Juliet locates Ike. "Hey you. I said I'd introduce you to the boy one of me. Is this a good time?"

"It is not a bad one!" says Ike.

"Cool, he's over there investigating the snacks." Juliet leads Ike through people towards Cam.

Cam: is a boy of Juliet.

"Hello!" says Ike.

"Hi! Who's this?"

"Cam, this is Ike. Ike, Cam. Ike was very interested to learn that I come in boy."

"Oh was he."

"Um. Yes," says Ike. "Yes I was."

"We have truly fascinating taxonomy, don't we, us Bells."

"Slayer, angel, witch, elf, admiral, mage, psion, vampire, magician, enchantress, ingot, swanperson, and boy."

"On that list I think I'd rather be represented as 'wizard'."

"Oh, I'm sure one day you'll have company and it will no longer be such a tempting distinguishing feature. Besides, I left out a couple of us altogether."

"You are also a wizard?" says Ike. "What kind?"

"...Speech wizard?" suggests Cam. "Only one kind on my world. Learn magic language, convince stuff to do stuff with it."

"Yes, that was a question about methods rather than nomenclature," says Ike. "I am not a wizard! I am an undergraduate student. Someday I will build robots. Well, I already build robots, but someday I will build much better ones."

"Rumor has it that's a much wiser occupation on Sunshine than wizarding, robotics is. At least until Tilly and her alts camp out there long enough to scare the magic system straight."

"I have not heard about Tilly, who is Tilly?"

"She's a Matilda? There isn't one in Sunshine, maybe you haven't heard of them. There's three - mine, Rainbow's, and one from an unBelled world called Wellspring. Matildas are great."

"I had not heard of Matildas," Ike confirms. "That is interesting! How do they scare magic?"

"Oh, it turns out that Wellspring's magic system is actually lots like the Sunshine-family worlds, except Sunshine-family worlds have had it for a long time and demons or something have been using it in unpleasant ways. It's kind of impressionable magic, so it gets unpleasant when used that way. But Matildas are all really intensely good at this kind of magic, so if they went and were good examples for it, they might be able to shift things some."

"Ooooooh," says Ike. "That's interesting. They should do that! Our magic kind of mostly sucks right now."

"They plan to! I don't think they have a timetable though."

"I am sure they will get around to it someday. Did you know you are extremely pretty?"

"I've heard this from reliable sources before. But not from you. It's good to know."

"Oh good," says Ike.

"You're cute, do people inform you of that often enough?"

"With reasonable frequency! But mostly they are members of my immediate family and that is not at all the same."

"I wouldn't expect it to be, no. But here I am, not related to you, thinking you're cute."

"I have noticed that," says Ike. "I am very pleased!"

"Good, I hate it when my flattering opinions are unhappily received."

Cam looks up.

"Oh, I was looking for my sister," Ike explains. "She is likely to show up and interrogate you if she notices that we are talking. But she does not seem to have done that yet."

"Why is she likely to do that?"

"She is very protective."

"What, exactly, is she likely to expect me to maybe do to harm you?"

"...Lots of things, none of which I think you are actually going to do, but there is a really long list, because I have had very bad luck with boys," says Ike.

"Aw, that sucks."

"So now she makes sure to intimidate anyone she catches maybe sort of slightly flirting with me, but I don't think she is going to try to intimidate you in particular because you are probably not very afraid of being punched even if it's by Val, but I think she will probably still glare at you a little just in case."

"I am fully warded up, yeah. Is she unusually good at punching?"

"I'm not sure if 'good' is the word. Maybe 'enthusiastic'. Also Sessiaki have iron bones."

"Sessiawhonow? Are you one of the innumerable forms of Sunshine demon?"

"Yes! Well, partially. Full Sessiaki also have scales and tails," he says. "I'm slightly more than half human. I have shiny fingernails, an iron skeleton, some human-toxic dietary requirements, and I never need a compass or a ruler."

"That is an interesting array of features. Can I have a look at the fingernails?"

"Okay," says Ike. He holds out his hand. His fingernails are, indeed, shiny - and a little smoother than human ones, and faintly opalescent.

Cam takes his hand and peers at them. "Very cool. I'd think it was a deliberate aesthetic if you hadn't told me. How does the geometry thing work?"

