even pretending the right thing! There weren't any fairies in the magic bar at all. I can't turn into a dragon yet because I don't have a magic thingy but we're going to learn to make them, we got magic books."
"Can I see your magic books?"
"Sure! I can send them to your pen. You get a pen. It's the one your grownup picked. He wasn't there but they had one so they knew what kind you'd want." Nika performs arcane pen gestures.
"Where is my pen?" he asks reasonably.
"It's in the box of pens. This way." Nika shows him this way, and the box of pens, and finds the one labeled Gregor. "You get the pointy kind."
Gregor picks up his pen. He observes its pointiness.
"How does it work?"
"How does it work?"
"If you wave it around it will teach you to use it!" she says. "I've had mine for hours now, it's the best thing."
Gregor waves his pen around experimentally.
This calls up a tutorial! The tutorial explains that a pen is very like a comconsole. It tells him that he can change its default gestures if he wants, and explains the default gestures to a) make the pen work almost exactly like a comconsole, b) draw, c) write with gestures in Cyrillic, d) do specialized pen-things that comconsoles cannot do. He is supposed to imitate these gestures as they are introduced so the pen can learn how he holds it and moves it. It is a very good tutorial. Linyabel hires excellent help.
Gregor becomes totally absorbed in figuring out the pen. It's fascinating.
Nika sits by him and hugs his leg with one arm and does pen things with the other hand.
He ruffles her hair occasionally, because she is little and cute.
When he manages at last to find and begin reading one of the magic books, he becomes even more fascinated.
When he manages at last to find and begin reading one of the magic books, he becomes even more fascinated.
"I wonder if you're a thing," says Nika, when she notices what he's reading. "Bar couldn't tell, because you weren't there."
"I don't know how to tell," he says thoughtfully. "And... people might be upset, if I was a thing."
This is the sort of thing you have to think about as an emperor.
This is the sort of thing you have to think about as an emperor.
"Well, you don't have to turn into it. Ivan doesn't want to turn into a firebird. But I want to turn into a dragon! And fly! Dragons can do that! Also Miles needs to turn into a unicorn and I can ride him around and we can do unicorn dancing like horse dancing only with a unicorn."
"I think," says Gregor, "people will still be upset if I'm a thing, even if I don't turn into it at all."
"Oh. Well, don't tell them, then, if you are."
He nods thoughtfully.
Leghug. "Can you learn to do magic and not be a secret about it, though?"
"I don't know."
"Hmmm. Well, I'm going to do that. And if you need magic done and you can't do magic because of stuff I will do it."
"Thank you, Nika." He gives her a smile.
Nika beams up at him.