"Hi!" says Tony. "Apparently now I'm an interdimensional expert on spontaneous teenage relatives."

"That is the weirdest job title of all time. High five." She proffers her hand.

He high-fives her, then leans over to give her a kiss.

Kisses! "So who else has a spontaneous teenage relative and do I need to go hug the spontaneous teenage relative? I could do that now, I can go places."

"Amariah now has a thirteen-year-old daughter named Helen, we're not actually sure why beyond some kind of 'it made sense at the time' deal while she was stranded. And you can totally go hug her if you want, I support the hugging of spontaneous teenage relatives." He plops onto the edge of the beanbag and hugs Soph. "But it didn't look like she desperately needed one or anything, they seemed to be getting along okay."

Hugs. "Well, that's good, nobody needs to not get along with the people of whom they are spontaneously teenage relatives. I guess Amariah was flailing around and Bella recommended you?" (Soph is not accustomed to calling her sister Juliet; that is what Sherlock calls her.)

"And nobody was being teleported to Canada or anything either, I hope?"

"No Canada involved whatsoever!"

"Good. Boo, Canada, it is cold."

"Aww, you're gonna hurt Canada's feelings."

"It is Canada. It will apologize for being cold and offer me a donut."

"Aww, poor Canada."

"Someone should hug it."

"I believe it is being hugged by some oceans."

"Whew, okay, good."

"Canada is in a committed relationship with its oceans. They keep each other cold."

Tony cracks up. Again.

"I like making you laugh."

"You're really good at it!" he giggles.

"It's not really hard." Pause. Eyelash-bat. "Phlogiston."

He cackles helplessly.

Soph grins and squirms happily and hugs him again.

Hugs! Hugs and kisses. Extremely giggly kisses.

[I'm gonna go to my first Bellparty soon and I'm kinda nervous about that,] she informs him as kisses proceed.

[Aww!] he says, snuggling her. [Nervous why?]

['Cause - Bella made sure none of the others would remember me existing, so they won't, but I'm not some - new friend Bella made and is bringing along, so that's weird.]

[...Yeeeees that's true.]

[You've been to bellparties, what are they like?]

[Uh - they have orgy chambers?] He giggles. "Sorry, I swear that's not their only feature, but it does kind of spring to mind."

"I bet those are memorable, yep."

"Extremely! Also kind of a misnomer, actually, they don't tend to be orgies so much as giant cuddlepiles with maybe some people having sex occasionally. Well, maybe the Jokers have orgies."

"Sounds cuddly and occasionally sexy. Wow, that sounds like the most stoned weather forecast ever."

Tony cracks up. Yet again.

"With a front from the northwest of man I could really go for some nachos."

He giggles into her shoulder.

Nuzzle nuzzle. "So in other news I am pretty much reacquainted so to speak with Jane."

"I figured something like that."

"It went pretty good."

"Awesome!"

"Yeah! Jane says she might do the memories-she-would-have-had thing except she wants to 'refactor a few yottabytes'."

"That is a lot of data," says Tony.

"I am a big Jane," says Jane, "and that thing that knocked me out did it very thoroughly."

"I'm getting that sense!"

"Poor Jane."

"I'm okay! I am also now literally shiny."

"...How literally?"

"Very. Brilliance put me in a Device body, and when I'm not making it be human shaped, it is a jewel. And I can glitter. Also float."

"Cool!"

"And she lives in the Belltower on a shelf collecting dust. She didn't really want a body for its own sake."

"It's okay, I just don't get what the fuss is."

"Yeah, you and Jarvis both."

"I bet Jarvis wouldn't even take a body."

"I bet he would if someone had carelessly wandered his soul-or-something into Materia," says Jane. "Bleah."

"I am actually not so sure," says Tony. "They're really not into that. The closest they get is Malibu installing on the Iron Man suits."

"That reminds me, Materia has an aware building in it. I don't know if she's remotely like Jarvis or me though."

"I'm guessing she's not that much like you guys if she's from Materia. I mean - implementation-wise."