"I have a perfect sense of distance and direction, by eye and by physical orientation," he says. "The Sessiaki writing system tends to boggle humans because they don't see angle and distance automatically. But for example I can tell you that you're slightly taller than five-ten, about a sixteenth of an inch to be exact - heights are really interesting around here actually, with all the templates, your alts are mostly about five-four but very few of them are exactly the same as each other, and some of the other templates I've seen really are exactly the same across the board." He takes a breath. "And if I close my eyes and spin around several times I still know which way is north. Or, well, any direction. And if I were to walk around blindfolded I could tell you exactly how far I'd gone and draw the route on a map. Moving between worlds is always weird that way because it doesn't feel like going anywhere, but I am still demonstrably somewhere else."

"Huh. Is your sense of direction freaking out about being in space?"

"Not particularly. Most things are in space if you step back far enough," he says. "I don't have trouble with the moon orbiting the Earth or the Earth orbiting the sun, either. Actually when I was little it took me a while to get used to moving around in vehicles - I used to get horribly carsick, and I have thrown up on at least five separate trains - but it did not stay a problem for very long."

"I would not actually have speculated that the moon would give you trouble. Do you generally track arbitrary moving objects? Tides in the Indian Ocean, tectonic plates, comets, particularly energetic whales?"

"Only ones I can see," he says. "And I can pay more or less attention to particular ones. But I see dimension and distance with about the same immediacy as colour."

"So other stuff gets in the way of it? How much stuff does it take to be 'opaque' to this sense?"

"It's a visual sense," he says. "Well, partly. Mostly. One is... as though everything in my field of vision comes with little labels saying what the distances are between any part and any other part, and the other is orientation relative to known landmarks. But—" he starts to make a gesture, discovers that Cam is still holding his hand, goes very suddenly very pink, and continues after a short pause without continuing to gesture "—I don't orient relative to where something is, I orient relative to where I remember it. I can always find where we parked the car, but if somebody moves the car I can't immediately tell where they put it. If someone teleported my house three feet backward, I'd notice the next time I looked out the window or went outside, but I don't think I'd be able to tell right away. I haven't actually experimented with teleporting, come to think of it."

"What about distorting lenses, funhouse mirrors, that kind of thing?" Cam asks. He appears to find the blushing very cute. "Also, happy to teleport you someplace if you'd like."

"Distorting lenses... imagine looking at a ruler in a curved mirror," he says. "You can see all the tick-marks even though it looks like it's a funny shape. Visual distortions don't change the underlying dimensions, and they don't change my perception of the underlying dimensions. But mirrors are interesting, actually, because they're almost like those optical illusions where it's two faces and you blink and it's a vase. I see the real relative position of reflected objects, but I can imagine the relative position they would have if the reflected light had been travelling in a straight line through a transparent pane. There's, um, a science museum back home that has a hallway lined with two not-quite-parallel mirrors, and I used to stand in it and make myself dizzy trying to see all the imaginary relative positions of all the reflected Ikes."

"This is fascinating. And the science museum part is adorable."

"Sure. Should we find your sister and get her attempt at intimidating me out of the way?"

Cam makes sure his hold on Ike's hand is secure and smiles and ports them both to wherever Ike's sister may be.

"Hello, you must be Ike's sister. I'm Cam."

"Val," says Val. (She is not wearing her nametag.)

"He is sort of slightly flirting with me," Ike says helpfully. "I think."

Val snorts.

"I didn't think I was being that ambiguous about it."

"You have to be pretty direct before Ike will stop looking for alternate interpretations," says Val. "Try not to make him cry. I punch people who make him cry, and I think I might get kicked out of the party or something."

"I don't think I have ever made anyone cry. Also, it wouldn't be automatic for you to be kicked out, it'd depend on how mad I was and how much Juliet likes you and whether you seemed likely to be otherwise disruptive."

"Well, if you don't make him cry, we won't have to worry about it," says Val.

"I think he is very unlikely to make me cry!" contributes Ike. "He is nice and interesting! And very pretty."

"He is definitely pretty," says Val.

"Just once I wish people would look past my stunning exterior and see me for the wizardly millionaire philanthropist that I really am inside," deadpans Cam.

"Uh-huh," says Val.

Cam tilts his head, and says, "My notebook bird reminds me that it is the recorded opinion of the world Alethia that I am actually a notebook bird inside," he reports.

"You are and/or have a notebook bird?"

"Yep." He reaches with the hand that is not still holding Ike's into his ever-present backpack, and pulls out Grace, currently in notebook form. "Don't touch her," he warns. "She's my daemon. Have you heard about daemons?" She turns into her hawk-self, standing on his forearm.

