"I wonder if he'd decide to look like you, or like something else?" Sherial wonders, studying Lazarus. "Do alts of the same species always look the same?"

"Looking like me would at least be a reasonable default," says Lazarus. "I'm not actually sure about alts - I know there's a little variance at least, but I don't know how much we've seen so far or how much we can expect in the future."

"We can present this curiosity to Glass, when she arrives. But we do learn that things previously invariant are not so on a regular basis and she is not always equipped to provide advance notice without examples to look at. For instance, I expressly wished that the five dragons I conjured up be unrelated to each other and the existing dragons, yet in all other cases where Tonies and Sherlocks have existed in pairs, they are genetically identical."

"That is interesting," says Sherial. "I wonder if Tianthonet got distracted. She does that sometimes. Not usually when it's important."

"Should we brainphone her?" (Brainphoning is this thing -)

"I'd better do it if anyone does," says Sherial, curling her tail around her forefeet. "Otherwise she might be needlessly alarmed."

Elspeth adds the relevant parties to the brainphone network and makes it clear to Sherial that she has done so.

Sherial gazes thoughtfully into the distance.

Her visitors wait.

"...Go on," says Sherial.

"The names would mean nothing to you as yet, but -" She takes a look at Tianthonet's new Bonded.

Tianthonet's new Bonded is also the local Virginia alt.

"Tianthonet's new bonded is an alt of a template of whom there are two others. They call themselves Virginias."

"And do they normally associate with Tianthonets?" inquires Sherial.

"One of them does. The other is primarily associated with a Libby, although the world does contain a Tony. There is also a Libby here, who is human, but we have been addressing the dragon alts first."

"Tianthonet finding her Bonded just now, who just happens to be of a template previously associated with hers, is the kind of coincidence that usually isn't," says Sherial. "Who are all of the other unaddressed templates, and do they come with any existing associations to one of us like that?"

"Well, there's apparently a Kolya," volunteers Lazarus. "They're attached to mes. And vice versa."

"The Libbies have no obvious attachments to any particular other template, although Glass has said they are slightly attracted to your own template even if we haven't routinely seen the combination appear together. I... suppose we could expect Arianna to wind up attached to the elf of Sandy. There is no one obviously lying in wait for Sidanar."

"'Sandy' is a template attached to Arianna's?" asks Sherial.

"Yes, they've appeared together three times now and never separately."

"Perhaps," says Sherial, "we should tell all of these people about their potential attachments."

"Quite possibly. I am an advocate of thoughtful Bonding. I hope Tianthonet and her new Bonded are adjusting comfortably."

"She isn't very talkative at the moment."