He flicks her a suspicious glance but doesn't actually voice the suspicion that goes with it.

"What?"

"Nothing," he says, in blatant defiance of reality.

"If you want to know something, I'll tell you. I can't even lie effectively, watch: My name is Kelly."

...Felicity cracks up.

"'Telling the truth' usually doesn't sound like a good superpower to people who haven't met me."

"That was hilarious," says Felicity, "do it again!"

"I'm five years old," laughs Elspeth, "ummm, let's see - the moon is made of cheese - I'm not actually very good at thinking of false things to say."

He giggles helplessly.

Yep. Still giggling.

"It was pretty inconvenient when I was a kid and traveling incognito constantly. There was a very, very short list of nicknames I could use for myself or my mother that wouldn't alert everyone I talked to."

"What, you couldn't just pick a new name and use that?"

Elspeth shakes her head. "I mean, maybe if I'd wanted to stop being Elspeth Annarose Cullen I could have changed my name and the new one would have stuck, but my mother still called me Elspeth in private, I just had to introduce myself to humans as Beth or Ann or something."

"How do you be a name?"

"You don't," says Elspeth. "I do. I can remember all the way back to when I was born and being told what my name was. It's my name, really and truly, and my witchcraft cares about that."

"Yeah, you're right I don't."

"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."