"...oh," says Finnah, not at "magic interdimensional bar" but at "alt". "Well, I dunno about me, but you three," point point point, "look like Mial."

"'Mial'," muses the third Mial-like person. "And where is Mial? Fetchable without letting the door shut behind you? You lose access to this place when it does that."

"Uh, he's not anywhere nearby and I don't bring my crystals to work but I could song him until he tries a whisper spell?"

"What does age five have to do with anything?" wonders Finnah. "I mean, that would have been adorable, but not that different from four or six."

"Well, in my personal timeline - shared up to at least that point by a close alt of mine who's been and gone - up until age five I lived my life in a spinal brace that pretty much completely prevented me from going anywhere under my own power," says Miles. "And the five-year-old Miles who was just here was really ticked off at me for being twenty years older and no longer thusly confined."

"Ohhhh. I didn't get a really close look at your eyes - okay, Mial is a shren, shrens grow ten times slower than humans do. He's my age, which is to say a hundred seventy."

"...That's a new one," says Miles, after a pause. "Eyes? What about eyes?"

"Behold how my hair is super red? For guys it's eye color and he's a silver. You probably just all have gray eyes, slightly different if you know what to look for - I don't hang out with shrens and dragons often enough to be sure I could tell a silver apart from a platinum or a spelter but a silver from a human is easy. Come to think of it, he," she points at Ivan, "looks like Mial's cousin but the eye color is usually the first thing I pay attention to on him and brown is way more different from gold than gray from silver."

"Oh joy," says Ivan, "more of me."

"Oh joy," Mark says brightly, "more of you."

"Aurin's not bad, for a dragon. Mial can go get him if he wants, Mial can teleport. Do you think I need to open the door to song him?"

"Quite likely. There's a time-pausing effect."

A short pause, and then Mial whisper-spells Finnah: "Where the hell are you, besides 'not Elcenia'? And why did this spell work anyway?"

"Teleport to my work and come see!"

Finnah giggles and lets the door close. "He's still too tall to grow his hair out and pass for a halfling-form, though. Alts!" she adds helpfully to Mial, because: word.

"Oh, yeah, how did he take the news?" wonders Finnah.

"Um," says Mial. "Coughed all over the girl he was kissing at the time, called me an inconsiderate ass, asked after my reasoning, sat down to a board game with me. We're fine."

"You don't have to get Aurin but you might as well," says Ivan. "He would get you. I know because I found this place first. Do I want to know what your coughing-fit-inducing news was? You're about the right age to get yourself a small army..."

"Mial with an army. Hoo boy. We live in a demilitarized country!"

"I used to be a shren, but I took the miracle, and when I can get a day or two off work, I'm going to fly into the fucking sun," says Finnah cheerfully.

"You sound," says Ivan, "very pleased about that."

"Aurin and his mom went one time. I think he was like a hundred fifty something?"

"Red-groups like fire. Flying into the sun will not harm her," Mial clarifies. "Anyway. Should I go get Aurin?"

"Definitely," says Mark.

"Did you find out what Finnah was doing in another world?" Aurin inquires, when Mial reappears.

"Yeah, one appeared in the back of her candy store, and it's full of our alts," says Mial. "There's a human version of you, and one human and one otherworldly not-very-dwarflike dwarf version of me, and the human me's brother is weirdly enthusiastic about meeting you."

"...Uh, that's weird, but okay," says Aurin, holding out his hand.

"Oh, I'm Finnah. Did I forget to - I forgot my nametag, second time this week, I'm getting mop duty for sure. Bleah."

"In what way do I find you interesting that is distinct from how normal people do it?" wonders Mark.

"I haven't yet caught Aurin doing anything especially and lovably Ivanish but I have no reason to think he won't," says Mark. "'Does that imply that you are very good at scoot-racing' sounded like it would've qualified if I'd had any idea what he was talking about."

