She makes a surprised little noise, grins, and kisses back.

"Okay," says Nona, and she snuggles up.

Snuggles.

Snuggles! Snuggly snuggly warm lovey happy snuggles. Mmm.

Best kind.

Etty comes and sees. "What'd you find?"

Etty is rather taken aback by the strangeness of the door. And the nudity. "Have you been casting peculiar spells?" she asks.

"Nooo," she giggles. "This place just does that. It's called Milliways and it has a door that goes to all different places and today it came here. And there's somebody I want you to meet!" She sticks her head through the door. "Celo? Celo, where'd you run off to?"

"Celo?" asks Etty quizzically.

"Celo's a nymph," Nona explains. "He's from a different world. They have a lot more magic there, and all kinds of horrible things but some that sound pretty nice, and nymphs are a kind of person that comes out of a field of plants and has to have sex with men a lot or they'll die. But Celo says me and him are a lot like each other, and I think he's right. I think he's that other world's version of me."

"He's... more okay than me," says Nona. "He's been away from his - it wasn't his father, he doesn't have one, but his - person like that - for way longer. But he had a lot of the same not-okay stuff happen."

Etty shivers. "Okay. Why are so few people in there wearing clothes?"

"There's some kind of thing happening," Nona says vaguely. "Celo said it'd been going on for a few hours already when he got here, and that was a few hours ago. He likes it because it means he blends in more; he can't wear clothes because his mother's a goddess and she said nymphs aren't allowed."

"His mother's a goddess? And - he had a person like the Baron, anyway?"

"It's complicated," says Nona.

Etty nods. "That's me. Hello."

"Nice to meet you," he says. "Wow, yeah, you're definitely another one of Bella. You wanna come in? I need the door so I can go to my world and get the person I know who I think is one of you."

"...There's more of me?" Etty steps inside, tucking herself under Nona's arm. "Yes, please - I'd like to meet - her? Is it a her?"

"Yeah, her name's Bella," he says. He closes the door and opens it again, and on the other side is a hallway; he leeeeeeeeeeans as far out as he can, looking at another door a short distance down the hall. "Bella! Hey! You in? I found a thing!"

I love how you're so specific. What is it?

It's a - look, just come here, he laughs. You'll like it, I promise.

All right, all right. Up she gets, and out of her room, and, "Kheez!"

"...Hi."

Celo beckons, grinning. "C'mon in! Can't hold the door forever, it's rude and stuff."

"What in the screaming abyss is this place?"

"I don't know. Before the door opened on part of our castle."

"You have a castle?"

"...Yes. But you wouldn't want it the way we got it."

"What is hot chocolate?"

Bella blinks at her. "Yeah, hot chocolates for us too."

Meanwhile, Nona is peering curiously at Bella.

Bella waves at her. "So, I'm Bella, who are you?"

Etty was looking, but she soon stops and turns her face into Nona's shoulder. This would not be her kind of party if it weren't apparently the only way to visit versions of her from other worlds.

"Well, I'm who Etty is in my world, I guess, and I'm a subtle artist - I have mind magic, I don't use it without permission except that I can always tell if an unshielded person is around - and me and Celo go to school together. Although we don't share any classes."

"You're a scholar?"

"...I think calling myself a scholar would suggest it's less common than it is to go to school where I'm from. I'm a student. I'm going to be a mental healer." She pauses, peering at Etty. "I... haven't taken any classes on mental healing yet, but you seem to be not in great shape, and if we're as alike as we look, maybe I could do something?"

"...That would depend on what you were going to do."

"Talk to you. Look at anything you wanted to show me."

Nona hugs Etty some more.

Celo comes back with another pair of mugs. He hands one to Bella and one to Etty.

Slurp.

"I know!" says Celo, beaming. "I love this place."

"It is such a strange place. What is it?"

"I'm not really sure," says Celo. "Some kind of interplanar bar or something. I tried to ask a couple people but mostly they're interested in the party, and I like the party too, so I didn't pester anyone about it."

"An interplanar bar. I guess stranger things have happened. It just appeared to you?"

"Yeah! And then I saw her coming out of the door," he gestures to Nona, "and - I don't know, does she look like me to you? She looks like me to me. She looks a lot like me. And we compared histories and she's pretty much me, you know, accounting for species and stuff."

