The locals will be Sarion, her beloveds, their other beloved, the five conjured dragons (and their Bondmates, where applicable: Virgivere and Lissa), and Liselen - Magania has, as usual, declined, and so far no Bell party has featured Bell parents.
Amariah is bringing her boyfriend and spontaneous daughter and two of the spontaneous daughter's friends, as well as an Alethian instance of the Rupert template.
Shell Bell is bringing Pearl and Screwdriver.
Golden is bringing her usual large contingent, as usual not including her husband but including her daughter and daughter's grown fosterling (the other remaining at home) and his wolf, both mothers-in-law and one father-in-law, adopted siblings, staff members including the Joker and Nathan, and the children of the aforementioned.
Glass is bringing both wives, all three daughters, Kanim, and her cat. She invited Icarin and Valeria, but their parents are not willing to let them gallivant into other worlds unsupervised and had a scheduling conflict.
Stella's bringing a smattering of people including Alice, Anna, Sandy, Libby, Bridget, her college roommate Janine, and Lazarus.
Tab is bringing Aelise (but not Kers) and Luhan.
Etty is bringing only Nona.
Aether, likewise, brings no one but Celo.
Pattern comes with Ripper, Slipstick, Queenie, and Ghosty.
Aegis is accompanied by her four-bodied boyfriend, Merryweather, Whitlock, and Howlett.
Aurora comes with Brilliance, Lexi with her Device Persica, Agent Honey with her Device Adularia, and Beth.
Rose brings her husband and three children and her former apprentice, Luc.
Angela brings her husband, her four children, several of her friends, and some of those friends' children and grandchildren with and without wings. Keziah also brings a friend.
Juliet shows up with Soph, Minus, Red, Giles, James, Virginia, Minnie, Ike, and Val.
Cam brings Jellybean and Tilly and stops there.
And from unBelled worlds hail additional Sherlocks and Tonies, Darcy, Matilda, Pepper, and Eights.
Elspeth, uncommonly but not uncharacteristically, is dancing in the corner of the space plant currently supplied with the music of an angelic choir. Jacob is with her, dancing less beautifully but not badly.
A Joker-flavoured sense of presence close by becomes the rapidly assembling body of Ghosty, already dancing even before she has muscles to move her bones or skin to cover them.
"Hiiii," says Ghosty, twirling her way into a lovely black dress with a long swirly skirt. "How've you been?"
"I'm doing fine. Felicity burned down the house, but it and he were both fixable."
"Yes. And he didn't want to come to the party today, which is convenient since I hadn't decided whether it would be a good idea to bring him or not at all."
"Not very talkative. He likes the computer games. He fixes food for himself, he'll eat what Jake conjures, he wanders around the island. He didn't register any opinions on colors or anything when I offered him a set of pajamas, so I made something up, but I did get him to pick out which bedroom he wanted. He seems to find it entertaining when I fail dismally at lying."
She dissipates; a short time passes, but longer than a literal second; she reappears—
"My name is Kelly," asserts Elspeth. (Nope. It is not. It is very much not Kelly. At all.)
"I can actually lie to people who haven't ever heard me say anything true before, but obviously most people don't fall into that category."
"Oh. Well, I can't, and he burned the house down anyway."
"He was going to be testing boundaries and so on, right? He burned down the house, and when I asked him he said he didn't have fun, so he wasn't just doing it for kicks. So I guess my not being able to lie convincingly isn't completely closing the gap in his confidence."