"I have sort of vaguely heard about daemons!" He blinks at the hawk.

"That... is a story," says Ike. "About a thing that happened. My goodness."

"She's a Cooper's hawk. If there are future boy Bells who are also called Cam I'll probably go by Cooper for that reason."

"Every so often I almost manage to forget how far outside my experience this party is," says Ike, "and then it occurs to me that I am floating in space above a planet in another world holding the hand of someone whose soul is a bird that is also an amalgamation of notebooks." He smiles a tiny smile. "And I don't hold people's hands very often," he adds.

"The situation isn't too far out of the scope of things that my life tends to contain, and I still do a mental double-take when I notice things like, 'hey, I'm holding the hand of a part-demon introduced to me by my alternate universe self and floating near some dragons outside of a plant magically generated by a completely unrelated kind of demon, and also my soul turned out to live in my magic notebook and is a bird now'," Cam chuckles. "I don't know if that goes away, I'd have to ask one of the older ones of me."

Ike giggles. "I'm glad it's not just me!" he says.

"Ooh, I pass. Do I get a prize?"

"Maybe," says Ike.

"Maybe?"

"Well, I think the prize is that Val leaves you alone while you possibly flirt with me," he says.

"Aha. And hold your hand, that also seems to be ongoing."

"Yes! Those," says Ike. "Those are examples of things we can do without Val's interference."

"Cool. Are those the kind of activity you prefer to do with a floor under you?" Cam inquires. Grace turns into a notebook again; he catches her and tucks her back in his backpack.

"Generally speaking, yes," says Ike.

Ike relaxes slightly. "This is a floor," he says, gazing down at it. "It is very a floor." He looks out past the railing. "And there's where we were standing earlier - teleportation does wipe out my orientation the same way interdimensional travel does. But I can get it back the same way, too, by placing myself relative to known landmarks again."

"And then it's all - restored from backup? How good is your memory for this stuff?"

"Very, very good," he says. "I couldn't retrace every step I've taken in my entire life, but I could probably draw you an accurate map of the parts of Toronto I've been to more than once."

"Cool. Are you working with about the same quality senses that a full Sessiaki would have, or did you get a toned down version?"

"About the same," he says. "Sessiaki-human mixes seem to be lucky that way. I can also see violet, which full Sessiaki can't; their visible spectrum is a little smaller."

"And that glowy thing your sister was doing, is that also a thing you do or something else?"

"That is iethat. She is an ithue," he says. "About a third of Sessiaki are. I'm not."

"...Stop me if all the questions are intrusive or you get them all the time or they are insufficiently flirtatious. Alternatively, ask me questions about wizardry or notebook birds or what I have learned from talking to inanimate objects."

"I don't actually get them very often, because the set of people who know my mom is Sessiaki but don't already know all about them is extremely small," he says. "You talk to inanimate objects? I suppose you implied that earlier. What do they say?"

"Depends! Plants range from extremely stupid, like grass, to fully sapient - most trees. This is only on my world, Syntropy - not even the stars outside of Syntropy are worth holding a conversation with, and stars back home are really smart. My wizard manual will talk to me about what's inside it, answer questions, direct me to page numbers. Grace is a person and always knows what I've written in her. Other stuff will answer basic questions about its properties if I ask it."

"Does this space plant say things?"

"Good question." Cam looks at the nearest part of contiguous space plant, which is the railing. "Hello, space plant!"

"I'm a space plant," says the space plant.

"Yes you are. Anything else to say?"

"Is it saying things?" says Ike. "I can't tell."

"It says it's a space plant. It's a big space plant. This isn't Syntropy, so that's probably all I'm gonna get out of it."

Ike giggles. "It's true! It is a big space plant. It might even be the biggest space plant ever. It's definitely the biggest one I've seen. But then, I have only seen one space plant."

"I am not aware of larger, but then, I don't know what Aianon has been up to for the last sixteen subjective years in Origin while Jane was broken."

"Maybe he was space gardening the whole time," says Ike. "Maybe Origin has space forests now."

"Maybe! I know he was there in the first place to put an ecosystem on Saturn. Do plants on Saturn count as space plants?"

"No," he says decisively. "Saturn is a planet. They are planetary. Planetary plants."

"Planetary plants," snorts Cam. "Very well. But perhaps he became bored with ecosysteming Saturn, and Pat's world has space forests now with space plants ten times the size of this one. I cannot ask it, for it is not the sort of thing it would know."

Ike giggles.