"She looks like you could be siblings," decides Bella after a long look at both faces. "Awfully similar siblings." She turns to Etty. "We should compare life histories."

"All right. I can't remember my name, but I can remember everything else."

Bella goes first. Parents, little town in Blackwater, subtle artistry, school, introspection, her questions -

"Our questions," inserts Etty when she hears them.

Celo and Nona simultaneously giggle.

Heh. And school and her inauspicious first meeting with Celo and the business with the elves and what she's at liberty to share about the business with Callahan. That's pretty much the story of her life.

Etty's story is shorter and less pleasant. Parents, unremarkable upbringing, figuring out that she only yearned after women and not men, getting picked up by a giant owl and cursed, meeting Nona, turning into a swan (she demonstrates), the hurt and the violation and the terms of his immortality and their ultimate victory. Poking around at sorcery, flying over the countryside looking for home.

Bella hugs her, partway through this recitation.

Nona hugs her as soon as Bella has stopped.

"I could hug you too," says Celo.

Etty's reaction to this offer is silent but extremely dubious.

"No," translates Bella.

"I got that," says Celo. He hugs Nona instead.

"...Etty, you're not going to like this and I guess Nona didn't warn you, but nymphs, like Celo, don't predominantly recognize each other by face, but by an - involuntary - read of their - sexual characteristics, basically. He's working on 'squinting' but he's not very good at it yet."

Etty peers mistrustfully at Celo.

Celo throws up his hands, takes his hot chocolate, and leaves their little cluster by the door to head for the other obvious door in the room.

"We could go that way too," says Nona. "It leads to a nice little lake and a forest and some things, and it's a lot - quieter out there. Not as many people."

"That sounds better - but -"

"He already saw you. Unless something changes, he can't get any new information," says Bella, shaking her head. "Otherwise do you think I'd hang around him? I can't even block it with subtle arts." She follows the nymph to the outdoors.

Etty goes after her alt.

By the time they get outside, Celo is not visibly nearby.

Etty and Bella sit next to each other on the grass.

I can relay you conversation, if you want. And I explained that you've already got what you're going to get off her.

I got that she's you plus trauma and some different stuff, he says. I didn't look at which stuff was different. Which means you're wrong, by the way, I could slip up and see her properly anytime, it's just easier not to when I already know somebody. And I knew about the trauma already; Nona didn't exactly say, but - it was just obvious. So whatever. Why even talk to me? I'm just the nymph. Give me a shout when somebody needs a good fuck.

Etty nods.

The way you said it, it ended up feeling like you were using me to hurt her, Celo sighs. And I know perfectly well that's not what you were aiming for, but it's what you hit.

I - don't understand why that would be, but I am sorry I upset you.

I was trying to present it neutrally.

You should maybe work on that, he says.

What would you have wanted me to say?

Ask me privately if I'd got anything off her, and if I hadn't, which I pretty much didn't, lead with that. It's nicer that way.

Okay. If we meet any - more of me - then I'll do that. I didn't realize you were that accomplished at squinting.

I've been getting better, I just don't run and brag to you about it every time I manage not to catch somebody, he says.

Understood. Pause. I wouldn't expect her to "look" that much like me the way you said she did. I mean, we're the same, but she's gay and traumatized and I'm straight and not-traumatized, are those not relatively overwhelming features?

I told you before you're too hung up on the information part, didn't I? There's a lot more to it than just - features, like that. Stuff that doesn't tell me anything directly, and doesn't really turn into words. And on that level you're almost the same. It's like... if you saw somebody you knew, and then you saw them again and they'd been beat up pretty bad and they were wearing totally different clothes and had different-coloured hair, you'd still recognize them, wouldn't you? It's a little like that.

Sure.

Bella sets herself up as a relay. "I'll bounce everything we're saying to Celo," she informs her alt and Nona.

"How's that work?" she says curiously. "I don't think your magic is the same as ours at all. There's less - drinking blood and peeing on things, from what I've heard."

"...Ew? The subtle arts aren't like that. Some of the darker arcana might be, I guess, but I'm only a dabbler in arcane magic. I know nothing about divine magic to speak of - well, except common knowledge for my world, which I guess might be more than you have - but I don't think that involves any of that. My subtle arts are just a matter of me being able to focus my mind in certain ways that tend to produce effects in the world. Usually in minds, mine or others' - it's pretty trivial for me to talk to people mind-to-mind from a reasonable distance - but I have a little bit of telekinetic potential that I'm working on training, too."

