Aether has a tagalong.

"Hi, Amariah," says Aether, when she and her tagalong have arrived. "Wow, you're - what's wrong?"

"Went home," says Amariah in clipped tones. "Saw Kas napping on the floor. Curled up, napped a bit too, woke up, there was hugging and crying, I've been gone sixty-six years, he wrote me a lot of postcards, I started reading them - and then who should appear - but his thirteen year old daughter who looks just like Yseult or Damaris."

...Celo blinks. (His aura, previously expressing that he is a friendly minor deity, now also announces him to be sympathetic. The low-key rendition of his name remains constant.)

"I'm. I'm really not a qualified therapist."

"I'll take suggestions for other people to vent to besides Kas or the innocent thirteen-year-old girl with half my genes running around in Alethia."

"You can vent to me," Celo offers. "I'm not a qualified therapist either, but I can care with the best of 'em."

Ama glances at him with vague wariness. "You're also a Joker, though, I - don't know to what extent the thing Kas did is a Joker thing."

"Juliet also acquired a spontaneous teenage relative! She recommends ranting to a Tony. Do you want me to ask some Tonies?"

"Juliet acquired a - what? She didn't get stranded."

"Nope, she has a magically constructed sister and her opacity prevented the memory implant from working."

The conversation seems to have temporarily moved on from Celo; he waits.

"She deliberately forked and merged with a copy of herself who did have the sister-related memories. After addressing the problem that precipitated the magic sister, that is."

"Yeah, that's -" Amariah shakes her head. "That's not going to work for me."

"What exactly did Kas do?" says Celo.

"It was an accident, I guess," says Amariah, hugging her knees. "He got lonely. He wanted a kid. He turned female and wished himself pregnant and didn't - think - it - through - and the wish filled me in for the other parent."

"...I want to hug you," says Celo, "you look like you need a hug."

Path fluffs up on her shoulder and huddles close to her neck under some of her hair. "I need to figure out how to solve the approximately twelve problems I have now," she says. "And I don't want to put Path down while I'm upset." (She lets her aura out. Path is Not To Be Touched.)

"Okay," says Celo, "then I want to help you solve your problems. And then maybe hug you."

"I don't want a kid. I wasn't ready. I'm not even old enough to have a kid her age, I'm subjectively twenty. We never talked about having kids. Witches don't - can't - conceive accidentally, not the first time at least, we're sterile till we first want to get pregnant and I still am. Hell, Golden was older than I am when her half-vampire child looked thirteen. I have no idea how he's been bringing her up or what she thinks of me or anything. And maybe this shouldn't even be my business, maybe I should go back and ignore her, but one, I can't ignore her, because she's Kas's kid and she'd be relevant even if she weren't mine - and two I can't because she is mine, even if I wasn't there, even if I didn't decide to have her, because she's the firstborn Bell-and-Joker-kid template, she is the kid I would've had if I had ever wanted one, if we ever have one together now she'll be a - a Griffin, they call themselves - instead - my firstborn child has been stolen from me by the person I love most of anyone -"

"It means he wasn't setting out to hurt me. That he was just careless. It's different. It means I can't just scream at him, stab him somewhere squishy, and dump him and have done with it. It doesn't hurt less, it just means the hurt is - undirected."

"...Is stabbing a usual method of expressing displeasure in your, er, culture?"

"Hm? Yes, actually, I mean I wouldn't do it under normal circumstances but I'm pretty sure if I wanted to dump him he'd rather I get a good hit in first than not. Or maybe he wouldn't. It's been sixty-six years, what do I know."

"...The reason I'm in school for therapy is because I have the ability to perceive and interact with the mind. Is there anything you want done - I have taken no actual classes on therapy per se but I know the subtle arts okay."

"...can you perceive and interact with my mind? Through the opacity?"

"I can tell you're there, which means I should be able to do some things, although you could hedge me out in ways I'm not familiar with that don't affect my ability to detect that you're a mind at all. I can't tell that some of the others are minds, but yours must be lighter-duty or operate on a different wavelength."

