"...Potentially," says the woman. "What's a fire-witch?"

"Oh, on Chronicle they're... a kind of witch, but not like regular witches. They do fire and some other things. I'm a little bit a fire witch, just enough to hold hot stuff. Tony and Sherlock are more and Grandma Marianne is more than that. I have some friends who are all fire-witch though. They aren't here."

"Then no, I don't think I'm a fire-witch," she says, smiling.

"They have red hair," says Carinna. "Most people on Chronicle with red hair are fire-witches."

"Not the case on Earth," says Pepper. "As far as I know. I did recently have... a fire-related experience, but I wasn't any kind of fire-anything before then."

"A fire-related experience?"

"Someone came up with a treatment that was supposed to make very sick or injured people healthy again," she says. "There were complications."

"...Fire-related complications."

"Unfortunately, yes," she says. "Everything's under control now, but there were some chancy moments. And now I have a few fire-related complications myself, although they usually don't come up."

"Um, okay. Mostly all I do with being a bit of a fire witch is play with hot glass."

"My fire-related complications wouldn't be much good for that. But they do come in handy whenever I need to light a candle."

"I heard that in worlds with a lot of technology they don't use candles."

"Not as a major light source, but we do use them for decoration," she says.

"Like the pretty carved kind with all the layers? But those are too pretty to burn."

"Actually," she says thoughtfully, "there are some people who make candles with sculptures inside them, so the sculpture comes out as the candle burns down. I like those."

"Ooh, those sound neat! I don't think I've ever seen one."

"I'm sure you could get someone to conjure one for you," she suggests.

"I have squares... but I would have to think of a sculpture. And a candle."

"I have one in mind," says Pepper.

Carinna takes a square out of her sorter - it's in Kiawen's transparent, rainbow-misted color - and hands it to the fire-related nonwitch.

She takes it, and a moment later hands back a candle: a perfectly unexceptional cylinder, blue at the bottom shading to white at the top.

Carinna takes it and smiles. "It's pretty but not too pretty to burn. What's inside?"

"It's a copy of one I've seen at home. I'm not sure how to explain it exactly - a kind of lattice made of circles. I liked it because it cast pretty shadows."

Carinna puts it in her skirt pocket. "I think I will light it later when I'm at home."

"Sounds like a plan."

"My name's Carinna," she adds abruptly. "Of the Enchanted Forest. I didn't say."

"My name's Virginia, but I have alts, so you can call me Pepper. It's lovely to meet you, Carinna."

"I have a nametag but it wound up under my scarf." Carinna moves her scarf. It falls back over her nametag. She growls at it and takes it off and goes to put it in her uncandled pocket, then takes Mossy out of the pocket so it has room.

"Oh, what a cute little... puff!" says Pepper. "What is it?"

"It's a poof!" beams Carinna. "This one is mine and it's named Mossy. Poofs come from the Gentle Cave."

"The Gentle Cave sounds... very positive," says Pepper. "What is it?"

"It's a cave! A nice cave with cute little animals, like poofs, and piano bears, and fluffbats, and pawlings, and cheepingbirds. Kanim found it and said there wasn't going to be anything that would scare me in it so we all went and named all the kinds of animals and figured out why they weren't leaving the cave. It's because they need spring water from in it, so now we have little fountains with the same kind of water and we took pets home. Me and my sisters. Bella's cat promised not to terrorize them."

"It sounds very relaxing," says Pepper. "Do you think I could visit?"

"Yeah. It is and I bet you can. Jane can put you in Chronicle but you have to get to the cave some other way."

"I happen to be able to teleport."

"That's a way," laughs Carinna. "I can, too, but most people in most worlds can't."

"True. It's very convenient, though, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Sometimes I can get the forest to cooperate with me too, but I'm not really good at it. Sherlock does it really well, and Grandma Marianne."

"You live in a cooperative forest?"

"I'm one of the princesses," says Carinna. "The Enchanted Forest gives its royalty some special magic. Bella gets a little bit too - usually she would just get courtesy stuff like being able to pick up the sword, because she married in, but she married two princesses so she can get some of the other things to work, too."

"That sounds friendly!"

"It is! Oh, and our forest is where Bells go to get auras, it can just suck up the enchantment magic. It's getting bigger."