"Aianon made me a fruit once. It was heart-shaped - I mean, anatomically correct heart-shaped - and it was tasty so I kept the seeds. The trees have not turned out very clever - they are brighter than this plant, probably since I grew them in Syntropy, but they wouldn't win any contests within the world. But they are uncommonly emotional. They're always happy to see me and know who I am because they were made for me."

"...That's adorable," says Ike.

"Isn't it just? I mean, I have befriended a tree, but this is on another kind of level."

"Heart fruits!" he says, giggling. "Heart fruits. Heart fruits that love you."

"Well, the trees love me. The fruits, once picked, are not so full of mental activity that I feel any qualms about taking bites out of them. I did have a very anxious few days when I first learned to talk to things. Quizzed muffins, etcetera. I'm still slightly vegetarian on those occasions when I don't eat conjured food."

"...Yes," he says, "I suppose eating food that was aware enough to love you would be slightly horrifying. Did the muffin pass the quiz?"

"Failed it miserably! All it could say was, 'I'm a muffin'! It did not react when I warned it I was going to bite it. It did not complain when I did so."

"That's good," says Ike. "I would hate to think about all food being smart enough to complain when you try to eat it."

"Most food is not. I mean, nothing in actual food form is smart, but I talked to a goat and she was capable of telling me that she didn't want to be eaten, so I don't eat anything that used to be potentially brighter than a chicken. Chickens are really stupid, though."

"I am glad my visions of screaming cupcakes are not supported by reality."

"At one time I thought I had met a very clever rock but it turned out to be a disguised evil deity."

"...I think I just had another 'floating in space holding hands' moment," giggles Ike.

"Yeah. The disguised evil deity introduced itself to me as Iggy," Cam adds, winking.

"Pfffffffffff," says Ike.

"And then it tried to convince me not to do so much Belling because I was cramping its style and I didn't bite and then it tried to kill me and Jellybean and Tilly saved my life, so that was exciting."

"It sounds it!" says Ike. "I am glad the evil rock did not kill you."

"Yeah, me too. It does continue to exist, I'm not sure yet what to do about it, although the list of possibilities recently expanded to 'hire the assassin from Materia who terrifies both her local Bell and Glass'."

"...I don't think I would like to hire an assassin that terrified multiple Bells!" says Ike. "But I guess an evil deity would be a good reason to do it."

"Yeah, ordinarily I wouldn't wanna interact with her, I have had enough unfortunate experiences with Materia, but Iggy's kind of a problem. Syntropy's not hooked up to Downside, there's something in the way, and I bet Iggy's involved."

"I cannot even imagine trying to solve this problem," Ike says after a moment. "At home you don't solve evil gods, you avoid them as much as possible. Or at least I don't. I guess somebody probably does, or we'd have evil gods popping up like mushrooms."

"Juliet solved an evil god," says Cam. "I think it was in her job description even apart from being a Bell."

Ike nods.

"Things," he says, with great authority, and then grins. "Actually not very many things. I tried to build a robot puppy once but I did not succeed. That's what trying again is for, though! The latest thing I'm working on is stairs. Because we have a Roomba, and they're really only good for relatively unobstructed flat surfaces, and stairs get dirty too, so I'm trying to build a robot that can climb up and down stairs, and then I'll figure out how to make it also vacuum them."

"A stair-climbing Roomba. That's adorable. It's probably cheating on the robot puppy thing if you just make something that bends in all the right places and someone gets it to come when called by magic, isn't it."

"That would be very cheating!" he says. "Magic usually is. Which is all right for some things, but I want to build a robot puppy, not just get one from somewhere else."

"Yeah, that's fair, it'd be like wishing a crossword puzzle filled in. There is already something which does the job of being a puppy without having to be built and it is called a puppy."

"Yes. They are very cute," he says. "That is why I want to build a robot one. I would be much better at taking care of it than I would be with an actual dog, and it would still be cute and fluffy and reasonably huggable."

"I've never had a pet. Most of us don't. Glass has a cat, but on her world cats are people and also magically useful."

"I have not had any pets either. But someday I will have a cute fluffy robot friend."

"I wish you the best of luck. The fur exterior won't present insoluble problems with cooling the processors or anything?"

He shrugs. "Not very many things are really insoluble if you are clever and have flexible parameters!"

"I like that attitude."

Ike beams!

"You are very cute and I would rather like to kiss you."

Kisses! Kind of grinny kisses. Hopefully that is okay.

It is okay, if a little giggle-inducing.