"...I don't know if I want you to do anything, but I'll bear it in mind."

"Okay, so - putting on my completely unqualified therapist hat - it sounds like there are separate problem-bundles here - there's the girl, what's her name? - and there's what Kas did - and there's the fact that you've been gone a long time and there will be fallout in your relationship. And you can have feelings about any one that don't translate in obvious ways to the others."

"- I don't know. He called her 'button'. He probably did not literally name her Button. Fuck if I know, maybe he just let her go without a name altogether, didn't the Joker persistently call his kids 'munchkin' and 'pumpkin' and let Nathan pick their names, maybe single parent Jokers will literally refer to their children by nicknames forever if no one gets in the way." She starts fishing around in the postcards, looking for one with the kid's name.

The first one that comes to hand just says, Helen baked a cake today!

"Helen. He named her Helen. I wouldn't have named her that. I guess it's better than Button."

Celo decides not to express any name-related opinions.

"So," says Aether slowly, "if things had gone as they should've - if, um, Materia hadn't broken Jane - then there's a meaningful sense in which you'd still have the chance to have this particular child one day, but a lot of things about her situation would be different. And all of those things are reminding you about how things didn't go as they should've."

"Yeah. Are you reading my mind a little bit or are you just a Bell?"

"Just a Bell. I won't read you past being aware you're a mind unless you ask me to."

"I dunno if anybody mentioned it but I've got a reading thing too and it's vagued all the way out," says Celo. "I read sexualities. Yours at this detail level is 'probably straightish'. For, you know, complete information and stuff."

"...Thanks for telling me," blinks Amariah.

"I should make a note about that in the Bellbook or something, maybe."

"Thilanushinyel unicorns do something a little similar - they don't have control over the detail level, though, it's all vague enough we don't mind - and nobody's bothered noting about them," shrugs Amariah.

"I can get even vaguer than I used to, since I got my aura," says Celo, "and that was pretty vague already. But anyways, enough about me."

Amariah hugs her knees tighter. Path hoots softly.

Aether shifts her weight uncertainly, then also takes a chair.

[Sue's free to attempt porting lessons,] Jane reports to Celo and Harley (and also Elspeth and Aether and Amariah, since they are in the relevant rooms).

"So - you don't actually have any advantage over generic Bells unless I want you to poke my brain, huh?" Amariah asks Aether after a silence.

"Nnnot really, except that I am considering staying in school and I can log this as extracurricular practice. All the details zipped up in patient confidentiality," she adds. "So I might be more willing to listen than somebell else, but I really haven't taken any therapy classes at all, Juliet might have more specific expertise or you could take her Tony-related advice."

"I think Juliet's case only sounds superficially similar. Probably very different on an emotional level."

"Probably. She might still know things about how good listeners Tonies are, and the cases do share the characteristic of an innocent person having suddenly dropped into your life without your permission."

"True." Amariah swallows, closes her eyes. "Jane, you wanna poll some Tonies?"

[Should I just assume you are exempt from statements in this category about the template?] Jane inquires of Iron Man as she relays the results to Amariah and Aether.

"I guess in the absence of other distinguishing criteria I'll take Red," says Amariah.

[You answered first and have spontaneous-teenage-rant-listening-experience, you win, ding ding,] Jane tells Red.

[Yeah,] says Iron Man, [good plan.]

[Ooh, do I get a prize?] says Red. [Is the prize interdimensional travel?]

[The prize is interdimensional travel. Report to the Janepoint to collect. Or they're in the Belltower, you could go by door if you feel like walking.]

He reports to the Janepoint.

Yoink!

Here is Amariah, looking like she has had her - well, not her soul stepped on, her soul is sitting on her shoulder in perfect physical health - but at any rate like she is in very poor emotional shape.

And there is Aether, looking totally out of her depth.

"Wow, hi," says Tony, taking a seat. "You look - unhappy. I barely know what's going on, but I guess that might conceivably make me a better person to rant to? Jane just said 'spontaneous teenage relative' and I'd give good odds you didn't get hit with a Soph."

