"Okay. Where's your home?"

"The world I'm from is called Telperion but the world I live in is called Warp and there are a couple hundred dimensions all connected to each other and we're kind of a big collective that runs around fixing them all. The Bells call themselves the 'peal'. Because collective noun for Bells."

"...Pun's not translating."

"Your world might not have a collective noun for bells, then. Okay. I can make you a handheld translator but that won't help with puns, I don't think. Anyway, there are lots of us and we have lots of magic and we go around fixing everything and my Bella adopted me because I was so sad all the time and it was really good, I'm really happy now."

"That's sweet. And you can tell I am one because you can specify things to make by them being Bells?"

"Yeah but if I couldn't have told that I could probably have guessed by now because you weren't, like, 'no, me, who would have me run the country' and you had sensible concrete suggestions on how to denominate the money and stuff and I'd definitely have guessed by an hour from now when you'll have heard everything you need to know and figured out how to end slavery."

"If you hadn't known I was one I'm assuming you wouldn't have declared me in charge of anything."

"Well, no. I'd have probably tried to work with the government of some country that doesn't have slaves, are there any of those? And I'd have said 'I will give all this nice stuff to anyone who stops with slaves' and seen if that did it."

"Tsopix doesn't have slavery and harbors runaways; that's why that one fellow wanted to go there."

"Good for them. Then I'd probably have started with them and made them ridiculously nice and then hoped other places were tempted by that."

"Is that what world-fixing usually looks like?"

"No but usually it involves grownups and people who are better at navigating politics and stuff than I am."

"I suppose that would make sense. Why can't you teleport home?"

"Worlds have neighbors. You can mostly only do stuff - jump, summon, find with magic - if it's in your dimension or the dimension next to yours. I jumped two - at least, I think that's what happened, and now I don't neighbor any worlds I know of. I checked them all."

"Are you stuck here forever, then?"

"I wrote them a note and they'll probably be trying to find me, but not very urgently once I tell them there's a Bell here and we're both safe for now and the world's not ending or an Arda or anything - it's not, right -"

"The world is not ending as far as I know, and I don't know what an Arda is. How did you write them a note?"

"There's a Bell who's a demon like me only mine is wished on and his is for real so he can conjure past adjacency limits - he can conjure stuff even if it's not in a dimension next to him - and I can't - and so if I write him letters he can read them by making 'letters addressed to Cam in the last day' and then he can pass them on to everyone else."

"...some of me are male?"

"Yeah, Cam and Kib, but Kib died and reincarnated and he was Aly in his first life, the one who looks like you."

"What do the ones who don't look like me look like?"

He sends the normal girl Bell face - "except Golden who's a vampire -" send - "and T'Mir who's half Vulcan -" send - "and the boy ones look like this -" send.

"Huh. There's nobody that pale around here. - You'll stick out too, but you would anyway with the wings."

"In humans I think it's usually far northern and far southern climates. With Elves the Noldor and Teleri are pale and the Vanyar are like you or darker."

"I suppose that makes sense. Are there a lot of kinds of non-human people?"