"Hi, mini-mum," says Kerron, finding a place to sit opposite Felicity's chosen sofa. "I'm Kerron. How're you doing?"

"Mini-mum?"

"Would you rather I didn't?" asks Kerron. "You're one of my mum only smaller."

"It's just weird," he says. His cloud of poofs expresses no opinion one way or the other. "...Is your mom a girl?"

"About as much as you are, I'm guessing, plus shapeshifting magic. I call her that because it's less confusing on account of I also have a dad who is just my dad."

"Oh. Huh." He contemplates this. And pets his poof. Fluff fluff fluff. "Why'd you come visit, anyway?"

"Princess said you might like it. I can leave if you want," he shrugs. "Or if it looks like you're going to try to set me on fire, she mentioned that was also a valid reason to leave. Brought you some pastries," he adds, holding out the box.

"Search me. Doesn't look to be on your to-do list. It's a pretty short to-do list unless something's fouling up my magic."

"I have a to-do list?"

"I'd lay money you haven't written it down, but Elspeth said she told you I see goals and intentions and whatnot? You've got a bunch of colorshapes - they look kind of like your pet there, only more colors - and they're moving around pretty sluggishly till there's something you want right in front of you. You wanted to rack up a good chain reaction in your game, you want to pet your critter, you want to eat danishes - Mum has weird colorshapes too but you take the cake."

"Sure," says Kerron. He reaches out and scritches the poof.

The poof goes whmmmmmmmmmm and glows with a pale pink light the same colour as its fur. Felicity smiles.

"It's cute. It's an it? Has it got a name?"

"Nah," he says, to the second question. "It's just my poof. It's not like there's another one around to confuse it with."

"If I was gonna get one of these I'd probably have a hard time taking just one."

"I wasn't the one who got it," he says. Very misleadingly, but he's not concerned with that. "I don't know if I would've gotten more, though. It'd be harder to carry them all around." He pets his poof. It whmmmms some more.

"I never went in for pets anyway. When I was little I used to ask to get turned into stuff myself."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Usually blue versions of animals. Blue fox, blue hawk, blue hare, blue snake. Red cat."

He giggles.

"Was going to be a blue cat, but I was hanging out with my friend Lily at the time and she thought I should be a red cat, and she was pretty convincing."

"What'd she threaten you with?"

"She used to bite people. She has since outgrown the habit."

He giggles again.

"She's the Emperor's sister," adds Kerron. "His adoptive parents' biological kid. Technically the Princess's aunt. But adoptive vampire relationships get kind of weird and Lily'd be the first to tell you so."

"What's weird about 'em?"

"So, when Her Imperial Majesty Elspeth's Mom started learning about the exciting undead underworld," says Kerron, "the Emperor, and two other guys and two girls all about his visible age, were all passing for the adopted children of this other vampire couple, Lily's parents, who look a little older and were pretending a bigger age gap. But they're not actually related, any pair of them. The 'parents' didn't turn them all. Two sets of them are mates. The parents-and-children thing was a front for the humans - other times the Emperor was pretending to be his 'mom's' brother, or a subset of them would splinter off and do its own thing for a while and the cover story wouldn't include the whole family. The thing they actually are all together is a 'coven', but they're used to using parent and sibling relationships for each other. The Princess calls them aunt and uncle and grandma and grandpa as appropriate. But Lily thinks it's nonsense and won't hear 'Aunt' out of her mouth."

"Huh," he says. "Sounds complicated."

"Very much. More now the Emperor's biological mom's back from the dead."

"It's still weird that that happens."

"I'd say you get used to it, but I probably don't have a great perspective on that. Both my parents have died without it making a lick of difference to me. Maybe it'll be weird for you."

"If my mom dies, I won't notice," he says.

"Well, if you want to be informed, I bet Jane could do it," says Kerron. "But my point wasn't about parents in general, it's that I grew up such that someone could die one day and play how-high-into-the-air-can-Kerron-be-flung the next."