"No, her name is Helen. I hear Juliet has a sister now. I have a - a daughter."

"...Wow," says Tony. "Okay. What, like - happened?"

"Kas had her. He wasn't trying to have her be anybody's in particular but his, I guess, but the wish - filled in the gap. She looks like a thirteen-year-old Damaris or Yseult, I recognized her right away when she showed up. I was gone a long time."

"At least thirteen years, I guess," says Tony. "Wow. I'm sorry."

"Sixty-six. He didn't have her immediately. I mean, I understand he'd be lonely, I just wish he'd addressed that by - talking to the harpies or hanging out with that bear he was friends with or meeting new people - I could even get it if he'd met someone and fell in love with them and wanted to have kids with them - but this is so much worse."

Tony nods.

"We never talked about having kids. Not even the perfunctory conversation about prophylactics - witches can't get pregnant until the first time we want to, it's supposed to be literally impossible for me to have a surprise kid even more than it would be for anyone else - and - Now if I ever want to, the one we would've had is already grown, she's probably already settled and separated, at thirteen - if she's even going to settle, if she's even separating, she was wearing mortal clothes when I saw her. I don't know anything about how he's bringing her up - culturally, personally, induction into the mysteries of the multiverse; she didn't look surprised when she saw me but who knows why that would be. I don't know what possessed him to spontaneously reproduce at all, let alone anything about what he opted to do once he'd managed it. I wouldn't have wanted to name her Helen. I wouldn't have left her alone for thirteen years. Even if I hadn't meant to have her. If I'd gone home and he'd presented me with a newborn I could - I'd be mad, I'd be bewildered, but I'd step in. It's not like I'd decided to be eternally childless, you know? And now the - possibility I was supposed to have is gone. I'm not even old enough to have a thirteen-year-old daughter. I am only seven years older than her."

"That really sucks," says Tony. "On the subject of not being old enough to have a thirteen-year-old daughter, I can say some stuff about when I was thirteen if you want, Sherry wouldn't mind."

"- Yes, actually, that hadn't occurred to me, but yes."

"Also kind of relevant to spontaneously having children, I guess," he says. "Except that wasn't really what I was after, I just - I was a bored, lonely genius and I thought I probably could clone myself if I tried, and I'm not even sure I was expecting it to work, and then suddenly there was this baby and he had needs and I kind of freaked out and by the time I'd almost started to figure out what to do with him, he was practically my age and I had a whole different set of problems. Which I will totally talk about at length if you want, but I don't really know where it stops being relevant for you, you'll have to tell me."

"I'm not sure. It's probably closer to relevant than most things? I'm not sure anyone has had my exact problem before, so."

"- Yeah, quite apart from whether Kas thought through the effect on me I don't know if he fully thought through the effects on Helen. Even if it'd turned out how he wanted to and she was just some random kid, I was always going to come home eventually and then she'd have a - we aren't married, so not a stepmother, but the same general idea - who was there first and simultaneously had no idea she existed. And instead she's mine and she's been growing up without a mom except insofar as Kas counts, so even if I'd talked to Yseult and Damaris more I wouldn't know that much about her, I don't know how that will have affected her, I don't know what if anything she wants from me now, and I don't feel like I can ask her till I'm more calmed down and have read these - postcards. He wrote me a lot of postcards while I was gone." She brandishes her postcard bag.

"Huh," says Tony. "Postcards. Okay. Um, well, is this," he gestures between the two of them to indicate their conversation, "helping with the calming down part?"

"Yes. I am calming down," says Amariah. "Probably I'll be fit for innocent-thirteen-year-old company any minute now."

Tony smiles wryly. "Okay, good."

"You are totally getting a second recommendation next time a Bell comes down with Spontaneous Teenage Relative Syndrome."

