Ivan must be drunker than he thought he was. He could have sworn he knew his way around Vivienne's parents' house, since she wanted to introduce him last week and showed him the place, but maybe they have a... secret... upstairs... bar? where Vivienne's room is supposed to be? And most certainly was last time he checked? He's never going to find the sweater she sent him up looking for here, anyway. Why is there a secret upstairs bar in Vivienne's parents' house?
Grownup Miles grins.
"Bar," says Linya, "who publishes these textbooks, exactly? I mean, there's names, but."
I don't know anything beyond what's contained in the volumes themselves.
"So you might not have to invent that many things. You might be able to go to - Tau Ceti - and find these editors and learn what they know."
"Oh, that makes sense," agrees Nika.
"Good instincts," murmurs Grownup Miles.
Grownup Miles giggles.
"Congratulations," says Grownup Miles.
"A noble aspiration," says Grownup Miles.
"I don't know what that means but shut up," says Little Miles.
"They probably wouldn't," says Grownup Miles.
And she goes back to magic textbooks.
"Are all of your grownups besides Bothari somewhere you can't go?" wonders Linya. "We're sending you home with so much stuff..."
"They're at a," handwave, "thing. So's Gregor. There's servants? I guess?"
"Bothari satisfies the 'is an adult' criterion by himself; what I was hoping was that we could send you to fetch one of the people you're going to be explaining this to..."
Nika shrugs. "You could write them letters, too."
"I think I will. Here, we'll switch seats and Isabella will tell you the words you haven't learned yet while I do that."
There is reshuffling.
"What are you going to write? And to who?" wonders Grownup Miles.
"A summary of the... payload. Notes on myself and Isabella for Nika's later curiosity and that of anyone she cares to show. Isabella might want to add a bit on expected developmental timeline in case that's useful."
"I can even produce parenting tips that stem from having had parents."
"They do okay?" says Little Miles.
"Yeah."
"Well, they're Da and Mama, so that makes sense," says Little Miles.
"Yeah."
"My guess is that they won't need most of it - they are sensible people - but it might be nice to have written down."
"They did it."
"My name and Isabella's both have the sound 'bel' in them, and 'mir' in our second names. If you wanted to find your dragon birth parents that might be a hint that Simon couldn't have found on his own, if you used to have a different name with that sound."
"Huh. Okay. I like my name now just fine though."
"It's pretty."
"Read me a story," Tiny Ivan says to his alt.
"Sure. What story do you want?"
"I dunno. Something good."
Ivan goes to the bar and borrows a copy of some adventure story he liked when he was seven, which tiny Ivan will not have read yet. He reads tiny Ivan the adventure story.
Cetagandan Grownup Nika checks. "About halfway done," she reports. "It would probably be safe to take you out of the brace now, although I suspect you'd immediately try to run around at top speed, and while you probably wouldn't break anything if you walked you might still do if you slammed into a wall."
"That's not better," Grownup Miles points out. "That is in fact arguably worse."