"Depends on whether Mum's throwing me or Dad and whether magic's involved. I think the record is six stories up. This is when I was yea high, though." His hand hovers considerably lower than his current height.

He snorts. "Did you hit the ground when you came down?"

"Nah, Dad caught me. I would've been fine if he hadn't, though, half-vampires are pretty durable, like two steps up from a pet rock. Feed once daily, do not psychologically scar."

"Nice," he says, giggling.

"It's a pretty good deal. Also, I don't need magic to avoid wanting to go for your jugular, which is an advantage we have over vampires."

This notion cracks him right up.

"And we pass for human better and we sleep - not everybody agrees on whether that's a plus - but we have to breathe and we're slower and weaker and so on compared to full vamps. All kindsa tradeoffs."

"I think sleeping is a plus."

"I agree with you, some of my friends don't. There's magic going around for it now if they don't want to do it, though."

"Is there anybody who doesn't sleep and magics so they do?"

"If anybody does they haven't told me about it."

"Huh."

"I have some guesses, but for some reason it feels like intrusive gossip? Vampires all used to be humans, and wanting to go back to that seems like more private information than who's using - performance-enhancing hexagons to stay up late."

"I don't get it."

"Well, I was born a half-vampire, never been anything else. If I don't like it it's pretty neutral if I'm like 'Mum, can I have a hex' and fix whatever's bugging me. If a vampire does the same thing it means they feel like they lost something when they turned. That make any more sense?"

"N...maybe? I dunno."

Kerron shrugs. "I don't know another way to say it."

"Kind of academic, I don't expect you to want to turn any more than Mum or Harley."

"Do me-s just not wanna be vampires?"

"Mum and Harley don't. One of you was for a while but then undid it with magic because he had a fight with his girlfriend or something? I'm sort of peripheral to major social news like that, I don't have the ins and outs of that."

"It's weird that me-s have girlfriends," says Felicity. "It's weird that they have kids."

"I was an accident," says Kerron. "Bear that in mind when you're grown up and carelessly playing with shapeshifting."

...He laughs.

"But yeah, most of you have girlfriends or boyfriends or wives or whatever," says Kerron. "Doesn't seem weird to me, but this is probably another place where I fail at neutral observation, yeah?"

"I guess that means I'm the weird one. But I just can't imagine. Well, I can imagine one of me having a kid by accident."

"You're also, what, twelve?" shrugs Kerron.

"Are you seriously gonna tell me I'll understand when I'm older?"

"I dunno, I haven't quizzed what I remind you is my mum's template on their puberty-related experiences, but for humans twelve is on the young end, isn't it?"

"This colorshapes thing really throws you, huh? What's the big deal?"

"Witches and ingots kind of orient around our powers a lot. I'm really used to navigating by the - you realize Elspeth cannot possibly know this? Same reason - she doesn't do secrecy - I'm not saying if she knew it'd be in the next imperial press release, but she would have mentioned it to me in the course of inviting me here expressly to talk to you. She definitely has no idea."

"She knew it was something bad that it would be better to be out of than in. The specifics? I don't think that's usual. Elspeth soaked up a lot of Joker childhood memories as a crash course before she got Harley - if there'd been anything like that in there she would've known or at least guessed, and then because she's Elspeth and works how she works it'd be something approaching common knowledge. Which it's not."

"Approaching common knowledge how close?"

"Someone like... Lily probably wouldn't know," says Kerron. "It wouldn't come up with her - if Elspeth tried to communicate everything in her head constantly regardless of its relevance she'd wind up killing unprotected humans, she doesn't just randomly share absolutely everything. But I'd know, the Imperial Alpha - Jacob - would know, Mum and Harley would know, people close to them like me or Dad or Harley's wolf would probably hear it, Her Majesty would know. So - given that if you don't want me to tell Elspeth I don't have to. She gets that there's reasons to not tell her things."

"I don't actually know if I care," he says contemplatively.

"Well - up to you."

He shrugs. He pets his poof. He has a vague flicker of actually wanting to pet his poof. It doesn't stay.

"Are you okay?" asks Kerron helplessly.

