"That's smart," says Lima.

"I've never had anyone be too weird about it," says Klimati. "Even if I'd made up a name Isama's pretty distinctive by description."

"Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it too much, really, but Kairda's really nervous about people connecting her fic to her real identity, and now that she has any sales I figure I should try not to do anything that would make it easier for her to pick up a bunch of weird stalker fans. She would probably keel over dead or something if she got anything like that weird rpf fandom that shows up to bug you sometimes."

"Oh man, that stuff," laughs Klimati. "It's so weird! I haven't even read any and it's just so weird. I have dinner with those people and..." She shakes her head.

Zada's bag turns up. "Let's get home and drop that off," Lima says.

"Yeah! Maybe some people don't have enough drama in their own lives and have to make it up in other people's? I dunno." She grabs her bag and follows. "You have dinner with them on, like, a regular basis?"

"Yeah, I don't go to every family dinner, maybe half? Sometimes I do stuff with my side of the family then, or if Isama and Kantil aren't going and I'd feel weird."

"Yeah, that totally makes sense," nods Zada. She supposes that if she had regular access to Afen Kisan-fucking-tami then she would probably also not feel the need to make use of it literally one hundred percent of the time. Besides, it would probably seem like less of a big deal if she were the coolest person in the world. "How old is Kaloa exactly? I should be better about checking up on people, I just keep being intermittently terrible about it - "

"Kaloa's one! And if you come to one of the dinners she's got a cousin in-cohort. So does Hala, she and Ana are three now."

"Aww! That's so good. One-year-olds are amazing, they're so small but they know things."

"Kaloa knows all kinds of things! She will count all the way up to three hundred if you let her and at three hundred she scrunched up her nose and said that we should probably look up the rest if we wanted to know them."

"So good! Does she know anything about space yet? I was absolutely obsessed with stars when I was tiny - you probably remember that, come to think of it - "

"I do," grins Klimati. The train pulls up; she and Zada can sit together but Lima winds up halfway down the car. "Stars and dragons. Kaloa likes memorizing the names of chemicals, she likes stars fine but they're not her favorite."

"Gosh, a baby chemist. Is it just names, or does she like learning about chemical reactions, too? Chemistry is honestly really neat, I'm glad we have a baby scientist working hard on that front. Seems like the sort of thing the other babies might tend to neglect."

Klimati giggles. "She has a few reactions memorized - I don't think she knows what's happening, not that I do either, just that this and that make the other thing."

"Oooh, the physics underlying it is so cool, though! Though admittedly pretty heavy for a one-year-old. I don't think I understood what was happening with electron shells and stuff until I was at least two. Oh, I should look up more chemical names in Anitami - I try to read technical stuff in different languages so I pick up all the vocabulary evenly, but I'm not sure I've read enough in Anitami about chemistry in particular..."

"I bet Kaloa would like you to read it aloud."

"Huh! Maybe I will, then."

Klimati giggles.

"We change lines here," Lima calls across the car as they slide to a stop, and they head to another platform to do that.

Zada follows them home, continuing to make small talk about the adorable baby chemist in their lives.

And when they get to Klimati's house an adorable baby chemist flings herself at Klimati and is scooped up!

"Kaloa, this is my friend Zada."

"Zada," repeats Kaloa.

"She can pronounce it because of her grandfather, she didn't have to practice so much," says Klimati.

What an adorable baby chemist!

"Aww! That's so cool! I can speak Anitami because Klimati taught it to me when I was really small."

"Afen wants all his grandkids to know at least five," says Klimati. "It's sticking better with some than others - Hala and Kaloa are supposed to be working on Voan and Tapap and Oahkar and Evaleen. Hala's solid on the ones they support in her school and she can more or less watch TV in Voan and Evaleen, it's hard to tell this early how well everything'll stick for Kaloa."

"I know most of those! Not anywhere near fluent in Oahkar - Oahkar's so different from place to place that it didn't seem like one of the best choices if my goal was to maximize the number of people I could talk to, but I think my Tapap is pretty decent? It's not as strong as my Anitami, but I think it's pretty good. And I can totally blabber at people in Voan if anyone wants that while I'm here. How many does Afen know?"

"Oh, I have no idea, he just sort of - eats them - at least thirty -"

"All of them," says Kaloa confidently.

"That is so cool."

It does mean that she's gonna have to find some different axes on which to surpass Afen Kisan-fucking-tami when she gets around to doing that, but hey, nothing worth making your life's work is easy.

"How many languages are you gonna learn, Kaloa?"

"All of them," says Kaloa.