"I wonder why it's teenage girls."

"I'll ask that too." Write write. "Like, maybe teenagers have more usable emotion or something, but boys are not actually emotionless."

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be all that much different as a boy."

("And I would be no less bipolar," says her inner Solvei.)

...She cracks up.

"...What, is it a particularly funny mental image?"

"No, Solvei's being hilarious again. I can explain if you want but it might lose something in translation."

"I'm curious anyway. I like you, but I like her too and wanna know what she's saying."

"She said—" shift,

"And I would be no less bipolar."

"Because when we were talking on the couch one of the jokes she made to cheer me up was that I should get a bumper sticker that says 'my other personality is bipolar', because she's so—Solvei, we are in fact pretty sure she tends in that direction even if neither of us feels like trying to get her diagnosed."

"Getting your other personality diagnosed with bipolar. Yeah, I just don't see an upside to that," snorts Bella.

"So. It was probably funnier to us crazy people, but there you go."

"Is it like actually having company, or do you still get lonely?"

"Tough question. We're almost never... active together like this. Usually it's Solvei out in the world and me behind the curtain keeping track of what she does and doesn't know, and that's hardly companionable."

"Well, I'm glad it turns out you get along, otherwise it'd be very awkward."

"Wouldn't it just."

"You'd have all these internal arguments. The potential for sabotage would be enormous."

"We would not sabotage each other!"

"If you didn't like each other?"

"In our situation? If I had to share a body with somebody I disliked while both of us were under constant threat from an immortal person with magic powers, I would try very hard to like her more."

"That does seem reasonable."

"I'm a reasonable sort of person."

"Are you feeling better? Partly but not entirely separately, should I ask Charlie if we can have a sleepover?"

"We're feeling a lot better, but... that's a good idea anyway."