"Fun fact, this little symptom of not flying around is also a significant chunk of why being a shren sucks so very much," Finnah says.

"You said 'to start with'. Something else happens after that?"

"Oh yeah. The tiredness goes away and then it starts hurting, and if you are a little baby shren who cannot shapeshift and therefore cannot fly, it just gets worse. He's teeny because he had a weird reaction to painkillers. I was on the same ones and nothing happened, though, maybe you guys are just supposed to be teeny."

"Fifty-fifty," says Finnah. "Are you guys not fifty-fifty? If I have alts and we cannot bond over how hot girls are I do not know what I shall do."

"We match," says Ivan. "Linyabel, did it come up with Isabella?"

"She's straight, I contribute to my constellation's quota of bisexuality," says Linyabel. "But that was designed in, so it may not be a useful data point."

"Ours is Elcenia," says Finnah. "That's explicitly the world, the planet doesn't even bother to have a name besides 'planet' in most languages - Draconic does it, but Draconic does everything up to and including bully small children."

"Words don't just have denotations, they have connotations," says Finnah, "and for most things Draconic is pretty good about coughing up the exact set you're looking for, and for 'shren' it's really, really not."

"You keep saying that Mial's father is a dragon. What is his mother?"

Bar can probably confirm safety. Its effect on old age on recipients is non-obvious and would have come up if there were a known reaction, but he's very well-preserved.

Mial goes out the door and teleports away to find his parents.

Finnah holds the door, since she is wearing an apron and can shoo anybody who comes near.

Mial returns, parents in tow.

Avar looks around curiously as he steps into the bar; Koridaar does the same.

"Avar's not going to look any older than that," says Finnah, "least not human-shaped, dragon thing. Did Mial explain you stuff?" she asks the parentals.

"Quote, 'alts!', end quote," says Avar.

"I got several more words than that," says Koridaar. "But I'm given to understand it amounted to the same thing."

"Well, these two are Miles and Stalas, alts of Mial," point point, "and that's Miles's brother Mark, and that's their cousin Ivan, and I'm Miles's wife, Linyabel. You've missed another couple of sets with different mixing and matching who've already gone home, but I'm planning to loiter here for days and everyone else who's intending on going back through our door is waiting on me rather than skip the intervening waiting through the magic of time dilation."

"My parental situation doesn't match either of the alts of me I've met and they don't match each other either. This could be sample size or differences in our various altly regularities, I suppose, we haven't seen more than four of anyone."

"I have not yet forgotten what my own father looks like," Avar says dryly.

"That is the 'have the correct opinions before I start telling you what they are' look," says Aurin. "Among other uses."

Miles laughs. "Yeah. On the General it saw a lot of use as the 'I was a war hero before you were born, sit down and shut up' look. Similar use case, different context, maybe."

"Ours isn't a war hero. I mean, maybe he is actually, for all I know he fought in the South Anaist Conflict or something, but it doesn't really come up and it would've been a long time ago, he mostly goes on about being a council member and super-old," says Aurin.

"Ours is a war hero," says Miles. "It wouldn't be much of a stretch to call him the war hero, of his generation at least. And there was plenty of war-heroing to go around in those days."

"I do the odd bit of translation and solve problems everyone else has given up on," says Avar. "My official job title is National Applied Policy Authority. Translation isn't usually attached, it's just a matter of 'does anyone in the office speak this language? well, the dragon had better'."

"Are we going around talking about our professional lives now?" asks Finnah. "I work at a candy shop."

"I could reasonably be summarized as an engineer."

"I'm unemployed," says Mark.

"And I'm a research wizard," says Koridaar.

"I've already collected textbooks on one apparently portable form of magic. Anything I can import from you?"

"Elcenian wizardry doesn't work outside of Elcenia. But I'm interested in your apparently portable magic," she says.

"It involves a lot of complicated drawing and I have no substantial evidence that it can do anything you can't, except be relocated to other universes, but Bar will supply textbooks on it. What about non-wizardry magic?"

