"...aww. Were you... babies? In the way that humans are?"

"I don't think so- we knew how to walk and handle things and talk to each other from the beginning, even 'though we didn't know what we were yet."

"How'd you find out?"

"We did what felt right and when I guided Riley people said she was sad and when Joy did they said she was happy and so on."

"Huh. I don't thing people frequently narrate to small children that they're disgusted, did Disgust use to have a different name until you learned the word?"

"We used to call her 'Eww'."

"- hee hee."

Smile

"So, what else do you want to know about how Riley's mind works? I told you about us emotions and about dreams. There's also people who do imagination and people who work in her long term memory, throwing out things she doesn't need anymore to make room for new things and recalling stuff when it's relevant. And workers who maintain everything."

"- people who do imagination. How is that done?"

"There's the imaginary people themselves- I thought you were one when I saw you. And there's also all the people who design and make imaginary things and set up imaginary places and schedule imaginary events. And people who film the vivid stuff."

"- imaginary people are people?"

"Yes."

"How does that work?"

"Sometimes imagination crews come and film them for daydreams and speculations and so on? When she imagines herself doing things the crew stands in for her."

"I mean how does a person being imaginary work? Do you just mean, they're a resident of her mind like you who features in imagination-generation, or do you mean they are - fictitious themselves somehow?"

"I mean they're characters in her daydreams and speculations and that's why they exist. For example, Riley used to have an imaginary friend and he helped me and Joy get back to Headquarters. He's dead now. And recently she's been imagining having a boyfriend a lot and Joy made some copies of him to help us get back to headquarters. They died too. The copies, that is."

"How did they die?"

"Bing-Bong was on a ledge that collapsed when Family Island did. The boyfriends- Joy got them to stand on each others' shoulders to make a tower with her on top, then throw themselves forward at just the right moment to get her to the cloud I was on and push us both straight towards Headquarters.

Joy isn't good at noticing the downsides of things."

"I... see. It seems odd for imaginary people to be subject to falling."

"Why?"

"- if Riley imagined them again, would they just be similar people, or would she bring them back to life?"

"She could imagine similar people again, but not exactly the same people.

Oh- an imaginary person could have fallen to their death and survived if they'd done it all in Imaginationland, but these ones fell into the Dump."

"Can everybody in Riley's mind die?"

"I don't know. So far only imaginary people have died but so far only Joy has fallen into the Dump and survived, and she managed to get out again pretty quickly."

"What's the Dump, besides what it sounds like?"