"Perhaps the shape of one's planet should be an item in the list of important world characteristics," says Stalas. "Actually, maybe we should all have written the names of our worlds on our nametags when those were going around."

"Solvei, what do you think of 'Wish' for ours?"

"Two votes in favour," says Solvei.

Bells write "Wish" and "Nexus" on each other's nametags.

Solvei takes it upon herself to add world names to the Miles table. Wish for her, Nexus for Miles and Mark, Thedas for Stalas, Chronicle for Milo, Elcenia for Mial, and then she shrugs and hands the marker to Ashras.

Triplets get "Suranse". Ashras passes the marker to the Ivans.

Who all also write their worlds on each other's name tags, corresponding to the choices of the relevant Mileses.

"Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you, Stalas," says Ashras.

"Happy to help," says Stalas. "So at this point it's definitely a bad idea for us all to sit down and play a strategy game, right?"

"Tell me you're joking," says Elarron.

"I will physically stop anyone who tries to get this number of Mileses and their siblings competing in a free-for-all of any kind," says Mark.

"Put them on teams."

"No," says Elarron. "No. Noooooo. No." Pause. "No."

Inlaith laughs. "Yeah, I'm with Elarron. As much fun as it would be. Especially if I got to play."

"So what is the state of the art in handling your alien invasion?"

"Send the winged ones, hope for the best?"

"The who?"

"The...? Oh," he says. "Of course. You don't have winged ones on your weird solid planets. I don't know what I expected."

"In our world," says Ashras, "when a human reaches some vague, heavily individualized, hard-to-predict threshold of personal achievement, they sprout wings and become immortal-unless-killed and much more difficult to kill. The Ceirene call them Unfading; the Aluvai just call them winged. In addition to the wings and immortality they also get Spheres, which are like little personal universes that grow slowly over time. A winged person can make a portal to their personal Sphere from wherever they happen to be standing, except that if they're standing in the Sphere of another living person they need that person's help. And I guess we all just assumed this went without saying."

"It did not go without saying. We have not encountered anything even analogous."

"And by that, you mean...?"

"Does everyone just get old and die?"

"Well, I'm working on it, and some things I have collected here are pretty promising, but by and large, yes."

"Dragons don't get old and die anymore, but that's because some people came through to fix all of the everything to do with dragons having inconvenient properties. And Mial."

"...So. Mileses," says Elarron. "Is it time to get your wings, or what?"