"Generally you have to be born with those," says Finnah. "You'd probably know if you had any of the kinds."

"Purely for my own curiosity, I think I'd like a set of textbooks," says Koridaar.

"Meaningfully useful... hm, yes, I think so," says Koridaar, nodding. "Thank you."

"Linyabel invented the holo-pen, hardware and software, and they sell like ice cream in summertime on Zoave Twilight. She has a pet neuroscientist."

"Dr. Cheung is not my pet."

"Someone explain 'neuroscientist' in more detail?" says Mial.

"Neuroscience is the rather medical study of brains. Dr. Cheung does groundwork in uploading, which would be the instantiation of a person's mind in software; it's at least sixty years away, even optimistically, but if it works it could mean universal immortality, and depending on some other factors possibly resurrection of adequately stored deceased individuals. I pay him a salary, reimburse him for research expenses, and provide software support, and I'll pay his assistant too when he finds one he likes, because that seems very cheap for universal immortality."

"Yeah, no kidding," says Mial. "Although I'm not sure 'software' sounds like a nice place to live."

"Well, obviously that would require some work, in order for the uploaded individuals not to have to spend all their time in a featureless wasteland, but we've already got a lot of preexisting technology for connecting experiences to minds, mostly used for immersive fiction. Delivering experiences to an upload is almost certainly much easier than getting someone uploaded in the first place. Certainly all the tests will be on animals until we're extremely confident that uploaded people will not be better off dead. And if the virtual environment turns out to be very complicated or people simply don't prefer it, it should be likewise fairly straightforward to put them in robot bodies - or even figure out a way to clone blank brains and redownload them, although that's uncomfortably close to the current leading brand of functional immortality, which involves human sacrifice, and I'd want to be very sure no one would be tempted to take shortcuts with the downloading."

"Thank you," Mark says dryly.

Stalas squeezes Mark's hand and says, "I'm missing something here. Human sacrifice...?"

"If someone wants to be immortal in the current state of technology, first of all they need to avoid sudden death in any situation that isn't amenable to cryopreservation and subsequent revival, and second of all, when they get very old or develop other intractable health problems, they commission clones of themselves, who grow at an accelerated rate to adulthood and are then murdered and receive brain transplants. This is not very popular and it's only legal on one planet, but it happens on a routine if not overwhelmingly frequent basis. Mark is a clone, just not for that purpose."

"Mark's half-alt Lalita - who was married to my alt Isabella - was genetically engineered, differently enough from me to have ceased to age and such that his blood, transfused, can heal an amazing variety of conditions very quickly, albeit not as instantly as it sounds like your lights can. So I may be able to make non-software-based inroads on the galactic lifespan with what he left for me to look at."

"That's interesting," says Koridaar. "Does his blood make people cease to age too? Or have you not had the opportunity to test it?"

"Isabella's received transfusions and hasn't noticed any effect over about seven years," says Linya. "But it's possible she simply wouldn't have noticed; I'm younger than she is and I can expect to look younger than a non-engineered person of the same age for my entire life, and our alt didn't share our face and was also shy of four years old. Perhaps she's aging much slower than she otherwise would. We don't have any better data. Bar can tell whether substances are safe for possible recipients that she has available to look at, and we have one full dose left - I don't need it to try to duplicate the effect at home; I have his genome sequenced."

"...hmm," says Koridaar. "Is that a suggestion?"

"Yes," interjects Miles.

"Let's make the experiment."

"Noted. I'm sure I can find some way to pass the time. Reading your runecasting textbooks, maybe."

"I think I heard the phrase 'translation spell', so you'll probably still be able to figure them out after you've got them home. I wonder if you'd find pens useful without a background in computers or an infrastructure designed for them. Probably not very, but maybe enough to be worthwhile."

"Pens...?"

