"What do I want, what do I have, how do I best use the latter to get the former."

"What else do you have?"

"Miscellaneous childhood. Learned Harthanic to impress her teacher, rolled around on a little scooter because she was clumsy - I am too, I have a golem chair -" He points at it. "Darker than me - not close to anybody from creche - once wrote a letter to the woman who brought her in though -"

"What did she name her magpie?"

"...I don't remember a magpie, when was this? Uh, let's see, good magpie names - why did she even have a - it'd really depend on the bird's personality anyway. They like shiny things, I think?"

"Favorite co-prentice?"

"Datsar. Unless I'm totally missing another one or the boy with the huge ears who I have four scenes remembered for and still can't remember his name turns out to be great."

"Do you know what she was working on?"

"Not directly but based on circumstantial evidence suspect storks. - and that they are anonymous to prevent anyone attempting to use them to throttle populations in certain locales."

"What are you working on now?"

"Talking generalist golem. Wrought iron chassis, loopy, seethrough, I didn't bring my sketches or my model. Aitim's funding me. - he's also my boyfriend, I, uh, I didn't even realize Aly was a real person till I heard somebody speaking Harthanic, and - I don't remember you -"

"The important thing is if Aly is alive. It's fine. After death, reincarnation, and memory loss I would not dream of insisting on fidelity, please don't worry about it."

"...yeah. So. Talking golem. Aitim wants it for mining, he's from another planet where they use metal for a lot of things and availability of materials is a bottleneck on revolutionizing all the everything, it's exciting. The green hair's natural. He actually doesn't like it, he usually dyes it blue for alien reasons but can't get dye here."

"I still have the magpie."

"Oh, what did she name it? - you know what, Aitm wanted me to try instructing a stork, just in case, but they're hard enough to catch even if I sat on a creche roof it'd take ages, but if she had a magpie that's both more easily accessible and a more definite check in case the storks were password locked or something, like, 'don't do what I tell you unless I preface it with "pineapple"' -"

"Thief," says Aydanci.

A magpie comes to his shoulder. And bites his hair.

"That's a good magpie name! Hi Thief. C'mere."

Thief hops onto his hand. Kib pets his feathers.

"- you're alive -"

"Yeah - I - do you want a hug or something -"

"I may end up crying on you -"

"That's fine. I'm waterproof."

He does end up crying on him.

Kib stays late and crashes on the couch overnight and in the morning receive groggy hugs and goes home to Wrebb.

"How'd it go?"

"Aly's magpie recognizes me, that did it. He cried on me. He's very glad I'm alive and not the least bit upset about posthumous cheating and I didn't ask if he was straight."