"I'm Aleko," volunteers Aleko. "Kiri says I'm supposed to call you 'your highness' and I said 'all the time?' and she said 'pretty much'."

"Hello, your highness," says Kiri, rolling her eyes affectionately at her twin.

Aleko - observes this, marks out the distance as best as he can without being in the bubble himself, says, "Huh."

"I did tell you," Kiri says.

"We can leave as soon as Renny's done making sure the luggage all went where it's supposed to go."

"And then I learn what he knows about what you should wear because you barely even know that lace is a thing," says Aleko.

"I know lace is a thing," snorts Kiri. "But you'll be better at this than me and you wanted to do something."

"Did you know it comes in kinds?" the prince inquires brightly. He does! He knows lots of things. And now he's going to get to teach them to someone who presumably cares more about them than Kiri does. (Caring more about fashion than Kiri does is not, he judges, very hard.)

She might be! She probably is. Anyway, if she didn't know the answer to that question before, she clearly does now, because the prince is thinking about it. Lace is pretty. He likes it and its kinds.

Kiri giggles.

"How do you not mind?" asks Aleko.

"I just don't," he says, shrugging. "I don't mind all the same stuff most people do."

"Well - can you tell me how so I can do it?"

"Huh," he says. "Good question. I don't know, why do you mind it?"

"Well - wouldn't anyb- wouldn't most people? One day she can't do anything like it at all and the next day she can't stop and she's setting things on fire and crying about how if Great-Aunt Elytte did this to people then it's just as well that she's dead, and now you're just sort of not minding, I don't get it."

"You just... don't get embarrassed?" translates Kiri slowly.

"Yeah! That," he agrees, nodding. "I don't do that."

"I'm not sure if Ko's gonna be able to learn that."

"Aw, come on. He can do it."

"I'd teach you if I knew how!" he says earnestly. "But I don't really have a 'how', I just don't ever get embarrassed. It's not like I used to and then stopped."

"That's weird. Why are you like that?"

"Just am!" he says, shrugging. "I don't really know what embarrassed is."

"I have a really good metaphor for it but it'd probably just sound neat to you," says Kiri.

"Well, what is it?"

"It's like noticing that you're leaking, I think."

...Well, it's a funny image, and he can imagine embarrassed people looking mournfully at the streams of water dripping out of their elbows and shuffling behind a curtain, but it does not get him much closer to understanding the feeling itself.

"Yeah, I didn't think that'd help."

"It was funny, though," he says, giggling.

"Well, I don't want to leak, anyway. What if I got empty?"

"I guess that would be bad," he says. "But I don't think it's how being embarrassed works."

"No, I mean, like..." There is something he means but he doesn't know how to say it.

Kiri's all the way over here. She can't help.

"Mm?" says the prince.

"I dunno. Kiri's smarter than me," he volunteers; this seems relevant.

...The prince does not see how this is relevant.

"...I dunno. What if she memorized me like a book, then what?"

"If I what? I can't do that. That isn't how people work."

"Yeah, that," says the prince. He is extremely clear on this point, even if it is not a clarity he can articulate.

"Well, how do you know?"

"Because... people don't even have themselves memorized," he says. "You can't. There's parts of you that haven't happened yet. And I don't know about you, but even if Kiri followed me around every day of my life taking notes, I bet she still couldn't - say my entire half of a conversation for me, or know what I think of somebody's clothes without checking."

"I mean, if I could memorize a whole person like a book I'd've done it to myself by now."

"...Yeah, you would've."

The prince giggles. "I wouldn't," he says. "Even if I could. I don't think I'd even want to could."

Kiri snorts. "Far as I know most people don't care about it. I do though."

"Way differently," agrees Kiri. "I don't want to surprise myself like that at all."

"I like it. I feel like it's part of what makes me me and not somebody else."

Renny comes down the stairs, having squared the luggage away. "Are you three ready to go?"

"I think so," says Kiri.

"We just sort of triangle around Kiri and make sure nobody gets close to her, right?"

"Yes please."

"Okay!" the prince says cheerfully. He is imagining her bubble again.

And out they go. Kiri dodges and weaves as necessary within her triangle to conscientiously not get within five feet of anyone they pass in the street.

"I like them," she says. "Are the rules about wearing the same jewelry different from wearing the same clothes?"

"Yeah! You can wear the same jewelry as much as you want, almost, just if you always wear the same one thing all the time everywhere people are gonna think it means something special to you and some of 'em will think you're - I dunno, something not nice." (He knows what that particular kind of contempt looks like, but not what it actually represents in the minds of the people who feel it.)

"So I should get maybe a couple things to cover for being obviously sweela when I'm in other colors but this can be one of them. It's pretty."

"It is! They're all pretty."

Aleko is paying very careful attention both to Kiri's assessment of aesthetics and to the prince's description of the rules.

"It looks really nice on you!" says the prince. He imagines himself wearing the coru necklace again. And then he buys it, for his mother, who he's sure will like it as much as he does.

By the end of the trip there are enough yards of miscellaneous fabric slated for delivery to the Chialto Ardelay house that Kiri should be all set until she's grown two inches and can't wear any of it. "Good, that's over with. Thank you for helping."