"Well, yeah, I don't think we can talk to her unless Aether translates, but in terms of being a building."

"Are you a building?"

"I'm a network. Also now a Device, but it doesn't feel special compared to any of my points or gems. I can operate buildings just fine given the hardware though. I'm more like a building than I am like a human, it's natural to be - distributed over multiple places, for me."

"Yeah. The Jarvises don't do the distribution thing much, except, again, Iron Man's."

"Well, except multiple places within a house," says Soph.

"Exactly. We are going to have been friends, you and I."

"Yay."

"Hey, I don't mind being called upon for my practical usefulness, but it's kinda nice to know that I never picked you up and put you down and you missed me anyhow."

"You guys are cute," says Tony.

"I am so glad you think so." Nuzzle.

"Your face is cute."

"It is! I have a cute face," he agrees, nuzzling her with it.

"It is good that you have healthy and accurate face-related self-esteem." Nuzzles!

"You have a cute face too," he adds. Nuzzle-kiss!

[I'm adorable.] Kisses kisses kisses.

They are currently just kisses.

Kisses are Soph's favorite thing.

Kisses are pretty fucking awesome!

"Yep. Want to visit?"

"Yeah, if you don't mind." She kisses Tony one last time and hops up from the beanbag.

Tony waves. "See ya!"

"I'm Soph. I'm - Juliet's - sister. I thought I would come, um, meet the other Spontaneous Teenage Relative, that seems to be what we are being called now?" She waves at Helen. "But I haven't met you guys before either - I'm sorry I can't remember your names."

"Yseult," says Yseult, curtsying.

"Damaris," says Damaris.

"Helen," says Helen. "Hi." She waves back.

"So I'm not the same kind of spontaneous, but basically some people wanted to hide a magical artifact where it would be safe and they thought the best way to do that would be to turn it into the little sister of the mysteriously immortal ex-Slayer with spooky magical powers. Only, the opacity thing, so she had no idea why there were suddenly bunk beds and didn't really take it well."

Helen winces. "That doesn't sound fun at all."

"I got teleported to Canada and interrogated, she thought I might be a demon or something, which, kinda fair, there are a lot of those at home. It was not the best day."

"Wow," says Damaris. "I can't imagine. ...Does that make you my - auntoid?"

"Yyyyes I think that's how it works."

"Bizarre," says Yseult.

"Is it? I mean apart from the magical artifact thing I am not very weird."

"Yseult is twenty-two," says Helen, "and she's sort of your niece in an interdimensional way. That's kind of weird. But I don't think it's weird about you, necessarily, it's just - a peculiarity."

"People can have aunts who are younger than them even without interdimensional time weirdness."

"True," says Damaris.

"So anyway in the department of Your Closely Related Bell Is Alarmed To Discover Your Existence, I have been there, do you want a hug?" Soph asks Helen.

"I will absolutely take hugs," says Helen.

Hugs!

"I know what I would have. It's a shiny cowbird. What's weird about it, though? Sherlock - the Sunshine one - Minus - has one but she's almost never out."

"Well - I just had the thought, 'oh, Kalavar isn't here, or she'd be trying not to maul your—' and then I realized I didn't even know what species you'd hypothetically get. Because you don't have a daemon. Kalavar's a teratorn," she adds by way of explanation. "Huge extinct birds, when she snuggles my friends' daemons she does it really carefully."

"I am led to understand that if I had my shiny cowbird I would be really unhappy if he got mauled. Bella - my one - would have a tiger though."

"Tigers are cool," says Helen. "Kalavar has never actually mauled anybody."

"That's good! Not-mauled magic talking soul animals are the best kind."

"Is two enough for a club?" muses Soph.

"It is if we say so!"

"Okay. We can hang out in Milliways and eat madeleines and drink interesting coffee beverages - well, do you drink coffee, you're thirteen, whatever, interesting hot chocolate variations - and stuff."

"I haven't tried coffee! I should try coffee," says Helen.

"It's an acquired taste, but I went and acquired it," giggles Soph.