"What does that even mean?"

"I... don't have a comprehensive definition. You're doing this not-wanting-anything thing except for a flicker about petting your critter and I've never seen it before. I don't know if it means you're hurting or you're shut down or I should leave or I should hug you or what."

"What difference does it make to you?"

"I don't want to make anything worse? I don't know if I'm qualified to make anything better but I hold myself to a firm standard of not making things worse."

"I don't think you could make it worse if you tried," he says. He doesn't necessarily believe it, but then, that isn't always a factor when Jokers say things.

"Well - I'm not as sure. Anyway, maybe I'm more qualified than I think I am, except it's beyond me how."

"I don't get why people keep acting like they care, anyway."

"Why, though?"

"Because you're a kid who had some lousy shit happen and that sucks and most people are not totally void of empathy?"

"I don't get it," he says. "It doesn't make any sense. It sucks for me but it doesn't suck for you, you don't have to care, why would you?"

"Well - I guess I might regret asking this, but if against all probability I - I don't know - tripped and wound up accidentally biting off half of my hand and for some reason didn't have any coins on me and had to wait for it to heal the long way and was thoroughly unhappy about that? Would you care?"

"I was going to say what if I picked a fight with the Princess and the Imperial Alpha decided to rip my arm off but that's less likely on a couple levels. Anyway, if it was that it'd be me doing something stupid, which makes it different. You didn't do anything to deserve it."

"He rips people's arms off?"

"No, that is one of the ways in which this is unlikely."

Felicity giggles.

"Anyhow, most people care when lousy things happen to other people and this comes to their attention. And the ones who don't aren't too popular with the rest of us, by and large."

"Well, not if they can't fake it," he says. "But almost everybody can fake it."

"Okay," concedes Kerron, "people who don't care and don't fake it effectively aren't very popular, but there's enough non-fakers for it to be the standard thing, yeah?"

"You sure?"

"I see what people want to do, remember? I'd notice."

"...huh," he says, and gives Kerron a thoughtful/suspicious look.

"I mean, I guess you could decide I'm full of it."

"Guess I could," he agrees. "Are you?"

"Nah. Ask Elspeth if you want, she's got a million people's memories in her head and magic sorting so she can find facts about them whenever she wants, she could probably cough up an actual percentage breakdown. Ask the Imperial Alpha, wolves have collective consciousness when they're phased and basically the same psychology as humans most of the time. Ask the Emperor, when you meet him, he reads minds. Meet Addy and notice how weird she is next to everybody else, she really doesn't care."

"Maybe this world's just weird."

"Couldn't tell you. I've been to others, but only for Bellparties. Oh, and once I wandered into Milliways when I was little, met Mum's Batlady."

"Batlady?"

"Yeah, some of you guys if you're born in worlds with Gothams meet this lady who dresses up like a bat and fights crime and there's a weird bit of extended violence? I think you were lined up to do it, I know Harley was, Mum actually did, so did a couple others."

"Yeah? And what's she like?"

"Did not care for Mum. Far as I know she's otherwise good on the minding-when-bad-things-happen-to-people. Hence the fighting crime."

He laughs.

"Dad was spooked when he found out I met her. She accidentally killed him one time."

"Accidentally?"

"He stood up too fast - like, way too fast, I am incapable of demonstrating, that fast - because he was pissed off at her for vampire-mate-jealousy-stuff-reasons, and she got scared, and she had a hexagon in her pocket and wasn't very careful wishing him something safe but not dead."

He snorts.

"So then Mum resurrected him but we didn't know how to do it properly then, so then there was one of him in the afterlife and one alive, and the afterlife had a century go by in the meantime, and then they found out this had happened and the Dads merged so there's only one Dad again now. This was all way over my head at the time, but I've picked it up since."

"I sure prefer it that way."

"I wouldn't know."

"Yeah, you guys get the very short end of the stick in the parent department."

He giggles.

"But hey, then you get to grow up and have fascinating children."

"Uh-huh."

