"Kib's husband. Friend of mine. It - they almost got Kib back, once, and then they lost him again and it crushed him and it might be kind of weird for him, seeing you, walking around and happy and okay."

"I can get one of the girl ones but you need to not brandish pointy sticks at her, the reason I do the scouting is because I'm indestructible and we've got slightly higher safety requirements for everybody else."

"Do the girl ones look like Aly, because that. Wouldn't help either. Hey, can someone osanwe Aydanci and ask him? And also the King?"

"...I don't know what Aly looks like? Who's Aly?"

"Humans reincarnate! Well, only some of them, possibly only Kib and Aydanci, my guess is that it has something to do with Kib having invented storks but we don't really have a good explanation. And we don't know for sure if it'd happen again or we'd have killed Kib. But Kib used to be a girl, named Aly, and then she died, and a few days later a stork brought Kib to a crèche and he had the same personality and then he started getting dreams about being Aly. And Aly'd died young and had a husband who she loved very much, and that husband was Aydanci. So Kib went and found Aydanci and then the Valar let them be married even though they're both boys because they'd been married before, and they were happy.

And then the Enemy killed Aydanci, and Kib sent the storks to find Aydanci's reincarnation and bring him, and the new Aydanci and I were the same age and grew up as friends and stuff and we had to do all the servantmaking because Elves can't servantmake, and then Aydanci started getting dreams about his past life and fell in love with Kib, and they were married again, and then the Enemy got Kib and tortured him and he doesn't scream in his sleep like he did the first ten years but he's. Not. He's gone."

"Well, shit. Uh, I've got a picture -" He pulls up a picture of himself and Loki and Iobel - "This one's out of date, we've got a new alt, same face as the other girls but paler and gold eyes, Iobel's height not Loki's - Iobel's the one with the cat - Aly look like them?"

"...don't think so, but I should ask the King, he'd probably know and probably not be super sad if it turns out it is - Nelyooooo -"

And he steps out. He looks at Cam with an odd mixture of relief and loathing. "No," he says coldly, "that isn't Aly."

"...hello. Would this be more comfortable if I went and swapped for one of those then, I am not here to upset anyone. Or, like, instances of me could be out of the picture altogether except insofar as you might want us to look over Kib! I could go get one of you, or something."

His expression changes as swiftly as if it's magic. He can damn well play along with this a little longer, even now that Thauron's thrown plausibility aside. "Not upset, sorry, just terribly confused. Unless worlds have a recent point of divergence it doesn't make sense that they'd have alternate universe versions of people who look identical. You are quite welcome here.

The most obvious avenue to help Kib is something to make it unnecessary that he sleep, can that be achieved?"

"Don't have anything off the shelf for it if you need it sustained, could probably hack something together, waiting on some experimental results that will tell us if he can do it my way or not... Uh, versions of you and your folks are four for five now from things that can be classified as 'Ardas' but there's one set elsewise. Bells - that's us - we're more widely varied. Why would it help if he doesn't sleep, I'm not seeing it, I mean, sleep is boring and I seldom bother but the connection is unclear."

"A feature of Kib's reincarnation - thing - is that if his memories are erased or tampered with he gets them back in dreams. Rolling him back to before Angband fixes him. We asked the Valar for help and they did it, once, and he was normal, he was fine, he was making a list of specific memories he wanted back so he could have everything relevant without going catatonic, he wanted to hear all about how we'd defeated the Enemy, he was so happy - and then that night he dreamed Angband back, and when he woke up he was convinced this was a hallucination of the Enemy and that he was still trapped there.

So the best we're hoping for is to find a way he doesn't need to sleep, roll him back, and let him have a life again. At least while we try to come up with something that he would have known before Angband the Enemy could not imitate."

Cam... runs through the corresponding logic. Draws some inferences.

"Okay," he says, "that explains the blip in the gap in his written output - and we can probably figure out a not-sleeping thing even if we have to put five of your dad in a room to do it, but it wouldn't be my go-to if I'm guessing right about the details."

"He's doing it deliberately, thinks he'd be easier to manipulate if he were thinking at all and it's even worse if the Enemy can read minds. He can't be logicked out of it because he is not having any thoughts."

"That was my guess. I will want to run this by the other Bells first but we might be able to sort of spook him out of it without mental tampering of any kind. He'll be cranky about it though, if you prefer a cheerful rolled back version this is not that."

"I don't have preferences about his temperament. We considered some ways to scare him, they weren't things the Enemy couldn't imitate -"

"The Enemy's ability to imitate things is not at issue with the - okay, so, we're all Bells, with information about the uniquenesses of his particular Belling situation we will be able to just sort of think like he does. And tell him all about it. And then it will be clear that whether he is thinking or not does not affect the Enemy's access to thoughts-like-his, I think a one of us could probably not self-destruct deep enough to fail to recognize our own patterns of thinking if they were presented to him, and then his options are 'Enemy, if applicable, can produce Kib-thoughts and I'm bored out of my skull and my husband, if applicable, is really upset' or 'Enemy, if applicable, can produce Kib-thoughts and I'm not bored out of my skull and my husband, if applicable, is not really upset'. Make sense?"

"...do it. Please."

"I will need more background information. Reincarnation's weird, servantmaking's a one-off world trait, don't know if his husband is an alt of anybody we know but he's not an alt of anyone interesting enough that I checked for, etcetera, and I do want to run it by the girls in case any of them have a better idea or a contraindication or something I haven't thought of. In the meanwhile will it help with the thing where I look like Kib if I take the coat off, I have wings and a tail."

So, I was also captured by the Enemy and also don't believe you're real, the Enemy just can't learn nearly as much from me organizing people as he can from Kib servantmaking so I'm under oaths to make sure if this is real he can't use me against people and if it's not he can't learn anything more interesting than how to be lovely at dinner parties with people who you secretly believe are all hallucinations. The thing where you look like Kib might be a problem for Aydanci but the problem for me was that increasingly plausibility-straining coincidences that involve the arrival of new characters are one of the hallmarks of a hallucination reaching its grand finale. No preference on the wings and tail.

Even if Aydanci's not up to it - and he probably will be, if it might help - I can give you detailed profiles of him and everything else about the situation, but some of it's politically sensitive so I'd want more context than 'alternate universe version of Kib' - you said you have a me, if I can talk with him briefly about you that'd do it -

Yeah, I kind of figured you had been, that happens, this is the first time it's been one of us but third for you. I can get a you. Available in 'remembers Angband', 'doesn't', and 'human and not from an Arda', if that might matter. None of them really know me in particular all that well except insofar as you guys are, like, scary at knowing people, but the first one and Loki are really close, and the last one and Iobel.

That Cam's Maitimo and Cam are not close is mildly surprising even assuming Cam's straight. His face does not convey mild surprise.

Kib and I were really close.

Any of those would be fine, if they know you.

I'll see if Mitros wants to come then, he's nearest by.

He pops two steps to Hex. Mitros in the middle of anything?

"How's the new Arda?"

"My alt went to Angband and doesn't cope with it nearly as functionally as yous do! I think we can snap him out of it with enough background information. Your alt wants to talk to a you. Oh, and they killed the Enemy all by themselves, place is pretty safe although they did temporarily brandish sharp objects at me for impersonating Kib."