"Yes," giggles Keziah.

Junia grins at her.

"They're Bells. Me and my alt decided to be Griffins - she has a pet one and I would too if magic wasn't secret. That was when we were seven, I don't know, maybe we'll think of something better now. Dars and her alt couldn't think of anything and the last time there was a Bell party Ariel and Pen were too little to go and there weren't more of them anyway. There might still not be. Depends how many Bells who have alts of my dad - those're called Jokers - have the right number of kids."

"It's all so - bizarre," says Junia. "Why are there alts of different people? Are there alts of everyone's parents and their parents' parents and so on back along into forever? How did all these people meet each other despite not being exactly quite alike?"

"All the Bells have the same parents. I don't think the grandparents match as close. I don't know why there are alts at all, though. I'm not sure what you mean by the last thing?"

"Parents," says Junia. "You have a set of parents, and your parents each also have two parents, and so do theirs, and so on. And each of those pairs of people met somehow or other and decided to have children, with or without the intervention of the divine, but mostly without, on the whole. And for there to be another you, there has to be another of your mother, and another of your father, and another of each of their mothers and fathers - doesn't there? And how can all those people come together just the same even living in entirely different places and - and Isabella's an angel, but none of them were - why does this work so that people who are together in one universe tend to be together in all the rest?"

"Oh, not all of them are," says Keziah, "some of the Bells are with other people and some of the Jokers aren't with Bells either. Also templates don't just work by parents, they only mostly do - there's a Joker who was made out of magic by some people and doesn't really have parents at all."

"...there is a Joker - that is a one of your father," says Junia, putting this together. "There is a Joker who was made out of magic by some people. There are worlds where people can make other people out of magic?"

"Yes. A lot of worlds are really strange."

"I am beginning to see that," says Junia.

"The one who said she had one of you at home is not from the world with the talking animal souls or the one where people can be made out of magic, though," says Keziah. "Minting is from there and sometimes people have magic powers - supposedly I should have one of those by now, but if I do I don't know what - but nothing else that weird except for more technology and they don't live on one of this planet. Nobody lives on one of this planet but us, actually, it is not very popular."

"I wonder why that is," says Junia.

"The most popular planet is this one called Earth. There's one in this world but no one lives on it anymore. The whole ancestors-had-a-lot-of-wars thing goes really far back."

"Goodness."

"Yeah, except in other worlds they didn't have quite the same thing so there are still people on Earths in all the worlds that have Earths. And no angels, except there's a different kind of thing called angels that aren't like us much at all except sort of being shaped alike in the animal-souls world, and they aren't very nice."

"In what way are they not nice?"

"Well, most of them worked for a god who wasn't very nice. The one of my mom from there had to make them stop doing what they were doing so she could save some people."

"Ye-e-es."

"I am confused," says Junia.

"- Um, there is a god there. And there's another world with a bunch of them but they aren't that good and one of them is bad. There aren't any most places though."

Junia looks at her.

"Um."

"You seem to be leaving things out," says Junia.

"Yeah, I just didn't realize till now that I'd left this stuff out and now I'm trying to - figure out how to not leave it out."