"Holo pens." Linya pulls hers off her necklace and draws a line. "They'll store any sort of thing that can be considered information - text, images, holos, sound, etcetera - though you need another bit of equipment to get sound out again. The tutorial is designed for people who've seen comconsoles before, though, the version for the uninitiated isn't done yet."

"That looks very interesting," says Koridaar.

"'Comconsole'... tell me more about those," Mial says thoughtfully.

"They do what pens do, but you can't pick them up to draw with or carry them around, and they don't need a peripheral to produce sound. Oh, and all these devices network with each other - I can send a message from my pen to Miles's without having to be nearby."

"I want one. I want dozens. I want to manufacture them on Elcenia," says Mial. "Pens more than comconsoles but I don't see why I should limit myself."

"Well, I've already given away the blueprints once - but I'm not sure you have the technological infrastructure to read them usefully. Maybe you can skip a lot of steps with magic or something."

"Occasionally even more so," murmurs Linya. "Well, they come in various colors and styles, have a catalog, you can bring home a box of them if you like." She tosses Mial a catalog.

"Watch out, everybody, Mial's had an Idea," murmurs Avar affectionately.

"Aieeeee," says Finnah.

Mark too.

"I mean, are you thinking more of the 'drive an antique tank, dig an escape tunnel' genre of Milescapade or the 'avert a civil war, liberate a POW camp' type?" wonders Miles. "I'm sensing more of the latter."

"Oh, either, they're both very different from the inventor bit."

"The tunnel is a childhood incident that collapsed on my head and the Dendarii are his plausibly deniable covert mercenary corps."

"Sometimes extravagantly accidental," adds Ivan. "And extravagantly illegal, so Gregor has to take the whole shebang as an early Winterfair gift..."

"He likes to say 'let's see what happens'."

"Shortly after I appeared on Barrayar having married Miles, he came over for lunch, waited until Miles was busy chewing, and inquired of me point-blank if I was some sort of spy or saboteur. But he seems to have effectively accepted my statement that I am not from the earliest, though Miles's boss took longer."

"Yeah," says Miles, "I caught how you all just sort of say 'Alts!' at each other and then nod knowingly."

"Well," says Aurin, "you know - alts." He waves at Ivan.

"Makes us very portable," says Finnah. "And I'm obvious from a distance so people go up to me in the street and start speaking Alteisec or whatever, wanting directions, whatever, these guys get less of that."

"I help out when I hear somebody having language trouble, though," says Mial. "Seems the polite thing to do."

"Ivan has been out-Ivaned," snorts Miles.

Miles finds this exchange deeply hilarious.

Avar and Koridaar are carrying on a murmured conversation over there and might plausibly not even have heard.

"If you'd be comfortable asking, we probably have enough grace period for you to lean out the door and see if he's looking at his pen messages right now - do you not even know her name?"

"I would feel very weird sending my father a random pen message about his dead first wife," says Miles. "I think I'll pass. And no, I don't."

"I could've sworn I knew it at one point," says Ivan. "Can't call it to mind."

"Maintaining relationships with multiple partners has been a done thing in many places for a long time," Linya tells Miles. "It's more of a stylistic choice than anything within Cetaganda."

"Yes, I'm aware," says Miles. "I wouldn't find it remarkable if it weren't an alt of my father. It's enough of a strain imagining him with somebody who isn't Mother, let alone imagining him with three such somebodies at once."

"Is this a 'parents thing' or about Aral's alts specifically?"

"...There may be overlap," says Mial. "I'm having a hard time imagining Dad with somebody else, too."

Finnah is not looking at any one or making any sounds. She's spacing out and leaning on a wall.

"How do you guys know Finnah, anyway, she doesn't seem to be one of Linyabel or either of Mark like at all."

