"That's Mark. That's Miles. That's Mial. That's Stalas. I'm Ivan, this is Aurin, I go with Miles and he goes with Mial and Stalas hasn't got one, poor Stalas. That's Linyabel, she goes with Miles."

"Nice to meet you all. What the fuck is going on?"

Miles and Mial and Stalas actually stop swearing at each other in order to pay attention to their newly arrived alt.

"Those three Mileses are having an extremely vicious game of something with pegs," says Aurin. "Is the main event. You just missed Mial's immediate family."

"Alas, with them goes the last dose of nigh-magical healing blood, and its donor is long gone, so we can't help you very much with the bones beyond your already impressive fey blessing."

"There does seem to be an element of spree involved. You've also missed child versions of me, Ivan, and Miles; and another of my alts who came with a 'half-alt' of Mark. 'Alt' being what you are to those individuals who resemble you thusly and 'half-alt' being more complicated and requiring a very crowded personality."

"And a Bothari and a, what was his name, that doctor fellow. Have you got a Bothari?"

"...Doesn't ring a bell..."

"He'd be Milo's bodyguard, if you had one. I don't think anyone's had a Bothari so far except the five-year-old me," says Miles.

"Definitely not ringing any bells," says Milo. "Insofar as anyone is describable as my bodyguard it's Jann, who seems to be spoken for alt-wise. Do we now get to play an exciting game of Guess the Absent Alts? Um, Cath? Glynn? Reko...?"

"Milo's cat, my best friend, Milo's boyfriend," Jann adds helpfully. "In that order. Separately."

"Nothing obvious, but names aren't always definitive," says Linyabel. "Mini-me was adopted as a baby and named Nika, but my other alt and I had similar names. 'Stalas' and 'Milo' have almost nothing in common in terms of sound even absent that confounding factor."

"I don't have a boyfriend, I have a wife. Stalas's boyfriend is Mark. Mial is single. None of us has a cat that I know of," says Miles. "What are these people's other characteristics? And why include the cat?"

"Why not include the cat?" wonders Milo. "Her full name is Catherine. She's shy with strangers but friendly with people she knows and likes, and very few people will believe me about her glorious sense of humour."

"I would imagine so? I mean, we're not witches, so Milo can only understand her via elaborate code and guessing, but I don't think they actually depend on the presence of witches for anything except interpretive services."

"The elaborate code and guessing is really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be," says Milo. "I don't understand why more people don't do it. Well, I guess most people who really want to understand a cat don't also have personal reasons to avoid becoming a witch."

"Aurin's a dragon," clarifies Ivan. "Hence for some reason the eye color while he's shapeshifted like so. I'm not anything interesting but Little Ivan was a secret firebird."

"...well, good," says Milo. "Do continue refraining from carrying me off. So if cats aren't people in your world, maybe Ekaterin is an alt of Cath, but we'd have a hard time finding out since Cath is at home keeping Reko company and you haven't talked to Ekaterin recently. Okay, how about Glynn and Reko. Glynn is... really good at chess, although not nearly as good as me. Reko is... um... the Duke of Ferdinandia? Jann, do you have any better idea of how to describe these people?"

"Reko is very much the duke of Ferdinandia? I don't think I have any recently minted Ferdinandian coins on my person. Heeee is three years older than me - five older than Milo - pretty good at duke-ing, was all set to pine for Milo forever until I did some excruciating matchmaking in which he waited until I was just about despairing of being able to make eye contact again before telling me he was in love with Milo... pale, dark curly hair, an inch shorter than me?"

"...um," says Miles. "This may be ringing a bell. I'm not sure it's a bell I want rung."

"Does he sometimes say 'let's see what happens'?"