"I appreciate it." Amariah closes her eyes. "I suppose the option of pastwatching her childhood exists, but that might make it worse. I can't exactly go 'no, I don't like the name Helen' or 'why are you letting her eat that bug' and have it change anything."

Tony winces. "You don't like her name? Ouch."

"I know, right? Don't tell her," says Amariah ruefully. "It's not terrible, it's not like he called her Euphemia or something, just - I definitely would not have named her that."

"Yeah," says Tony. "On the other hand, at least she has a name."

"Yyyes, although I did briefly wonder if she had when it occurred to me all I heard Kas call her was 'button' and the Joker let his boyfriend name their kids."

"Still, he's got one up on me there."

"And Sherlock turned out all Sherlocky, which is, as the multiversal observational study proves, not strongly related to anything you did - so I guess I should expect Helen to turn out templatey, too, unless that's just a way the templates in question differ. I suppose I could see if Yseult or Damaris wants to talk to me."

"You could do that!" says Tony. "That is something you could do. And if they both want to talk to you at the same time, that might be a better way to get a handle on what's template stuff and what's just so-and-so stuff."

"Oh, good point. Yeah, that probably makes sense now I'm not - about to burst into tears." (Path leans his head on her cheek.)

Tony winces. "Also I could hug you," he says. "If that would help any."

Amariah considers this, and then she gently tucks Path away and stands up from her chair and holds out her arms.

Tony hugs her.

"Anytime," he says. "I mean, hopefully never again? But anytime."

"I understand completely," she laughs. "Jane, can you talk to Yseult and Damaris for me?"

[Hi, Jane!] says Damaris.

[Hello,] says Yseult.

[So,] Jane says to both of them, [Amariah would like to talk to you and your alt about your template. She's in the Belltower. D'you have a while?]

[Yes,] says Yseult.

[Sure!] says Damaris.

[I can yoink you there if you'll head for your Janepoint.]

They both

do that.

Yoink, yoink.

"Hi, guys."

"Hello," says Yseult. "What is it?"

"When I got home," Amariah says, looking away, "it had been sixty-six years. There is a thirteen-year-old you there named Helen. And I don't know what to do."

"...I'm not sure I know what to do either," says Damaris, glancing at Yseult with a nervous flutter of her wings.

"I can't imagine," Yseult murmurs.

"Yeah. I'm calmed down now, but I'm not even old enough to have a thirteen-year-old you, right, and we'd never talked about it."

"...I'd like to meet her," says Damaris. "Another us. - We never even named our template, did we?"

"I can donate 'Dominique', since I'm not using it," Yseult offers wryly.

"Dominiques it is. Do you think that's the best next action, is inviting her to meet you guys?"

"I don't know," says Yseult. "But I'd like to meet her, too. And I don't think it would be a bad thing to do."

"I could get out of the way and Jane could invite her here? Or not get out of the way, I guess, I'm going by your expertise on yourselves here."

"I have no idea what I would or wouldn't want if I was seeing Maman for the first time at thirteen," Yseult says apologetically. "Besides that - I'd want to get along with her, I think."

"But if all you know is that you want to get along with someone, it can be hard to do," says Damaris.

"Yep."

Damaris's wings droop.

"This is still sounding like the best plan we have going?"

"It seems to be the only plan we have going," says Yseult, "and not a bad one."

"...Okay. Jane, if you wouldn't mind?"

[Hello, Jane,] says Helen, tentatively.

[Your alts are in the Belltower and want to talk to you. Amariah's there too but she'll leave if you'd rather.]

[I wouldn't rather that. I don't know if - well. How do I get to the Belltower?]

[I can take you there, just go to the basement of Amariah's house.]

"Hey, button," Kas says quietly from the living room floor.

"Hey. How do I get into the basement?"

"Oh." He flutters a hand. "There ya go."

"Hi!" say Jane's speakers. "Ready? D'you want to bring your daemon?"

"I wasn't planning to. Will something terrible happen if I don't?"

"Not if you're separated, no."

Helen nods. "Okay."

"...Hi," says Helen, to the assembled.

