Isabella continues her work on motion magic. Metis has been paying less attention to her even when she's around; Isabella's learned enough that the marginal value of working with a teacher is diminishing and the apprenticeship will probably be brought to a formal end soon enough. Then she'll have to find somewhere else to go, probably her dad's house or the clan enclave. The former will be easier to secretly practice her new branch of magic in. The latter will be easier to have sex with Kas in without unwanted interference. Maybe she should just find her own place, somehow. She's not sure how to find opportunities for it. Metis stumbled across her house by sheer accident. But she's got a few months to think it over. (And an alethiometer, for that matter. It can probably find a house that she can just move into, with Kas reading it.)
"I think it's a few things," he says. "One of them's about the other me she's fucking, and I don't know much about that. But the asteroid—I really like people," he explains. "All of me do. I don't need to be close to them personally—I like it, I don't need it—but I love cities, I hate being out on my own in the middle of nowhere for too long. He's the same way. It would've killed him to be out there with nobody else around, if it weren't for Milliways. And he gets why she did it, and he's not mad, but it breaks his heart a little that she'd do that to him."
"Thanks," she says, petting Petaal's head. (This has turned into a casual gesture; it's not that it feels different, it's that the feeling is natural and not so momentous now.) "I hope there's lots too! I particularly wanna meet the asteroid one. I don't think I know how to put anyone on an asteroid, so she's got magic and seriously different, powerful magic at that."
"I will be very upset with any of me who put you on an asteroid. If one of them says she's going to and I'm not there, tell her you've got a me and she should talk it over with me first. We ought to be able to come up with some less unpleasant arrangement. It's not as though you go on uncontrollable murder sprees or anything."
"I know," soothes Isabella. "I have no reason to believe that any of me will care why you are not going on uncontrollable murder sprees as long as you don't. It can be because you don't feel like it - as long as you reliably don't feel like it - or because it would upset me - as long as you reliably don't want to upset me - or whatever."