"I suppose not," says Shell Bell.

"I think at best I'm going to be 'the one with the wings'," says Angela ruefully. "If I'm less lucky it'll be something like "the sheltered fragile one"; I don't think I made the best early impression on Amariah."

"That might've been my fault," Micaiah says cheerfully.

"I don't think it was, really, I think I just - failed to know an embarrassing subset of things? She was very kind about it, really."

"What things didn't you know, or don't you want to talk about it?" asks Shell Bell.

"...Before I read your entry in the guestbook I was not aware that it was something people did to date within their own gender," says Angela quietly. "My education on the subject has been theoretical and designed around the fact that I belong to an endangered species."

Shell Bell peers into that silence.

It is the silence of Sherlock actively declining to have an opinion on something.

Okay then.

"Sorry?" says Angela uncertainly.

"You don't have to apologize. I could probably have made it to our age without noticing it being a thing if I hadn't been coming to Milliways from age six and if I didn't watch TV," says Shell Bell. "It's not like anyone ever sat me down and explained it per se."

"...What is TV?"

"...your world is going to be an experience," says Shell Bell. "TV is... a form of storytelling or news reporting that works by recording moving pictures, and sound. It's displayed on a screen and it's like you're seeing the event that's depicted, miniaturized and captured for replay."

"We have some music recordings, although we no longer know how to make new ones and they can only be found at the Eyrie and Monteverde. Adding pictures on a screen sounds interesting," says Angela.

"It sounds fun," says Micaiah.

"Potentially, although since even recording music was a technology our ancestors relinquished, I'm not so sure it doesn't have some... awful consequence I can't think of off the top of my head," muses Angela.

"...Well, it kind of does," admits Shell Bell. "Our world had a particularly nasty... event... that was televised, and if it hadn't been possible to record it I think the event would've been less effective at its intended purposes. Although that took way more than the mere existence of the technology and I'm not planning to abolish TV or anything."

Shell Bell has a look at that silence, too.

Its contents are predictably bloody.

"What are you doing when you look at her like that?"

"I can read her mind," explains Shell Bell, taking her girlfriend's hand and nuzzling her shoulder. "Stella can read Alice's mind, too."

"I want you to read my mind," says Micaiah, snuggling up to Angela.

"We'll talk to Peninnah," says Angela noncommittally. "- What is it like?"