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.

"Hi, Ghosty!"

"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."

"Ooh," she says sympathetically. "Any other casualties?"

"Nope. He took his poof out beforehand, even."

"Awwwwwwwww. That's sweet," she declares.

"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."

"Proooobably better not to," sighs Ghosty. "How's he doing in general?"

"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."

"My name is Kelly," asserts Elspeth. (Nope. It is not. It is very much not Kelly. At all.)

"What's so great about it?"

"You mean apart from being hilarious?" He grins and shakes his head; the grin fades. "It means you can't lie. Sounding all trustworthy all the time is one thing, but there are people who can sound all trustworthy and still be lying. It happens. You can't."

"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."

"Right, yeah. And he doesn't. That's the important part. He's not going to give a fuck if you can lie to anybody else."

"What would he be imagining I'd lie about?"

"Anything. Everything. How safe he is. Whether or not somebody's going to hurt him if he fucks up."

"Oh. Well, I can't, and he burned the house down anyway."

"...I'm not following," says Corona.

"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."

"I bet it didn't," says Corona, "but I also bet it helps. And that's not the only reason he might burn the house down, anyway."

"What reasons am I missing?"

"...I'm not sure if 'reason' is even the word," says Corona. "Just. Sometimes he'll do things that don't make any sense. He'll hurt himself or hurt somebody else or cry for days or break things, not because he's trying to get anything out of it, not because he decides to, but just because he has to do something and that's what came up. It won't all necessarily be destructive, either. I used to clean things a lot. The kitchen, my room, other people's rooms, whatever I could get my hands on."

"I see."

"How much is known about the clusters, apart from that they exist and Glass can see them? I mean, I've been informed that I'm 'green', but I don't know what to do with that, either."

"We know some things about 'em," says Corona. "Not a lot. There's only the one big one with all those Jokers in it, and then the rest of us."

"I might be able to provide more insight if I'd judgesighted you or Felicity, but I haven't."

"Yeah," says Corona.

She doesn't press that point, but: "Felicity mentioned his stepfather's name. It's not the usual unpleasant parental figure name."

Corona nods. "It's stepfathers for us, fathers for the big cluster, mostly fathers for everybody else - all the ones with the 'usual unpleasant parental figure name' are in the big cluster."

"Hmm."

"Only me'n'Felicity and the big cluster have anybody with a Gotham attached," he adds. "We think that's probably important but we're not sure how."

"I don't know either."

"Yeah," says Corona, "figures. None of us have much to go on."

Jake puts in, "Is whatever you're avoiding saying something Elsie had better know to deal with Felicity?"

Corona looks at Jake. "It's... part of it, the kind of big main crucial part, is something that I think it would be better for Felicity if he gets to tell her himself. And I don't know how much I can give you around the edges before you'll get the middle." Looking at Elsie again, "You know our best guess at what he'll be like; knowing our best guess at why is a lot less important."

"Okay," says Elspeth. "I can wait."

"Yeah." He smiles slightly. "I figured."

"As long as we're on the subject, do you have a general idea of how long it's okay to leave him by himself on the island, given that loneliness is known to be a problem? By himself except for his poof, I mean, which he'll have unless he throws it into the sea."

"Okay, then we shouldn't run into any problems there. I had been wondering if it would be a good idea to stop briefly at home mid-party."

"It wouldn't hurt to. He'd probably like it. But it wouldn't hurt not to, either," says Corona.

"Do you think I should offer him a Janegem?"

"You could. He might not take it," he says.

"Of course. It would mostly be useful in case he spontaneously learned to freecast. He can already talk to her at any time as long as he's at home, and he could turn it off if he didn't want her looking at him."

"Well, he doesn't have Harley's reason to spontaneously freecast," says Corona. "But yeah, it could happen. Would you miss him if it did?"

"Not yet, really, I'm still quite prepared for him to ask for a ride to a randomly selected world's version of some large city and some of the local currency. If he stays long enough, of course."

"I think maybe you better not offer him a Janegem until you would," he says. "If spontaneous freecasting is the reason. He won't take a way to come back unless he thinks he'll want to. And even if you tell him all about what happened to Harley, I don't think he'll expect to want to come back unless he expects you to miss him and cares that you would."

"Okay, I'll wait on that then."

He nods.

"Thank you," Elspeth adds.

Corona smiles.