"That sounds much different from what we have."

"Yeah, we have to drink blood and pee on things and similar," says Nona. "And by we I mean I." She gives Etty's hand an affectionate squeeze. "And we don't have all different kinds of magic like that, and I don't think we have anything that'll let you have a conversation with someone's mind - do we, Etty?"

Etty shakes her head. "Not that I've found. It's all about - material objects, mostly, and a few curses that affect the mind like the one I was under."

"Do you want me to see if I can find your name in there somewhere?" offers Bella.

"I'm pretty used to 'Etty', now, but I'd like to know who I used to be," says Etty.

"Okay. I'll avoid looking at anything else in enough detail to learn the contents."

Nona hugs Etty. It just seems like the thing to do.

Etty leans on Nona and waits for Bella to work her magic.

"I can't find any memories of your actual name," Bella reports eventually, "but I can find the residue of what was blocked off when the curse was still active. It forbade you to use any name besides Odette - which you got partly around with the nickname - and forbade you to know the existence of the name Isabel, but you should be able to re-learn it now."

"It's like yours," observes Etty. "I think I'll just go on being called Etty. Otherwise it would be confusing, and besides, 'Isabel' doesn't feel like mine anymore."

"It's pretty," says Nona.

"I wonder why they're so similar but not exactly the same."

"Isabella like your name sounds like a foreign sort of name to me. Isabel is Diotalandish," suggests Etty.

Nona corroborates this with a nod.

"It is interesting how we are so alike, but come from such different worlds," says Etty. "I wonder if everyone has a match."

"I don't know. It also seems like a strange coincidence that you have Nona who's like Celo and Celo knows me."

"Celo said it seems to him like you and him are connected in some sort of Fate-ish kind of way," Nona offers.

"One of his teachers said something that made it sound like she thinks so. Celo," she adds, aloud and also relaying telepathically, almost as though he were there, "have you got any other reason to think so?"

If Callahan thinks something's up, then something is probably up, he says. Even if she's wrong about exactly what or what it means.

Bella relays this, and then, "But we don't know anything beyond that."

"Do you have guesses?"

"Celo thinks she expects us to kill a god," offers Bella.

"Are you going to?" wonders Nona.

"No! I'd get myself killed, or worse. Hubris is a bad idea."

"Are they doing a good job, then? The gods you have?"

"Hubris is a bad idea," repeats Bella firmly.

"Okay," says Nona.

"Is it not a bad idea where you come from?" Bella asks Etty tentatively.

"There are churches, and people talk about God - only the one - smiting people, sometimes, but I don't think he exists, because people say he's all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good," shrugs Etty. "I don't think there's anything other than other people to punish hubris. But if it's so dangerous where you're from maybe I shouldn't invite you back with us to help me do things with your magic. In case hubris being a bad idea follows you there."

"I don't want any more gods than the one we probably haven't got," Nona confirms. "It seems like they'd just get in the way."

"Well -" Bella's speaking very carefully now. "They are the source of divine magic. Celo can heal because of his mother, even if she isn't attentively intervening each time. And no drinking blood is necessary."

"That seems helpful of them," says Etty.

"I still don't want any," says Nona.

"Apart from punishing hubris they're generally a positive or neutral force in the world, I think," Bella says. "And they aren't all-powerful or all-knowing - and only a couple of them claim good, let alone all-good."

"And they definitely exist."

"At least some of them are blindingly obvious. There are some more controversial ones."

"Do you want to talk about something else?" wonders Nona.

"It might be more comfortable, yeah."

"Tell us more about your world's magic."

And lo, the conversation did become a thaumatology lecture.

Nona is fascinated!

Etty is more fascinated!

Bella is not actually equipped to teach Thaumo 101 but she will do her best!

Even I didn't know some of this stuff, Celo comments.

I read a lot.

You're kind of awesome.

Etty giggles.

Nona giggles, too.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Nona says after a few puzzled seconds.

"I mean," says Bella, rolling her eyes, "that in addition to all the usual effects, nymphs improve their respective plants when they have sex. So if you have some guys who want to grow, say, rice, but they don't feel like actually farming rice, they can try to get a rice nymph and have a lot of sex with her and never need to pick up a gardening implement until it's harvest time."