"You're welcome!" he says cheerfully. "It was fun!"

"I don't think I can do a whole shopping trip by myself yet but maybe in a while," says Aleko.

"I shouldn't need anything else until I've gotten taller, maybe in a year," says Kiri. "Unless I spend a lot more time in Chialto attending engagements and functions and such than I expect to."

"Don't. I hate school when you're not there, it's harder. And boring."

(The prince giggles.)

"Well, it is! Kiri says you don't even have to go to school."

"He does have tutors, though."

"Yep. And they're pretty boring too."

"But at least they aren't distracted by a whole lot of other kids when you don't get something and want it explained."

"You don't even need me to explain things that often. You're smart too."

"Yeah, but if I do want you to explain something you aren't like, 'just a minute, Aleko, I need to do sixty-seven other things' and then it's hours and I still don't get it."

The prince cannot actually remember the last time he asked a tutor to explain something. He judges that saying so would not be a positive contribution to the conversation.

Kiri glances at the prince out of the corner of her eye and nods minutely.

The prince blinks at him. The stepping closer to Kiri seems like a sign of a good thing, but the scowling seems like a sign of the opposite. And he has no idea at all how to handle jealousy over this.

Aleko relaxes anyway.

If she was addressing the prince, he's really not sure what she meant. But he's glad she and Aleko seem to be okay, anyway.

Aleko shifts from foot to foot.

The prince is curious, but doesn't want to interrupt.

"Twin stuff," Kiri explains in his direction. "I'm sorry, I'm not being a very good host -"

Aleko shakes his head, and when Kiri trails off, he says, "This is important and you can be a good host when we are not eight."

Also, the prince cares way more about her and her brother doing their being-okay than about any good-host things she could be doing instead.

Aleko steps forward again and hugs his sister hard.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

"Well, it couldn't very well be me, I'm not even sweela."

The prince giggles. He is happy that Kiri and her brother get hugs!

"I'm gonna go see if cousin Linsel is here and wants to play cards," says Aleko after a silence, and he skips off.

When he is gone, Kiri asks the prince: "Do you think about being a girl a lot?"

"Huh," says Kiri.

He shrugs.

"I don't actually know if most people do that. I don't think about being a boy generally though."

"I don't know either, but I don't think they do," he says. "Because if everyone did why would there be the rules?"

"Well, I don't know, if for some reason it was important that half and no more or less of everyone was doing each thing it might be a good way to divide it up since if you let everybody pick it might not be half? But I doubt it's important like that for half of everyone to not wear necklaces even if they feel like it."

"And there aren't any things that are like that and if there was a reason like that for the rules everybody's forgotten it so if they all thought about the rules like I do there would stop being them." Stop being the rules, that is. The rules would stop being.

"Yeah. So probably there aren't very many people who think about it like you but I guess there might be some small number."

He nods. "Yeah, maybe."

"Maybe there's a word for it. I will pay attention and let you know if I find one."

He smiles. "Okay!"

"I wonder if it even makes sense to say that you are a boy. Maybe you are just a something, which is shaped like a boy."

"But not a girl who is shaped like a boy. If I were shaped like a boy one day I don't think my thoughts would feel like yours. So you're something else and I don't know a word for it which will make it hard to write down."

"Why do you wanna write it down?" he wonders.

"I write everything down, so I can remember it right later if I need to. But don't worry, it's all in code, it was even before I started being prime, Jayce snooped once so I made up a cipher."

"That sounds like a you thing to do," says the prince, smiling.

"It is!"

"Anyway, if you don't know a word for it can't you just write it down in other words?"

"I'll probably just make up a word, but it won't be pronounceable because it will be in code from the beginning instead of being translated. I make up words like that sometimes."

"What are some of the other ones for?"

"Well, if I had good ways to describe them I wouldn't have to make stuff up. There's..." She takes out her notebook and flips through it for an example. "I started making up words for some of the ways it feels to do fire things or the prime handholding magic thing or mindreading, there's that. Things where I can go that thing, and know what I mean, but couldn't explain it, I make up words."

"But there were things before that too. For particular moods that have words that are almost but not quite right or whatever."

"That makes sense too, I guess."

"And then I have everything all written down to read later if I want to know what I used to be like or what I was thinking last Quinnelay or something. I didn't start till I was six though so I don't have anything before that."

He supposes he can see the value in that, but he is not compelled to try it.

"Yeah, nobody else wants to bother."

"Mm," shrugs the prince. It's less about bothering - about putting in effort - and more that he doesn't know if he would benefit from the result. Kiri seems to, but Kiri is not him. He isn't sure he would enjoy being followed around by what he used to be like. It might interfere with what he is like, which is something he already knows how to be in exactly the way that he wants.

"Huh. I avoid being - followed around by what I used to be like, by knowing what it was and what I would like it to be instead."

"Should I not tell you if I notice you changing some way?"

Kiri laughs. "I'm not doing that! I have things to do besides take notes on you."

"I thought so!" he agrees, giggling. "So I think it's okay."

"All right."

He grins at her.