"Hi."

"Well, I'm - Isabella Amariah, and this is Pathalan," (Path is on her shoulder again since the hugging concluded), "which you probably already knew, and - doesn't do indoors?"

"She's six feet tall with a twenty-four-foot wingspan," Helen explains. "Argentavis magnificens. She can more or less fit in most buildings, but she feels cramped there, and even if people are careful, somebody could bump into her."

Damaris's wings unfold slightly and she peers at them as though trying to compare.

"You can't tuck her away, then? - Kas didn't - how much stuff about - stuff do you know?" Amariah asks, gesturing generally at the Belltower.

"Well, I grew up knowing that my mother was... you," she says. "They call you the Shade-Dreamer now, there's a million movies and things, I guess you wouldn't know that if you haven't been back. But it was all a big secret - Granatee, I mean Ranata Ekamma, just told the queen whose daughter I was and let the rest of the clan think I was Random Witch Baby. And then after I separated, Kas told me about worlds and Bells and minting and stuff."

"The Shade-Dreamer, of all the - okay - anyway if Kalavar's that big you might find it useful to -" Path tucks, then appears on her other shoulder. "That. Borrowed it from Sue and Ivy, if you've heard of them."

"...That is useful," says Helen. "Kal might rather stay out most of the time, but it'll still be good to have in my pocket. Did you just wish it, or is there some special trick?"

"It's a wish generally - Sue and Ivy do it naturally because Sue was dreaming when he went to Alethia to get Ivy, but she sometimes slips in and out in his sleep. At least last I checked; he may have patched that recently."

"Hi. I'm Damaris."

"Yseult," says Yseult, with a little curtsy.

"I probably could've guessed that, if I'd thought about it. Uh, nice to meet you."

"There is indeed," says Amariah wryly, "a lot of stuff."

Helen smiles tentatively at her.

"So this is somewhat less awkward than it could have been. If there are movies of me and Ranata's been helping out with you and stuff you probably have most of my life story, with whatever cinematic innacuracies - um - tell me about you?"

"I'm not really sure where to start," she says. "Kalavar used to love being dragons when I was younger... I'm really good at magic... I was kidnapped very briefly once, we never really found out why - oh, I have an ingot power, I can throw my voice arbitrary places. And listen arbitrary places, too."

"Kalavar wasn't even sure she'd settle," says Helen. "Because, well, Petaal. But she did, and she likes what she is now."

"I checked once," Yseult volunteers. "I would have an ostrich."

"I take it you didn't instantly need an ostrich in your life."

"I am happy to remain ostrich-free."

"You ever check?" Amariah asks Damaris, since this seems to be what they're talking about now.

"It does seem that way," chuckles Amariah.

"It's interesting," says Helen. "—Do either of you have ingot powers?"

Damaris shakes her head.

"Mine concerns mindscapes," says Yseult. "They are more understandable to me, and more malleable, than they are to most people."

"So I guess if you haven't turned up with one yet that's evidence in favor of the mint-parents-at-time-of-conception theory," Amariah says in Damaris's direction, "have Keziah or Céleste demonstrated anything yet, though?"

The relevant Dominiques

shake their heads.

"Huh. I guess we'll see. So far no one has been deliberately reproducing to get specific ingotry, anyway."

"Specific...?"

"Well, Bells all have the same power when we can get powers at all. With variations."

"Hmm," says Helen, with a glance at Yseult. "Doesn't seem to work that way for us."

"Apparently not. So it varies template to template."

"Should someone be consulting Glass? I hear she's the go-to for this kind of thing."

"She is! Jane, does Glass want to pop in and peer thoughtfully at Dominiques?"

"Inquiring - yep!"

Dominiques peer thoughtfully back.

"You have some - themes to you, nothing that unusual to have in common as templates go - daemons, coin colors, obviously appearance. None of you are standing out as the template instance at all. I think you might be - almost a subtype? You are a kind of person, the specific kind of that kind of person that appears for Bell/Joker pairings' firstborns. There might be a theme to the ingot powers but I can't tell until I see more of them, I think. I think you're going to continue to usually be female as more of you appear but it's not a guarantee the way it is with - Matildas, say, I don't think we'll ever see a boy Matilda."

