"Wellspring magic doesn't have an 'addictive' pattern at all," she says. "I... can't swear that it won't happen, but I don't expect it to."

"I think -" begins Glass slowly. "I think Bells are very susceptible to magic addiction, come to mention it, I think if we get too close to any magic system that has that potential we will immediately be stuck in it. It's sheer luck you were steered away. I'd wish against it before trying anything if I were you, Juliet, just in case Sunshine leaks into your Wellspring-version system."

"There are a few Sunshine family worlds, so if you can do it, you will be able to keep yourselves occupied for a while between Sunshine itself and Helios and Apollo. It would be very nice of you. On the other hand, I bet part of the reason the worldfamily is so mean is because it's full of demons, many of whom are straight-up evil. I'm not sure how much you guys can counteract millennia of large populations using magic to do nasty things, however deeply entangled you are."

"We'll definitely want to give it a shot, anyway," she says. "As a long-term project, after your interdimensional transport system is up and running again. As another long-term project, I think we want to work on a better interdimensional transport system..."

"We've asked the Jarvises if they'd mind spreading out more. They're reluctant; they prefer to be houses, containing friendly people, and Bells aren't really homebodies, although it's possible we should have pushed it more when we had the chance."

"This castle, for example, is occupied," says Glass.

"Well, now I'm considering running back to Sunshine and asking if Jarvises want to be it. I've also discovered that a tenner will put someone Downside directly - at least from Sunshine; tenners are not freely available enough to afford much experimentation and Sunshine was natively Downside-attached so it might not generalize."

"I mean, I can probably finagle more tenners, but not huge numbers, especially with a baker's dozen Bells to distribute them among, so they should probably remain an emergency or Dramatic Large Project thing and not the basis of any sort of regular transit."

"Minting really is a remarkable magical system," says Agent Honey. "Although they're not all positive remarks."

"Stella ran all the sensible experiments about trying to make it run on sunshine or something, no dice."

"If only it was nice and flexible like Wellspring's. Then again, considering Sunshine, maybe not."

"Yeah," says Juliet, shaking her head, "and so far we've found more of Sunshine than we have of Wellspring."

"I'm going to maintain that Sunshine might be fixable until we actually try and fail," says Agent Honey.

"I think you can significantly affect it. I don't think you can walk in and command it to suddenly behave."

"You have interesting ideas about our methods," says Agent Honey.

"I don't mean methodologically. This is coming out of metacausality-vision, not magic-seeing. You can make progress, I don't think you can complete the job."

"Walking in and commanding it to suddenly behave was not the plan," she says. "It sounded like you meant it more or less literally, as a course of action that you predicted wouldn't work - did you not?"

"No, of course not. I meant I didn't think the resources you'd throw at the project, whatever they are - I don't know what they are, this is a metacausality pronouncement about how Matildas and Sunshine worlds might interact with no comment on the details - would complete the task. Although I think that might have changed since I said it."

"Yes, telling us we probably can't do something often has that effect," says Agent Honey.

She grins.

"Awesome. I haven't swept Sunshine for native Matildas, yet, but if there isn't one I'll be happy to take outside help."

"Matildas are neat," agrees Shell Bell approvingly.