"Oh!" she says, comprehension dawning. "Huh. He didn't tell me that."

Well, yeah, 'cause it's a different kind of sex that does the gardening, giggles Celo. You're welcome to explain that too.

"He says he didn't mention it because it's only sex with men that improves the plants," says Bella.

"...Wait," says Etty slowly.

Way not true, there's girls with dicks and I get the usual goodies out of them, Celo points out.

"Hmm?" says Nona.

"Clarification, it's - Etty?"

"Nona? Did you...?"

"Yes," she says, puzzled. "Of course I had sex with him. He's lovely. You already know how much I like to fuck myself - I thought you didn't like hearing about it, or I would've said something earlier. Why are you upset?"

"I thought - that -"

"Khersis Dei. You cheated on her," says Bella wearily.

"What's that mean?" she asks, bewildered and unhappy.

"You don't know what it - okay," says Bella, putting a hand over her eyes and engaging Explaining Humans Mode in spite of Nona being a human already. "By default, if two humans are being all snuggly and lovey with each other, they don't also have sex with anyone else. If they do it anyway, that's called "cheating". People make different arrangements, sometimes, and obeying the rules of a different arrangement isn't cheating, but apparently you didn't make one with Etty, and the only reason this hasn't bitten you before is because you live in a castle in the middle of nowhere. This is not a small deal; people end decades-long marriages and kill each other over cheating. It is a form of betrayal. The fact that you apparently aren't familiar with the word is probably a mitigating factor."

"Oh," says Nona in a small voice.

"What?" says Nona, mystified again.

"She thinks you got fed up with waiting for her to have sex with you," translates Bella.

"What," says Nona. "No! What? I just - he offered, and I like him. I didn't know it would upset you! I didn't know you'd even have an opinion on it at all, you don't on what I do by myself! I didn't mean to upset you," she sniffles.

"When it's yourself it's just - you," murmurs Etty. "Not you and somebody else. I - I guess you didn't know."

"I didn't know at all," she says. "I'm sorry."

Sigh.

"...And now I'm wondering to what extent Celo acting like a nymph is because he's actually a nymph. Is monogamy something you could even do?"

"I do it really easily when I'm in a castle in the middle of nowhere!" she says, hugging herself.

She'd have a seriously hard time with it, says Celo. Like maybe dealbreakingly hard. We're a lot alike that way.

Bella reports this assessment.

Etty looks at her knees.

Nona hugs herself some more.

"I love you," Etty murmurs.

"I love you too," she says. "I'm sorry. Is it - will we be okay?"

"I need to think."

Bella has a notebook on her. She flips it to a clean page, hands it over with a pen.

Etty takes a moment to figure out the unfamiliar writing utensils, but eventually she's scratching away.

Nona curls up on the ground and doesn't say anything.

"You going to be okay, Nona?"

"I don't know," she mumbles.

"You didn't know it would hurt me," murmurs Etty, reaching out to touch Nona's hand.

"Well, now I don't know if you're going to love me anymore," she says, sniffling.

Remind me not to even think about ever being a sex therapist.

Don't even think about being a sex therapist, Celo says obligingly. Sucks for Nona, though. I'd want to give her a hug, but her girlfriend might knife me.

Etty isn't going to knife you. For one thing, she doesn't have a knife. At what point during the proceedings did you find out that Nona had a girlfriend?

It didn't really happen like that, he says.

?

I mean it's not like we were going along and she was like, 'By the way, I have a girlfriend'. I just kind of... gradually picked up on stuff. I obviously didn't pick up on the fact that Etty was going to be upset that we'd had sex, or I would've, you know, told Nona.

When did you figure out that Etty was like me?

I had half a suspicion, and then I got a look at her and it was just obvious.

I'm not sure what to expect her to conclude from the thinking she's doing.

No? Nothing like it on your end?

I haven't been motivated to consider it.

So you don't secretly wanna date me? he says whimsically.

Is dating even a thing nymphs do?

Ask me if I care, he giggles.

Fine, is dating even a thing you do?

Not yet, he shrugs. I was joking, anyway.

Thought so.

He giggles again.

Bella waits, while Etty writes.

"I don't know," she says. "Do you mean how much of it do I need to do? I definitely don't know that. Or how strongly do I feel about doing it? I'm not sure I know that either. I know how I feel about never ever doing it again, though, and it's really really bad."