"Oh," says Mial. "Uh. Has anyone mentioned yet that shrenhood is contagious...? Well, it is. Correction, it was, the miracle-workers fixed that on their way through. But a hundred and seventy years ago there were no miracle workers available, and somebody left a shren egg sitting in a public park near my house when I was a few weeks old, and out hatched Finnah, and when there's a shren and a dragon near each other in natural form regardless of intervening materials, the dragon gets got, and that is how I'm a shren. And, my parents being my parents, Mom took a personal interest in Finnah and Dad backed her, and... at first it looked like Finnah's mom was fine to keep her but then that turned out not to be true so my parents took over."

Finnah mutters to herself but doesn't add anything to this description.

Bar comes up with a game involving colorful pegs that can be flipped over and hopped around in simple patterns but over a large and changeable board.

"Thank you." He gestures Mial and Miles to a table and deposits the game in front of them. "Sit. Play. Stalas, you can join in if you feel like it."

"Mial is like frightening amounts of good at board games, heads up," says Finnah. "I mean, maybe that's a thing, maybe you all are, but he's older, and he plays a lot. He's won money, playing, what-all, pel-pwon and four corners and stuff, if he picked one and stuck with it he'd place in squarewide for sure."

"What is it like to care that much about pegs," wonders Ivan vaguely.

"The pegs are not the point," growls Miles. "The point is victory."

"But if this were... Gestured Nouns, or something, you don't get weird about Gestured Nouns even though winning it is entirely possible," says Aurin.

"Different kind of victory," says Mial. "Oh, fuck you!" (This to Stalas, who has just eliminated one of Mial's pegs.) "You're gonna regret that, you overgrown mushroom!"

"What's this meant to accomplish, exactly?" Ivan asks Mark.

"I'm trying to rate Mial's - Milesness," he says. "I suspected it might be higher than baseline, and I think I'm right."

"Why would Milesness come in amounts?" wonders Finnah.

"There are some relevant things Mial has obviously got more of than Miles. Things like the weight and applicability of 'shren' versus 'mutie'. And, I don't know... there are certain kinds of, of personal intensity that I'm reading higher on him than Miles or Stalas. Maybe it won't make sense to someone who isn't an expert in Miles, I don't know."

"I have lived with one for more than a century," Finnah says.

"I spent my entire childhood and adolescence training to be one."

"Uh, why, does it pay well?" Finnah asks.

"It wasn't by my choice. Someone wanted Miles replaced with a substitute who could mimic him well enough to get past relevant security measures, kill a lot of his relatives, and become emperor of his planet, hopefully sparking a nasty civil war in the process. So this person created me and put me through intensive study in the subjects of Miles and murder until he could set up the switch. I didn't like him very much, and I ditched his plan as soon as I could."

"Oh. Good on you, then," says Finnah.

"Thanks."

"If you do have one of me, I bet he's from Oridaan, then," says Mark. "But no conquest of Komarr, no Solstice Massacre, no embittered David Galen with a laser-targeted grudge against the Vorkosigans - I think you're safe."

"Someone did attack them once, but they used me, and I don't think I'm you," Finnah says.

"I don't think you're me, either. You're very un-me-like."

The scanner estimates her age significantly lower than before, although there aren't any obvious outward signs yet.

Linya doesn't consider this exciting enough to interrupt the conversation Koridaar is having with Avar.

They continue quietly talking about the implications of longevity.

"Why?" asks Finnah. She is still sitting on Mial.

"They've escalated to unforgivable sniping. Well, 'unforgivable' might be a little strong. Very nasty sniping, anyway. Which they allow each other by virtue of being alts, but any outsider stepping into that crossfire disturbs the balance and makes it all hurt again."

Finnah decides to stop being on Mial. She flies away and shifts midair, feet on the ground. "Weird," she says.

"I was right," he adds, "Mial is pushing harder than the other two."

"And they're ganging up on him," says Finnah.

"Yeah. That part might stabilize out, though. Even the other thing might, given enough time. You may have noticed that when a Miles is pushed he tends to push back."

