"Yeah, I put him in that, he apparently died naked," says Aurora, "and I'm the only person repealed so far who has a Joker in, you know, a personal sense, so I didn't expect anyone else to think of an outfit before I did."

Aurora does not deign to suppose that it might. "You're welcome."

Meanwhile, Elspeth is speeding along Tab's introduction while she deprograms Harley slow-and-sure -

- and Tab is putting the finishing touches on her very limited deviations from the Bells standard wish set. (She's taking something halfway between standard flight and Aegis's version.)

Tab is super-fast now and flipping through the end of the Bellbook. "We're going to go to Glass's world and I'm going to cheat at aura-getting with her enchanted forest."

"You can pick up an aura there too, if you'd like," Glass adds to Corona, heading for the door. "And Harley too, if he recovers enough while we're there. The forest likes the extra magic; Marianne has taken to low-level channeling almost all the time."

"Sounds like fun. What's channeling like?" he says curiously.

"Fun!" beams Brilliance, his aura swirling with colours.

"It hurts for the channel - sort of a stinging stretchedness? - and lasts awhile, if the channel isn't the same person as the enchanter." Glass opens the door. "Jarvis, please tell everyone who might care to know that we've found a new Bell Tab, a new Joker Corona, and a grown-up Harley, and we're stopping in for aura purposes." (Jarvis is handy for filtering for people who are likely to care to know, and he is better at timing than her previous strategy of "indiscriminate immediate brainphone".)

"We can go to Chronicle, or back to Aurum, or stay here," murmurs Elspeth to Harley, who she's still holding.

"Will do. Welcome, all," says Jarvis.

As the rest of them pile through, Harley clings to Elspeth and cuddles her wordlessly.

In the absence of a decision from Harley, Elspeth follows the crowd.

"...Hi, Jarvis," says Tab shyly. "So, um, I have enchanting all wished up, who's channeling for me first?"

"I wanna try!" says Corona, grinning at her.

"Start with something medium-sized because they vary in tolerance some, and, Elspeth warned you in her explanation this is a thing with Jokers, right, you don't have to do anything about it but if that bothers you we should go back Downside and see if Eights is free."

"It can be his thing as long as no one expects it to be my thing," shrugs Tab. "Symbiosis, yeah? I just dump power in the forest and it'll suck it up?" At Glass's nod, she tilts back into her mindscape - the orbital ring - and reaches for Corona's.

Corona's mindscape is a broad, bright field of wildflowers, dotted with trees and bordered by water. The shape of that ring of water almost suggests a moat, and there are piles of old, tumbled stones covered with ivy that hint at a tall building that might once have stood here. A castle, maybe. But it's hardly possible to tell under all that vegetation.

"Whoa, that is not in the standard enchanting manual," says Tab. "Did you run it through your Gift?"