"There's only the one of Dad, though, so far, so you'll have to settle for some other variety of fascinating child. Depending on how it works, anyway, maybe there's more than one way to make Kerrons."

"I don't really want one."

"Sure. Not all of you become mums, I'm not reading your palm infallibly over here. Whatever you wanna do."

What he wants to do is... pet his poof some more, apparently. Fluff fluff.

Kerron relaxes, maybe not enough to notice. "It's pretty impressive they manage to be that cute without, like, eyes."

"They're fluffy," he says, snuggling it. "Little and round and fluffy."

"And they make the best noises."

"Harley has one too but his is sort of purple."

"Does it try to run him over? Mine does sometimes."

"I wasn't filming a nature documentary, 'and here we observe the animal's reaction to this environmental stimulus as it attempts to run over the Harley'. Just saw him with it at the party yesterday."

He giggles.

"One of the non-Elspeth princesses floating around in the relevant social circle has one too. Hers is green."

"And I guess you didn't see it try to run her over either?"

"Nah, she kept it in her pocket, took it out occasionally, it wasn't rolling around."

"Pocket poof," he snorts. (Fluff fluff fluff.)

"I was kind of surprised when it turned out the dress had pockets, actually. It was a really princessy dress."

"I guess she needed somewhere to keep her poof."

"Suppose so."

"Mum sews. Do you know how?"

He shakes his head.

"Want me to teach you? My sister would be better for anything advanced - she's very arts-and-crafts - but I know the basics."

"Sure, why not."

"Right then -" Kerron materializes a square in his mum's colors, spends it, and has a little sewing kit and some squares of fabric. He threads a needle, without recourse to licking it - "You'll probably find it easier to do this if you stick the end of the thread in your mouth first but if I did that the thread and maybe even part of the needle would dissolve" - and knots the end and picks up two squares. "So, there's running stitch, which is the simplest thing. Up, down, up, down, steer it all around for decorating a quilt or whatever, any length of stitches but shorter ones are stronger." He hands over the twice-stitched squares and the threaded needle attached thereto.

"Things dissolve when you put them in your mouth?" he asks, fascinated.

"Except glass and a few other things. Anybody more than fifty percent vampire, and anybody exactly fifty percent if male, is venomous, and vampire venom's powerful stuff." He gestures at the fabric. "If you want both sides to look the same, you move the same distance every time you make a stitch. If you want one side to be the "top", you make it so it's longer stitches going along there and only very short ones to anchor them on the other side."

Kerron picks up another couple of squares and threads and knots another needle, and waits. "You'll want to nudge the fold in the thread around the eye up some, or you'll be stitching in double the thread," he points out after a while.

"I like cooking."

"Ah, and if you already know that you probably don't need the 101."

He giggles.

"You got any other things you like?"

Shrug.

"Windsurfing?"

"You get a surfboard, you stick a sail on it," says Kerron, "you go out when it's windy."

"Is it fun?"

"Yeah! Sort of like sailing except you don't have to fuss with maintaining an entire boat."

He laughs.

"My roommate's got a sailboat. He likes it. I like borrowing it."

Giggle.

"I live in Safesun, which is one of the imperial capitals but has a large permanent population of mostly hybrids," Kerron adds. "It's on a beach in Florida. I moved there with Brandon - he's the Princess's cousin, if you take all the ostensible adoptive relationships in the coven at face value - when I turned five."

"It's still weird that you guys grow up at five."

"Well, we don't stop growing altogether till we're seven. And the superhuman memory helps with the picking up enough life skills thing."

"Doesn't make it not weird," he asserts.

"Wolves do it differently. They work like humans till they activate, when they're about your age - and then they take less than six months to look twenty-five. Is that more or less strange? Same amount of strange?"

"No, that's weirder."

"And then there's vampires, who are humans for however long and then they stop right where they are. Turning humans who aren't your age bare minimum is extremely not allowed."

"Why's that?"

"Psychological development. Little kids who get turned - stay little kids. For centuries. Nowadays if somebody turned a kid anyway, you could fix that with magic or torching or whatever, but the dead vampire children who've been resurrected had a hell of an adjustment period getting used to being human again with childlike emotional processing. Grownups can swap between species without too much of an issue, not so much seven-year-olds."

