Kanim will just be standing over here, trying to get his magic-senses used to what have to be a dozen different kinds of the stuff. No wonder Glass half-blinded herself trying to see it all through her specs.

"I. Uh." Kanim has known her for long enough to recognize that tone even if the exact euphemism is unfamiliar. "Uh." If he had kept that tail he had for longer than a month and a half it would be twitching. "Maaaaybe?"

"Word is, everybody thinks you're cute," she adds.

"How many of you are there?"

"Fusion, Screwdriver, Sapphire, Red, and Iron Man," she says. "And me. Six. Is six too many?"

"It's an amount!" says Kanim. "I can... accompany you on introductions. If you want."

"Awesome," says Tony, and she pecks him on the cheek and leads the three of them in the direction of the orgy chambers. (There are orgy chambers. That is also awesome.)

There's a magical person over there! He spots Kanim coming out of the orgy chambers and smiles knowingly.

"...Hi! You're - something. But everybody here is something and my specialty is place magic, not people magic."

"I am an ingot," he says. "My specialty is seeing magic. This place is incredible - there's more background magic here than I've seen in any other world, even Milliways."

"It's the Enchanted Forest, by far the most naturally magical location in the world. Isn't it fantastic? That's why I live here. Although I do sometimes go on scholarly trips to magical caves and so on."

"You're reasonably interesting yourself," he adds. "Although I almost lose you in the background noise. Tell me about magical caves!"

"There are lots of them! I actually started hanging around with Tony and Bella and Sherlock when the latter two rescued me and Tony from some wizards who were keeping us prisoner in the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises, which I had of course walked right into. With entrances that are often within the forest, there's the Caves of Fire and Night, and the Caves of Chance, and the Caves of Sunless Gardens, and the caves that magically refuse to have any name attached to them. There are fewer farther away - this is the highest concentration of place magic - but I wrote a thesis on the Caves of Irregular Dimensions once, years ago, that's nowhere near here."

"Those are some remarkably descriptive names," he observes. "What was your thesis?"

"I came to no useful conclusions whatsoever! Except that the Caves of Irregular Dimensions are extremely uncooperative. You may read the thesis if you like, although I'd have to go get it from the castle."

Lazarus laughs. "If you say you came to no useful conclusions, I think I'll believe you," he says.

"So how do you know this - crowd?" Kanim asks, looking vaguely around.

"Oh - I'm from Eos. Where wishcoins come from," he says. "I met Stella back before she was a magical space empress."

"This is going to be hard to keep straight," says Kanim. "All these Bellas, all this magic, all these - political entities. Are there six of you, too? I'm told I'm a new face."

"There are not six of me! There is one of me," says Lazarus. "And yes, it is a little daunting, isn't it? But you get used to it. More or less."

"Do you really?" asks Kanim. "It took me a while just to get used to Bella - Glass, I guess, sensible nickname, she does some marvelous things with glass - and now there are twelve more of her! With outrageous magical powers! My skills are going to be redundant. I guess I'll still hang around on account of Tony. And the little ones are fond of me."

"'Outrageous' is a good word for it," he says. "And I could stand to be a little more redundant, honestly. If the Bells consulted me as often as they probably should, there would have to be at least six of me just to keep up with all the new magic."

"Do they not consult you as often as they should?"

"There was some trouble just recently when Sarion joined the peal that could've been avoided if they'd asked me to take a look before anyone started wishing."

"I guess they were in some kind of hurry? I wouldn't describe Be- Glass - as patient."

"They were in a lot of a hurry! It was a very... tense situation," he says. "And emotionally and magically complicated. But it turned out okay in the end."

"That's good then!"

"Yes!"

"So..." Kanim waves vaguely around. "I know what Fire-flower Meadow feels like, because I attended both Bella's weddings, and I know that this isn't it, but I know almost nothing else, what can you tell me about what's going on here?"

"It's a Bellparty," he says. "There are some wishes up, like the nametags and the orgy chambers. Various attendees are also magical - about half the Jokers, about half the Bells, more if you include anyone who's been minted and enchantified. All the Bells and Jokers have enchanter's auras now; I don't think anyone else does. There's ingots from Eos and witches from Aurum. Which parts do you want explained?"

"Well," says Kanim, "I think Glass will explain to me any new powers she brings home with her, so stuff she's likely to not bring home with her is I guess more important - for instance, that looks sort of like a dragon but feels nothing like one, that looks like a weirdly-colored unicorn but feels nothing like one..."

"The dragon and the unicorn are from Thilanushinyel. That's what dragons and unicorns are like there," he says. "Liselen - that's the unicorn - gets very excited about coming to parties like this because until recently he was subject to the usual restrictions for the species about only coming in contact with virgins. The dragon is attached to the very red person with wings and a tail who I swear I saw out here a minute ago. They belong to the Joker template."

"So the virgin thing isn't a myth, there... Attached to - huh, so that's what - and - that Bell with the pointed ears over there, similar attachment?"

"Yes. The demon and the dragon spent about ten thousand years together like that, and then they met Sarion. That's what dragons do in that world; they attach to people."

"Dragons here do not do that. And unicorns here don't really have a thing with virgins, but it's a common myth."

"Interesting," says Lazarus. "But you don't have demons?"

"No. Should we?"

"Most worlds don't seem to. But most worlds don't have dragons, unicorns, or elves, either, and Thilanushinyel does."