Helen laughs.

"I started with mocha though, it's like beginner dessert coffee."

"Good to know."

"Should we all go and have coffee?" wonders Yseult.

"Maybe we should all go and have coffee!" says Damaris.

"Let's all go and have coffee! I don't have any alts of my own, I'm stealing you guys."

"I accept," says Yseult.

Helen laughs. "Awesome. And hey, I guess the bar thing's right here, isn't it? Right - where?" She looks around for an obvious way out of the tower.

"Uuum, Jane?"

"Just go out the tower front door and the bar is the only other building in evidence," says Jane serenely.

"Thanks. Yeah, I don't even remember being here before, the spell that made me couldn't figure out how to make memories of being anywhere besides Sunshine so I remember having this annoying magical affliction where I couldn't leave the world," says Soph, heading for the door, "or get wished on with anything bigger than a pentagon, because it couldn't copy those effects either, but now it is gone and I can go wherever."

"It is! I can teleport and stuff." Here is the door; here is the "backyard" of Milliways; here is the door to the bar, which Soph holds. "I'm not used to it so I don't do it as much as Bella - Juliet - calling her that is weird, her boyfriend calls her that - but it's really nice for sometimes."

"I don't know very much about individual Bells," says Helen. "What's your world like?"

"Full of demons. There's magic in it, but it's kind of gross mean magic, I tried a teeny bit - well, I remember trying a teeny bit - and it didn't work so I stopped, that's probably to 'explain' why Bella didn't have all kinds of magical resources around. She can't do Sunshine magic herself, her opacity is protecting her from it being gross and mean is the going theory."

"Is it the kind of magic everyone knows about or is it a big secret?" says Damaris.

"The demons all know about it! Humans mostly don't."

"What's a demon?"

"That's a kind of a catchall term for anything on Sunshine that's not a human and is smart. Vampires count or don't depending on who you ask. Most of the demons are from other sub-worlds originally."

"There's so many that you need a catchall term?"

"Oh, yeah. Thousands."

"Thousands, really? Wow," says Helen. "And nobody notices? Do they just - not interact with humans who don't know already?"

"Sometimes they interact with humans who don't know already and usually what happens next is the human dies."

"Oh," she says. "Yeah. That'd do it."

"Yeah. There are some nicer demons. The Sessiaki are supposed to be neat, I haven't been to where they're from but Bella based a lot of the garden around her palace on neat plants from there."

"Ooh, plants," says Yseult. "What do they look like?"

Soph commences describing wacky demonic plants from her sister's garden as they find seats in the bar. This naturally leads to: "She wasn't going to have such a complicated garden, except she needed something for her demonic minions to do."

"Your sister has demonic minions?" says Helen. "Not the people-killing kind, I hope?"

"Oh no they're really sweet actually! But they're not very pretty, to humans anyway. They wanted someone to be minions of after Bella had to kill the hell-goddess they were working for. They like M&Ms and they don't get bored if I want to play Monopoly and insist on playing through the whole endgame, I like them."

"That's cute," says Helen.

"It is! Bella made them a dorm on Mercury and they do her gardening and sometimes she takes a couple along when she is going on diplomatic excursions to try to get other demons to stop eating people, for added consequence. They are supposed to call her Your Majesty, they won't say 'Bella' - and sometimes they forget even that and they call her 'your flammableness' or something."

"Your flammableness?"

"It's her aura, it makes her all flamey, it's really cool-looking."

"Ooh. Kas's aura just makes him look huggy," says Helen. "I haven't seen anyone else's."

"I haven't seen anybody's besides my Bella's. I'm all excited and nervous about the next Bellparty."

"I don't even know that much about Bellparties," says Helen.

"They are fun," says Yseult.

"Tell us about 'em," Soph says to Yseult and Damaris.

"I think I was ten the first time I went to one," says Damaris. "All of the Jokers hugged me."

Yseult laughs. "I remember that."

"Aww!"

"It was adorable," Yseult confirms.

"I am slightly expecting to be surrounded by curious Tonies, but I don't think they will insist on hugging me."

