"Okay," says Aedyt, who can guess.

Helen looks at Kerron, then at Aedyt. Wheels begin turning.

"What's on your mind?" Kerron asks Helen.

"Guesses."

He snorts.

"Anyway," says Aedyt, "if you wanted to experiment, Lily, I could try to conjure you pretend singer blood."

"I'd rather not make an idiot of myself in the middle of a Bellparty if it works. Maybe when we're back in Aurum. You can come to the tasting, stay after?"

"Sure!" she says agreeably.

"Cool, I'll send you an invitation when I have the details of the scheduling and all worked out."

"So anyway. Helen here is Kas's kid. Slightly awkward amount of emphasis on 'Kas's'."

"Awkward emphasis because—?"

"Because he had me by himself after he'd been wandering around missing Amariah for decades, and he didn't even mean for me to be hers but it happened anyway because of some weird thing about wishing and templates, and when she finally got back she was really mad at him for it."

"...I want to hug you, do you want me to hug you?"

Helen nods.

Hug.

Kerron hugs her again too.

"Guilty as charged."

Aedyt giggles.

"Have you met our other cousinoids? Your - sisteroids, I guess? Or for that matter your own alts."

"Some of them!" she says, cheering up somewhat. "My alts, and Pen the tiny angel, and the griffins. I still haven't seen sisteroid number three - I don't even know if any of them are here."

"They should be. I haven't met Hyacinthe or Ariel yet either, the one wasn't born and the other wasn't old enough last time - Aedyt?"

"Haven't seen them. Well, I don't know what they look like, so 'haven't noticed them' might be more accurate. I might have seen them and not paid attention."

"Well, did you see any angels who were younger than Keziah but not as young as Pen?"