"Would your griffin be amenable to being dressed up anyway?" giggles Helen.

"Oooh, maybe, I could make him pretty barding!"

"And then you would have a use for your coat of arms," says Helen. "Perfect!"

"Yeah. I don't know, though, I've never tried to put clothes of any kind on Rainier. Perhaps he wouldn't like it."

"You could try just a little bit of clothes," says Helen. "And if he's not bothered then you could try more, and if he's bothered then you could not."

"That is a good idea. First I will make him a scarf."

"That sounds really adorable," says Helen. "If he likes the scarf I want to see."

"In person? Are you allowed to come visit Rêverie?"

Helen blinks. "Might I not be? Who decides?"

"Your parents, I guess? It's okay for people to visit Rêverie, so years ago we had the older two cherubs over, but we couldn't go to them because people in Samaria don't know about magic."

"Kas doesn't really not allow things," says Helen. "I don't know about Amariah. I wonder if I should ask her." She contemplates this prospect.

"Doesn't not allow things? What, at all?"

"Pretty much."

"I guess Papa doesn't make most of our rules, but Maman does..."

"If something's not a good idea, Kas says why," says Helen. "Or asks me not to do things. But if I wanted to do something anyway, he wouldn't stop me."

"Maman explains things too, but they are still rules even if I still want to do them after she explains."

"Yeah, Kas doesn't do rules," says Helen.

"I guess that could be nice, but I'm mostly embarrassed by times I did things Maman said not to when I was littler. That I didn't think to be embarrassed of back then. If I did more of them I would be more embarrassed."

Helen shrugs. "I like the way I grew up. I wouldn't want to swap childhoods with anybody."

"You liked not having your one of Maman around?"

"I liked some parts. Like having a secret mom, that was kind of fun. I didn't like that everyone was sad about her being gone. I liked going places with Kas, and baking cakes in the wilderness, and not having rules except with the clan. I didn't like getting kidnapped. But I like the whole thing, and how it made me turn out me instead of some alt of me, enough to want to keep it."

"I don't know how I'd be if Papa had raised me by himself."

"Me neither," says Helen. "And I don't know how I'd be if my secret mom had not disappeared and not been a secret. Well. I guess I wouldn't exist, that's kind of an answer."

"You'd probably exist at some point! I mean, Yseult and Damaris do."

"I wouldn't exist now. I might not exist in the next three hundred years. I might not exist ever."