"I wonder who else there is that we're - subtypes of," muses Helen.

"I'll let you know if I see any!"

"...What is it?"

"...Kas is still - being sad," she says quietly.

"Okay," says Helen. "...Do you want to read the postcards?"

Amariah makes an eloquently repulsed face at the movie poster.

"Wow. Wow this is mortifying." She rolls up the poster, stuffs it back into the magic bag, and grabs the next thing.

She sighs. She keeps reading.

This letter is crushed a little in her hand and pressed to her lips, not quite in a kiss, and then she puts it away and moves on.

Shit fucking hell, sweetie. I don't even know how to say this.

You have a daughter. Her name is Helen. Her daemon's Kalavar. Likes being ducklings.

I meant to have a kid - I didn't mean her to be yours. She wasn't supposed to be anyone's. I don't even know if that makes it better or worse. I don't know what happened. Fuck.

Amariah stares at this one for a long time, then puts it away and draws the next.

"Aww."

"What is it?" says Helen.

"'Granatee'."

Helen got kidnapped. She's fine, don't worry. Some asshole witches got her lost and said they'd take her back to me, and then they did a spell to kill me instead, right under her nose. Sent Petaal after her as soon as I torched. They killed me again on the way back.

And then they wised up and put me under some kind of freezing curse. I went to sleep and the next thing I knew your mom was standing over me with a knife. Really freaked Helen out - the freezing, not the stabbing, Ranata wouldn't let her watch the stabbing, she's pissed about that but she'll get over it.

The queen found the kidnappers, got their queen to hand them over, killed them both. Still don't know what they were after. I can guess, though. Nobody's supposed to know whose daughter Helen is, but shit gets out.

"Getting kidnapped is not fun," says Path softly.

"It really wasn't," Helen agrees.

Yseult hugs her.

Next card.

"Prophets? Is there one around?"

"Inkeri Saara," says Helen. "One of my friends. She prophesied that you were going to come back, and when. That's when Kas started crying a lot more."

A sheet of paper covered in the words I can't repeated over and over and over and over in decreasingly legible handwriting.

"And she told him, I take it. I wouldn't have guessed it would make things that much worse..."

"I'm not sure why, exactly," says Helen. "I just sort of chalked it up to Kas being peculiar. But I think it was something about hearing it six years in advance, after so long not knowing."

"I've been better." She sighs. "I - guess I'll go home again - are you coming along or getting to know the other Dominiques a bit more?"

"...I think I'll stay here for now," she says.

Someone is crying in the living room.

Amariah goes up.

It is Kas. Kas is the person who is crying.

Kas shudders, and pets Path's feathers, and Petaal squirms out of his lap and turns into a human and hugs Amariah.

Hugs.

"I love you too, sweetie."

"Are... are we okay?"

Quiet snuggle.

Snuggly snuggle.

This will probably take a while.

Yep.

The crying mostly trails off after a while, and then there are only snuggles.

"Don't think so," he says. "Inkeri just told me 'n Helen. And the queen."

"I would've checked. It didn't look like you were doing well even with as much information as you had, I guess."

"I don't know... what happens now," says Kas. "I don't know what - you know, when I first met Stella, I told her something like this was going to happen? Because... I don't know you perfectly, and I'm not perfect, and forever is too long a time not to make any mistakes in. But I didn't think it was going to be so soon." He sighs. "I guess you never do. If I'd known it was going to turn out like this, I wouldn't have done it."

"You didn't think I'd mind," says Isabella slowly. It's inflected like a question, except at the end of the sentence.

"I thought you might mind, you might think it was inconvenient or something that I'd gone off and had a kid by myself, I didn't think you'd - hurt," he says helplessly. "And then she came out yours, and I didn't know what the hell you were going to think, but I still didn't really know it would be this bad. This is - I don't know what this is. I don't know what's going on. You said we're going to be okay but I don't know how."