"Nooooo, really?" Finnah flops into a chair.

Mark giggles.

Meanwhile, Ivan and Aurin are telling each other about their respective current girlfriends.

Mark idly eavesdrops.

Vivienne's virtues have already been spoken; Siya, apparently, likes to fly, and plays the huan (an instrument) and amisro (a sport), the latter of which comes with a uniform that Aurin appreciates very much. She doesn't like kids but does like drakes and is currently between pet ones after her prior one succumbed to old age; Aurin is considering getting her one for Hearthnight. It is her favorite holiday and she's planning to be in a parade for it.

Well, that's adorable.

"Is this topic of conversation really that interesting to you?" Ivan wonders in Mark's direction.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"You've never met Vivienne or Siya?" suggests Aurin.

"Should that matter?"

"I mean, I suppose if you're coming back to Barrayar you might meet Vivienne eventually but I can't imagine that this would be particularly useful prep work," says Ivan. "Is this just 'Ivans are fascinating, even when they're going on about total strangers to make point by point comparisons'?"

"Yes."

Mark gives a little shudder. "Children. No thank you. Not even a child Ivan. Especially not a child Ivan."

"He was adorable, and very well behaved if I do say so myself," says Ivan. "His cousins were yelling and he was perfectly content to play whirligig. Children on Easy Mode."

"I fear the effect of me on children, not the effect of children on me."

"Why?" asks Aurin.

"I'm not very good at talking to people without inadvertently horrifying them. I don't care to test myself on people who are likely to be harder to understand and easier to upset."

"What about a little Miles, since you're the expert on Mileses?" wonders Ivan. "If he'd been here alone."

"...I am slightly less overwhelmingly reluctant to interact with a child Miles. But I'd still rather flee, all else being equal."

"Which one are you calling obnoxious? The one you grew up with, or the one who was in here earlier? Or both?"

"Both, although I noticed it less when I was also a small child," says Ivan.

"What, even with the collapsing escape tunnels?"

"I noticed, but I didn't attribute it to obnoxious childhood," corrects Ivan. "At the time."

"What did you attribute it to?"

"I don't remember. Maybe I should've asked Little Ivan."

Mark giggles.

Finnah goes up to the bar and asks for a book of candy recipes Elcenia doesn't have with which she may make a billion aaberik when she has her own store. She gets a fat volume in a language nobody in the bar has seen before and flops down into her chair again to read it.

"At least you didn't know me as a small child," muses Mark. "Now there was a little fucker you didn't want to get on the wrong side of. You know they shipped me off Jackson's Whole early because I was such a troublemaker? I think they were afraid one of my escape attempts would succeed."

"Where would you've gone?" asks Ivan.

"Away. Anywhere. Offplanet, as soon as possible."

"I meant more like, would you have ever turned up at home."

"Who knows? I didn't really start getting the details of my heritage until I was already on Earth. I caught enough references beforehand that I probably could've pieced it together eventually, but it would've taken a while and I might not have cared unless I expected a warm welcome I could exploit."

"Exploitable," snorts Ivan. "That's one way to describe Aunt Cordelia's sentiments."

"By my five-year-old definition they certainly would've been. On the other hand, since every other clone I knew was made for the brain-transplant business, I might not have wanted to risk contact with my progenitor."

"...Eh?" says Mark.

"Vampires," says Aurin. "They wind up with the lifespans of whoever they bite, averaged out, so they're very fond of dragons, we're delicious."

"Shrens too, I imagine?"

"Yeah, s'pose. I think I've seen Mial with bite marks."

"Hm, since everyone else with the right knowledge base is occupied right now - how bad does it get for shrens? Pain-wise, I mean."