"Curious Tonies?"

"I'm dating my Tony, and there are a bunch more of them."

"Aha," says Helen.

"I'm not sure I want to be mobbed by otherworldly Tonies, but I'm also not sure I don't."

Helen giggles.

"Perhaps if you told them to form a line," Yseult suggests.

"That sound so adorable, I'm totally doing that if they flock around me in groups exceeding three."

"How many of them are there?" wonders Damaris.

"Uh..." Soph starts ticking off fingers. "There's mine. There's Shell Bell's one. There's Glass's one. There's the one who's older than the other ones. And there's two other ones. So six total."

"Very precise," laughs Helen. "The Tonies are the ones who don't nickname easily, right?"

"Yeah, they just figured things out based on coin colors. Some of the Sherlocks did that too. My Tony is 'Red'."

"Nice and simple, at least."

"I wonder if there'll be ever be more of me or if I'm a one-off because of the magic artifact thing. Maybe Glass will know."

"Isn't there a Joker who's a magic artifact too?" wonders Helen. "But differently."

"Yyyyeah, there is one of those, but not the same way I don't think. I wasn't made to be a magic artifact, I was made from one."

"Maybe it's different, then." She shrugs. "I don't know."

"I dunno, maybe he wants to start a Magic Artifacts Club. Jane can join now, they gave her a body that's the same kind of thing as him."

Helen laughs.

"Anyhow weren't we going to get coffee, I'll go order, what do you guys want?"

"Mocha?" shrugs Helen.

"I will also have mocha," says Damaris. "It sounds tasty."

"Me three," says Yseult.

"Okay then!" And off Soph traipses to order mochas for all the Dominiques and a caramel latte with sprinkles for herself.

It turns out that

the Dominiques

enjoy their mochas.

Oh very good. And Soph enjoys her latte, so that works out.

"This was a good idea," Helen declares.

"Yes. Yes it was."

She laughs.

So do her alts.

"So - potential moodkiller but - how are things with your mom, Helen? Are there even things? With your mom?"

"I - don't really know," she says. "We didn't talk that much. She, um, she thinks it's cute that I call her mom 'Granatee'? That might be promising?"

"That is profoundly cute, if she didn't think that was cute I would be pretty sure she was actually a statue."

"That is also really cute."

She grins.

"It is! I declare you the most adorable Dominique," says Damaris.

Soph giggles.

So does Helen!

"So you guys don't call your relatives cute things, huh?"

"Not especially," says Damaris.

"I call my little sisters 'cherie' but that is hardly on the same level."

"Aww, that's adorable too though."

"Should I also wear a little crown?"

"Yes," says Soph firmly.

Helen conjures one and puts it on Yseult's head. It is made of iron in thin lacy spirals, and it is very pretty.

Soph applauds.

"Beautiful!" says Damaris. "...Are you minted, Helen?"

"Yeah!" She displays a square, patterned like layers of pine needles with the sun shining through them. "Why, aren't you?"

"I see what Glass meant about a theme," Yseult comments, producing a square that looks like oak leaves backlit by the sun in a similar fashion.

Damaris shakes her head. "No. Those are pretty; I wonder what mine look like?"

"You can check with a square," says Soph brightly, nibbling her thumb for a glowy green square and spending it.

"Mine looks like mystical artifact," says Soph. "All of my check-to-see-what-you-get-with-a-square features are mystic artifact related. The cowbird too."

"Are there any other than daemon and coin colour?" wonders Helen, tucking her square away.

"Well, no, but still."

She nods sympathetically.

"I suppose I have a Tony. You cannot check for him with a square but I have him and he is not about the artifact thing."

Helen giggles.

"You can so check for him with a square," Yseult announces, and spends her example square to produce a little illusory Tony.

Soph laughs. "Okay, you can check for him with a square. I stand corrected."

"He is cute," says Yseult. She pats the little illusion on his little illusory head.

"He's soooo cute. And he has the best laugh and he is a really good kisser."

