Ariel nods.

"What have you noticed?"

"Things work better around you," says Ariel.

"That's a good way of putting it. If I tell you why, can you keep it secret from everybody who doesn't know yet?"

Ariel nods again.

Isabella has been experimenting with various ways of presenting this story - she tried different orderings of information with Daniel, with Delilah, with Elisha - but in Ariel's case, the most bookish of her children, she thinks it will work best if she tells it like a story. From the beginning, as she experienced it. "I've already told you about how your daddy and I met. Not long after that, we opened the door out from our old quarters, but instead of the hallway, we found a restaurant, called Milliways."

Ariel listens.

"And in Milliways, we met a young man who looked just like your daddy, and he introduced himself as Kas, and he explained that there was not just one world, but many, and in some of these worlds were people who resembled each other very closely - like him and your daddy. Or like me, and Kas's girlfriend, whose name is Isabella Amariah."

"Amariah is a pretty name," says Ariel.

"I think so too. And I called her that, so we wouldn't be confused about both of us being called Isabella, and she called me Angela for the same reason. And she told me that there were several more people like us, and that her world was very different from mine - it has magic, and she isn't an angel and the angels they have there are different, and everyone's soul there lives outside their body in an animal's shape."

Ariel listens gravely to this, too.

"And I met several more of me, and they were from all sorts of places, and some of them had alts of your daddy, and some of them did not," says Isabella. "They had magic, and they offered me some to take home and use, because we were all alike in what we wanted done and wanted to help each other. I asked Alleluia to ask Jovah if magic was permitted, and she said that he said it was like technology - fine if it was kept under control. So I accepted, and I began to do some magical things, quietly, that no one would notice."

Ariel nods. That seems like a very Mommy thing to do.

"What did you do?" says Ariel.

"I did pray. But nothing happened. And so I used magic, instead, and Ithiel was a healthy angel, but still nothing happened, and I didn't know why that would be. I brought him back down to the Eyrie and told them half-truths. But," she says, "later, a little after Daddy and I got married, Alleya asked me how I'd done it. She knew it wasn't Jovah."

Ariel waits to hear how it is that Alleya knew that.

"Alleya had her own secret, but it wasn't about magic, it was about Jovah. She knew he couldn't possibly have fixed Ithiel, because Jovah isn't a god."

"The oracles at Sinai have to know this, because instead of being a god, Jovah is a spaceship." (Isabella has always told bedtime stories about spaceships, pretty much specifically to prepare for this revelation.) "Sometimes something goes wrong with it, and then it needs to be able to tell an oracle to come fix it. So Alleluia told me her secret, and I told her mine, and I went up to the spaceship, and it wasn't very smart at all. It could talk, but it didn't really understand things; it only did what the settlers told it to do, and what it heard prayers for. I didn't think it was doing a very good job of being a god, but all I had to do to make it listen to me was just a little bit of magic, and now I'm the spaceship's captain."

Ariel nods again. It is quite obvious to her that her mother's natural place in the scheme of things is captain of their god.

"We found the restaurant a few more times, and we met more and more of me, and of Daddy, and of some other people none of whom you've met," says Isabella. "And then we met one of me who had a computer-person that was much smarter than Jovah. Her name was Jane, and she moved into the computers on the spaceship, and she had the power to pick up anyone she could see and put them down in any place she could see, even between universes. So all of us could visit each other whenever we wanted, and not have to wait for Milliways to appear, and we could have parties, and coordinate on large projects, and share magic. But then, well before you were born, when Damaris was still a baby, Jane broke - Jane's soul lives in the one of me from her world, and that person was attacked, and it hurt Jane. While Jane was broken, time started passing differently in different worlds. Her own world had three seconds go by while ten years passed here."

Ariel looks thoughtful for a moment, then returns her attention to her mother.

"But then Jane got better, and we all celebrated, and we found some more people and added them to the group - several of me are a peal of Bells, several of Daddy are a deck of Jokers. And during this time your older sisters both got to meet everyone, and there are others of them, although their parents only have two children so there was not one of you, then. There might be now, I don't know."

"A different name, at least if she were from that family. Because Rose - that's that Bell's nickname - already knows what you are called, and wouldn't want to make it difficult to keep track of you. She named her Damaris 'Dominique', but she prefers her middle name 'Yseult', and she named her Keziah 'Céleste'. I don't know what she would name a third child but it wouldn't be Ariel and might not be a Samarian name at all."

"That's good," says Ariel. "I wouldn't want us to get mixed up."

"It can be very confusing. Luckily no two of the Jokers use the same name and Bells don't have a hard time choosing nicknames, but it became difficult with a few other repeating people."

"All kinds of things, but the next part of the story I'm telling you is that Jane broke again. A little over a year ago. We don't know when she'll be back."

She nods thoughtfully.

"That's why your uncle Nathaniel left. He was visiting another Joker, in a world called Aurum, when it happened, so now he can't come home until she's better. He's safe, though."

Ariel thinks this through, then says, "He wasn't visiting the other of him?"

"Most Jokers don't have others of Nathaniel, though there are a few," says Isabella. "And... your uncle is the only one of the few who is nice."

"What are the other ones like?"

"They are bad people. They hurt some alts of Daddy and of me very badly. I was very worried about Nathaniel, when I found out who his alts were, but - he seems to be fine."

"Worried he would be not nice?" inquires Ariel.

"Yes. But I think I got him away from his parents early enough."

"Were they making him not nice?"

"Yes. They are not themselves very nice, and Nathaniels don't react to that the same way that Jokers do."

Ariel contemplates this, then says, "It's good you got him away, then."

"Yes. So, those are the broad strokes of the story."

"And it's secret from people who don't know it," says Ariel. "And you and Daddy and Alleya and Keziah and Damaris know it. And Nathaniel but he's not here."

"And Serah, and Caleb, and Daniel, and Elisha, and Alleya's children, and Delilah but Delilah only found out recently so she is still adjusting and hasn't decided how to tell her husband yet."

"Thank you, treasure." Forehead-kiss.

She smiles.

"Do you have any questions?"

"All right. And now that you know," Isabella adds with a wink, "if you think of something that should be solved with magic that no one who doesn't know about it would notice, you can tell me, and I can fix it." [And you can tell me privately, like this. Everyone who knows about magic can do this.]

[Okay!] says Ariel. [I will.]