"Uh - very? I don't think there's a great way to describe it - uh, shrens and miracles who've been through the whole usual course of it can completely ignore basically anything else that happens to them as long as it doesn't lose them a form. Finnah has a story about how some guy tried to mug her once when she was on a dance company trip to Baveria and she just grabbed his knife in her bare hand and grinned at him and he got scared and ran away," says Aurin. "...Then she bitched about getting blood on her dance uniform and had to fly to a light, but the rest of the girls in her company were very impressed and bought her an iced planet."

"I have a baseless hunch that that might be related to why Mial is so... accelerated in his Milesness," says Mark. "And my baseless hunches about Miles and his alts are usually spot-on."

"How's that meant to work?" asks Aurin.

"Intuition formed over long years of study?" he suggests.

"No, I mean, how's the esu thing supposed to turn up the Milesitude," Aurin clarifies.

"Good question. Damned if I know. Something about - pressure," he says.

"It does that, all right. He held out without the painkillers longer than me, too," Finnah remarks from where she is studying the art of confectionery.

"Through sheer stubbornness, no doubt. What was he like?"

"He... calmed down," says Aurin. "I didn't hang out with Finnah back then but I'm told she was a screaming terror. He just sort of tried very hard to keep busy and when it didn't work he'd go on long crying jags - when he was littler and it wasn't that bad and when he was on the drugs he was much more fluttery and excitable."

"Yeah. Pressure," nods Mark. "Makes sense."

"You can get your doctorate in Miles-psychology from some minimally reputable university. Doctor Mark," Ivan tosses off.

He giggles.

"I think," says Koridaar, "once we verify the extent of the effect, I might like to take my runecasting study materials and go home. Otherwise I expect to be waiting a long time for Mial to be done swearing at his alts."

"I suppose there is no good way to predict when the rejuvenating blood will be done with me," says Koridaar.

"I could guess," says Linya, "but since we have no planned responses to any of the possible answers and I don't know if I'd be even close I'm not sure I should bother naming a number."

"Yes. Well then. Perhaps I'll get started on my reading now."

Books are supplied. Linya inclines her head and goes back to her own merry barsploitation.

Koridaar sits with her husband and reads.

The various Mileses swear at each other.

"Later, Aunt Koridaar."

Avar helps carry the books. Off they go.

"Well, this is some forest. This looks like the sort of forest you get turned into a hedgehog for poaching in, remind me not to hunt anything on this trip. I suppose if the idea is not to try to go to the forest we could try going to the Caves of Fire and Night and do my thing first."

"There is that... I don't know, something here feels off. Does something here feel off to you?"

"You mean besides the hedgehog thing?" Pause. "Yeah, actually, this does not look like forestry class in knight school." Jann peers around. "There... are... too many sticks? On the ground? Wow, that sounds incredibly stupid when I say it."

"Mm - well, you can't get much more 'not trying to enter the Enchanted Forest' than 'attempting to depart a clump of trees for not-a-clump-of-trees' - let's go."

"Ah, shit," says Jann, dropping to his knees to assess the damage and render assistance. "...Also: where in fuck are we?"

Jann is brisk, and as gentle as possible, and not a stranger! Presently all the bones are located where they ought to be. Jann picks up his cousin and makes for the building.

Having to be carried places is also pretty annoying, but again, if somebody has to do it Jann is one of the best possible candidates.

Jann manages to get the door open without jostling or discharging Milo.

"Uh, hi."

"...What the fuck," says Milo.

"Welcome to this puzzling interdimensional bar, additional Miles! Those are yous, except that one, and we're hims, and that's a you's wife," says Ivan.

"Cursed by a wicked fairy so my bones break if you look at them funny. But also blessed by a quick-thinking non-wicked fairy, so in a week the ones I just broke will be fine again. Nice to meet you too, Not Me."

"That's Mark. That's Miles. That's Mial. That's Stalas. I'm Ivan, this is Aurin, I go with Miles and he goes with Mial and Stalas hasn't got one, poor Stalas. That's Linyabel, she goes with Miles."

"Nice to meet you all. What the fuck is going on?"