"Interesting," says Pepper. "If it keeps getting bigger is it going to run into something, or is there magic at work?"

"It's only got more room in it, it isn't any bigger around," explains Carinna.

"In nonmagical worlds those things tend to go together unavoidably," says Pepper.

"That sounds really inconvenient," says Carinna thoughtfully. "Can you at least stack places, even if you can't grow them on the inside only?"

"...Yes, I suppose we can," says Pepper. "In fact, most of our cities turn out that way. We run out of sideways and start making things taller instead."

"No, not taller," says Carinna. "Stacked. In the same - box as each other." She starts gesturing; this is less effective than it might otherwise be since she has Mossy in one hand. "Like Bella's rooms, they all have the same door and you go to the one you want."

"No," says Pepper, "I'm afraid not. But we seem to get by anyway."

"So you have to find different places to put everything. Gosh."

"You could think of an elevator as a kind of multiply opening door," Pepper muses. "But with more waiting. Not much more waiting, though, if it's a good elevator."

"What's an elevator do?"

"It's a... box big enough to stand in that moves up and down between floors of a tall building much more quickly than you could climb the same distance using stairs."

"I... guess that's better than just having a lot of stairs? I mean, we have stairs too, the castle is pretty big. Also you have to go all the way up one of the towers to get to the dungeons."

"That sounds inconvenient," says Pepper.

"Yeah, but it's not like we use the dungeons much."

"I'd hope not! Frequently used dungeons are so rarely a good sign," says Pepper.

"...None of my moms will actually tell me what we would use them for, if we used them. The tablecloth drying rack used to be down there, though," she adds.

"I see."

"But they're inconvenient to get to anyway and there's not too little room in other parts of the castle, so that's okay." Carinna puts Mossy on her shoulder. Mossy snuggles up to her neck and whmmmmmms.

Pepper smiles.

"Do you want to hold Mossy?"

"I think I would like that very much."

Carinna hands over Mossy. "The glowing and the whmmming are happy," she says, sounding like she fancies herself a multiverse-class expert on poofs.

"They're so nice! You don't have to be careful, either, it just looks like it - you can't hurt them, when they glow it makes an anti-injury field and it works for people near them too."

"That's convenient," says Pepper, petting Mossy's fluff. "Do they, um... make more poofs somehow or other?"

"I guess they must. I've never seen them doing it. There's always plenty in the cave."

"A mystery," she says. "Well, all right."

"Kanim might know. He studies caves and stuff and he's been studying the Gentle Cave."

"Is Kanim here?"

"Yeah. He's probably with Tony, I mean Iron."

"I have a Tony, too," Pepper mentions. "Mine is Iron Man."

"I guess that makes sense, if he is a boy Tony. It's weird that most of them are boys."

Pepper considers this. "I don't think I find it weird that some of them are women," she concludes.

"I guess there's two now, the dragon one is a girl, right? Her and the one of my moms."

"Yes," says Pepper. "The dragon one is also bonded to one of my alts."

"Right, I remember hearing about that because the Thilanushinyel of Bella has a Thilanushinyel dragon. They're not that much like our dragons."

"My world doesn't have any dragons to compare them to."

"Your world sounds weird."

"I like it just fine."

"Bella says our world is the nicest world. You can come to it some time and get a poof if you want one, people do that."

"I think I will definitely visit," says Pepper.

Carinna smiles at her. "I would like Mossy back now," she says.

Pepper hands Carinna back her poof.

Carinna puts Mossy on her shoulder and wanders into the crowd, looking for the nearest mom (and checking name tags to be sure she gets the right one).

There's one!

"Tony, Tony, I talked to a stranger and she was nice and nothing bad happened and she wants a poof and she made me an interesting candle and she's sort of fire related!"

Hugs!

Beamy enthusiastic cuddlesome hugs!

"Her name is Pepper and in her world you can't stack rooms or grow things on the inside and not the outside, but they have things called elevators so they don't have to climb stairs," Carinna adds.

"Ooh, she must be from Yggdrasil," says Tony. "With Iron Man. He mentioned elevators too, when he was grumbling about the stairs in the castle. And he has a friend called Pepper."

"Yeah! She said her Tony was the Iron Man one."

"That makes sense! I'm glad you had a good talk," says Tony, hugging her again.

"I am too!" Hug hug hug.

Hug hug!