Bella eats one. She makes incomprehensible notes.

Andi eats meringues and pats Robin on the shoulder occasionally.

"What are you scribbling about?" inquires Ethan.

"The monster. Alien, demon, whatever. Thinking of things it could be and whether there are ways to find out that are relatively safe."

"Any luck?"

"Not really."

"Didn't think so."

"Yeah, I haven't had to figure out anything like this before."

"I bloody hope not," he says dryly.

"No kidding. But - Robin, did this thing look to you like a species? Well-adapted for something, good at moving around, not - sick, asymmetrical?"

"It - no, yeah," she says, making a gesture that combines a nod and a shake of the head into an ambiguous wobble. "Whatever it was, it was definitely one of it. It worked."

"If it is, so to speak, one of it," says Bella, "then there are certainly more of it - even if they're dead, far away, or - hiding."

...Robin contemplates this idea.

Ethan hugs her.

"This one was careless enough to let Robin see it, but it and however many conspecifics it has have been discreet," says Bella, tapping her pen on her notebook. "On at least one occasion at least one - demon? we can call them that till further notice - has interacted with at least one human; it was not friendly. We can't be sure if the one demon or the one human or the one interaction is typical, especially since if it were very common more people would be going missing - although I'd want to look at statistics to be more sure that they aren't - and more doors would be broken and someone less circumspect about adults than Robin would have spotted one. Although I wonder if there's a way to cruise through a psych ward to be more sure they haven't. Robin, can you draw - or direct Andi to draw - the demon?"

"I'm not much of an artist," she says. "But I'll describe it again if you want." She smiles wryly. "Like a police sketch."

"I'll see what I can do, lemme go get some paper," says Andi. She fetches a clipboard and a sheet of paper and a pencil and does her best to render the demon according to Robin's description.

"Draw some random other monsters, keep the drawings together in a stack," says Bella, "I'm probably being paranoid, but these things didn't exactly land on the White House lawn to announce they came in peace."

Robin describes it as exactingly as she can. Long neck, long bladed tail, horns, claws, beak, plenty of miscellaneous sharp parts.

Bella peers at the drawing, writes a few notes about it in her own notebook.

Andi finishes touching up the demon, then gets more paper and draws fanciful other creatures to keep with it for camouflage. Spherical fluffy bird with eight legs, low-slung turtle-sloth hybrid with long droopy whiskers, six-headed dragon, scary unicorn with fangs and bat wings, butterfly-winged fairy with enormous compound eyes and four arms and fluffy antennae.

"That one's cute," says Robin, of the flufferfly.

"Thanks."

"If you had to bet," says Bella to Robin, "would you put your money on science fiction, or fantasy, here?"