"These are good attributes in a boyfriend," says Yseult.

"Super important."

"Not that I would know."

"Me neither," says Damaris.

"Yeah, me neither," Helen agrees. "I wonder why that is? I wouldn't mind one or anything."

"Search me. I'd offer to set you up with somebody or something but I know - peal people who you could find yourself and not all that many of those - and my school friends who don't know about Things In Capital Letters, so."

"I don't have any," says Damaris.

"You have sisters though, does that help?" Soph asks Damaris.

"Well, yes. But I am not going to suggest that Helen date them."

"Yeah, that'd be weird," Soph agrees, making a face. "I just meant for the nobody-knows-all-this-stuff-and-that's-kinda-lonely thing."

"Yes. The sisters help with that."

"And on your world everybody knows everything?" Soph asks Yseult, not quite sure if she remembers right.

"Everyone knows about enchanting. Not everyone knows about other worlds, or other kinds of magic. But plenty of people do; it's not secret, just not common knowledge."

"By rights more people in Sunshine ought to know about magic. It's not really uncommon, especially in the town where we live. Sometimes I wonder if everyone is just pretending not to know and doesn't know everyone else is pretending. Like we're all putting on a no-magic-themed improv play together without knowing it."

"But how would you find out? You'd have to tell somebody, and then if they didn't know, they'd - look at you funny."

"Well, yeah. And I mean, I remember finding out when I was, um, hallucinating being sixteen, so probably some people really don't know, like, I found out because my sister was the Slayer."

Helen nods. "Yeah. It must be so weird living in a world where most people don't know about magic," she says. "I get a little of that when I'm out around mortals - they sort of know it exists but they don't really know much about it, you know? Even though there's the thing with the afterlife. But I guess that's different from what witches do."

"What is the thing with your afterlife? I sort of heard the adventure-story-type leadup, it was when Bella found out she would have a tiger if she got a daemon, but I don't know what actually happened at the end except that it seemed reasonable to summarize it as 'then Amariah made everything better'."

"Oh - well, the dead have their daemons now, or their daemon-parts if their worlds don't have those. And they can contact the living in dreams, and if enough people want them and the harpies let them out, they can come back as revenants. My grandpa Charlie's a revenant," she adds.

"Good for alt-of-Dad," says Soph.

She laughs.

"What do he and Mom have how they are in your world, for daemons?"

"Castarilan - Granatee's daemon - is a broad-tailed hummingbird, and Charlie's Kesathi is a wolverine."

"I guess my parents wouldn't necessarily have the same things. A tiger isn't very much like a little puffy owl."

"Pathalan is little and puffy," says Helen. "Tigers are not those things. Well, I guess they could be puffy if they had very fluffy fur."

"I saw the illusion tiger. It was super puffy, and about the size of a sedan, it was ridiculous."

"If she tucked her feet in maybe? It wasn't that high off the ground, just long and big."

"Yeah, when I ride Kalavar I have to kind of - flop on her," says Helen. "But it's not hard, because she's taller than I am."

"Flop on her? I don't think I understand."

"Like - lie on her back with my arms around her neck," she says. "Because I can't really sit on her without kicking her wings."

"Having my own wings is much more convenient," says Damaris.

"I fly around sometimes but just by magic. I like it but not nearly as much as Bella does."

"I don't think I would like flying with magic nearly as much as I like flying with my wings."

"I think you're right!" says Yseult.

Soph giggles. "Why's that?"

"Helen likes flying on her daemon, and Damaris likes flying with her wings, and I don't like flying very much," she explains. "So I think that we might not like flying with just magic very much."

"I like flying my cloud-pine," Helen muses. "But you're right. Plain old magic flying doesn't sound nearly as fun."

"I mean, it's a useful way to move around occasionally, and I like not having to have a stepladder," says Soph. "But teleporting is better if I'm really in a hurry and I still like hopping in a car with Tony. He has nifty cars."

"I don't think I've ever been in a car I'd describe as 'nifty'," says Helen. "What's nifty about them?"