Nona curls up and has some more sads.

"I'm sorry," murmurs Etty. "I just - I don't want anybody but you, and I don't - understand."

"I don't understand either," says Nona. "I don't understand why it's such a thing the way it is."

Bella will Not Be A Sex Therapist some other day, apparently. "She doesn't want anybody but you. For a monogamous person that's connected with - depth of feeling, commitment. If Etty heard a reliable prophecy about the future that said she slept with somebody who wasn't you, she'd assume this meant that in the prophesied future, you'd broken up or that she didn't like you much anymore or something was unsatisfactory about the relationship - correct me if I'm wrong, Etty."

"You're not wrong."

"Oh," says Nona. "That's not - no. At all. No. How much I love you doesn't have anything to do with how I feel about anybody else."

"I don't understand how that works."

"I don't understand how not that works," says Nona.

Can you be of any help here? Bella asks Celo.

You're the telepath, he points out. Ask Nona if you can read her, then explain her to Etty and then maybe explain Etty back to her because you seem to have Etty pretty well figured out. I'm a nymph; what I know about monogamy amounts to 'don't fuck it'.

"Celo suggests that I could read Nona and then try to explain you to each other," says Bella.

"Sure," says Nona.

"Is there anything I should not look at?"

She shrugs. "There's some stuff you might not like, but I don't think there's anything I'd be upset about you knowing."

Nona is mostly wondering what she should be thinking about. How do you explain something when you don't understand the thing it's supposed to be different from? Loving Etty and having sex with Celo don't have anything more to do with each other than loving Etty and masturbating do. Slightly less, actually.

"Yeah," she says. "I guess. Do most people just have the one impulse to be lovey and they can only point it at one person at a time? That's weird. I think I have - well, one per person I feel lovey about."

"Most people at least approximate the one-impulse model," confirms Bella.

"...Difficult. But not impossible. If Nona doesn't mind. I don't think I can do that and filter content at the same time, so Nona will have to present me with anything she wants to show you, on purpose, specifically."

"Okay!" says Nona. "...What do you want me to show you? Specifically?"

"I'm not sure. I don't know what there is."

"Okay," says Nona agreeably. "There's a lot of that."

"Concentrate on some for me and I'll do my best to bounce it."

Bella focuses, hard, and reads and projects, and these are two things that are not her natural affinity and she has to do them at the same time, but she can just - about - manage.

Etty makes a soft noise, almost like the trill she sometimes does when she's happy and a swan.

She does like it!

Nona hugs Etty, then turns to Bella and holds out her arms.

Bella shakes her head. They are not hugging friends.

Etty will take another hug! If Nona wants!

Plenty of hug.

This is really cute. Celo gets a picture, too.

So much hug!

Awwwwwwww.

Bella goes back into the bar to ask someone relatively unoccupied for more information about how this place works. She comes back armed with the results, shares with the group, and budgets a few more hours to stay and talk to Etty before it'll be ruinous to her sleep schedule - the holiday will be over soon and Celo will thereafter be in violation of Milliways rules, anyway. Any of them may find a door again in the future, so it's not necessarily goodbye forever; even if they aren't there at the same time they'll be able to leave notes at the bar.

Etty and Nona have clothes and no pressing obligations at home, but Etty thinks she'll probably leave when Bella does.

Celo thinks that if there's going to be rules about him not being naked in a little while, he's going to make the best of the time he's got. He goes back inside.

Nona finds Celo to say goodbye to him, and then she leaves too.

...Bella looks over her shoulder.

"What is going on?"

"Meet anybody interesting?" inquires the coach.

Bella will be busy restraining the urge to unethically mind-read Callahan over here.

Callahan pats Celo on the shoulder and pushes past him to walk out the door, which opens on somewhere other than their dorm, for her.

When the door closes, Bella says, "I'm so confused."

"No shit," says Celo.

"I'm also excruciatingly tempted to just look."

"I don't know why you're not, but in case 'she might kill you' isn't one of the reasons already: she might kill you," says Celo.

"That's a reason. Also it would be unethical."

"Yep," he says. "And she might kill you."

"Yes. I do not at all doubt her ability to kill me."

"Good, 'cause she could so do it," says Celo.

"Anyway." Bella pushes open the door. It is their hall again.

Out they go, into their hall.