"Elves? I don't see any of those. We have them, though."

"Sarion is an elf of the Thilanushinyel variety."

"Are your elves shorter? Has anyone named this world?" he wonders.

"Uh, no, it is without a name. Adult elves range from yea big to yea big," says Kanim, hovering a hand at about knee height and the other just below his ribs. "Depending on the sort. They do have pointed ears, but there are also some proportional differences and facial structure things that Sarion doesn't have."

"Someone should remind Glass to name it, then, if she hasn't already."

"All the Bells name their worlds as well as themselves, then?"

"Thilanushinyel had one already, I believe. I think the rest are Bell-sourced."

"I'm starting to follow this general undercurrent of 'wait, there is a queen and it is not Glass?' I'm detecting from my eavesdropping."

"The fact that there is a queen who is not Glass is mildly unusual," says Lazarus. "But I'm not sure why it deserves all this attention. Stella didn't overthrow the President."

"I mean, Glass certainly never objected to the fact that her wives don't care for politics and that left her as default actually-doing-things queen when Marianne passed on - but that didn't stop her from spending most of her spare time on trying to figure out immortality."

"Marianne is probably not going to pass on," Lazarus observes. "I wonder if she'll retire?"

"No idea. I hope Glass doesn't wind up fighting with her about it. Glass is my best friend and Marianne frightens me sometimes and the twins and the wee ones love them both and I don't think it could possibly end well."

"Doesn't sound like it," says Lazarus. "But maybe they won't. Bells do seem to get along with reasonable political leaders."

"Glass likes Marianne, they get along really well."

"Then they probably aren't going to fight."

"That's good!"

Glass wanders by. "Hi! You're Stella's magic-seeing-guy, right?" she says to Lazarus.

"Yes!" says Lazarus. "That is me. I am that."

"He sees magic, and apparently has better modulation than your specs," Kanim says. "Seeing as he's not clutching his face and yelping."

"Ooh, lucky," says Glass, pulling out her specs but not putting them on. "These things are great for anything native to the world, but all my alts just scream magic, I'd go blind if I tried to look right at them even through one lens at a time."

"...May I see those?" he asks, blinking in fascination at the specs.

Glass hands them over. She enumerates where all the lenses' magic came from: "Witch spell with-cat, witch spell without-cat, got that out of a wizard staff, this one too, this I got a wizard to cast for me, we've got some reformists in the woods, Tony helped me with this dwarf spell, this was the first royal magic I ever got to work for me after I married Tony and the forest double-counted me, this is a dragon spell, that's a different one, this is elf magic..."

"Goodness," says Lazarus. "That's a lot of magic."

"You can see why I couldn't pick just one," laughs Glass. "And that's a sorceress bit, and this is a unicorn spell, and this is an adaptation of a fire-witch property, and I have some spare lenses that aren't as useful in my sleeves for specialized applications."

"I wonder if I could design you a lens that does something similar to my power," he says. "I'm not sure how useful it would be. My power is very me-ish."

"I'd have a look, but I'd have to wish my eyes better and I wouldn't learn much," laughs Glass. "Rose thinks I might get something about all the myriad kinds of local magic when I get an aura. Apparently a lot of us did."

"Do you want a my-power-ish lens, for all the good it may or may not do you?"

"I'd like one, yeah!"

Lazarus thinks carefully, and then makes a wish. Glass's specs acquire a new set of lenses.

Glass carefully flips all her existing lenses out of the way, and the new ones into place, and sets the specs on her face.

"Oooh," breathes Glass. "It'll take me a long time to learn to interpret all this, but it's sure pretty."

"It is! It is very pretty," Lazarus agrees.

"You automatically read the content of this sort of thing?" Glass asks, turning slowly on the spot to get a look at everything.

"Yes? Sort of. It's a bit - translated," he says. "The original version is much easier for me to figure out, but not completely automatic."

Glass peers closely at his ingot power. "Thank you very much! I hate it when I can't look at magical things - once I ruined a whole set of lenses when I panicked and put them on in the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises and I had to make new ones. I'd probably have kept trying to squint very carefully at all the overbright magic till I'd had to wish myself unblind at least five times without this lens set."

Glass inspects Kanim next. "I think thaaaat's the witchwell, thaaaaat's sorcery..." She looks at her marble. "Wow, I have so much to do."

"I think that's a Bell catchphrase by now," says Lazarus.

"Is it? Well, of course it is," laughs Glass. "This is the best, best day." She turns to Kanim. "Say, have you seen Tony? Ours. Iron."

"She's with her alts," says Kanim delicately, smiling faintly. "Introducing herself."

"Aha," says Lazarus.

"Having fun, I hope."

"Oh yes. Last I checked. You know me, I'm no fun, I found it necessary to escape before I got a lethal dosage."

"I'm surprised you haven't hit on any of my alts, Kanim, I'm the only gay one."

"I would not know at all where to start! There are twelve!"

"Amariah," Lazarus suggests.

"Why's that?"

"Cam and Amariah are the adventurous sorts, and Cam is a non-girl and I don't know how you feel about those."

"Mostly not so inclined, but apparently I can make exceptions for non-girls who contain Tony's personality, because Tony is awesome."

"Well, Amariah's a girl," laughs Glass, "and straight, and she's over there."

"Noted," says Kanim. "But I am still coming down from my dose of fun. I'm not as young as I used to be."

Lazarus giggles.