"Do we trust their judgment?" wonders Steel.

"I'm not at all sure. It doesn't seem to be making any egregious mistakes?" offers Glass. "...I think there's a reason we have all-male wizards and Amariah has all-female witches, I think we'd never find the reverse case but I don't know why."

"Interesting again."

"Those words in English do have some gendered connotations, in those directions," muses Juliet. "I think in my world it's technically gender-neutral, anyone can learn the magic, but women are somewhat more likely to use the word 'witch' - I don't know for sure, I haven't met many of these people in person and my written sources are not overwhelmingly reliable."

"There isn't another word for the phenomenon in English on Aurum, and among people who are clued in to it being a general phenomenon - which is most people without their heads in the sand, at this point - it's gender-neutral, but historically media of various sorts which has fictitious varieties of magic-user gender-biases the words like that."

"English, or some distilled meta-version of it, could easily be the metalanguage I'm hypothesizing," says Glass.

"How many languages are spoken among the peal?"

"We usually speak English when we're just talking to each other. We've picked up different sets for use at home," says Golden. "I know all languages on my Earth with a non-negligible speaking population."

"I speak a bunch of demonic languages," says Juliet. "Not so much human ones, I'm starting with tidying up the underworld before I address the more run-of-the-mill problems with Sunshine."

"Sarion speaks an Elvish language and a Thilanushinyel common tongue, Amariah picked up a witch language that she didn't originally speak fluently but added once she had access to coins, Aegis speaks recognizable English and a slightly less recognizable form called 'Stark' that was centrally standardized in Peace's history, Shell Bell has an accent and different idioms here and there but speaks intelligible English to us standard-Earthlings, Rose speaks something mutually intelligible with but not identical to Earth French and many of the other languages on her world have similar parallels including one that's close to English, Cam has his magic language which it turns out we can't use for magical purposes probably because we acquired it as adults, and Angela speaks Samarian and when she got coins she added Edori."

"So English is by far the commonest native language among Bells," Sherlock concludes. "Cause or effect, I wonder?"

"I think it's a consequence of us generally coming from Earths," says Juliet. "And generally being born in the United States when we do. I'm not sure why Rose came from Sorta France instead of Sorta England; maybe since Sorta England never colonized Sorta America in Rêverie there was no pull to the language above and beyond the pull to the country."

"Overwhelmingly born in the same town, too," says Golden, "except for you, Juliet - I believe you hypothesized that you were pulled to Sunnydale by the Hellmouth attracting interesting things to itself? - and Shell Bell, on whose world I believe the location of Forks is some feet underwater."

"A fascinating bunch, you Bells. Are there any interesting consistencies among those not from Earths?"

"Are we counting Rose and her Sorta Earth?"

"Let's say yes."

"Rose, Sarion, and Angela have married parents. But Glass doesn't, and Amariah does."

"I think the divorced-parents attractor tries to work through regular causality when it can, and it backs off when it can't."

"No very strong regularities that appear predominantly in unEarthly Bells," says Golden. "The non-Earths aren't even all magic; there's not a speck of the stuff natively in Samaria."

"However do they manage without it?"

"Better than Shell Bell's world did," says Golden. "Origin and Peace are also natively non-magical, although Peace has by far the highest technology and Jane is only by the barest technical definition not magic. This world also seems to have much commoner magic than anywhere else. A lot of Earths have it but only a handful of people know it exists."

"How peculiar," says Steel. "I almost think I'd like to visit some of these places."

"There are some cautions about visiting Alethia, Aurum, and Samaria, everywhere else is more or less freely visitable with Jane online," says Juliet. "Alethia is safe if you wish to not acquire a daemon - or if you want one - and the wish, Minus discovered, only lasts about a week. Aurum has this problem with vampires and werewolves falling in eternal irrevocable love with people, but you can avoid that if you see Golden's precog before anyone else and have her check you over. Samaria is not public about magic and doesn't have all that great a place for visitors to hang out, so you need a cover story or to go about invisibly."

"Noted," says Steel.

"Minus's daemon is gone now. So if you wind up with one accidentally - and if it's sad about that - then you don't have to keep it. But it's probably best to just avoid getting one if you mean to visit Alethia."