"Help - what," he says. "Help me miss you less? Sure. Help me know what happened, what things I need to not do if you go missing again - no. Not really."

"Don't create sapient life," says Amariah. "I would've dealt a lot better if she'd been somebody else's too, if you'd just met someone and wanted a kid with them - I would have managed even better if you'd run into some orphaned or mistreated moppet and decided to look after them, some kid who already existed - this I don't understand."

"...I don't know what the difference is," he says. "I don't - okay. Sure."

"If you'd met somebody else," Amariah says, "and you had a kid with them I wouldn't be - like - There would be another factor in the situation besides you being disastrously wrong about how I tick. I'd have started out imagining that you met someone who really really wanted kids and that was a compelling feature of the situation. And the kid would have a full set of parents instead of a gap where I was supposed to be - which would be the case even if you'd spontaneously impregnated yourself with a clone of yourself, unless I missed a postcard where you broke up with me in absentia, people are involved with their partners' children, you knew I was coming back and you knew everybody involved would carry on existing forever, maybe if I'd shown up when Helen was thirty this wouldn't be an issue but you sure couldn't rule out my appearing during her childhood. And if you had adopted someone who already existed - then they were already in the set of people I count within my sphere of things-to-take-responsibility-for because I picked up the entire worldsheaf, that would be the more involved equivalent of you making a close friend who was going to be around a lot."

He curls up and shivers.

"Did we ever even talk about it at all? I don't think we did," he says. "I don't know what you'd think of me... I don't know... carving the moon into one of those lacy balls with more lacy balls inside them by hand, either. I can guess that you might not mind it because it doesn't really affect anything important, or you might mind it because everyone is going to be weirded out that the moon rattles now, but I don't actually know, you've never said anything either way about anything that's even enough like that for me to tell."

"It'd fuck up tides if you carved away ninety percent of the moon. If you fixed that, don't care. If you didn't fix that, then I'd come home and I would have to deal with a lot of fucked up tides. And if you have a kid, I come home and I have to deal with you having a kid - it's close enough to me and my life, through you, that I do have to deal with it. A perfectly innocent kid who seems nice enough and was not complicit in her own mistimed conception, so it is in fact much less fixable than the lacy ball moon problem, although she's probably destroyed fewer coastal cities."

"None, last I checked," he says with a quirk of a smile.

"Then she has an excellent record on the subject of destroying coastal cities, I suppose."

"She's awesome. I love her."

"Mmm."

"Because it's going to hurt? Sure it is. But it hurts already," he says. "If we actually understood each other, it might stop hurting."

"I - that's not what I'm worried about. People resent negative feelings about their children, people don't like people who produce negative feelings about their children."

"But... you're you," he says, utterly at a loss. "And you feel how you feel. I can't resent you for being you, it would be like - like resenting Petaal for not settling, you couldn't be any other way, something would be wrong if you weren't who you are, I don't know everything about you but I know that finding out more things isn't going to make me love you any less. Probably cry. Never love you any less."

He sighs and hugs her.

"I mean, at least I didn't already have plans in place to have a little Dominique - Yseult donated the name to the template since she's not using it - at least I hadn't formed expectations that specific - although if we'd talked about it maybe you'd have called her something I like more than 'Helen' - I'm getting used to it but I wouldn't have named her that, Ianthe is fine and Kalavar is fine but -" She sighs.

"Helen of Troy," he murmurs. "That's why I picked it."

"Sure. It's not terrible, just - another thing I missed."

Kas snuggles her.

Snuggles.

Snuggles.

"I mean," says Isabella tentatively, "she - seems nice, I don't know, maybe we'll get along great."

"I hope so," says Kas. "...Do you not think you will?"

"...Guardedly optimistic."

"It's the best I can do. I didn't want her. I haven't started just because I got her anyway. But - but maybe we will get along fine."

Yes. Those.