In the bottom bunk of a bunk bed, there sleeps a grey. (In the top bunk of same there also sleeps a grey but the bottom one is more immediately relevant.)
These people are weird.
It does not take very long for more of them to arrive. Blue hair and green hair and more grey - they don't all fit into the apartment, some of them wait outside. Some of them have private thoughts a little bit figured out; some of them don't.
"Pelape mentioned that you were maybe looking for help rescuing your friend from another planet."
" - well, taking anybody else wouldn't have been less hubris and also they would all have stopped me."
"Well, we're not going to stop you, but it seems like maybe if you taught the spell to someone very boring, and they went instead of you, they would have a better shot at rescuing Bella."
"Boring and good at learning magic. If you think this is a good plan I will start looking."
"Makes sense to me. If ''boring' is really the thing, I'm sure there's clever people who'd bore me to tears but are ambitious or scientifically minded."
"I think it's - " snuggle. "When Bella first came she was very small. Ambitious would be bad. Scientifically minded would be bad but not because of the hubris thing because of the science thing."
"Yes, but you need both not-ambitious and not-sciencey. I'm thinking yellow, but maybe I'm stereotyping."