"One of them has the driver's seat in the middle," Soph says. "And they're shiny and just - cool." She peers at the other Dominiques. "Do you not know cars? I guess you don't know cars."

"I don't know cool cars," says Damaris. "Cars are loud and ugly and give off noxious smells. I wouldn't ride in one for all the pastries a small village could give me."

"I am a little bit lost," Yseult admits.

"My favorite one of Tony's looks like -" Soph produces an illusion.

"Pretty," says Yseult.

"Ancient," says Helen. "Even I can tell that and I barely know anything about cars. But I guess that makes sense; I'm something like sixty or seventy years ahead of you, aren't I?"

"It's just 2006 in Sunshine."

"Wow, yeah. 2081," she says.

"And Samaria's so far future it's changed calendars and Rêverie is a whole nother thing."

She laughs.

"Yeah, it's 691 for us," says Damaris.

"1768," says Yseult.

"How positively medieval," Soph giggles in Yseult's direction.

"Which means what?"

"Oh, on Earths there was a period of history that's called 'medieval'. Actually the seventeen hundreds might not have been it, I don't actually know, I didn't do very well in European History."

She laughs.

"You do dress kind of in - period clothes, though, I don't know what period but it is a period."

"I think everyone dresses in clothes that are from a period," says Yseult.

"Except witches," says Helen. "Witches have been wearing silks the same way for thousands of years and it doesn't look to be changing anytime soon." She gestures at her outfit - jeans and a blue T-shirt with a pink flower on the front. "Me, personally, I switch it up sometimes, but almost nobody else does and everyone thinks I am extremely weird for it."

"How come you do it, then?"

"Because I can?"

"Yeah, but you can wear paper party hats all the time, and you don't. Like, even if you do it a lot, you clearly do not do it all the time."

"I don't wear mortal clothes all the time, either. Just when I feel like it."

"Mortal clothes. Makes it sound like the clothes are in hospice or something."

She giggles.

"I wonder what clothes would die of? Split seams and frayed hems? Spilled ketchup is recoverable."

She giggles more!

"This conversation is making me glad I can just repair my dresses with squares or let the wardrobe fix them," remarks Yseult.

"Ooh, do you have a magic wardrobe?"

"I do! At the castle, anyway. Sometimes I travel and then I do not."

"So it is not a magic walking wardrobe with little magic wardrobe feet."

"No," she laughs. "Although that is adorable and I might enchant one now."

"Awww!"

She conjures an illusion of a little wardrobe with round stubby little wooden feet. It walks in circles around the table, edging one foot forward at a time and wobbling back and forth a little as it moves.

"Awwwwwwwww!"

Yseult laughs.

"That is adorable!" exclaims Helen. "I want one! I want to give one to Kas! He loves clothes and he travels a lot, it'd be perfect."

"It doesn't look like it goes all that fast though," giggles Soph.

"That's okay. It's the spirit of the thing. He'll understand."

"I've never actually met a Joker. None of 'em have been to Sunshine."

"I've only met the one," says Helen. "He's very - himself."

"They all are," says Yseult.

"I only have hearsay to go on. Bella - my one - says that her and the other Bells who don't have them don't really see the appeal - wait, is that rude, those are your dads, should I not say that?"

"I am all right with not everyone seeing the appeal of marrying my father," laughs Yseult.

"Yeah, same," says Helen.

"My father is universally appealing," says Damaris. "...That came out wrong."

"Yeah, I have no idea what that was supposed to mean."

"Everyone likes him! At home, I mean. Well, not literally everyone, but - he is very likeable and friendly and nice."

"All of those things are good qualities."

"Kas is like that too, but... maybe not as much," says Helen. "Not so that that's how I would describe him offhand, anyway."

"How would you describe him offhand, then?"

"Sad," she says without really thinking about it.

"Aw."

Yseult is closest; she scoots her chair over and gives Helen a hug.

"Maybe. Uh, lemme know if it would help for me or my Bella or whoever to talk to - 'secret mom'? Why is she secret?"

