"I can't tell you how to feel about it. I've contagioused templatehood onto my cat and my best friend, it's kind of an occupational hazard of hanging out with Bells."
"...Cats in my world are people," clarifies Glass. "We haven't found any more of him yet, but any other Bells in a position to have sapient pets will have alts of Cricket. You may see him around here. He will be able to understand you but not vice-versa, I'm the only person who can do that."
"Hey - Ike? Ike. Hang on a second -" says Glass suddenly. "C'mere?"
"This would be easier to see if Icarin were here too but I've looked at him before, so I can pretty much... your template and their template are closer together than most independent templates. You aren't the same thing, but like - if Jnis are metaphorical sisters, Ikes are metaphorical cousins to them."
"I'm just reporting what I see, I can't tell you what to do with the information."
"So all the other templates are equally 'far apart'? And these ones are just - nearby each other?"
"Y- no. No, we're not all equally far apart. Bells are closer to -" She looks around, sees her cat approaching, scoops him up. "Bells are closer to Cricket's template than to Jnis or Ikes. There's almost..." She puts Cricket down over his yowled protest, flies up, spins in the air to look at everybody. She lands again. "Now that I'm looking for it there are clusters. Two of them. Two slightly different - colors."
"There's you and Jnis in the one color, Bells and Crickets in the other color, I think Sherlocks and Tonies are yours - These are not literal colors but maybe I should start referring to them as though they were anyway."
"The two groups should definitely be named in some way," says Janine. "Otherwise it will get confusing."
"Yes. Kanim is in the same cluster as Bells... yes, and you, Cricket." She picks her cat back up and rubs his fuzzy belly. "I think two of my daughters are in the Bell-and-Cricket cluster and Tanalin is in the other one..."
"If only we had a convenient cluster in our coin colors to tell us what to call these - halves."
"What don't we?"
"We don't have a good name for the two clusters templates appear to fall into. You're in the other one."
"The other one from - you?" he guesses, drifting over from the cookie table with a few more acquisitions. "Mm, that's nnnot a huge surprise. Who else is where?"
"Cricket here and my first and thirdborn and Kanim are with us, Jnis and Ikes and Sherlocks and Tonies and their parents and Tanalin are with you, and I'm not positive I can reliably make this distinction from memory with anyone I don't see all the time."