"You reacted really cutely to the story of your alt's sorta-girlfriend, and then you were dejected that you didn't have a version of her running around in your world. So the part of my brain devoted to matchmaking characters is like, 'Aha! I can solve this problem,' except actually the problem has turned out to be kind of hard." She crosses her arms, and tries very hard not to pout. She fails at this, and is definitely pouting at least a little bit. "It's not a huge deal, or anything, if I can't make it work it's fine. I'd rather have it make sense than try to stuff it into a place it doesn't belong. But it would be cute. And usually my genres of writing are, 'miscellaneous heroics' and 'adorable fluffy romance,' and so we're missing one."

"Well, I was not exactly setting out to be cute, but I am glad it worked anyway."

Yep she's definitely pouting some more.

"This isn't a big deal and might not even happen. It's just—a thing I'm considering, because I am pathologically incapable of not considering many things at once. Though, actually, it might be smart to make it so that you're, hm, free and clear to run around with authors that are not me, once I'm done saving your world?"

"Well, you could set a different version of me up. If there are other Tyrias."

"Well, yes, but auuuuugh! Think of the shipping!"

"The... shipping?"

"Oh, uh. Another word for 'matchmaking,' basically, but more in line with my culture. Matchmaking is more serious than shipping, shipping is sort of like... 'This would be cute, but I'm not very serious about it.'"

"I see. And you think it would not be cute if a different version of me met—the person you want me to meet?"

"Oh, no, it'd be terribly cute, but I'm a spoiled brat and I want my cuteness now."

He laughs. "Would I be able to even tell them about—you, all of this?"

"... Hm." That's certainly a thing to consider, isn't it.

"I'm not sure. I wouldn't have to fear for my life or hers, but I don't think she'd take it as well as you have? Meta-her gets it and is completely fine with the whole thing, but I don't know what happens if I puncture the fourth wall for an instance of her and introduce myself. I haven't done it before and she's often hard to predict."

"You lost me at 'meta-her' and 'fourth wall.'"

"Sorry. I have trouble translating myself when I'm thinking out loud, uh. The fourth wall is a term for the divide between the proverbial audience and the people in the proverbial play. To the people in the play, there are four walls in a room. To the people in the audience, there are three, because the fourth has disappeared to let them view inside. So puncturing the fourth wall is doing for her what I've done for you; letting her know that this is a play at all. Or, well, not a play, but I was going with the metaphor.

"Meta-her is a bit trickier to explain, it's..." She trails off, and hums thoughtfully. "If I remove one of her from whatever world I've put her in, and strip away all of the fluff from whatever setting she's in, so that just the—character traits inherent to her remain, and then give that person full knowledge of what's going on, all of the history and knowledge of places and situations a version of her has been in, that would be meta-her. She is fine with being a fictional character. But she never thought she was anything else, an instance from Tyria would not have that. So I'm not sure."

"...ah. I'm afraid I'm out of my depth and cannot advise, here."

"Yeah. I'll have to think about it. But my shipping urges are definitely somewhat suppressed, now, I don't want to put you in a situation where you have to systematically lie to a loved one."

"That would be unpleasant, yes, but not something I had never given thought to; I am a member of the Order of Whispers, even if I have not done anything for them in a while."

"I suppose that's true. And I sort of did already put you in that position by saying hi, didn't I, it's not like it'd be particularly smart to walk up to everyone you know and say, 'Hi! We're fictional!'"

"I don't know that it changes much about my life, knowing that."

"Really? That's interesting. Personally I'd start picking at everyone else's storylines and trying to leverage narrative conventions for my own ends, but... I do kind of do that already, so I suppose that's not much of a surprise."

"My life was already quite... storylike," he says wryly. "Now I know it will continue to be."

Giggle.

"Yeah. Oh, speaking of, I didn't finish telling you about your averted future did I?"

"You did not."

"Okay. One moment as I take a short commercial break to explain Elder Dragons to our lovely and discerning viewers, so they can be all caught up." She clears her throat, thematically.

"They are sorta kinda part of the world, and spend most of their time napping beneath it, but every now and then they wake up and wreck everything, then go back and have themselves another nap. There were six of them, but Our Hero has kindly already killed one. The other five are Primordius, Dragon of fire, Jormag, Dragon of ice, Kralkatorrik, Dragon of..." She pauses, blinks, and frowns. "... crystal?? That seems like it should be earth or something, but whatever, not my setting, moving on, Mordremoth, Dragon of minds and plants, because those totally go together, and Bubbles, Dragon of the Deep Sea who is terribly antisocial and has yet to come out of its room to say hi, who is the Dragon of something or other, but fucked if any of us know what it is. Kralkatorrik had a baby dragon... somehow... even though I don't think any of these dragons are girl dragons... and that baby dragon was Glint. Who was, hilariously enough, a girl dragon. Glint decided that she didn't like this whole 'serving an evil being' business and fucked off to chill with the cool humans and dwarves while Kralkatorrik was taking a nap.

"Eventually the dragons wake up to do their whole destruction schtick, and Glint goes, 'Not today, asshole!' and scoops up some worthy looking sapients to be her sidekicks, who call themselves Destiny's Edge. Possibly they wanted to form a band. They all go to kill Kralkatorrik, but this goes really, aggressively terribly. Glint dies, a member of Destiny's Edge dies, and the entire group breaks up and goes off to sulk in their own special corners."

She considers this set of statements. "Anything to add, James?"

Not for the first couple of minutes because he's too busy laughing, but eventually: "Destiny's Edge has mended a fence or two since that, but otherwise this was a very apt description."

Aestrix looks very pleased with herself. "Thank you. They have mended a fence or two since that, but I would like to make it clear to our lovely and discerning viewers that they mended a fence or two because James sat on them and told them to grow up and get over themselves."