A hug! Hugs are nice too. Ike squeaks, but it is a delighted sort of squeak. And he hugs back.

[I am glad you think so!] says Ike. [You are really attractive, wow.]

Well, the only appropriate response to that is more kisses.

That is the best response. Ike is so pleased.

Good. Pleased kissing: best kind.

And Ike is very pleased, so it is very best.

Cam is pretty damn pleased too. Cute boy, pleased kissing, all is well.

"I wonder if the space plant knows where to send us. Hey, space plant, where is an unoccupied room with a door?"

"There are many rooms like that under the main floor, reachable by stairs next to the archways," says the space plant, in the mode of the Speech used by unthinking objects when queried about their physical structure.

"Excellent." And Cam drapes an arm around Ike's shoulders and follows the space plant's directions.

Ike leans on him and beams the whole way down.

And here is a room! With a door! And a bed. And nobody in it.

Ike takes the greatly daring step of kissing Cam on his own initiative after they have closed the door.

That is great! Cam, of course, kisses him back, because what else is he supposed to do with a cute boy who kisses him?

He could do many things, but this is obviously the best option. Kisses.

Oh could he? Do many things? For example, could he resume that hug? With a view to no longer being in public, even?

Ooh. Yes he could. Ike hugs him back in a snuggly fashion.

[I haven't been thinking about it particularly,] he says. [Because of kisses. They are highly distracting.]

It causes him to squeak! And then no it is even more distracting. And nice. Extremely nice.

[You want me to quit distracting you?] asks Cam teasingly.

"Noooo," giggles Ike. "Continue."

Cam obliges happily.

Oh good! That is good. Cam is good. Ike is so pleased.

Nibble?

This is a positive development.

In that case, plural nibbles.

"You are really great," sighs Ike.

[You are adorable.]

"I am glad you think so!"

If Cam's hands wind up in a position to notice that, Ike is very likely to squeak! He seems to do that a lot.

[Are these good squeaks?]

"Yes," he giggles. "That was a good squeak. Well, a surprised squeak, but it's a nice surprise!"

He giggles. "But they're such nice distractions."

"No shortage," laughs Cam, pausing briefly in nibbles for some repositioning. Then he resumes. Nibble nibble.

"You are really great," sighs Ike. "I said that already. But then you kept being great."

[I am so glad you think so.]

He giggles again. He has a cute giggle.

Snuggle snuggle nibble nibble, just how many cute sounds can Cam get Ike to emit?

Quite a few! There is the giggling, and the sighing, and the happy little hummy sounds...

"Now that you mention it, I think it is non-optimal!" says Ike.

Cam decides that shirts can be removed the long way around on this occasion.

Ike supports this decision fully! Or he would, if he knew Cam had made it. He is definitely pleased about both the outcome and the process, anyway. Also it has been a long time since he has kissed Cam, and he is going to fix that now.

Mmmmm shirtless kisses.

Cam has an only-mildly-academic interest in all these shapes. He will investigate them a little.

That is good. Cam does check periodically to make sure that the squirms are good squirms.

They continue to be that. Yes. Definitely positive.

"Not exactly..." says Ike. "I mean, I definitely have a general idea, but I am lacking in specific ones."

"What is your general idea like?" (He nuzzles the side of Ike's neck.)

"It involves the same broad category of thing that we have been doing for the last... hour or so? I have completely lost track of time."

"Hour and eleven minutes."

He giggles. "You're handy."

Cam walks one of his hands up Ike's chest. "Yep."

He giggles harder.

"I could break the question into smaller bits if that helps. For example, should we continue wearing pants?" (Nibble. It's really cute when Ike is distracted, okay?)

"You are distracting me on purpose," Ike accuses, giggling.

"Yes. Because it causes adorableness."

Ike attempts to glare, but there is too much giggle.

Cam kisses his nose.

Ike contemplates pants.

Cam waits. And doesn't distract him again. (Unless ogling is distracting. It might be.)

Ike giggles. And kisses him. This is apparently his reaction whenever Cam removes an article of clothing.

Is it really? Cam could take his socks off, too. Test this hypothesis.

Ike supports this course of action in all particulars.

(Ike's toenails are, like his fingernails, slightly opalescent. Not very many people have ever had cause to notice this.)

Cam notes it, finds it unsurprising, and proceeds back up. For kisses.

Kisses, yay!

Kisses are quite lovely, yes.

Well. Asking Ike questions (in small, bite-sized pieces; when Cam can restrain himself from distractions) has been going so well.