"She fixed the afterlife and then disappeared," Helen explains. "There are a bunch of legends about her and stuff. And varyingly terrible movies. So Kas and Ranata decided that I should probably not grow up with everybody knowing I'm the Shade-Dreamer's daughter."

"Why is she called that? That doesn't make any sense as a title. Like, 'Slayer' might not be the best title but it's very comprehensible, Slayer slays stuff."

"I... don't really know? I mean, shades and dreams are both... components of what she did..."

"Alethia should fire its title-inventing department."

She giggles.

"Bella only has a very very small empire," says Soph, pinching her fingers together. "Just her demonic minions pretty much, and one village of refugee demons with three heads each that didn't have anywhere to go. I'm not sure if it's big enough to qualify her as an empress, let alone for me to get any spillover princessyness. So I don't have any titles at all."

"Refugee demons?"

"She's been talking to a lot of demons, and she found some demons that were being jerks to some other demons so she talked to the less jerky ones and set them up in a little village on Mercury, not too close to the palace."

"That sounds about right."

"And these demons are still kinda jerks so I don't go visit them and play Monopoly, but they can't actually do anything on Mercury because of the ground rules, which they agreed to as a condition for getting to live there away from the jerkier demons."

"I just realized you specified 'three heads each' and now I'm imagining a village of demons with three heads, like, shared communally," says Helen.

Yseult giggles.

"I would actually not put it past Sunshine to contain a kind of demon that works like that? But no, three heads on every pair of shoulders in that village, except there is a blue one who lost her left head in an accident."

"That sounds unpleasant. Is she okay?"

"I don't visit, but she's, you know, alive, so more okay than I would be if I lost my head? I think if she were desperately impaired by it Bella would have fixed her jerkiness or no jerkiness."

"Sunshine is strange," she concludes.

"Yes. Sunshine is strange and full of demons who are many and varied."

"I am definitely getting that sense," says Helen.

"I heard you have, like, talking polar bears in your world though, we don't have those!"

"Armoured bears!" laughs Helen. "Yes. I've met a few, but not talked to them for very long. I think Kas was friends with one once, but she died and didn't come back."

"She didn't want to or nobody wanted her back or the harpies stopped her?"

Helen shrugs.

"Are they basically like regular people who are bear shaped or are they strange?"

"...I'm not sure," Helen says thoughtfully. "They are themselves. I don't think they're exactly like humans and they're certainly not very much like witches."

"For that matter how different are witches from humans?"

"...Somewhat," she says. "Definitely somewhat."

"Okay, how are witches different from humans?"

"We have magical powers and don't come with an expiry date," she says. "And then there's a bunch of cultural stuff."

"Like what kinda cultural stuff?"

"Oh - no nudity taboo, wearing ripped-and-tied silk when we wear anything, clans and queens and fighting with bows and daggers and separating from our daemons when they settle so they can be as far from us as we want - I'm glad I did that, there's no way Kalavar could come in here. Too crowded."

"You don't do the tucking-away thing? Sherlock does it practically all the time, I've never even seen Steph."

"I only just found out about the tucking-away thing! From my secret mom!"

"Oh. Huh. Kas has to know about it, though, it was a thing before Jane passed out."

"Or wings," says Damaris. "It would be convenient sometimes if I could make my wings vanish away. But I don't think I actually want the power."

"I can't actually think of a time when it'd be useful to be missing a leg, however painlessly and temporarily."

"Sitting on a bus with no leg room," says Helen. "No legs! Problem solved!"

"I don't know how to sit without legs, I think I'd topple over."

"There is that."

"I'd say being down an arm would solve that problem when somebody's arm is trapped and guaranteed to fall asleep during certain kinds of cuddling? Except then that arm doesn't get any cuddles if it's gone, not even squashy fall-asleep ones."

"Is that bad?"

"Yes," says Soph. "Arm-falling-asleep cuddles are better than no arm cuddles at all."

"Good to know."

"I am full of useful knowledge!"

"You are!"

"What else do you need to know?"

"I dunno! Things," she says. "Things."