Miles and Mial and Stalas actually stop swearing at each other in order to pay attention to their newly arrived alt.

"Those three Mileses are having an extremely vicious game of something with pegs," says Aurin. "Is the main event. You just missed Mial's immediate family."

"Alas, with them goes the last dose of nigh-magical healing blood, and its donor is long gone, so we can't help you very much with the bones beyond your already impressive fey blessing."

"There does seem to be an element of spree involved. You've also missed child versions of me, Ivan, and Miles; and another of my alts who came with a 'half-alt' of Mark. 'Alt' being what you are to those individuals who resemble you thusly and 'half-alt' being more complicated and requiring a very crowded personality."

"And a Bothari and a, what was his name, that doctor fellow. Have you got a Bothari?"

"...Doesn't ring a bell..."

"He'd be Milo's bodyguard, if you had one. I don't think anyone's had a Bothari so far except the five-year-old me," says Miles.

"Definitely not ringing any bells," says Milo. "Insofar as anyone is describable as my bodyguard it's Jann, who seems to be spoken for alt-wise. Do we now get to play an exciting game of Guess the Absent Alts? Um, Cath? Glynn? Reko...?"

"Milo's cat, my best friend, Milo's boyfriend," Jann adds helpfully. "In that order. Separately."

"Nothing obvious, but names aren't always definitive," says Linyabel. "Mini-me was adopted as a baby and named Nika, but my other alt and I had similar names. 'Stalas' and 'Milo' have almost nothing in common in terms of sound even absent that confounding factor."

"I don't have a boyfriend, I have a wife. Stalas's boyfriend is Mark. Mial is single. None of us has a cat that I know of," says Miles. "What are these people's other characteristics? And why include the cat?"

"Why not include the cat?" wonders Milo. "Her full name is Catherine. She's shy with strangers but friendly with people she knows and likes, and very few people will believe me about her glorious sense of humour."

"I would imagine so? I mean, we're not witches, so Milo can only understand her via elaborate code and guessing, but I don't think they actually depend on the presence of witches for anything except interpretive services."

"The elaborate code and guessing is really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be," says Milo. "I don't understand why more people don't do it. Well, I guess most people who really want to understand a cat don't also have personal reasons to avoid becoming a witch."

"Aurin's a dragon," clarifies Ivan. "Hence for some reason the eye color while he's shapeshifted like so. I'm not anything interesting but Little Ivan was a secret firebird."

"...well, good," says Milo. "Do continue refraining from carrying me off. So if cats aren't people in your world, maybe Ekaterin is an alt of Cath, but we'd have a hard time finding out since Cath is at home keeping Reko company and you haven't talked to Ekaterin recently. Okay, how about Glynn and Reko. Glynn is... really good at chess, although not nearly as good as me. Reko is... um... the Duke of Ferdinandia? Jann, do you have any better idea of how to describe these people?"

"Reko is very much the duke of Ferdinandia? I don't think I have any recently minted Ferdinandian coins on my person. Heeee is three years older than me - five older than Milo - pretty good at duke-ing, was all set to pine for Milo forever until I did some excruciating matchmaking in which he waited until I was just about despairing of being able to make eye contact again before telling me he was in love with Milo... pale, dark curly hair, an inch shorter than me?"

"...um," says Miles. "This may be ringing a bell. I'm not sure it's a bell I want rung."

"Does he sometimes say 'let's see what happens'?"

"Yeah! He's probably whoever you're thinking of. Is yours his evil twin or something, what's so concerning?"

"He's the emperor of my planet and a close childhood friend and at no point have I ever considered dating him," says Miles.

"...Well, I hope yours isn't just pining forever, but you seem to be doing all right on your end."

"Thank you," says Linya dryly.

"If Gregor is pining after me he's doing it very very quietly," says Miles. "Good God."

"Okay, moving on - Glynn is absurdly good at being a knight, do you have anyone like that around?"