"Sucks for them, I guess."

"Yeah. Not a particularly happy chapter in supernatural history."

Felicity shrugs.

"Stop me if I start sounding too much like a textbook."

"Never had a textbook about vampires."

"There are some! Mostly they're for puppy schools - half-vampires mostly get away without formal education, we grow too fast and remember enough that we can do without - but they exist. Elspeth wrote a lot of them."

"I still never had one."

"Well, you could probably download one," says Kerron, gesturing at Felicity's computer. "I'll conjure you one if you prefer paper."

"Nah."

"Okay. Not such a history buff, I take it."

He shrugs. "Guess not."

"I've never been to this island before," Kerron says after a pause. "Feel like showing me the place?"

Kerron follows his uncloid. "Very tropical," he remarks.

"Ooh, somebody's been playing with architecture. These are neat."

"They were fun," he says.

"There's a sand sculpture contest in Safesun every August."

Felicity laughs. "You gonna steal my ideas?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Certainly not if you show up to check up on me."

"How'm I gonna do that? It's a long way to swim."

"Yeah, I wouldn't recommend showing up the long way unless you get into hardcore long-distance boating or acquire a small aircraft. If the Princess clears it I could pick you up but apparently she's been warned by the coalition of your alts that you're going to be inconsistently acceptable company for a while?"

...He cracks up. "Inconsistently acceptable?"

"Not her exact words, but it seemed to be the general idea. One day you're somewhere between okay and antisocial, the next day, pyromania."

"Well, I did burn down the house," he admits cheerfully. "It didn't stay down, though."

"Yeah, lots of magic floating around courtesy of Mum."

"Lucky her."

"Par for the course. There's practically a caste system going on for common templates."

"Huh?"

"Elspeth's mom and her alts take over the world, Jokers make coins for 'em, Elspeth's grandma Lizzie and her alts do personnel officer stuff," Kerron shrugs. "There's exceptions and other people floating around but there's also really obvious patterns."

"It's pretty likely, but you're gonna have to be a little patient."

He makes a face. "Patience."

"Oh no! You have to live on a tropical island with a magical princess, building sandcastles and playing computer games and cuddling your glowing pet, before you are awarded masochism-powered unlimited wishes!"

"Nah. I get to live on a beach with my best friend, windsurfing and teaching myself Sanskrit and occasionally entering the Ultra Olympics, and have already collected my award."

"Good for you," he snorts.

"I'm pretty cool with it!"

"I bet!"

"So what's your favorite place on this island?"

Kerron traipses up the rock, looking rather like a mountain goat in so doing, and investigates the view.

"Nice," says Kerron, leaping lightly down. "Good vantage point."

Kerron takes a good long look at this one so he can memorize it.

"Cool. This is a nice place. I guess Carlisle has good taste in - anniversary presents, or whatever the occasion was when he got it for his mate."

He shrugs. "I guess."

"Carlisle's nice. Kind of bland unless you want to talk about the bland things he finds interesting, but nice."

"So wait, he's not bland when he's talking about bland things?"

"I guess? I mean, if you're interested in theology or whatever I imagine it's less bland."

"Gotcha."

"But I'm not so I don't find him the most entertaining company."

"I'm not even sure I know what theology is."

"Speculating about God. Religion's pretty out of fashion these days but Carlisle sticks to it."

Snort.

"Esme too. She's his mate. Lily thinks they're out of their minds, and most of the rest of their coven was never much on board with it. The Emperor was, but he's by far the less assertive between himself and Her Majesty and wound up sort of agreeing with her about everything. By and large when vampires pair off there's a leader and a follower, even if it's not explicit."

"You'd think with all this magic somebody would've found out for sure by now."

"I'd think finding Downside would've done the trick, but nope. The sort of people who believe in God don't think he'd have to play by the rules, even magic rules."

He shrugs. "Whatever, then."

"See? Bland topic."

He laughs.