"None of you like your original names. Except Celo, whose name is not actually 'Celosia' but rather -" (Elspeth, like Aether, can actually pronounce Celo's name.)

"...Cool," says Felicity. "I'd like that too if it was my name!"

Elspeth laughs. "He's a nymph. His name came with him, nobody had to give it to him. Celosia is the name of a plant that grows in his garden."

"What's a nymph?"

"They're a species from a world called Materia. It's got a Bell - that's an alt of my mother - and Celo, who's one of you, and no other templates that we know about -"

"And it's horrible. Worst world ever," says Jane.

"And nymphs are sort of the spirits of fields or gardens or similar, and Celo is the only male one, and they've got some fertility-symbol features that no one has fully explained to me, and they are divinely commanded to go around in the nude all the time."

"It broke me," says Jane petulantly. "Aegis walked in and it just broke me. Worse than the time she torched."

"I've met him. He does. Although someone has installed magical censor bars, so that his religious prohibition and others' propriety can coexist."

Felicity giggles some more.

"He has an interesting aura," adds Elspeth. "Standard aura stuff, plus it sort of perpetually announces that he's a minor deity."

"I think I like this guy."

"I think you'll like all of you when you meet them."

He laughs again.

"In a few days, there's going to be a big interdimensional party," Elspeth says. "I'm not sure yet whether you should be at it. You'd at least catch glimpses of your alts, and maybe they'd talk to you a little - Sue met some others when he was close to your age - but they wouldn't hang out with you extensively, I imagine."

"I'll skip it," says Felicity.

"Okay. There will probably be other chances, assuming Jane remains up. There's a party every time another Bell is found."

"How come Jane's so sure she's staying up and you're so not?"

"I'm not because she's gone down twice. I got stranded in the afterlife, the first time."

"I'm not going anywhere because I have been thoroughly decanted from Aegis and my containing body now sits in the Belltower, collects dust, and encounters no superweapons and no horrible worlds."

Felicity looks thoughtfully at Elsie, for lack of a visible Jane to take a share of his glances, and then shrugs.

"I can't produce definitive truth either way," says Elspeth. "I'm just cautious."

"Yeah," says Felicity.

"There have been strandings both times. At the party, though, there will be Shell Bell, whose aura lets her open doors to Milliways, from which everyone will be able to get home."